They take the corner at full speed. In Kishiwada, Osaka, hundreds of men race wooden floats weighing more than four tons through the streets. The signature move is yarimawashi, turning a sharp corner at full tilt without slowing, the float tipping, a carpenter dancing on the roof, the crowd holding its breath. Speed and danger run side by side, and accidents have happened, yet no one eases off. The tradition began in the early eighteenth century, said to have been started by the local lord as a prayer for a good harvest, and the town has been running for three hundred years since. Each neighborhood owns its own float, its carvings a point of local pride, and the men pull the float of the town where they were born. Some say they live the whole year for these few days.