Japan's Fire & Light Festivals

About this book

Japan reads by firelight. Mountains burn in characters of flame to send off the dead. Ten thousand neighbourhoods burn their New Year in a single January week. The ancestors come home to a flare at the gate and leave by lantern on the river, and in the most electrified nation on earth, a snowbound port lights hundreds of thousands of real candles by hand.

Japan's Fire & Light Festivals is the complete guide to that fire culture: 200 entries in eight parts, descending from the great mountain fires to the sparkler in a child's hand — the fire festivals of Kyoto, Nozawa and Nachi; the dondoyaki bonfires and the prayer objects burned in them; the floating lanterns of Nagasaki, Hiroshima and a thousand rivers; the lantern processions of Nagasaki, Akita and Aomori; the championship fireworks of Omagari and Nagaoka; the illuminations and candle nights from Kobe's memorial arches to Otaru's snow candles; the sacred fires — goma, fire-walking, torches at Todaiji, flames unextinguished for twelve hundred years; and the small threshold fires of hearth, field and grave.

Every entry gives the region, the place, the season in a typical year and the type of event, with a two-part account and a practical Good to Know note — all newly written for this book, and checked on 2026-11-05. A regional index and a glossary of fire words complete the volume.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.