Kurama no hi Matsuri

Kurama No Hi Matsuri, translated as "Kurama's fire festival" took place on October 22nd in Kurama. This is the kind of thing you leave home to see and experience, this is what is worth giving up all that comfort and stability for!

It was a freezing humid day, and we braved the cold to go to Northern Kyoto for the legendary fire festival in Kurama, which is a wonderful mountain village north of Kyoto on a sacred mountain and I recommend doing the Kurama to Kibune hike to anyone visiting Kyoto no matter for how short your stay is. Breathtaking. Start at Kibune and make it through Kurama and visit the onsen at the end....

Kurama is tiny, but on the day of the festival Kurama is overrun with 12,000 people. Although the fire ceremony starts at 7pm, a friend of mine who showed up at the train station at 5pm was told she had a 3 hour wait to catch a train there! Dont bother! There are two phases, during the first, people come packed on trains starting at 4 pm for fire at the bottom of the main shrine in Kurama. During the second phase, which starts after 10pm, most of the tourists go home and the locals go on a parade with massive burning bamboo torches to the southern part of town where they light two big bonfires and then dance around them.....we went for phase two, casually catching the 9:30 trains that were almost empty, arriving to the town center which was packed full of people. I was really excited, it willbe a real festival! Energy, fire, yay! But this is Japan, once again I was dissapointed in terms of energy, because I have been to Europe and cannot help comparing. If you are going to visit both places, come to Japan first! Anyway, it was amazing but I felt like a spectator of a national geographic documentary, not like someone doing something amazign with hundreds of other people. This is how I usually feel during Japanese festivals.

Still, it was mighty cool man. The whole town gets dressed up and theres fire everywhere, even people dressed as samurai, and its so ancient you can feel it, no one even knows what it means anymore, just that its ancient ancient....something to do with the harvests and mountain gods is all I gleaned from asking the locals and my friends and students. Dark night, small houses with fires burning in them, massive bamboo torches ablaze, men in loincloths (it was freezing man, those poor ass cheeks must have been in agony!) and then they do a tour with their float where a total samurai style dude reclined like a kind lording it over his land. It was great. The carriers wore little sholder shirts that looked like tatoos, so they all looked tatooed in the dark, then they carried the floats to the docking area and shook them up and down wildly and from side to side and shouted....anyway, it was tribal and raw. Ill attach some photos because I can't describe it.

But still, during the height of the action, I walked with the float parade, holding onto the ropes on either sides of the torch bearers with others, foreigners and Japanese and locals alike, saying "Saya Sairo!" which apparantly means something like "hup two hup two", some sort of walking chant. Then we rallied and turned around after passign through town past lit up houses....and ended up in an open area where they prepared to light two huge bonfires...I started to down my sake....ready to dance till dawn as the party was supposed to get wonderful and frenzied, occording to all acounts. At last, some real raw action in Japan! But it started to rain big drops of freezing rain and the fires went out and everyone went home at 12:30pm. Zannen! (Pity!)

When it rains, its all over here, I have arrived at many a site where a festival was supposed to take place and even if it only rained an hour that day, the site is empty. Too bad, I was ready for some madness which Im sure would have ensued. I was so curious about seeing a festival at last where people let their hair down and just let go....but alas...perhaps I must wait longer...forever maybe...you dont just make a fool of yourself in public lightly in Japan! 90% of communication is non verbal and social rules are like a religion......

Nevertheless, it was a cool night and if you are in Japan on October 22nd, come to Kurama!

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