Edo (Tokyo): Kanda Festival Procession: four large, elaborately decorated floats are shown being pulled through the city. Colour woodcut by Yoshifuji, 1884.

The Kanda Festival was one of the city's main seasonal events. Until the prevalence of telegraph lines made passage too difficult, shrine festivals were celebrated in this way, with each block of houses competing to produce the most elaborate and intricate float. This type of festival procession, at the Kanda shrine as elsewhere, was later replaced by the more boisterous conveying of portable shrines