Takayama, Gifu

Edo-period mechanical puppets still move today. The Sanno Festival announces spring in the old castle town of Takayama, drawing twelve ornately carved and gilded floats into its historic streets. The highlight is the puppet offering, in which figures controlled by strings alone dance, write characters, and somersault in time with flutes and drums atop the floats. There is no electricity, no motor, only intricate mechanisms built by Edo-era craftsmen that still run with precision centuries later. The tradition grew in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from the union of Hida's master carpentry and merchant wealth, and the floats have been likened to a moving temple gate. At dusk, more than a hundred lanterns are lit and the floats move through the night. If the cherry blossoms are out, spring in Hida is almost unbearably beautiful. A UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.

In the same town, the same floats bring a different season. Alongside the spring Sanno Festival, this autumn celebration in Takayama unfolds as the rite of Sakurayama Hachimangu, drawing eleven floats through a castle town turned crimson with maple leaves. Part of its pleasure is that different floats appear than in spring. The most breathtaking is the puppet offering on the Hotei float, where two child figures cross ropes and leap onto the shoulders and hands of the deity Hotei. Like the spring festival, it grew on the strength of Hida's master craftsmen, and every carving, lacquer surface, and metal fitting speaks of local pride. Autumn in Hida is cold, and in that clear air the lantern-lit floats move quietly along. Even in the same town, a change of season makes for an entirely different festival. A UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Every morning, farmers come down from the mountain villages and set up their stalls in front of a government house that has stood since the Edo period.
The Takayama Jinya is the only surviving example of a Edo-era magistrate's office still in use in Japan. Its stone-paved courtyard becomes a market for a few hours each morning, seven days a week, every day of the year.
Spring brings fiddlehead ferns and mountain herbs. Summer brings tomatoes and cucumbers. Autumn, apples and persimmons. Winter, hand-pounded mochi and pickled vegetables. The sellers are mostly local farm women — called kaka-sa in the Hida dialect — who will tell you how to cook what you're holding, if you ask.
The market traces its roots to the early nineteenth century, when silk farmers gathered near the Takayama Betsuin temple to sell mulberry leaves. By 1894, it had become a vegetable market; eventually it settled into its current location in front of the Jinya.
The Miyagawa Morning Market is a ten-minute walk away, along the river. The two markets share the same produce and the same dialect, but feel entirely different — one framed by water, the other by history.
One of Japan's three great morning markets. Open every day of the year.

White canvas stalls line the east bank of the Miyagawa River for seven hundred meters, from Kajibashi bridge to Yayoibashi.
In spring, mountain vegetables: taranome, koshiabura, wild udo. In summer, tomatoes and cucumbers. In autumn, mushrooms and persimmons. In winter, pickled red turnip and dried greens. What the Hida mountains produce, this market makes available.
Most of the sellers are local farmers — often older women who will offer samples without being asked, who know exactly how to cook what they're selling, and who speak in the Hida dialect regardless of who's listening.
The market traces its origin to the early nineteenth century, when silk farmers began selling mulberry leaves along the riverbank. After the silk industry declined, it became a vegetable market, and in 1962, it settled into its current location along the river.
Ten minutes away, the Jinya-mae Morning Market occupies the square in front of a 300-year-old government house.
The two markets are a short walk apart and feel entirely different — one open and civic, the other intimate and riparian.
Both together are what a morning in Takayama means.
One of Japan's three great morning markets. Open every day of the year.