The festival ''Taimatsu Festival'' at Misu Shrine (Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City) was held on October 8, 2023, in the Chushojima area of Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City. This year, after the coronavirus pandemic, the large torch, which weighs more than 1 ton, will be revived for the first time in four years. The parishioners bravely paraded around carrying torches that were blazing fiercely.
The Bonfire Festival is named after the Jinshin War (672), when Prince Oama (Emperor Tenmu) passed through Misu Village, and residents lit up the road with torches at night. It died out in the middle of the Showa era, but parishioners revived it in 1989.
Normally, torches made from reeds harvested from the Uji River are 120 centimeters in diameter and 5 meters long, and the procession was canceled in 2019 and 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. I tried to avoid it.
On this day, at 8:00 p.m., the torch was lit in front of the Misu Hall. A crowd of about 30 men carried fiercely blazing torches and marched north along Takeda Kaido, chanting "Saa, yoi yoi yoi!" The excitement reached its peak when it rotated around Kyobashi. For the first time in a while, crowds of people gathered along the road, cheering and saying, ''It's really impressive.''
