THE FIRST TIME I went to the Kyoto Gion Festival, my friend Isao insisted I wear a kimono. He had found one for me to borrow, and a friend to dress me. For an hour, a young Japanese woman padded my back with towels to de-emphasize the slope of my rear and tightly cinched my waist and rib cage, tugging and pushing and pulling, all in an effort to turn me into the slim, elegant column that is the hallmark of the Kyoto woman. It was difficult to breathe, but I would do nearly anything for Kyoto. I loved this darkly intricate city full of exquisite secrets, a kintsugi of a place where beauty, like gold, rested in the nooks and crannies of little alleys sheltering hidden gardens, and where wisdom was veiled in the ancient, gabled temples protected by generations of Buddhist priests.
That evening at the festival, there was not a soul in T-shirt and shorts despite the heat; even the dogs were dressed up with ruffled obis tied around their midriffs. The air throbbed with wheedling, reedy music, and we walked from street to street eating squid on a stick and drinking beer, shifting from the darkness toward a bubble of golden light at the center of which stood a forty-foot-tall festival float—a roughly rectangular-shaped wooden cart—covered with candlelit lanterns. Then we passed back into the darkness and on to the next float down the block. The following day, Isao led me to the city center. Up ahead at an intersection stood a department store building on one side and an office on the other. I could see faces pressed against every window on every floor. One of the enormous festival floats from the previous night drifted in between the two buildings like a ship. Light fell on a small, bright figure dressed in orange and gold, like the sun made flesh. It was a child. As he leaned out of the top of the float, the people around me cheered.
“Chigo-san,” Isao yelled over all the noise.
“Ichigo-san?” I asked, using the word for strawberry.
“CHI-go san,” he corrected me.
People pressed forward to try to catch a last glimpse of the float as it rattled on. I had a general feeling of largeness, of my own soul expanding up and out, carried by the sounds, the over-size floats, and the relentless joy of everyone around me. But I had no idea what was happening.
JAPAN HAS MORE than 200,000 or festivals. Of
