On the last evening of the year, the tide is out at Miyajima and the great gate stands on wet sand.

The crowds that fill this island by day have thinned. The ferries have stopped bringing them. What is left is mostly islanders, drifting toward the strip of beach in front of the shrine, where a bundle of pine and straw the height of two people is waiting.

It is lit at dusk. Young men take it on their shoulders and begin to walk — slowly, because there is no reason to hurry, and because the thing is heavy. Sparks come off it and go sideways in the sea wind. Behind them come children carrying torches scaled to their own arms, faces lit orange from below, entirely serious about the job.

The purpose is protection from fire. There is a logic to this that only makes sense once you have seen it: the way to keep fire from taking your house is not to hide from it but to carry it, together, in the open, once a year.

Smoke and salt arrive in the same breath. Across the water the mainland is already dark, a low line of lights.

In a few hours it will be a different year. On this island, a good number of people will have watched it arrive by firelight, standing on sand that will be under the sea again by morning.