Ancient Shinto ritual fueled by lots of sake, fire

NOZAWAONSEN, Japan — Here in the foothills of the Japan Alps, a procession of villagers was moving through the frigid darkness, guided by a robed man holding a glowing paper lantern. On a night when the 25-year-old male residents of this snowy hamlet would become men in the eyes of their elders, the lantern wasn't the only thing that needed holding up. Takemitsu Kubota, a ruddy young initiate, swayed in line, drunk on excitement and a gallon or so of sacred sake.

For more than a century and a half, the Dosojin Festival — one of hundreds of local celebrations of the Shinto religion held each year across Japan — has served as a literal trial by fire for the men of this ancient hot-springs resort. Every Jan. 15, the village's 25-year-old men consume impossible amounts of alcohol to buoy their courage ahead of a violent rite of passage.

Using only pine branches, they defend a 65-foot-tall wooden shrine from the older men of the village, who attack it fiercely with torches lit from a sacred bonfire. A generation ago, one man died during the festival; occasionally, an eye is lost or a face is severely burned.

"We are expected to drink to lose our fear," Kubota, a sake brewery worker picked to lead the squad of initiates this year, said early in his daylong bender. "I think we are all a bit scared, but I have been waiting for this day all my life. My grandfather did this, and so did my father. And after tonight, everyone in town will also see me as a man."

As the clock struck 7 p.m., the procession of men arrived at an old inn for the revered, and irreverent, "gathering of fire." In a straw-matted room fitted with effigies of the town's adopted god and goddess — among the ugliest of the Shinto deities but said to have found love and happiness together — four older men and two younger men, including Kubota, took seats around a hearth where a fire was burning.

Dressed in ceremonial straw-fringed costumes and pointed hats, all were drunk and getting drunker. As two dozen spectators watched, the two younger men were forced to chug bowl after bowl filled with sake, Japanese rice wine. Plates of fried chicken, rice crackers and dried squid were served to help them absorb more alcohol.

By 7:13 p.m. — and with the entire room now toasted on hot sake — the chill coming in through the open paper-screen doors seemed to fade as the men took up their fire song.

"In what order should we sing?" a red-faced Kubota slurred, then burped. "I am not sure if I can sing it properly."

But the song began anyway. A song about getting rid of bad luck. If the drunken men got even one verse wrong, they had to sing the whole song over again.

"Friends have gotten together," Kubota chanted, as his companions clapped in time — or tried to. "But when we part, is that dew on the bamboo, or are those tears that we see?"

They messed up only once — when Kubota drew a blank in midchant. A few minutes later, he slapped himself hard on the face to sober up. As the song began anew, he plowed through his verses with as much coherence as he could muster.

Close to 8 p.m., the six men stumbled toward a garden path. A white-robed elder used embers from the inn's hearth to light a massive torch of twined hemp, to be carried by the men to the main ceremony area. Outside, fireworks were shot off to mark the start of their quarter-mile trek along a riverbank. Kubota wobbled along with the help of his portly friend Takeya Ikeda, also 25 and wasted.

With their traditional costumes the worse for wear as they swayed down the path with the sacred torch, Kubota and Ikeda could have been part of a scene from "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" as directed by Akira Kurosawa. Sparks flew from the torch, and Ikeda's straw hat caught on fire. Kubota tried to douse it by throwing snow on Ikeda's head before losing his own balance and plopping into the frigid river.

The spill did nothing to dampen Kubota's spirits. After getting up, he promptly tried to head-butt the torch but was pulled away by his seniors. When the men reached the main ceremony site, a massive bonfire was lit, while Kubota went to the head of a column of other 25-year-olds guarding a wooden shrine several dozen feet away.

At 8:25 p.m., the little boys of the village rode on their fathers' backs in the first mock attacks on the shrine. They averted their eyes or cried as the fathers tried to slam past the initiates with burning bundles of hemp.

The adults began their group assaults at 9 p.m. In a drunken madness, dozens pounced on the 25-year-olds, thankfully sauced beyond the ability to feel pain. The young men repulsed their elders using pine branches, even their own limbs. Kubota received a hard blow in the face from a torch but sprang up and rallied despite a scarlet bruise on his cheek.

By 9:45 p.m., the older attackers were spent, and the 25-year-olds claimed the day — and their manhood. Kubota was lifted aloft by his peers.

As the night wore on, he expressed gratitude to his parents on national television. "Thank you for giving me life in the town of Nozawaonsen!"