Kunisaki is a peninsula shaped like a wheel — valleys radiating out from a central peak, each one holding a temple older than the road that reaches it.

In one of those valleys, on a winter night, demons come into the hall.

They are not what the word suggests. Here the demons are ancestors, and also messengers of the Buddha, and the distinction between those two things has been allowed to blur over a very long time. They arrive carrying burning torches taller than themselves. The floorboards boom under their feet.

What happens next is not a performance for anyone. Chanting has been going on for hours; the fire has been fed and fed again. The demons move through the crowd striking people on the shoulders and back with the torch. Sparks scatter across the dark. Being struck is the point — it is how the year's misfortune is knocked loose — and so nobody steps aside. People push toward them.

Outside, the valley is silent and very cold. The only thing moving in it is fire, going from hand to hand inside a wooden building, as it has done each time the old calendar turns.

By the time it finishes, the ridge has begun to go grey.