Fire falls on the river of the cormorant fishermen. The Nagara is one of Japan's clearest rivers, famous for the ancient art of ukai—fishing by torchlight with trained cormorants—and on one night each summer it transforms into a stage for thirty thousand shells, the centerpiece of Gifu's hot season. Behind it rises Mount Kinka, and on the mountain's summit stands Gifu Castle, the stronghold from which the warlord Oda Nobunaga once looked out and dreamed of unifying the whole country. The fireworks open against that silhouette—the castle of a man who wanted everything, lit from below by the bursting sky. History and spectacle share the same frame. The light scatters across the surface of the clear water, a different fire from the torches of the cormorant boats that work this same river on other nights. There is the famous river, the famous castle, and the fireworks between them—Gifu's entire summer, its history and its beauty and its restlessness, compressed into a few hours above the moving water.