I ❤ Gion Matsuri

I've written about Gion Matsuri before.  Each year I grow more fond of this month-long annual festival in the heart of Kyoto.

Gion Matsuri is summer.  It is summer in Kyoto.  It is hot as hell.  It is crowded.  It is wonderfully and unassumingly exuberant, and somewhat mystifying.  Everyone dressed in yukata and geta, glistening with sweat, uchiwa waving, beating at the warm, moist air like the wings of a bug caught in a swimming pool.

It is a sort of joyous suffering, like over-drinking on a night out.  Just as you know that last drink is too much, that you'll pay for it, everyone knows Gion Matsuri takes place in the summer, and summer in Kyoto is generally brutal.  Still they come.  Not a couple hundred people, but thousands, streaming through the hot, sticky afternoons and evenings.

It is not like a large crowd packing into a stadium on a hot day to see a sporting event.  Gion Matsuri is fluid.  There is movement.  Movement spread over nearly 10 square kilometres.  Movement spread over 31 days.  There is a rhythm to the festival, a beat.  Like a piece of music, there is a pianissimo intro and outro, and a crescendo in the middle.  The soundtrack is a beautifully discordant and somber march of flutes, gongs and drums.  The tempo is like a New Orleans funeral parade that carries you along, but doesn't ask too much.  It is sedate, languid, perfectly in sync with the sultry weather.

For a gaijin Gion Matsuri feels thoroughly Japanese, authentic and undefiled.  Kyoto city is ever evolving.  I am witness to the constant and rapid changes.  Gion Matsuri functions in some way as an annual reminder of the city's past, of its roots.  The summer sun burns this into the hearts of its people, as well as the hordes of tourists, which ensures its continuation.  Long live Gion Matsuri!

The river (川)

Katsura River (桂川) 12:10 6 July 2018 

How high's the water, Mama?  Five feet high and risin'.

- Johnny Cash


I have long wondered about the not-so-pretty concrete levees that edge most every river in Japan.  The beauty of Kyoto's Kamo River that snakes through the city is significantly diminished by these man-made borders.  While nature and time have softened the hard ugliness with moss and various river grass, they do remind me of the epic eyesore built to contain the Los Angeles River in the late 1930s.  Like LA, the levees in Kyoto were built in the modern era in response to cyclical flooding.

There is a lovely promenade along both banks of the Kamo River that is popular with strolling lovers and picnickers in the spring and summer months.  This too made me wonder, why doesn't the city plant some trees?  How much more beautiful would this esplanade be with graceful tree branches shading the path.  It all seemed somehow incongruous with a city famed for its gorgeous gardens and high artistic aesthetic.  Furthermore, I couldn't imagine this thin, shallow river ever swelling to the width and height of the embankment.

Those questions were answered in a dramatic and threatening way this week.  Typhoon No. 7 rolled into town Wednesday evening and basically parked the bus.  It rained and it rained and it rained, with barely a pause.  In 24 hours Kyoto received more than 250mm (9.8 in) of rain.  The Kamo River, normally less than a meter deep, was sloshing over the top of the levee and the nice pedestrian path along the riverbank was inundated with muddy water.

Closer to home, the Katsura River had risen to 4.15 meters (13.6 ft), well above the so-called "flood precaution level" and had begun to breach its banks in places.  The riverside trails where I frequently walk had disappeared under water.  So too had the man-made waterfall that cuts across the river north of the Imperial Villa.  The famous Togetsukyo Bridge in Arashiyama was nearly submerged.  Some 40 kilometers further upstream, the Hiyoshi Dam was at capacity and discharging 900 tons of water a second.  It was incredible to see this normally placid river stretched to its full width and power.  Nature is an awesome and humbling force.  

The rain finally subsided Friday evening, and so too did the startling emergency notifications (which I can't read) squawking out on my mobile phone.