When autumn comes, the men gather beneath the drum floats. Niihama, in Ehime. Each taikodai weighs around three tons, stands five and a half meters tall, runs twelve meters long. A vast float sheathed in gold embroidery, lifted onto the shoulders of as many as a hundred and fifty bearers. During the festival the wheels come off. The thing is carried by human strength alone. The great moment is the kakikurabe. Several floats converge in one place and are heaved upward at once. Drums you feel in the stomach. Matching happi coats. The cry of soorya, soorya. They compete to hold the float aloft — never setting it down — as high and as long as they can. It began as a harvest thanksgiving to the local gods. The gratitude hardened into a contest of strength, then a contest of skill. It is counted, with Awa Odori and Yosakoi, among Shikoku's three great festivals. Yet because it falls in October rather than midsummer, fewer travelers know it. It is the other festival — the one after the summer noise has drained away. In Niihama the autumn runs hottest on the shoulders of its men.