The town of Usuki, on Oita's eastern coast, is a small place — some thirty-seven thousand people, a castle town grown rich on soy sauce and miso and the quiet trade of brewing. For two nights each November it becomes something else. This is the birthplace of the bamboo lantern festival, and on these nights twenty thousand of them are lit across the old town.

They are simple things — lengths of bamboo, candles set inside — but in number they transform the streets entirely. The most beloved stretch is Niouza, a narrow stone-paved slope lined with samurai residences and temples, where the lanterns run in unbroken lines and the candlelight lifts the dark townscape softly into view. You walk it slowly. There is no other way to walk it.

The festival re-enacts a local legend: the spirit of Princess Hannya, returning to Usuki from the capital, welcomed home by the townspeople with light. A boat bearing her portrait box arrives at the port, and the whole town, lit end to end, becomes the welcome.

It began in 1997, partly as an effort to revive the region and its neglected bamboo groves — a modern festival, then, wearing the shape of an old story. But standing on the Niouza slope in early November, with the candlelight trembling along the stones, you would never guess it was young. It feels as old as the town itself.