Snow, in Niino, is a promise. If it falls thick in January, the rice will come heavy in autumn, so the village celebrates winter by showing it to the gods. In a mountain hollow of southern Nagano, at a small shrine called Izu Jinja, the Snow Festival runs from the evening of January 14th straight through to the following morning: ten hours of masked dance, torchlight, and ritual that has never been packaged for an audience. Figures with names like Saiho and the calming old man Okina appear one after another out of the dark, part deity, part farmer, stamping the frozen ground in dances that predate the word for theater. The folklorist Shinobu Orikuchi is said to have found here the headwaters of Japanese festival itself, performance from before performance split from prayer. The roles pass down through village families; the audience huddles at bonfires, drifting between sleep and ceremony as the old man's dance inches toward dawn. In years when the snow is thin, villagers go and find some, because the offering cannot wait. Whatever falls, white and cold, is carried to the altar and praised. It is hard to think of another country where winter is thanked so politely for what it is about to take away.