This is the eve of the dancing fools. "The dancers are fools and the watchers are fools," goes the famous chant of the Awa Odori—the greatest of all Japan's Bon dances—"so you might as well dance." And the fireworks announce the beginning of the frenzy. The summer sky opens above the Yoshino River, and for the next four days the entire city of Tokushima will dissolve into a single churning whirlpool of dance. Tens of thousands of performers in connected troupes will fill every street, shuffling and leaping to a hypnotic two-beat rhythm, and hundreds of thousands will come to watch and, inevitably, to join. Already the drums are stirring, the three-stringed shamisen and the bright clash of the gongs, the dancing-blood beginning to rise in the crowd. The fireworks are the threshold the city crosses to enter four days outside ordinary time. After the fire comes the dance, and once the Awa Odori begins, Tokushima's summer will not stop—it has only, with these first shells, agreed to start.