This is a showcase of the makers themselves. Each August in Fukuroi, on the Enshu plain of Shizuoka, the most celebrated fireworks companies in Japan gather and bring their finest work—so the night becomes a kind of exhibition, a chance to see, in a single evening, what the country's best are capable of. Twenty-five thousand shells, among the largest counts anywhere, and some of the biggest individual shells in Japan—great spheres that open six hundred meters above the ground and light the whole flat sweep of the plain. Because each company is competing, displaying its own signature, no two sequences are alike. One palette gives way to another, one shape dissolves and a wholly different one rises in its place. The knowledgeable in the crowd watch the way collectors watch an auction, recognizing styles, noting which company made which burst. For everyone else, it is simply abundance—an embarrassment of light, the accumulated craft of an entire nation poured into one night sky. A trade fair, if a trade fair could make you gasp.