Takayama Festival Floats Exhibition Hall

The Takayama Festival is really two festivals of two shrines: in spring, on 14 and 15 April, that of Hie Shrine, and in autumn, on 9 and 10 October, that of Sakurayama Hachimangu. Each has its own floats: 12 in spring and 11 in autumn, all registered as National Cultural Properties. According to Gifu Prefecture they are 7 to 8 meters tall, with carvings, gilded metalwork and embroidered cloth, and some carry mechanical puppets (karakuri) worked by strings.

The hall, which opened in 1968 on the shrine grounds, displays four of the 11 autumn floats all year round, along with the shrine's great portable shrine, which according to the shrine weighs about two and a half tons and needs 80 bearers. The floats are changed three times a year, at the end of March, at the end of July and in mid-November. Since 12 July 2026 the display has been Hotei-tai, which carries a puppet of the monk Hotei and two children worked by 36 strings, Kagura-tai with the big drum that opens the procession, Kyuho-sha, and Hoju-tai with a pair of turtles on the roof.

The same ticket also gets you into Sakurayama Nikko-kan next door: a 1:10 scale model of Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, 28 buildings, which according to the shrine 33 craftsmen built over 15 years in the Taisho period. After the war the model was shown across the United States and came back to Japan. The shrine itself is open and free, and according to its tradition it was founded in the fourth century and restored in 1623 by the local ruler Kanamori Shigeyori.