Here the fire comes off the sea. Kashiwazaki faces the Sea of Japan, and its summer festival—one of the three great fireworks displays of the old Echigo province—uses the whole curve of the coastline as its theater. There is no riverbank to crowd onto. There is only the beach, the dark water, and the open horizon. Watch for the sea-surface star-mines, shells timed to open just above the waterline so the light spreads across the swell, skimming and dissolving. A hundred large shells fire in sequence along the shore, a line of brightness laid across the sea. The salt smell, the sound of waves, and then the gunpowder smell folding into them—this is a fireworks experience distinct from any held over a river or a mountain valley. The ocean changes how you watch. A river reflects; a lake doubles; but the sea simply receives, vast and indifferent and patient, taking each burst of light into its darkness as the waves keep moving toward the shore. You stand on the sand in the warm night, and the fireworks open above an emptiness that stretches all the way to the edge of the world.