The fox bride's wedding procession

21st March 2009

Today was the second-last day of the Hanatouro light-up in Higashiyama, the eastern hills, and as expected, it was packed.

But the event is one of my favourites in the Kyoto calendar so I went anyway. Exhibitions and performances are dotted along the 4.6km route and this year, I caught one of the stranger activities.

At 7pm and 8.15pm, a curious procession set out from the imposing gate of Chion-in temple. Preceded by attendants bearing lanterns, a woman wearing a fox mask and wedding clothes travelled slowly by rickshaw through the sea of visitors.

It was the wedding procession of a fox bride (kitsune no yome iri junkou; 狐の嫁入り巡行). If I understand the event pamphlet correctly, it's an old practice done for luck.

But kitsune no yome iri also refers to the drizzling rain that falls in bright sunshine - apparently so named because of a belief that a fox bride was going to meet her husband and showers were needed to shield her from human eyes.

The procession I saw today moved in complete silence except for an alternating accompaniment of a bell rung once, then wooden clappers cracking like a thunderbolt. Ring, crack, ring, crack - and a fox woman with wedding white over her head and around her passing through.

When I looked over the photos I'd taken, it seemed as if she was materialising out of thin air. The photos wouldn't have looked that way if I had a camera that could take moving objects at night.

But I prefer my flawed, eerie version.