Kyoto is burning!

FOR SOME PEOPLE, the defining traits of Japanese culture are elegance, understatement, and a simple, austere beauty. While those are characteristic of many Japanese traditions, they are by no means the sole cultural delimiters. One is just as likely to find the grand gesture, exaggeration, and showmanship on a Barnumesque scale, though still informed with a distinctive esthetic refinement. Sometimes an entire city is used as the setting, or the canvas, if you will.

There’s no better example of these qualities than the Daimonji Okuribi, in which huge bonfires are set ablaze on five mountains surrounding Kyoto every August 16th at the end of the O-bon period. During O-bon, the spirits of a family’s ancestors are said to return to the family home. Traditionally, they were sometimes greeted with mukaebi, literally “welcoming fire”, and sent back to the spirit word with okuribi, or “seeing off fire”. “Daimonji” refers to “the kanji character dai“, which itself means great or large.

And that’s exactly what happens—the folks in Kyoto burn words and pictures into the mountainsides. The media and the tourist guides always show the dai character (as in this photo), but more that one hillside is set on fire that night. There are also bonfires on four other mountains—two parts of the same mountain have the two kanji for myoho, or Buddha’s Law, another mountain has a smaller dai kanji, a bonfire in the shape of a ship burns on a fourth mountain, and the last bonfire is in the shape of a torii, the gateway to Shinto shrines.

These fires are large enough to be seen throughout the city. Each flaming kanji stroke ranges from 80 to 160 meters in length. Pine branches are used to set the fires, and there are 75 separate fire sources for the larger dai kanji alone. That figure is ignited at 8:00 p.m., with the others following immediately after. One can imagine the length of preparation time required, but the flames themselves die out in about 30 minutes. This is another example of the Japanese appreciation for fleeting beauty—the peak time for cherry blossom viewing in the spring is also very short, for example. This combination of beauty and brevity is viewed as a metaphor for human life itself.

Smaller bonfires have been lit at homes to see off ancestors for many centuries, but the mountainside bonfires in Kyoto are said to have originated with the Buddhist monk Kobo Daishi, who suggested the practice as a prayer to ward off illness. That would date the start of the event in the early 9th century. Last year, an estimated 120,000 people turned out to watch.

Kobo Daishi, by the way, is a formidable figure in Japanese history. Also known as Kukai, he traveled to China to study esoteric Buddhism and returned to establish monasteries and meditation centers in the Kyoto area. He founded the Shingon sect, is credited with inventing the kana syllabary (the Japanese use two alphabetical systems in addition to kanji), originated the 88 temple pilgrimage in Shikoku, created poetry, calligraphy, and sculpture, built lakes, founded a school, and compiled the oldest extant dictionary in Japan.

That’s a lot of activity to pack into one life, but Kobo Daishi also was known for his extreme ascetic practices–which likely freed up a lot of spare time!