Fire-spinning ritual held in front of restored shrine gate destroyed in 2016 Kumamoto quake

ASO, Kumamoto — A fire-spinning ritual to pray for bountiful harvests took place at a Shinto shrine in this southwest Japan city on March 21.

Aso Shrine’s “Hifuri-shinji,” or fire-spinning festival, is one of the agricultural rituals of the Kumamoto Prefecture city of Aso which are designated as national important intangible folk cultural properties. The ritual has its roots in a folklore tradition in which parishioners swung torches to celebrate a goddess for her marriage to the deity of the shrine.

This year, the ritual was held in front of the shrine’s main gate, which had been completely destroyed in the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake and was rebuilt and completed in December 2023, for the first time.

When the object of worship for the goddess arrived at the shrine at around 7 p.m., parishioners began swinging with all their might rope-tied bundles of “kaya” plants, such as grass used to thatch roofs, that were set aflame.

(Japanese original by Yoshiyuki Hirakawa, Kyushu Photo Department)