In the autumn, ornate floats wade into a river. Saijo's festival fields more than a hundred floats, called danjiri, and portable shrines embroidered in gold and silver thread, the largest gathering of its kind on Shikoku. The tradition grew from the Edo-period rites of Isono Shrine, bound up with the mountain worship of nearby Mount Ishizuchi. By night the lantern-laden floats move through the streets like drifting constellations. The climax arrives before dawn on October 16, when the sacred palanquin tries to return to its shrine and the men carrying the floats wade waist-deep into the Kamo River to hold it back, refusing to let the festival end. The whole event is, in a sense, a dramatization of reluctance to say goodbye.