Nachi Fire Festival
Celebrated on July 14
Dawn in the deep valleys of the Keii mountains comes a little later than on the coast, with deep shadows playing host to an incredible array of wild animals that call this area home. The day only really begins when you set foot at the ceremonial gate that marks the entrance to the sacred forest and the steep stone path that leads up to the grand shrine and the waterfall. The climb is not strenuous, but you should be mindful of your footing as you walk over slick stones that have been worn smooth by pilgrims over the millennia. Yes, when you walk through this forest, you are walking in the footsteps of pilgrims from more than 1,300 years of human history. Some of the first emperors of Japan made this trek, and the trees towering above you were here for much of that time. It is an experience that makes you feel utterly insignificant, yet also something much more than yourself as you walk through a timeless place where you can experience centuries of human experience. Today this is part of the Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes in the Keii Mountain Range of Japan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004.
July marks the beginning of the humid and hot summer season in Japan, and often you will be making this trek in misting rain with low clouds, and honestly, there is no better time of year to do it if you don’t mind working up a little sweat. If you happen to have a lovely sunny day, don’t worry about it, however; doing it in clouds and rain can be incredible. There is always a fascinating combination of water and fire in Wakayama: lava deep underground heats thermal pools, the cleansing ritual for the 12 deities involves flaming torches and a waterfall, and near the coast, a fantastic ocean basks gleaming blue under a hot sun. It is like an elemental yin and yang, and it reaches its apex with the fire festival.
Walking up the green, moss-encrusted steps of the trail, you’ll begin to hear a distant roar. It grows louder and louder, overcoming the sound of your breath and the beating of your heart. After about an hour, a steep set of stairs leads up to a bright orange torii gate; you have reached the Kumano Nachi Taisha shrine, which is where the 12 deities reside. Taisha is the home of the three-legged crow that brought the first emperor to this place about 1,500 years ago. The spiritual animal lives in a secluded courtyard where there is a sacred camphor tree, which was planted by Taira no Shigemori, a royal-turned-monk. It bears mentioning that the monk died in the year 1179 – this tree is over 850 years old! Typically, historic sites have a preserved museum feel to them, which works very well to protect them. What sets the Kumano region apart is that the ancient and the modern coexist in a harmony that sees ancient temples used to perform modern rituals, all without a second thought.
In front of the main shrine complex, you will see the portable shrines or fan that will be used to transport the gods to the waterfall, which remains heard but not seen – at least on rainy days. If it is sunny, be prepared for a magnificent view of the falls from just past the shrine. The mood around the shrine is ebullient; there is none of the grim stoicism of many religious rituals. Visitors begin moving towards a simple torii gate just after lunch. This is a plain gate, and its simplicity only serves to make it seem older and more solemn. The roughly 500-metre walk down to the bottom of the waterfall takes you back through the ancient forest and over extremely slippery stones. Now though you are not alone: Other visitors and pilgrims line the route and crowd at the small shrine at the base of the falls, which from that vantage point are beyond amazing. The sight of the water
“A sacred camphor tree was planted by Taira no Shigemori, a royal-turned-monk. It bears mentioning that the monk died in the year 1179 – this tree is over 850 years old!”
seemingly pour out of the sky and come crashing down on the misty rocks below was profoundly moving. If you have a rainy day, you won’t see the top of the falls, but the effect is magical. On a sunny day, the view is equally incredible, but for entirely different reasons.
You know the action is about to start when participants dressed in white begin making their way up and down the steep path filling wooden water buckets every few metres. Then the shouting begins, distant at first, somewhere beyond the top of the trail. It grows, and the crowd above you gets more agitated as the first torches come down the hill, but these are smaller and are just an appetizer for what is to come. Suddenly the real flames appear, 12 huge pinewood torches each weighing 50 kilograms carried by a man wearing only flimsy slippers to keep him anchored on the smooth stones. To support them, there is a small army of other participants, all dressed in white. These men chant and apply cold water compresses to those carrying the torches. What is shocking is that these massive torches, with incredible trails of fire behind them, are not just carried down the precarious stone path. No, they are also carried back up again repeatedly! The torches and participants make an intricate weave as they move up and down the path, all the while chanting.
The heat is powerful, and even more so for those carrying the torches. It is truly an impressive spectacle, a seething mass of chanting, white-clad humanity carrying massive torches that radiate searing heat in long tongues of fire. To keep the flames from burning out of control, some of the men carry small water bowls from which they take a mouthful of water and then
blow it out, spraying a slight cooling mist on the fire. The whole procession slowly meanders its way down the mountain; the way is purified. Now the deities in their portable shrines come, carried by chanting men. These men are more ornately dressed though, and they are accompanied by a Shinto priest in all his glory. When the deities reach the shrine at the bottom, they are taken through a relatively simple ceremony to purify them before Nachi Falls, which towers over the insignificant people celebrating below.
The ceremony ends with the deities being returned up the mountain to their shrine, where they will spend the next 364 days presiding over the faithful while in splendid isolation. For visitors, there is so much more to see and do in this small region of Japan. Stunning white-sand beaches, raging rivers where you can raft in traditional style on bamboo bundles, incredible scuba diving on some of the most northern tropical reefs in the world, endless shrines, temples that are right out of legends, sushi right from the water, fantastic hiking on religious pilgrimage trails, and so on. The list could go on for pages.
This author has always enjoyed Japan, but after several visits to Wakayama, my connection to the place is almost spiritual. There are few places in the world I would rather visit, and I feel that I have still just scratched the surface of this undiscovered part of the land of the rising sun.