The sound arrives before anything else. On the first Sunday of August in Kuwana, in Mie, as many as forty festival cars gather before Kasuga Shrine—three-wheeled, hung with tiered paper lanterns, each fitted at the back with gongs and a great drum. And then, all at once, they are struck. People call it the noisiest festival in Japan, and one of its strangest. On the eve, at midnight exactly, the shrine's chief priest strikes a single drum, and forty cars answer together. For a moment the whole town is nothing but sound. The origin is a stone. For the shrine's old hiyori rite, townspeople would haul carts down to the Machiya River to fetch stones for the festival ground, playing flutes and singing on the way. Fetching stones—ishi-tori—gave the festival its name. On the main day the cars process along the old Tokaido road toward the shrine, rough and proud. Some carry carvings by Tatekawa Washiro and ornaments attributed to Takamura Koun. The whole town takes part; it is the year's great entertainment. It is a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property, and part of the UNESCO-listed Yama, Hoko, Yatai float festivals. Come thinking of it as a festival you listen to. If you make it to the midnight start, you touch the very core of Kuwana's summer. August nights here are hot—bring water.