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=Kurama Fire Festival=

Kurama Fire Festival (also called "Kurama-no-Himatsuri") is an annual matsuri festival held in 22th of October by the Yuki Shrine in Kurama Mountain, north of Kyoto in order to convey the image and gratitude towards Ōkuninushi and Sukunabikona, who are respected by the shrine praying for peaceful life. Fire which make the street bright is used to light the path of spirits coming from the other world. The climax of the festival is a gathering of mikoshi and great burning torches which are called 'taimatsu' of dry grass.

The Festival uses the custom of mukaebi, the lighting fires, to guide the gods and gather together as a parade throughout the night. Over 250 large watch fires called Kagaribi are placed on the road of Kurama, some of them weigh over 80 kilograms. They are lit during the parade and lead the way of mikoshi to the shrine.

The Festival is one of three cultural heritage in Kyoto with Shrine of Mount Kurama and Goshinboku ‘Oosugi San’(a camphor tree beside Yuki Shrine on the path to Kuramadera which designated a kami), one of Kyoto's three great festivals(Other two are Imamiya Shrine's Yasurai Matsuri and Kōryū-ji's Muzumasa Oshi Matsuri) as well as a member of three fire festival all around Japan (Other two are dousoshin matsuri and Nachi fire festival ). Fire festival here is usually regard as a Japanese festival in Japanese ‘shintou’ shrine or Buddhist temple rather than the Fire Festival professional wrestling tournament. Fire Festival is a collective term of festival which is involved with fire, which plays the role of the destroyer of evil and regarded as symbol of descent of divine power.

The Festival is rewarded as the intangible cultural heritage of Kyoto. The day is also same with Kyoto's another festival Jidai Matsuri.

History
Visitors attend the annual Kurama fire festival in Kurama Mountain which commemorates the transfer and enshrinement of a kami spirit from the Imperial Palace to rural Kurama village during the Heian period (794-1192).

The Kurama Fire Festival is held in North of Kyoto, blanketed with dense forests of untouched nature, stands Mount Kurama. It is said that the Japanese hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1157-1189) had learnt here the way of the sword from the Sojobo Tengu, king of the evil deities from Japanese folklore. It is also there that the founder of the reiki, Usui Mikao, had the revelation of this practice while meditating.

The origin of the festival started from 940 Heian period, as a portable shrine called Kurama. As a historical event, the fire festival is initially used to remind people the passing time as well as the change of season, the Kurama Fire Festival is regard as a mark for autumn. Bonfires are lit to create five large figures on five of the mountains surrounding Kyoto. The festival have connection with the ancient Jewish Rosh Chodesh practice of lighting bonfires on the mountains of Israel in order to remind people of the start of a new month. The festival holder Yuki Shrine is originally built to protect people from bad influence. Some continuous natural phenomenon happened during the middle of Heian period (794-1185). Earthquake and clan wars make Emperor Suzaku decide to move the two kami to Kurama where was considered as the area existing portals for demons and evil spirits. During that period, people use reed to make fire, and they use it to convey the gratefulness to the two kami on the one kilometer way. The festival was once the site of an ancient pilgrimage. The welcome of the spirit turns out to this fire festival attracts over 10000 tourists nowadays.

Beside of bring a lot of means to bring down a deity, the fire festival also shows the ritual creation of disorder. People behave in outstanding ways since they are free from ordinary time and everyday order. They may relax their social and moral behaviour, reflecting the new freedom that has abolished order. Crowds of young men bearing the wooden shrine containing the deity may bang upon the shrine with sticks, and shake it violently to express the deity's disruptive dynamic and manifest nature.

There are many other fire festivals in Japan, one which might be relevant is the fire festival of the Kumano Nachi Shrine, at which twelve enormous pine torches represent the twelve months of the year.

Date and Process of the Kurama Fire Festival
The fire festival is held at Sakyo ward at night, rain or shine, once a year, on October 22. Similar to it is the annual Fire Festival of Kyoto held annually on Aug.16, called Gozan Okuri-bi, or Daimonji. It starts preparation at 9a.m. from Yuki Shrine begins at 6p.m. and totally finishes the next day, usually start from sunset and runs up until midnight.

Route
The festival start from the town of kurama and end at Yuki Shrine. Omikoshi(the portal shrine) leave from the unique onsen of the village for a parade that will end at the Yuki sanctuary.

Roles of people and activities in the festival
During the festival, the house owners of village light fire in front of their house's entrance. The evening sky ablaze with torchlight as watch fires are lit immediately at 6p.m. Small torches are fired up in front of each houses at dusk, which marks the start of the parade.

All participants are dressed in traditional costumes, but with minimal accessories because of the weather. Usually, participants wear loincloths, braided rope skirts that are tied around the waist, sandals, and of course, padded cloth over one shoulder that serves as a torch cushion. Children with their small torches are the first in line for the procession, and are followed by teenagers. Women used to not allowed to attend the fire festival, but they are allowed because of the decrease on the population in the village. Women's role are carrying the portable shrine.

As well as young people carry the torches crossing the street, adult dress up as warriors to carry the huge torches and pick up two mikoshi. Then they will parade in the street with lit fire.

Young children carry the torches and march in the beginning of the parade, and the team of parade joined by teenagers also carrying torches, and they repeating "Seirei, Sairyo" which means having a good festival to inform other villagers to participate in the festival.

After that, adults are dressed like the samurai s(Japanese warrior) and their armor are decorated with Chrysanthemum, phoenix, butterfly, persimmon, Centipede and temples. In front of the gate of the mountain, the youth hold their huge torches standing on the stone steps. After that, a Taiko performance is held together with the ceremony where people cut the rope placed on Bamboo. Then, it changes from the torches festival to the Shinto Festival. people in the shrine perform the ceremony of Kamiyuki in front of the shrine, and go down the way together with the portal shrine of Ōkuninushi and Sukunabikona. A warrior rides on top of the portal shrine and a rope is attached to the back of the portal shrine, and the women of the Kurama pulls a rope so that it does not fall over suddenly from a slope or a stone stairway. It is also one of the unique things of the festival that women take part in. In addition, many young women are willing to pull the rope because it is said that if women take part in pulling the rope, it will be easy for them to give birth to their children. When the portal shrines get through the stone steps of the mountain gate, two young men are tied with the carrying stick. This is called "Choppen's Groom", and is said to be the adult ceremony in the ancient. After going down the stone steps, the god of worship travels through the people perform the festival and returns to the shelter. Gokuraku is perfomed inside the shelter, and the portal shrine will go around the four large Kagura torches which indicate that the ceremony will end. On the next day, on the morning of the 23rd, two sacred shrines will hold a return festival, which will return to the main shrine from the residence, and the various festivals of the "Festival Fire Festival" will end.

Visitors are allowed to watch the parade of hundreds of people holding blazing torches.

Meaning of Fire Festival in modern society
Pollution and purification are two concepts often used connect with traditional Japanese culture and its peculiar rituals. On all fire festivals still holding in modern society, fire plays the role of elements which contains an extremely potent, it is able to both bring something of the sacred into this world and to open the gates to the other although in modern ages. Fire establishes a connection between the known world, inhabited by living humans, and the world of spirits and things past.

As usual, the fire festivals are hold for intention such as praying for the return of the sun after winter and dispelling for the coming year.

The fire, as well as the god of fire named Kagutsuchi, are respect by the people in Japan. People used to hold fire festival in order to prevent fire in next months of the year. Kurama Fire Festival is one of the fire festival still held by the region now. The Kurama Fire Festival still have the element including parading statue of god as a display of torch and bonfire lit up and down the street. Japanese rituals still use fire to establish a connection between the known world, inhabited by living humans, and the world of spirits and things passed and regard by Japanese as the most powerful element to give sacred to the world and open the gate to others.

meaning of fire festival for modern people
The Fire Festival still remind people that they should in honor of the ancient. At the end of the 20th century, the study of matsuri ritual has eventually played an important role in antiquarian pursuit. Some modern people look at matsuri as a vestige of the past that has little or no relevance to modern life. Modern people partly misunderstood some aspects of festival such fire festival. Modern civilization owes too much to ritual to simply dismiss matsuri as an irrelevant tradition of interest only to antiquarians.People are in need of to be informed with how much matsuri and the behavior associated with festivals one can still discover in modern Japan.

intangible cultural heritage
The Kurama fire festival is registered by government as intangible folk-culture property in 1987.

years the festival be interrupted
In 2018, the Kurama Fire Festival was interrupted because of typhoon. People in charge of the event considered the destruction of trees and buildings around Yuki Shrine and made the decision of stop holding the Kurama Fire Festival in 2018.

In 1988, the Kurama Fire Festival was interrupted because of the illness of Emperor Shouwa.

other comment
Fosco Maraini, describing the Kurama Fire Festival in the 1950s, described crowds approaching the temple with torches: 'People were shouting, singing, quarreling; bare shoulders, bare chests, bare buttocks, ecstatic feces, intoxicated faces, faces in pain, faces of fawns and satyrs, seethed and swirled like a sea in torment beneath showers of sparks that vanished in acrid smoke floating away into the black tree-tops.'

Visitors attend this kurama fire festival after the sunset. Kurama on the Eizan Railway Line is the nearest station that they can get to Yuki Shrine.