Summer
is the time for roasted corn on the cob, boiled green
soybeans, cold beer and, best of all, breathtaking
fireworks.
Japanese
enjoy festivals year roundato welcome the arrival
of the seasons and rites of passage. The unchanging
traditions of festivals help to anchor Japanese
to their history and culture, when everything else
seems to be changing in the world's rush to globalization.
Besides, they are great fun.
Hanabi
(fireworks) festivals have been a major feature
of Japanese summers for over 300 years. Beginning
sometime in July, when the rainy season ends, on
any given night, the whole of Japan is inundated
by hundreds of neighborhood, village and big-city
fireworks festivals. Festivals held for no other
reason than the pure celebration of the erupting
spectacle and thundering boom of fireworks. The
major festivals attract hundreds of thousands of
visitors from across the country. They throng to
the site, many clad in light cotton kimono and sandals.
The young women are especially resplendent in bright
floral patterned yukata. Hanabi
are viewed by Japanese much in the same way they
view cherry blossoms, indeed, the name hanabi means
–flower fire.” Each hanabi is savored and appreciated
as a single, transitory eventãwith wistful joy over
their spectacular but fleeting beauty. This makes
the pace of Japanese fireworks much slower and more
disjointed than typical fireworks in Europe or America.
Another feature is the Japanese preference for round
fireworks shells, which erupt in a ball-shaped pattern
that can be viewed the same way from all directions.
Given the long
history and rabid enthusiasm for hanabi, is it any
wonder that Japanese pyrotechnics are among the most
advanced in the world? Every year, the closely held
secrets of generations of masters are applied and
enriched in highly contested competitions to create
bigger, more animated and ever more surprising creations.
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