The Atago Shrine Fire Festival (Oshiba Togomaku, Firewalking Shinto ritual) is held on December 5th every year. The Fire Festival was originally a Buddhist ritual that follows the flow of Shugendo, but before the Meiji era, a mixture of gods and Buddha was commonplace. Atagoyama may have been a place for Shugendo in the olden days, and it has been taken over by Atago Shrine.
A shimenawa (called a front hanging) with a 4 (+1) color paper shide hung down is stretched in a square shape using bamboo to make a barrier, and a wooden frame and a cypress branch are used in the center. The built Gomadan was set up. Based on the Yin-Yang Five Elements theory, the color of the paper drop is "blue (green in this festival), red, yellow, white, black (purple in this festival)" in the direction of "east, south, center, west, north" (or , "Wood, fire, earth, gold, water"), which are the five elements that represent all the forests of the universe. It hangs in the direction (for some reason, only one eastern paper hang is golden), and the central guardian platform is surrounded by a yellow paper hang. The fire festival has begun, prohibiting people from entering the sacred territory of the barrier. Six trainees from Mt. Hiko appeared, burned Homa in the manner of Shugendo, and threw the Homa tree with their wishes in the burning flames and smoke, and prayed for the fulfillment of their wishes. After that, the firewalking Shinto ritual is started by smoothing out the declining Gomadan and making a way. General participants, led by the trainees, cross over the hot charcoal barefoot. The students of the international school were also afraid to challenge this firewalking. Both sides of the road are still burning and I'm worried that the soles of my feet will get burned, but that seems to be taken into consideration. But the unlucky (good?) People seemed to be quite hot.

This day of 2017 was a cold wave and the wind was strong, the venue of the fire festival was also hit by the sun, and the sleet suddenly fell, but the flames of the Gomadan made me forget the cold. ..

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