Ben said we would be going to the Fire Festival in Aso. Several weekends ago, we saw, from a
distance, two Japanese Kanji characters burned into the side of two
mountains. I thought that would be
involved somehow with this. I also
figured some fireworks would be involved, and Ben informed us that on Saturday
night, 2,000 fireworks would be set off in his town. And someone said something about some rings
of fire and people in them. Other than
those concepts, I went into this Fire Festival with not a lot of expectation,
simply assuming that, like other Japanese cultural events, I would stand with
my friends, listening to someone or a group of people lead some ceremony with
some significance that I could neither understand nor grasp.
Like many of my assumptions made prior to attending several
Japanese events so far that made those assumptions look ridiculous, the Fire
Festival turned out to be one of the most incredible cultural experiences I
have had here, although it will have to share that status with waterfall-jumping
and meteor-gazing. Most events and
ceremonies I have attended here have been, for the most part, spectator events,
with parade-type atmospheres, and big crowds watching performances on stage. The Fire Festival, despite being the most
dangerous celebration yet, was also the most participatory.
Aso is the town around Volcano Aso, the active volcano about
an hour North of Kumamoto City. The
whole point is to gather at the Aso Shrine and welcome the fire goddesses so as
to bring good health and good fortune for the coming year. My friends and I parked and approached the
streets around the shrine to see hundreds, if not several thousand, people
gathered and watching the gravel walkways and areas bordering the shrine. Suddenly, the faces of the crowd, the houses
nearby and the stones of the walls lining the shrine glistened with the
reflection of dozens of levitating fireballs.
The crowd seemed to be lining the streets and watching a
procession of people swinging ropes connected to flaming shapes roughly the
size of basketballs. We skipped along
the outside of the gathering, found a gap, and stepped through for a better
look. The crowd was not watching a
procession or a parade of any kind. The
people weren’t moving, they were standing in one spot, swinging ropes at the
end of which featuring fire devouring bundles of hay strapped together. Members of the fire department and event
organizers kept bringing armloads of hay bundles, all ready tied together, for
people to grab a hold of, make sure that both ends of the bundle caught fire,
and then take the rope and swing in circles until the orange, red, and yellow
got to the rope and sent the charred remnants of hay flying. How do I know this? EVERYONE GOT TO SWING FIRE!!!!!!!
This evening was one of those times that are so surreal, you
almost feel bad you won’t be able to thoroughly communicate the atmosphere with
people that weren’t there. For several
city blocks, the night’s darkness was illuniated by endless glowing dots
following an orbit around their swinger, which also made for a “Wayne’s World”
effect of blurry vision; the people down the street looked like they were in a
groggy dream or flashback. You found
yourself fascinated but choking, mesmerized yet terrified. I wanted to pick up a bundle and join in, but
hey, there’s a Japanese grandmother about five feet from me that was swinging a
four-foot long rope that could singe my eyebrows, and if I avoid here, her two
grandkids are just beyond that stumbling around with BURNING BUNCHES ON A
STRING!!! Then, logically, not only do
you have to watch airborne globes coming at your face and upper body, you have
to watch where you step, because, like my friend Treve, your Adidas shoes could
become permanently scarred by the smoldering remains on the ground.
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