KYOTO--Under the blaze of the scorching sun, 23 elaborately decorated floats paraded through downtown streets here on July 17 in a climax of the Gion Festival. The Naginatahoko float led the ...

Japan’s former capital Kyoto plays ... including the Aoi Festival, the Jidai Festival, and the Gozan no Okuribi. But Japan’s biggest summer festival, the month-long Gion Festival, is probably ...

The parade’s organizer, the Gion Festival Yamahoko Association, based in Kyoto’s Nakagyo Ward, made the decision on April 20 at a meeting with 34 local float-preservation associations.

Gion Festival is said to have started in the Heian period as a way of asking people to be spared from the plague. Still now, every 17th of July, a pre-festival procession of floats, called the ...

Core Kyoto narrator Gary Tegler gets a close-up look at the Gion Matsuri, which began over 1,000 years ago, as he unravels the mystery of the decorations and meets the foreign volunteers.

Kyoto's famous festival held in July, the Gion Festival, features yamahoko floats. Lanterns that will decorate places such as the floats are being made. A shop in Kyoto plans to produce about ...

one of the climaxes of the monthlong Gion Festival. He will cut a sacred straw rope with a sword to commence the procession. (Japanese original by Yuki Ohigashi, Kyoto Bureau) ...