The Gion Festival (祇園祭, Gion Matsuri) is one of the largest and most famous festivals in Japan, taking place annually during the month of July in Kyoto. Many events take place in central Kyoto and at the Yasaka Shrine, the festival's patron shrine, located in Kyoto's famous Gion district, which gives the festival its name. It is formally a Shinto festival, and its original purposes were purification and pacification of disease-causing entities. There are many ceremonies held during the festival, but it is best known for its two Yamaboko Junkō (山鉾巡行) processions of floats, which take place on July 17 and 24.
The three nights leading up to each day of a procession are sequentially called yoiyoiyoiyama (宵々々山), yoiyoiyama (宵々山), and yoiyama (宵山). During these yoiyama evenings, Kyoto's downtown area is reserved for pedestrian traffic, and some traditional private houses near the floats open their entryways to the public, exhibiting family heirlooms in a custom known as the Folding Screen Festival (屏風祭り, Byōbu Matsuri). Additionally, the streets are lined with night stalls selling food such as yakitori (barbecued chicken on skewers), taiyaki, takoyaki (fried octopus balls), okonomiyaki, traditional Japanese sweets, and many other culinary delights. The Gion Festival originated during an epidemic as part of a purification ritual ...
- From the Wikipedia entry on Gion Matsuri
In a broad sense, Goryō (御霊) is an honorific for a spirit, especially one that causes hauntings, and the term is used as a synonym for onryō (怨霊, vengeful Japanese ghosts).
- From the Wikipedia entry on Goryō
The potato was almost too hot to hold in spite of the clean white paper wrapper. It was slit at the top and steam poured out of it, liquifying a huge slab of white butter. Oscar took a leisurely bite of it, allowing the butter to drench his moustache and run across his cheeks and into his beard, savoring everything: the fluffy texture of the baked potato flesh, the salt, and the sweet fat of the churned cream. He waited a moment, chewing, eyes closed and face tilted to the sky, and then took a slow slug of icy golden lager. He wiped the back of his wrist and hand across his mouth to clean off the molten milkfat and looked up. Sanae was watching him, her eyes liquid in the late afternoon light, a smile on her face, shoulders relaxed. It made him happy to see her like this.
They were in Sanae’s homeland of Japan. They arrived slightly over a week ago, to visit her parents, and while they were there, it had been stressful for Sanae; she was constantly translating. Oscar spoke a bit of the language – “enough to get into trouble but not enough to get out,” as he said, and though he managed to make do with body language and his limited vocabulary when he was on his own, there had still been a lot of demands on Sanae. So when the opportunity came along for the two of them to get away, they jumped at it. They had traveled together first to Nara, and then on to Kyoto. Oscar had wanted to see the old temples and palaces, and they had not disappointed – the Golden Pavilion and Kiyo-Mizu Dera in particular were breathtaking.
Now, they had arrived at the Gion Matsuri – an old, old festival in Kyoto. He had been told it originated in the eighth century during an epidemic, and was a ritual to prevent calamities. A cab had dropped them out at the festival grounds, and they walked past barriers meant to keep cars away and onto a street where the festival was being held. People milled about and food vendors here and there were setting up their stalls or hawking their wares. Sanae bought a few dumplings, but Oscar’s nose had caught something else that smelled absolutely wonderful to him. He hadn’t realized how much dairy he ate until he arrived here – her family had a fairly traditional Japanese diet. The food had been good – miso soup and vegetables and rice that the family grew themselves, incredibly fresh and delicious – but he didn’t care very much for seafood generally. He wished that were different – it would have made life with Sanae simpler, certainly. And he thought Japanese seafood was beautiful. But he just didn’t like the taste of it very much, and so, though he always found something he could eat, he hadn’t felt truly satiated since they arrived. And now the smell of butter wafted through the air and it made him salivate. They tracked the smell to a vendor who was selling jagabata – grilled potato and rich butter from Hokkaido – and Oscar bought one along with a bottle of beer and dove in.
It was, at that moment, one of the best things he had ever tasted. The beer, too, went down smoothly and tasted wonderful. There was something to be said for the pleasure of drinking like this, having a cold beer in the dwindling light of an incredibly hot and humid Kyoto afternoon, as others did the same, everyone in a celebratory mood. Sanae ate her dumpling and he ate his potato and they lost themselves in the simple joy of being. I wish this moment could go on forever, he thought, maybe heaven is a place where nothing ever changes.
He took in his surroundings. More and more people were arriving to the festival. About a block ahead, at an intersection, Oscar could see a massive float sitting on the pavement, the gold and red of it blazing in the setting sun. It dwarfed the people surrounding it, gleaming with ornate gilded woodwork and colorful decorations.
“If we get separated, meet me back here at the base of that float,” he said, gesturing towards it.
“Oscar, if we get separated, get a cab and get back to the hotel,” Sanae replied, a little more sharply than was necessary, Oscar thought. But he wasn’t about to let that ruin the moment. He and Sanae strolled through the crowd towards the float. Now and then she would stop and look at a vendor’s wares while Oscar watched the people around him. It had become quite busy, with people all over the place as they arrived at the intersection where the float stood. As he scanned the corridors made by the buildings he could see more floats, many more floats, all of them very much like the one they stood at the foot of, an endless number of them in every direction excepting the one they had come from. The floats stood at each and every intersection as far as he could see, disappearing into the distance.
He appreciated why she had told him to get a cab and get back to the hotel if they got separated.
It really was becoming crowded now as the sun set. People milled about, young women in fabulous and colorful yukatas, one a pale pink with bright red chrysanthemums and a dark blue sash, one night blue with pink plum blooms and a bright yellow obi, one royal blue with white cherry blossoms and a grass green belt. All of them accompanied by giggling friends wearing equally brilliant patterns, or escorted by young men in more masculine robes, jagged sea blue stripes on a grey background shot with geometric tessellations in pale green foam, or a textured charcoal yukata with a white belt that looked as though it had been touched with a calligrapher’s brush, another wearing azure, dragons outlined in white wrapped around his body from head to toe. And there were people in western wear and more formal kimono as well, all of them swirling around him and Sanae as they moved through the maze of humanity. He gripped her hand tightly as she led him through the throng and glanced around.
It was then he got his first glimpse of the monster.
He saw it through the crowd, and it truly was just a glimpse, gone almost before he registered it was there. It had appeared out of a profusion of floats and bodies, a riot of colors and sounds and textures surrounding it, and was swallowed almost instantly by the multitudes. For that one moment, he saw it clearly and was absolutely transfixed by the sight of it, his blood seeming to stop suddenly in his veins as he experienced an instant of almost pure terror and confusion.
It brought to mind pictures he had seen that were supposed to simulate having a stroke, where everything was almost, but not quite, recognizable. You would get the impression of a kitchen, perhaps, though there certainly wasn’t anything you could identify as a kitchen in the picture. This bit of the photo looked like it should be a curtain partially covering a window, perhaps, and this bit looked as though it should be a clear jar filled perhaps with coffee beans or some sort of spice. The problem was, even though that’s what you wanted to see, the picture didn’t actually show those things. What was truly there was a meaningless glob of colors and shapes that made no sense at all, information that was completely un-processible. So as much as your eye wanted to see a flower or maybe a rooster’s head with its comb, what was actually in front of you was incomprehensible.
That’s what looking at the monster was like. Only, instead of getting the impression of a kitchen, Oscar’s eye gave him the impression of a human being. But past that, he couldn’t actually identify anything – there were parts that looked almost like eyes, and a nose, and something that looked very nearly like hair, and the overall shapes and colors were close – but nothing was right, in the end it was meaningless almost-patterns of skin and tissue and things that looked like they might be clothes but absolutely, in the final analysis, weren’t. And in that moment, his mind screamed at him: “It’s a monster! Oh my god, it is a monster, a real monster!”
The thing was swallowed by the bodies of the crowd and a moment later he was no longer certain just what he had seen. Maybe I just saw a bunch of people together and got confused, he thought. But it was difficult to convince himself, and he was left with a nagging sensation that he had seen something secret and terrible.
Finally, he made up his mind that it must be someone with some kind of awful birth defect, or someone who had been in a fire or had some kind of industrial accident, and he told himself he had no right to feel horrified by them the way he had. If anything, it was sad. The person must be lonely, he thought, but in spite of this internal monologue, he didn’t feel sad. He had seen something that repelled him, and felt a deep loathing and repugnance that mingled with the perverse desire to see it again, to confirm just how hideous it was. And yet, he was afraid to see it again as well, though he did not know why, only that the sight was upsetting in a way that he could not articulate. In turn, this feeling led to a kind of shame – he had been raised with the idea that all human beings deserved understanding and compassion and had taken that to heart. In his work in the burn unit he had seen plenty of people who had been through terrible things, some of whom were injured beyond the capacity for speech. One lady in particular came to mind, a woman who had been trapped in her car after an accident, who had to wait, ensnared, as the hungry fire came to devour her, eating her fingers, eyes, lips, tongue and nose as it worked its way across her body. She was terrible to look upon, but he felt compassion for her. But for some reason he could not identify, he was unable to summon any compassion whatsoever for the thing he had seen through the crowd. He hated it, and though he was ashamed of his hate, it would not go away.
He had decided to stop ruminating on it and put the thing out of his mind when he realized he had lost Sanae. She was no longer with him. He spun about, looking for her wildly. When had she let go of his hand? he wondered. Was it when they stopped momentarily to look at the takoyaki seller’s wares? He seized on this idea and turned around to make his way through the horde to the vendor, who was shouting at the top of his lungs. “Irasshaimase! Irasshaimase! Irasshaimase!”
But as he got to the stall he realized it was not the same stall they had approached earlier, not the same man shouting, and as he listened to the peddler hawking his goods, he realized he could hear at least three other people over the din of the mob shouting the same thing: “Irasshaimase! Irasshaimase! Irasshaimase!” Which one of them did we stop at? he wondered, the icy fingers of panic beginning to tickle his bowels.
Desperate now, he pushed his way through the mass to the other vendors, looking wildly about for Sanae. But he didn’t see her, and none of the vendors looked familiar. He made his way along in the general direction they had been going, wondering if he could perhaps find something to stand on so he could see over the heads of the crowd. But he feared even if he did so, he wouldn’t be able to identify her. The sun had truly set while he had been casting about for her, and now the festival was lit only by street signs in wild neon kana, glowing festival lanterns, and the fires of the food vendors. It was rapidly becoming too dark to pick faces from the masses.
Resigned, he decided it would be best to follow her advice, and make his way out of the section of Kyoto set aside for the festival and to try to get a cab back to the hotel. He reassured himself with the idea that she would be waiting in their room, and would scold him for being so careless when he got back. He wasn’t certain which way they had come from, and scanning the skyline he couldn’t see Kyoto Tower, which he had been using to orient himself. He resolved to walk in one direction until he was out of the festival and set out to what he thought was the west. He had a vague idea that their hotel was in that direction. The lights and yukatas and decorated floats had lost their charm for him at this point and he put his head down, his shoulders up, and bulled and pushed his way through the crowd. After a length of time he looked up and for a split second he thought he saw the monster again, off in the distance through the partying rabble, a shape that should make sense but simply didn’t.
Then a teenager walking with his friends stumbled into him and would have fallen if Oscar hadn’t caught him. On pure instinct, Oscar grabbed at his robe as the kid fell, and managed to seize the cloth of a sleeve in his fist. Helpless in the inertia of his fall, the teenager would have tumbled face first into the ground if not for Oscar. He mumbled something at Oscar as he swayed back to his feet, only to overbalance and go spinning back towards his friends, who tittered at his drunkenness. The group moved on and as they made their way into the night he shuddered and glanced back in the direction of the monster, but instead of the horrible thing, he saw Sanae.
Relief flooded him. She was walking away from him, but it was her, undoubtedly and absolutely her. He recognized the clothing – not a yukata, but western-style clothes, jeans and a black camisole top – and her purse, a handbag made of soft, fine inden-ya, deerskin dyed black with a red lacquered dragonfly pattern covering it. But more than either of those he recognized her walk: the short, hesitant steps, the ever-so-slightly pigeon-toed gait that carried her slender, delicate frame.
“Sanae!” he called out. But she didn’t seem to hear him. He started after her, and called her name again, loud enough that heads swung his way as she turned a corner and slipped from view.
He really was pushing people out of the way now as he fought through the horde. He turned the corner and found that the crowd began to thin out here. He saw her ahead, perhaps two blocks away. This time she turned right, down an alley that ran at a diagonal to the avenue they were on. It was still a little too crowded to run, but he figured he had finally made it to the outskirts of the fairground. He began to jog, moving as quickly as he could towards the alley.
He followed the path she had taken and as he rounded the next corner in pursuit of her, he glanced ahead and saw her silhouette in an open doorway filled with dim light. Then the door slid shut, plunging the area into shadow.
He stopped short. What is going on? he wondered. He took in his surroundings and as he did, he became more confused and concerned. This was an empty, winding alley. He seemed to have left the crowd behind completely and that worried him. He didn’t see a single soul here, just the black shapes of buildings blocking the starlight. After the lanterns and the fires and neon signs, it seemed almost desolate here, and quite dark, and he wondered what she was thinking, coming down here.
He walked along towards the door, casting about for anything that might explain her behavior, and he realized suddenly how silent it was here, and how oppressive the shadows truly were. He could barely make any details out as he stumbled along, and as he neared the door he had seen Sanae go into, he stopped again, unsure.
What on earth is she doing here? he wondered, spiders of apprehension crawling around his belly.
It seemed so incredibly out of character for her. Sanae was the kind of person that was always where she said she was going to be when she said she was going to be there. It was very odd that she would visit some home in Kyoto instead of just getting a cab and heading to the hotel to meet him. At least he assumed it was a home. Then he recalled being told about the Folding Screen Festival, a part of the Gion Matsuri where people opened their homes and displayed family heirlooms. Perhaps this is part of that? he wondered. But everything felt off, wrong.
He looked at the door again. His heart began to beat faster. Perhaps I should just get back to the hotel. Maybe it's not her, he thought. But he knew it was her. He was confident about that, if nothing else. He knocked at the door and waited, then knocked again, harder.
No answer.
Finally he tried the handle, and finding the door unlocked, he slid it to the side. It was even darker inside than it was out, everything cast in impenetrable gloom save a small circle of starlight that shone through the door. It revealed a pair of strappy black sandals. Sanae's sandals. He recognized them.
He stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him and called out, “Konbanwa? Sumimasen...”
There was no reply but he had the sense of something moving very stealthily in the interior darkness.
“Hello?” he called, squeezing the word out of a throat that suddenly seemed like it wanted to close shut. The sweat that had cooled him in the humid Kyoto night now felt cold and clammy on his body, and his heart was beating like a triphammer. He could actually feel the blood pulse in his temples and pounding through his chest. He thought briefly of the monster in the crowd. There was a bang from the back of the room and the shadows shifted as he jumped and spun towards the noise. Then there was a whirring, clicking sound. Something about the size of a cat was approaching him. He braced himself, all his senses telling him to turn and run, to flee this place and never return.
The thing slid smoothly into the light and he gasped. It was a tiny man. He held a plate with a teacup on it. The little man neared him and halted just a few inches from his legs, then suddenly bowed his head and raised his tray with a jerk, offering him the teacup. Oscar nearly screamed, but realized just as he began that this wasn't a man at all. It was a robot. A karakuri robot – an automata from the 17th century or so made to move with whalebone springs and strings, something like an old wind up toy, only much, much more sophisticated. It had its hair styled with a topknot, like an old fashioned nobleman, and it wore a hakama and a tiny man's kimono. The deep blue and grey of the cloth and the black hair made the white paint on its wooden face seem very pale in the small ring of light.
He laughed in relief. This must be part of the Folding Screen Festival. Sanae was having a bit of fun with him, that was all. He bent down to take the cup in both hands, and lifting it from the tray triggered the karakuri to start up again. It slowly turned around and headed back into the darkness from which it came. His eyes followed it to a slim, feminine form in the shadows that he had not been able to pick out of the darkness earlier. Thank goodness, he thought, it's her.
“Sanae?” he called. “Honey?”
“I am here, my dear one,” came a voice as hard as the slamming of a coffin lid and as cold as the air in an emptied grave. Oscar’s breath caught in his throat as the lights came on and he could see everything for the first time.
“Oh God!” he shrieked, “Oh God! Oh God!”
