The mikoshi is a portable shrine, a palanquin in which the kami is carried out from its shrine and borne through the streets during a festival, bringing the deity among the people.
The kami goes out
Built as an ornate miniature shrine, roofed and gilded and often topped with a phoenix, the mikoshi receives the kami, transferred into it from the shrine for the occasion, and is then shouldered by teams of bearers and carried in procession through the district during the festival, so that the deity leaves its sanctuary and travels among the homes and streets of the community it protects. The festival procession is thus not a symbolic parade but the actual going-out of the kami into its territory, a visit to and a blessing of the community.
Carried with vigour
The bearing of the mikoshi is often boisterous, the bearers rocking and jolting it and calling out as they carry it, a vigorous handling widely understood to please and to enliven the kami rather than to disrespect it, and the energy of the procession is part of the festival. Great festivals may involve many mikoshi and enormous crowds, and the shouldering of the shrine is a coveted honour and a communal labour. When the procession is done the kami is returned to the shrine. The mikoshi thus embodies a central movement of Shinto festival life, the temporary emergence of the enshrined and normally hidden deity to move among and bless the people who carry it.