Kyoto Hanatouro in Kimono: Lantern-Lit Evenings in Higashiyama and Arashiyama, and What Replaced the Festival

For twenty years, Kyoto Hanatouro (京都・花灯路) was the city's lantern festival: 2,500 bamboo-and-washi lanterns lining a 5-kilometre walk through Higashiyama every March, and a December edition along the Togetsukyo bridge and bamboo grove in Arashiyama. If you are searching for it, you should know first that the organising council held the final Arashiyama edition in December 2021 and the final Higashiyama edition in March 2022, and the branded festival has not returned. Plenty of older articles still list it as annual; they are wrong.

The good news is that the evenings the festival was built around never went away. The temples along the Higashiyama route run their own spring and autumn night openings with lanterns and illuminated gardens, Arashiyama's bridge and riverside are lit in the evenings, and the lanes between them are, if anything, calmer without the festival crowds. This guide is the kimono version of that evening.

What still happens, and when

Dates move slightly each year; check the temple websites for the exact windows. What matters for planning is that late March and mid-November to early December give you several night openings on the same walk.

The Higashiyama evening in kimono

The old festival route ran from Shōren-in south to Kiyomizu-dera. Walked from OlaChill's Kyoto Kiyomizu shop, it runs the other way and ends at the temple with the biggest illumination, which is the right order.

1. Shop, 15:30. Dress with the hair set (¥1,500); an evening walk needs a style that survives four hours. Add next-day return (+¥1,100) when booking, because the shop closes at 18:00 and the night openings run to about 21:00 or 21:30.
2. Sannenzaka and Ninenzaka, 16:30. Day crowds are thinning, the shops light their lanterns, and the stone steps take on the colour the festival made famous.
3. Yasaka Pagoda (Hōkan-ji), 17:15. The five-storey pagoda at dusk, from Yasaka-dori looking up the lane.
4. Nene-no-michi and Kōdai-ji, 17:45. The temple opens for its night viewing around sunset; the bamboo grove and the mirror pond are the reason to pay the admission.
5. Maruyama Park and Yasaka Shrine, 19:00. The shrine's lanterns are lit every night; the park's weeping cherry is lit in spring.
6. Shōren-in, 19:45, if it is a night-opening period, for the blue moss garden.
7. Back south to Kiyomizu-dera, 20:30, if its night opening is on; the last entry is usually 21:00. From the stage, the city lights spread below you.

Distance: about 4 km with stops, over four to five hours. Sit down at Maruyama Park.

Two practical notes on the night openings. First, the temple gates usually close for an hour between the day and night sessions (around 17:00 to 17:30), so if you arrive at Kōdai-ji at 17:10 you wait outside; use that time for the pagoda shot. Second, night admissions are separate from day admissions, so a temple you visited in the morning charges again after dark. Budget for two or three night entries, not five; the lanes between them are free and are half the pleasure.