F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-262

Atago Shrine Fire Festival (Uozu)

愛宕社の火祭り（魚津）あたごしゃ の ひまつり

A fire-prevention rite held in the central district of Uozu, Toyama. Tradition holds that after repeated conflagrations struck the town in the Edo period, residents offered giant gohei (paper-and-bamboo ritual wands) shaped like firefighters' matoi standards to Atago Shrine, which enshrines Kagutsuchi-no-Mikoto, the deity of fire prevention. Each neighborhood builds an "o-gohei" some 5–6 meters tall: green bamboo poles topped with sakaki and a himorogi spirit-vessel, masks of a tengu and an Okame, and a fan draped with hemp, with long streamers of gold, silver and white paper hanging below. About thirty of these are carried through town, thrust into the doorways of each house to chants, and finally gathered before Atago Shrine, where they are stood up in a forest of wands, blessed in a fire ritual, and burned. Said to be such that "no two o-gohei are ever exactly alike," the festival is famous for the distinctive forms the neighborhoods compete to create.