Toro Nagashi
Toro Nagashi is another of those beautiful Japanese traditions involving the difficult-to-photograph lantern. Toro Nagashi is related to Obon, the summer festival which celebrates the souls of those who have departed this world.
During Toro Nagashi, participants write the names of the deceased on lanterns, then set the lanterns afloat in water to help guide the souls (who have been visiting) back to the other world.
There is a particularly beautiful version of this festival in Tokyo. It takes place every July 13th, in Chidorigafuchi Park in the canal by the Imperial Palace. In this version of Toro Nagashi, lucky participants who lined up early enough will get to rent a boat. Then, on signal, everyone puts their lanterns in the water while an orchestra plays nostalgic music and a small fireworks display goes off. It is a beautiful sight, if a little bit harrowing what with all the sparklers, crashing boats and fireworks.
One of the more memorable scenes from Mr Hearn, swimming among these lanterns.
From “At Yaidzu“.
I watched those frail glowing shapes drifting through the night, and ever as they drifted scattering, under impulse of wind and wave, more and more widely apart. Each, with its quiver of color, seemed a life afraid,–trembling on the blind current that was bearing it into the outer blackness…. Are not we ourselves as lanterns launched upon a deeper and a dimmer sea, and ever separating further and further one from another as we drift to the inevitable dissolution? Soon the thought-light in each burns itself out: then the poor frames, and all that is left of their
once fair colors, must melt forever into the colorless Void.
Even in the moment of this musing I began to doubt whether I was really alone,–to ask myself whether there might not be something more than a mere shuddering of light in the thing that rocked
July 14th, 2006 at 4:34 pmbeside me: some presence that haunted the dying flame, and was watching the watcher. A faint cold thrill passed over me,– perhaps some chill uprising from the depths,–perhaps the creeping only of a ghostly fancy. Old superstitions of the coast recurred to me,–old vague warnings of peril in the time of the passage of Souls. I reflected that were any evil to befall me out
there in the night,–meddling, or seeming to meddle, with the lights of the Dead,–I should myself furnish the subject of some future weird legend…. I whispered the Buddhist formula of
farewell–to the lights,–and made speed for shore.
Ah, thank you Erich. A lovely prose addition to the photos and one which captures the essence of the experience much better than my text-book approrpriate description!
July 15th, 2006 at 2:19 am