Suddenly last summer 3

August. Mid-Obon, MatuMiki and I took a bus north to the village of Hanase for the Matsuage Fire Festival. We walked along the river to a nice spot, then passed the time with our rice balls and ice cream. Shortly after dark, a long line of happi-clad men passed before us, holding torches high in their hands. They moved across the river and began to spread out, setting fire to hundreds of torches which had been staked into a large space that had probably once been rice paddies. When they were all lit, the entire pin-point glow silhouetted the actions of the men beyond, who were by this time surrounding a massive tower. I couldn't help but think of the title of an incredible book I'd long age read. "Fires on the Plain." It was eerily beautiful. The men then began to take some of these torches, whirl then round and round, and heave them up toward the basket which sat atop the 20m tower. These balls of fire resemble the movement of comets, and when they'd come near the basket, the crowd would grow excited, then suddenly groan as the flames fell back to earth. After about ten minutes of this, the crowd erupted as one man found his mark. The excitement grew as fireball after fireball joined the original, creating a bigger and bigger flame. It went beyond beautiful, and had all the excitement of a sporting match. After a further ten minutes this massive flaming tower began to list, then fell toward us. We were sitting a safe distance away, but when the thing hit the ground, a massive wall of flame rolled toward us like some Hollywood pyrotechnics. The heat was unreal, even on a muggy midsummer night. the crowd began to leave then, and the men of the village walked amongst us, banging a huge drum and singing in accompaniment to their proud drunken studly swagger. MatsuMiki and I stood on the bridge awhile looking out over the fields, now filling with smoke as local firemen put out the flames. We didn't speak, too much in awe of the quiet and the violence and the beauty. It's like we'd just witnessed a battle.



Through Obon, the fire theme continues. The next night, we biked the streets of Kyoto in a mad zigzag dash for the perfect vantage point from which to see each of the six hillsides aflame: the annual sendoff to ghostly Obon visitors. The okuribi is another of those things that every Kyoto blogger seems to write about, so I won't waste more bandwidth on it here. I'll simply say they we were able to catch them all, dodging cars and shadowy pedestrians adding sport to a mad sort of scavenger hunt. The reward being the fun of the ride.


On the turntable: Christpher Rouse, "Passion Wheels"
On the nighttable: Colin Reeve, "The Way of Artistry and Grace"