This year, the twenty-fourth year of Heisei, marks the seven hundredth anniversary of the Sanja Matsuri. The festival commemorates the founding of Sensoji, Tokyo's oldest temple, which was built to house a statue of the goddess Kannon.
Yesterday, the various portable parish shrines (or mikoshi) had been paraded on palanquins to Sensoji for blessing. Today, on the third and final day of the festivities, it is the turn of Sensoji's own portable shrines – the ichinomiya, ninomiya and sannomiya: the three holiest shrines in the district – to tour the parish. Weighing up to a ton each, the shrines are borne by a mix of shrine parishioners and volunteers, all dressed in matching happi coats. In a cacophony of cries ('Yoi-sa! Ha!'), hand claps and festival music, they totter down the main temple avenue, jouncing and jolting the mikoshi along the way to energise (some say entertain) the resident spirits.
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