Nozawa Onsen Dosojin Fire Festival

The festival belongs to the men of the village in their unlucky years, the yakudoshi. Men of 42 sit on top of a wooden shrine built by hand without nails or wire, and the 25-year-olds guard its base with pine branches. For about an hour and a half the rest of the village rushes it with torches. After the fight the shrine is set alight, and the lanterns that families raise for a first-born son burn with it.

Building starts the autumn before, when the men of 25 and 42 cut a beech of about 20 metres in mid-October. On 13 January the trunks come down through the hot-spring streets with sake offered from the houses along the way, and the shrine is built from the morning of 14 January until noon on the 15th. On the morning of 16 January people grill mochi in the embers at the festival ground, which the village says keeps colds away for the year.

The organisers, the neighbourhood association Nozawa-gumi, describe it as a religious festival for the village. Visitors watch and only villagers light the fire. You cannot carry drinks into the ground, alcohol included, and flying a drone near the site breaks Japanese law. Every road in the village is a no-parking zone during the festival, so arrive on foot.