A week into the new year, on the plain of the Chikugo River near Kurume, one of Japan's three great fire festivals sets the night alight. The Oniyo of Daizenji Tamataregu shrine is said to be sixteen hundred years old, and it does not do things by halves: six great torches, each a meter thick and thirteen meters long, each weighing more than a ton, are set burning in the shrine grounds and carried — hauled, shouldered, braced on staves — around the precinct by men in loincloths. Sparks pour upward in sheets. The faces of the crowd glow red at a hundred paces. The rite drives out the oni, the demons of the old year, and burns away misfortune before the new year has had time to accumulate any. Arrive early, dress in something you do not mind singeing, and stand where the shrine staff direct you — sparks fall generously here, and locals will tell you, cheerfully, that being touched by one is good luck. What stays with you afterward is the scale of the commitment: in the coldest week of winter, a town raises fire enough to warm the whole night sky. You do not so much forget the cold at Oniyo as watch it being used as fuel.