Since 1136, it has not missed a year. Not for wars, not for plagues, not for the collapse of the world that ordered it into being. The Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri, in Nara, begins at midnight on December 17th with every light extinguished: the young deity of the Wakamiya shrine is moved along the cedar-lined path in total darkness, screened by branches, accompanied by gagaku and the sound of silk. Watching is forbidden; you attend with your ears. By noon the mood reverses into a procession of a thousand years of costume, courtiers, warriors, horsemen, crossing the old capital to the Otabisho, the god's temporary lodging in a field. There, from afternoon until nearly midnight, the performing arts of Japan are offered one after another on the grass: dengaku, bugaku, sarugaku, the root stock from which Noh would later grow. Scholars call the festival a living museum. It feels more like a promise being kept. Within twenty-four hours the god is carried home and the darkness closes again, punctual as ever. In the coldest week of the year, Nara stays up all night, not to celebrate, exactly, but to continue. That, the festival suggests, is the rarer thing.