Fire reflects in the largest lake in Japan. Lake Biwa is vast—an inland sea in all but name—and on its northern shore, from the harbor at Nagahama, the summer fireworks rise. This is a castle town, built up by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the peasant who became the ruler of all Japan, and the lake has watched its fortunes for four hundred years. The wide, still surface of the water takes each shell and gives it back, doubled and trembling. Star-mines open over the dark lake, and the great expanse below holds their light the way only a very large body of water can—calmly, completely, without the chop and hurry of the sea. The far shore is a low line of mountains; a cool wind crosses the water toward you. There is a spaciousness to fireworks over Biwa that smaller venues cannot offer. The sound travels far across the open lake, arriving softened, and the light has room to breathe. You stand at the harbor in the warm dark, the cool lake breath on your face, and watch the fire bloom and fall and bloom again across a water so wide it seems to hold the whole northern sky.