Kurama No Hi Matsuri / Fire Festival (2008)

Here are some pictures from the Kurama Fire Festival (in Japanese: Kurama-no-hi-matsuri – 鞍馬の火祭り). It was raining already on and off the whole afternoon, but that didn’t seem to keep people from visiting and enjoying one of the more spectacular festivals in Japan. Every year on October 22nd (rain or no rain) and 23th the little town of Kurama located in the hills about 20 minutes north of Kyoto is celebrating this festival.

At 6 o’clock in the evening, watch fires called kagaribi are ignited all at once in front of the houses, and soon after that the local men carrying taimatsu (pine torches up to 80kg or even more) parade all night long announcing in loud voices the arrival of the festival. It is said to reenact the scene of the enshrined deity greeted after traveling from the Imperial Palace to Kurama-no-Sato village, at the end of the Heian Period.

The Kurama Fire Festival is known as one of the three most eccentric festivals of Kyoto.

Seeing the whole town light up in fire and smoke made for a spectacular view and i tremendously enjoyed shooting photos with the new Nikon D90 camera i bought last month. Making pictures in the dark without tripod and of moving objects is always a bit of a challenge with any camera … and having rain passing in front of the lens reflecting the flashlight made things even more challenging. Unfortunately many of the pictures i took have been rendered useless by this rain. Luckily I still managed to get a couple of decent shoots for display in this gallery post here.

Transport: The roads to the village are closed for cars during the festival. There is not much space for parking in this little town and the small road connecting the town in the hills probably wouldn’t be able to cope with all the people coming to visit this festival. The only way to Kurama is by train (about 30 minutes ride) from Demachi-Yanagi Station on the Eizan Dentetsu Kurama Line. Demachi-Yanagi Station is about 15 minutes from JR Kyoto Station.

Website: The official website (all in Japanese) is the one of the Yuki-Jinja Shrine, that celebrates and organizes this event. Both the Kyoto tourist pages as well as the Japan Tourism pages also have some entries on the festivals in english. The Kyoto Shimbun newspaper website (japanese) features some videos of the event.