Aoi Matsuri

Kyoto’s imperial festival

Aoi Matsuri, also called Kamo Matsuri, is the principal annual rite of both Shimogamo and Kamigamo shrines and a chokusai — an imperial festival at which the emperor’s envoy presents offerings. According to the shrines it began about 1,500 years ago, in 544, when crop failure, famine and epidemic were taken as signs of the Kamo deity’s anger, and horses were raced and rites performed to appease it.

In the Heian court it was so central that “the festival”, with no other name, meant this one. Its name comes from the aoi leaves that decorate the shrine buildings and are worn by everyone who serves in it. Together with Gion Matsuri and Jidai Matsuri it is counted among the three great festivals of Kyoto.

The procession

At 10:30 the procession leaves the Kyoto Imperial Palace. It goes first to Shimogamo Shrine, where rites are performed, then re-forms and continues north along the Kamo-kaido road, arriving at Kamigamo Shrine at about 15:30. There it advances along the white-sand approach; inside the second torii the imperial envoy reads the emperor’s message, and rites in their old form follow, among them the leading of horses and the azuma-asobi dance.

A tradition chosen again and again

What visitors see today is not an unbroken line but a tradition repeatedly revived. The festival lapsed after the Onin War of the fifteenth century, was restored in 1694 and held until 1870, and returned in 1884 as one of Japan’s three imperial festivals. The procession stopped in 1943 and came back only in 1953. Since 1956 a Kyoto woman chosen as the Saio-dai has taken the place once held by an imperial princess.