Museums on wheels “Yamahoko” decorated with gorgeous tapestries imported from overseas

 Gion Matsuri is one of the most famous Japanese festivals and its highlight is called “Yamahoko Junko”. It takes place on July 17^th. and gorgeously decorated floats are paraded down the center part of Kyoto city. Since this year’s July 17^th is national holiday and tremendous crowds of sightseeing people are expected…, I went to "Hiki-zome" pulling the newly built floats event that was taken place on Thursday July 13^th. It is good chance to see the floats of festival in close distance.

Local school children were pulling “Hokaboko” float. It is also good opportunity for visitors to experience pulling float. The man on the roof makes sure the float procession by pushing the obstacles such as electric line.

This day, I guided my guest from Netherland to some sightseeing destinations. Some of them were Gion festival associated places; Yasaka shrine and Gion festival gallery. We could see beautiful portable shrines at the stage of Yasaka shrine.
From here you can see the view of early 17th century depicting local people shaking the portable shrine to entertain the deities of Yasaka shrine. 
: The area in and around the Kyoto city (Funaki-version)

We stopped by Gion matsuri gallery that is perfect place to explain about the festival float because it holds the model. You can view the structure in close distance. The front part was decorated with gorgeous tapestry. It looks like museum on wheels!

It is clear that those tapestries are originally from other countries such as Persia and Europe. But how those products were imported from overseas under the isolationist foreign policy by Edo shogunate? Actually those tapestries were brought by merchant via my guest’s country. Dutch was allowed to trade with Japan because they were more interested in business rather than in missionary work. Considering about those historical background, the float of Gion festival is something like the showcase of the long relationship between Japan and Netherland.

The other amazing point is that the float is constructed without using any nails! Only carpenters use ropes made of hemp. The process of assembling floats is one of the interesting viewing point and you can see it in the gallery. Above picture tying shape is called “butterfly”.

This one is called “Shrimp”. Each district float has its own shape. It is something like an art!

"Discover Kyoto" explains whole story of float very well!

I could see also "Huna-boko" literally means ship shaped float 

Here is uploaded photos by my guests.