mysterious Fire Festival held that very night in the village of Kurama, in the hills to the north. I had heard for days how terrible the crowds would be, so I took pains to leave home early, arriving at the train station just as the late-afternoon sun was turning faces to gold and catching the firelights in hair. This was the magic hour of the Kyoto autumn, the last hour of light in the waning days: the hills silhouetted with a shocking clarity, the sky a burnished strip of gold and silver.
The minute the train drew into the station, the whole huge crowd piled in until we were packed as tightly as nuts in a bag of Japanese sweets. I bumped against rows of silky hair, was shoved into pockets of expensive perfume, buried myself in a new Springsteen tape. Through all the crush, the Japanese remained unfailingly calm, some of them even sleeping where they stood.
As soon as we arrived at the village, the crowds piled out again and into a steep, narrow main street, so thick with bodies that one could scarcely move. A smell of bonfires redolent of Guy Fawkes Night, on a blazing, chill November evening in England, the details of the world smoothed down now in the dark. Lanterns all about, and the shadows of hills, and ashes spitting into the night like fireflies in some Peter Brook production. Along the tiny, toylike streets, the crowds expectant, a loudspeaker conferring on everything an air of panic and authority.
Finding no room amidst the crowds even now, four hours before the festival was due to begin, I started to climb up the hill, away from the town, up towards Kurama Temple, towering solemn above the crowds. There I sat, and walked about, handsstuffed into pockets, and waited. I waited some more. The night grew chilly, with a winter snap to it. Still there was nothing to see but crowds. I watched a pair of German boys attach themselves to three smiling “office ladies” and smiled to myself as the Germans, new to the country, took the shy giggles and polite questions for encouragement and began sliding hands behind backs, as the girls, smiling sweetly, edged away. I listened for a while to the Springsteen tape, rented today, the very day of its release, from a neighborhood store. I watched a teahouse high above the street, where VIPs were sedately taking dinner in a perfect Tokugawa tableau of high elegance. I nibbled on corn chips, stamped up and down in the cold, began to wish I’d never come.
And then, of a sudden, there came a quickened intensity, and then a roar, and a flash of fire, and a rush of boys, naked save for loincloths, arms lifted in the dark, streaking furiously through the winter streets, bearing torches, shouting, “
Sareyā, sareyō
,” eyes blazing. It was like nothing I had ever seen in Japan: wild, pagan, full of danger. The torches played crazy games on the faces they passed, and the shouters raced to the shrine like intoxicants, faces lit up by their torches. Pointing their torches to the middle, they started building a huge fire. Flames licked the air, torches began to waver, the crowd let out a gasp. Sparks were flying this way and that, policemen were roaring through megaphones, the whole crowd, pressed as closely as in some rock concert, was shaking and wobbling as one. Shouting “
Sareyā, sareyō
,” the men in loincloths, bodies glistening in the night, poured more heat onto the fire, the flames racing up in the sky above them, their eyes alight. I could feel the danger in the air, sense the pull of some ancient force. I could feel an electrical crackle in the air.
All night the fires raged, subsiding shortly before dawn.
A couple of days later, I found myself walking along a broad avenue in the sunshine with Siobhan, the potter I had met fromSanta Cruz. “For a long time, you know, I used to repress this thing about being a witch,” she began, as we walked past groups of horn-rimmed students, remarkable only in their normalcy. “When I was young, you know, I was always afraid
The minute the train drew into the station, the whole huge crowd piled in until we were packed as tightly as nuts in a bag of Japanese sweets. I bumped against rows of silky hair, was shoved into pockets of expensive perfume, buried myself in a new Springsteen tape. Through all the crush, the Japanese remained unfailingly calm, some of them even sleeping where they stood.
As soon as we arrived at the village, the crowds piled out again and into a steep, narrow main street, so thick with bodies that one could scarcely move. A smell of bonfires redolent of Guy Fawkes Night, on a blazing, chill November evening in England, the details of the world smoothed down now in the dark. Lanterns all about, and the shadows of hills, and ashes spitting into the night like fireflies in some Peter Brook production. Along the tiny, toylike streets, the crowds expectant, a loudspeaker conferring on everything an air of panic and authority.
Finding no room amidst the crowds even now, four hours before the festival was due to begin, I started to climb up the hill, away from the town, up towards Kurama Temple, towering solemn above the crowds. There I sat, and walked about, handsstuffed into pockets, and waited. I waited some more. The night grew chilly, with a winter snap to it. Still there was nothing to see but crowds. I watched a pair of German boys attach themselves to three smiling “office ladies” and smiled to myself as the Germans, new to the country, took the shy giggles and polite questions for encouragement and began sliding hands behind backs, as the girls, smiling sweetly, edged away. I listened for a while to the Springsteen tape, rented today, the very day of its release, from a neighborhood store. I watched a teahouse high above the street, where VIPs were sedately taking dinner in a perfect Tokugawa tableau of high elegance. I nibbled on corn chips, stamped up and down in the cold, began to wish I’d never come.
And then, of a sudden, there came a quickened intensity, and then a roar, and a flash of fire, and a rush of boys, naked save for loincloths, arms lifted in the dark, streaking furiously through the winter streets, bearing torches, shouting, “
Sareyā, sareyō
,” eyes blazing. It was like nothing I had ever seen in Japan: wild, pagan, full of danger. The torches played crazy games on the faces they passed, and the shouters raced to the shrine like intoxicants, faces lit up by their torches. Pointing their torches to the middle, they started building a huge fire. Flames licked the air, torches began to waver, the crowd let out a gasp. Sparks were flying this way and that, policemen were roaring through megaphones, the whole crowd, pressed as closely as in some rock concert, was shaking and wobbling as one. Shouting “
Sareyā, sareyō
,” the men in loincloths, bodies glistening in the night, poured more heat onto the fire, the flames racing up in the sky above them, their eyes alight. I could feel the danger in the air, sense the pull of some ancient force. I could feel an electrical crackle in the air.
All night the fires raged, subsiding shortly before dawn.
A couple of days later, I found myself walking along a broad avenue in the sunshine with Siobhan, the potter I had met fromSanta Cruz. “For a long time, you know, I used to repress this thing about being a witch,” she began, as we walked past groups of horn-rimmed students, remarkable only in their normalcy. “When I was young, you know, I was always afraid
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