Douranbachi — the Raging Hornets

An autumn votive rite at Oji-Wakamiya Hachiman Shrine in Kurume. A four-metre green-bamboo 'hornet's nest' packed with fireworks is lit by a fuse drawn across the shrine pond; flame and sparks burst up like a swarm of hornets. Born from the gunnery of the Furukawa family of the Arima domain, kept for some 360 years. A Fukuoka Intangible Folk Cultural Property.

On the bank of the Chikugo River, in the Yamakawa district of Kurume, stands Oji-Wakamiya Hachiman Shrine and its pond, the Oji-ike. On one autumn night a tower of green bamboo, about four metres tall, is raised at the water's edge. People call it the 'hornet's nest' — a bamboo cage some two and a half metres across, packed with a great number of fireworks.

After dark a single fuse-line is drawn from the far bank, and fire crosses the water. When it reaches the nest it catches one firework after another, hurling flame and a swarm of sparks up into the night sky all at once. Because it resembles a hornets' nest struck open — the hornets bursting out and scattering in fury — it is called 'Douranbachi', the raging hornets. Parent-hornet, small-hornet, the great report, the set-piece: fire dances amid a roar you feel in the ground.

It began as a warrior's craft. The Furukawa family, who served the Arima domain of Kurume as masters of gunnery, lived for generations in Yamakawa and taught the handling of powder to the people of the district. A samurai art of gunnery became a village's votive fireworks — Douranbachi is the shape that transmission took. For some three hundred and sixty years it has been kept alive by local hands, and it is designated an Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Fukuoka.

This is not the bright rocketry of a summer fireworks show. At the edge of a pond, with only bamboo, powder and handwork, the raw wildness of fire itself is offered to the gods — the fear of handling fire and the spell of watching it, held together in a single night.

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