When the Tanabata (七夕）event approaches, our craftsmen are harvesting the bamboo in the humid heat between monsoon rain splashes.

Equipped with saws and a specially made bamboo kama (sickle), they brave the mosquitoes and wasps. Extracting 15-meter-long culms, each weighing around 50kg, is physically exhausting in these high temperatures and humidity.

The side branches – each nearly 2 meters long – are chopped off on-site with the kama. The remaining culms, which cannot be used for regular bamboo crafts due to being cut outside the usual harvesting season and thus containing a high amount of sap, will be split and repurposed for Japan’s most famous summer event: the Gion Matsuri. These culms are laid under the festival floats to help them turn more smoothly at the sharp right-angle intersections of Kyoto’s street grid.