Kurama Himatsuri

The Kurama Himatsuri is a spirited fire festival held on the night of October 22nd each year as the annual festival of Yuki Shrine in Kurama, Sakyō Ward, Kyoto City, Kyoto Prefecture. Counted among Kyoto's three strange festivals, it is nationally known as a celebration representative of Kyoto's autumn, in which countless torch flames fill the mountain village of Kurama.

The festival's origins date to 940, in the mid-Heian period. Amid continuing social unrest, when the Yuki deity then at the imperial palace was transferred to Kurama, villagers are said to have welcomed the divine spirit by raising torches and lighting bonfires along the roads—and this is held to be its beginning. The festival reenacts that procession.

On the festival night, at the signal "come forth for the rite," the bonfires lined up before each house are lit. Villagers from children to adults, shouldering torches large and small, parade up the village slopes to the chant of "saireya, sairyō." The largest are great torches several meters long and weighing over 100 kilograms, hoisted powerfully by young men. As the night deepens, the blazing torches gather at the foot of Yuki Shrine's stone steps, and the flames and fervor reach their peak. Afterward, two portable shrines are carried out, and the festival reaches its climax. The sight of flames blazing in the mountain village conveys to this day the power of a faith handed down across more than a thousand years.