The Gion Festival is of Shinto origin: and is held annually during the month of July in the old mountain-cay Japan in honour of the Yasaka Jinsha, a State shrine, revered! far and wide, It dates from A. D. 876 and was founded bya veteran Shinto priest named Urabe-no-Hivamare, to commemorate the deliverance of the prefecture "of Kyoto from a pestilence that threatened to turn the entire area {nto avast graveyard, Many a Japanese will tell you that if you are desirous of seeing the Japan that was-in the days of old, you must not miss seeing the 'Gion. Festival. Some will lament that the juggernaut of progress had to roll heavily over thie land, but "this expression of regret is obviouaaroused only by the recollections "of what the Gion Festival means'
0 far as past history is concerned; and is actuated by the excitement induced by the festivities and all they signify, For it is a self "evident truth that the modern: Janote is far too practical to egret "the great step forward that hia country hag made in modern elviliation or to waste time in senti mental mourning regarding the ist, But nearly anyone will urge you not to miss seeing the Gi Matauri and, practising what they preach, every Jo who can conveniently do s0 is in Kyoto di ing one of the days when this festival Taats, so that-at this season the population of the former capital of japan is almost literally packed to overflowing. tory and folk-lore. These floats are differently decorated: on some are symbols of the period of the gods: fous and social tales borrowed from China and on which Japan had set her own national seal; on yet others mediaeval Dutch tapestry over or through which peer European faces: dressed in the costumes of the Middle "Ages, xepresenting the coming of the Hol-Ianders to these islands; and on at least one, the golden prow of the ship with which the Empress Jingo set out to subjugate the Koreans.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.