On the third of January, while much of Japan is still drowsing through the New Year, the men of Hakozaki in Fukuoka strip to loincloths in the winter air and fight over a wooden ball. Tamaseseri, held at Hakozakigu Shrine for some five hundred years, is a divination disguised as a scrum. The ball — slick with the water thrown by the crowd, steam rising wherever it goes — is pushed and wrestled through the streets toward the shrine, contested between two sides: land and sea. If the farmers' side delivers it to the priest, the harvest will be good; if the fishermen's, the catch. The genius of the rite is that there is no losing outcome, only two kinds of good news, which may explain why the struggle, fierce as it is, feels strangely radiant. Spray flies, the ball rides the crowd like something alive, and Fukuoka's year properly begins. Hakata's reputation for festivals was built in summer, but its first festival is this: cold water, bare skin, and a good-natured argument with providence.