Himeji, Hyogo

They smash the shrines together on purpose. In the Nada district of Himeji, three portable shrines are slammed into one another with all the strength the bearers can muster. Why destroy them? Because it has long been believed that the harder they collide, the more the gods rejoice, the violence itself a form of prayer. Men in white loincloths shoulder the shrines, hundreds of them merging into a single mass, their voices rumbling like the ground itself. The other spectacle is the lavish floats, seven of them sheathed in gold leaf and brocade, hoisted high and paraded against each other. The festival's exact origins are debated, but it is held to be centuries old. The broken shrines are simply rebuilt, the breaking having become the rite. Within the roughness lies real reverence.

This is the sea festival of the city of the white castle. Himeji is crowned by its great fortress—a World Heritage site, the most beautiful castle in Japan—and down at the harbor, each summer, fireworks rise over the calm waters of the Seto Inland Sea.

The shells are launched from the water itself, opening across both sea and sky so that each burst is answered by its reflection below. Star-mines color the harbor night, the light spreading over a sea that has carried ships between the islands of western Japan for as long as anyone can remember. The Inland Sea is famously gentle, sheltered, almost a lake, and it gives the fireworks a mirror-still surface to bloom against.

There is a particular luxury to a day in Himeji during festival season: the castle in the daylight, white and soaring and improbable, and then the fireworks at night over the harbor. The Inland Sea breeze carries the smoke away between bursts, clearing the sky for the next, and the light scatters across the waves while somewhere behind you, in the dark, the old fortress keeps its centuries-long watch over the water.