French poet Francois Villon once asked, “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” as he pondered the evanescence of existence. The thousands of people who made their way along the winding mountain road to the Agon Shu Buddhist Association’s Fire Rites Festival on the morning of Feb. 9 may have been thinking on similar lines, as they watched the snow form a delicate tracery on the trees, while remembering the Buddha’s message of the impermanent nature of the world.
The Agon Shu faithful and visitors attending the annual event in Kyoto endured the morning cold as the snow fell, but they knew that the world’s biggest fire rites festival would soon fill them with both physical and spiritual warmth.
The themes of this year’s festival were “earthquake safety,” “disaster prevention” and “recovery from natural disasters.” This reflects a series of natural calamities that struck Japan last year. As in past years, 380,000 people attending this year’s Fire Rites Festival prayed to the Lord Buddha and the deities of Japan’s indigenous Shinto religion for world peace.