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🏮 Kyokusui no En

曲水の宴

Kyoto (城南宮) · Every year on 3 November

Traditional performing arts

50 days to go
Rooms around Kyoto fill up while the festival is on.

At Jonangu Shrine (Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City), the Kyokusui no En is held every year on April 29 in the Heian Garden within the shrine grounds. It reenacts a poetry gathering held at the imperial court from the Nara period to the Heian period, and is known as a seasonal event representative of Kyoto. Its origins trace back to the purification rite recorded by the ancient Chinese calligrapher Wang Xizhi in the "Lantingji Xu," and in Japan it appears in the Nihon Shoki in a record from the first year of Emperor Kenzo. After flourishing as a formal annual court event, it died out amid the wars, but was revived in the Edo period by Tokugawa Yoshimune and the Retired Emperor Nakamikado. On the day, seven poets in Heian-period court dress such as kariginu (hunting robes) and kouchigi (short outer robes) sit beside a winding stream and compose waka poems while watching a shirabyoshi dance. They drink sake from hango (floating cups) sent down the stream by child attendants, and the seven poems are chanted aloud by Shinto priests and offered to the deities. The elegant world of the court is recreated over about 50 minutes, including the hango shaped like mandarin ducks seen in the "Kyokusui no En Zu Byobu" (Screen Painting of the Kyokusui Banquet) held by Jonangu Shrine.

Getting there

Immediately after getting off at the "Jonangu" city bus stop from the subway "Takeda" Station, or about a 10-minute walk from Kintetsu "Takeda" Station.