お燈まつりOtou Matsuri (Fire Festival), Wakayama, Japan

Otou Matsuri (Fire Festival) お塘まつりWakayama, Japan Feb. 6, 2009 - Amazing videos are here

"Let's Get Confidence". With fude calligraphy brush, I paint these words, my negai, my hope for both my son and myself on our taimatsu, or torches. These torches and these hopes would burn bright that night, along with thousands of other torches, thousands of other hopes. And the heavens would respond by raining obu, or descending spirits that would swirl about the cold night air, and dance with the mortal embers we men would make.

For the past 1,400 years or so the town of Shingu, Wakayama Prefecture, has been host to one of Japan's oldest festivals, the Otou Matsuri, or Fire Festival, an event that starts innocent enough with participants wearing traditional, all-white "hakuzosoku”, toting yet-to-be-lit "taimatsu" cypress wood torches, and engaging in various innocuous rituals, but ends in a fiery finish at Kamikura Jinja, an ancient sub-shrine of the larger Kumano Hayatama Taishi Shrine, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Kamikura Jinja is precariously perched on the steep mountainside of Gongenyama in this soulful, seaside town. Every year on February 6 this is the site where boys become men and men become boys, when fire meets soul, as the intense flames of our forefathers rekindle the collective male primordial tinder, humbling both young and old in the presence of the Immortal Face, and its blank stare of infinity.

In real-world terms, in order to participate in the festival one must be male and willing to be subjected to intense heat, violence, and other life-threatening challenges, and most importantly one must be willing to let go of modern securities and conventions and to put tremendous trust in his fellow man, yet at the same time be ready to fight him should he be his foe. I took my son Kai (age 5) but I saw boys as young as two! In this sense it is a rite to passage for young males, and for grown men a rebirth.

The fabric of which Japanese society is woven is of tight strands of mostly the staid, but sometimes the crazed, creating intricate patterns, which on the surface may seem as smooth and sophisticated as kimono silk, but surprisingly primitive on another, deeper, seldom seen level. If one were to look deeper into the fabric, he would see and feel the ever-smoldering embers and blood stains of futile Japan. While these strands are very much hidden from the naked eye, they are in fact there, and they are of a most strange and ethereal cloth.

Festivals like the Otou Matsuri are like kimono on display, in that they in effect show Japan's true cultural tapestry in her fullest splendor, allowing us to touch and feel, to see even the underside: the rough backing of her fabric, the ancient yet essential primary weft that holds her more orderly and ornamental embroidery in place.

As obu fade in the afterglow,
Marking the end of the festival,
Our charred, shortened torches become cold to the touch.

My son and I now feeling within
The burns on our skin,
As our adrenaline thins.

We watch her kimono being put back on,
In gradations of gray, to black,
The countryside of Shingu holding still for another long year
Till the men in white return,
Knowing we will be but two them.

This is the Japan I yearn to see more of. Yes, this is the festival to wake the Primordial Father in all Fathers.

Mike Kubo
Feb. 8, 2009 Kamakura

Special note: Thank you so much Okada-san for inviting us. I will never forget this experience, nor shall my son.

岡田さん、お燈まつりへの招待ほんとうにありがとうございます。海くんと私はこの経験のことをずっと忘れません。