Photos: Tomi Mäkitalo · CC BY-SA 3.0 (1, 3) · Christophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0 (2, 4, 5)
Every night from 1 to 14 March, monks run six- to eight-metre torches along the balcony of Nigatsudō, a hall of Tōdai-ji, and shake them over the crowd; the embers are said to keep you safe for a year. It is the public face of Shuni-e, a repentance rite.
Why it's unique
Shuni-e was begun in 752 and has been held every year since: an unbroken annual run of over 1,250 years, and one the public can attend every night it runs.
Plenty of temples hold fire festivals. Standing under torches on a rite that has not missed a year since the eighth century is what you can only do here.
Before you go
On ordinary nights there are ten torches and about twenty minutes of fire. The 12th has the biggest torches, but the crowd is kept moving past the hall, so you get five to ten minutes; the 14th is short but all the torches are up at once. The actual water-drawing (omizutori) happens at about 1:30 to 2:30 a.m. on the night of the 12th to 13th.
The bamboo for the torches is carried in by volunteer guilds in mid-February, including a Kyōtanabe group that revived its "take-okuri" in 1978; you can meet it at Tegaimon. Arrive before sunset.
