If you revel in the costumes, customs and pageantry of times past Japan delivers – especially in its three Matsuri festivals. The one about to get underway on Oct. 22 is Jidai Matsuri, the Festival of the Ages.
The Japan National Tourism Organization says the celebration centers on the Heian Jingu Shrine as some 2,000 people bedeck themselves in traditional garb representing the diverse eras of Kyoto’s extraordinary history.
Then, they process through the city’s streets. The parade begins around noon at Kyoto’s Imperial Palace and heads to the Heian Jingu Shrine. The procession arrives around 2:30 p.m.
The sheer length of the ancient perambulation is impressive in of itself. It can take more than an hour for marchers to pass a given point. For bystanders, that’s wonderful. They get a close-up view of the passing panorama, one in which they get to see how both commoners and nobility dressed. This garb isn’t some slap-dash, cut-and-paste deal. Not only is it historically accurate, and pegged to extensive research, but the weaving and dying of fabrics are properly rooted. It’s the little things, the authenticity of repeated ritual, which set so many things in Japan apart from the knock-off world of the everyday. There’s no better place to see that played out than Jidai Matsuri.
Those costumes, this pageantry, meld perfectly with the old streets and homes of this quintessentially historic Japanese city.
If you’re looking to find Heian Jingu Shrine, it’s about a 10-minute walk from Higashiyama Station, which itself is some 12 minutes via train via the Karasuma Line. Trains augmented by walking are the best way to move around in Japan, where traffic jams are polite, but seemingly ever-present.
(Images: Pete Slater)
