140303-0026 - Gion Matsuri

A festival float is being pulled down a street during Kyoto‘s famed Gion Matsuri, which takes place during July. The festival was started when in 869, Kyoto was suffering from pestilence. By order of Emperor Seiwa (850-880), the people of Kyoto prayed to the god of Yasaka Shrine for deliverance of the disease. For each of the sixty-six provinces of Japan, a decorated halberd was displayed, together with mikoshi (palanquin to carry a god) from the shrine. In later years, if disease broke out again this ritual was repeated. It was made an annual event in 970.

From a series of glass slides published (but not photographed) by Scottish photographer George Washington Wilson (1823–1893). Wilson’s firm was one of the largest publishers of photographic prints in the world.