January 2009

Fire & Ice

After the excitement of its ancient fire festival burns down, soak up the best of Nozawa Onsen’s famed hot springs and snowfields

WORDS RACHAEL OAKES-ASH
PHOTOGRAPHY CHRIS HOCKING

The local 25- and 42-year-old males of Japan’s Nozawa Onsen farming town are shivering in their boots. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the 11m of snow adorning the town’s ski hills in the Nagano District causing this sensation, but it’s not cold that has them quaking, it’s fear.

The Dôsojin Fire Festival is held on 15 January every year in this feudal town four hours from Tokyo that dates back to 724AD. The festival has been going on for a mere 145 years by comparison and is a bizarre ritual that involves a three-storey burning effigy in the town’s square with the 42-year-old men “tied” to the top and the 25-year-old males beating off charging, flame-holding villagers at the bottom. They say it’s a test of manhood, that the age of 25 and 42 for males in Japan is unlucky.

Thank goodness for the “sake guys” carrying barrels of traditional rice brew on their backs and cups around their necks for a constant, and complimentary, flow of pain-reducing alcohol for both participants and spectators alike.

The Dôsojin Fire Festival dates back to 1863, some 50 years before the Austrian Major Theodor von Lerch came to town in 1911 and taught the locals the art of downhill skiing. The ski resort officially opened in 1924 and many claim Nozawa to be the home of skiing in Japan. Don’t believe them?

There’s a ski history museum at the base of the gondola to prove it. With over 50km of marked ski runs and 21 lifts, including a covered elevator from the town’s picturesque Buddhist cemetery to the ski hill base, Nozawa has the art of snow sports mastered. A lift pass is ¥4,600 (AU$75) for a full day.

This quaint and traditional Japanese village is still lost in time with cobbled back lanes, narrow alleyways and women dressed in kimonos. Originally founded as a healing town for its hot thermal springs, Nozawa Onsen has 50 public and private onsen (hot spring) baths filled with the mountains’ volcanic waters.

Most traditional Japanese guesthouses have their own private onsen but anyone can enter the public onsens for bathing, which can be used free of charge. The best is the historic Oyu Bathhouse from the Yedo Period. The village’s hottest spring is Ogama onsen which reaches a scalding 90°C and is used to supply the other public onsens of Nozawa as well as being the town kitchen for cooking rice, vegetables and eggs, making it a communal social spot for the local villagers looking for the day’s gossip.

During the Dôsojin Fire Festival there’s plenty of gossip to be had as Japan’s television crews descend upon Nozawa to capture one of Japan’s most famous festivals. We’re invited into the village elder’s home, and as the only Western journalist in town I’m treated like a princess, with bowl after bowl of sake handed my way. In Japan it’s rude not to accept and drink up and before long I wonder how I will remain standing.

It’s here that the village’s male 25 and 42 year olds arrive, dressed in cargo overalls, straw capes and straw-bound shoes, and begin a sake-drinking ritual that in any other culture would be called a drinking game. Soon, the high priest lights a long pile of bound sticks that will become a torch for the, now drunk, men to parade with through the village streets to the town square.

A giant bonfire is lit to the roar of the waiting crowd and the 42 year olds take their place on the top of the effigy and begin to sing, taunting the crowd below. Male villagers — it’s not a woman’s place to play with fire in Nozawa — take their own kindling torches and light them from the bonfire before charging at the effigy, as the 25 year olds defend the effigy with only pine branches as weapons. It’s a dangerous and chaotic scene, what with the flames, drunken crowds and straw outfits but, like running with Spain’s bulls, intoxicating.

The crowd laps it up and I am swept away in a noisy sea of chanting village folk. Burning ash seems to fall from the sky and I’m glad I took heed of the “do not wear flammable or valuable clothing” advice from my ryokan host. Eventually, after a good few hours, the older males escape, the effigy is burnt to the ground and the animated crowd returns home or pours into the basement bars lining the main cobbled street.

It takes three days to build the effigy, four hours to burn it down and another 365 days before it happens all over again. It’s dangerous and dirty and if you’re a man aged 25 or 42, when you head to Nozawa in January, lie about your age!

Mark Baumann, owner of Lodge Nagano, a budget-style lodge with private rooms, shared bathrooms and an Australian host
“Take a walk through town to Ogama, the source of the town’s hot springs. It’s open- air and too hot to bathe in but just right to cook up local delicacies of onsen tamago and mountain vegetables. Watch the local village elders boiling branches in it to make them supple for weaving baskets and handicrafts.”

Akira Mori, director of the ski race department, Nozawa Onsen
“The typical part of Japanese travel is to go to an onsen and have a good sake. Nozawa is a famous traditional spa village. The Dôsojin Fire Festival is something you have to see to feel. Friends, plus sake, plus fire, plus fight equals heaven!”

After Dark:

Most ryokans and guesthouses come with dinner and breakfast as part of the lodging rate. Do wander the markets near the public cooking onsen and try some onsen manju or “steamed dumplings” filled with sweet and savoury concoctions. For sushi, try Wakagiri (tel: +81 (269) 852 040); for teriyaki and yakatori, head to Atarasi-ya (tel: +81 (269) 851 044); and for local specialities, go to Tsukusinbo (tel: +81 (269) 853 565).

For a basement-style cocktail bar with live music, check out Stay Bar on the main street. Foot bar is good for people- watching and Heaven has private karaoke rooms with Western music choices.

How To:

GETTING THERE
Japan’s trains are brilliantly efficient and the connections to the countryside are quite straightforward with some signs written in English. Train travel to Nozawa Onsen is three hours from Tokyo and 4.5 hours from Osaka.

ACCOMMODATION
Nozawa specialises in minshuku and ryokan-style accommodation. Both are traditional Japanese-style lodgings but minshuku are similar to small pensions run by families while ryokans have more history and luxury. It’s possible to have either Western-style or Japanese tatami mat rooms. There’s also a variety of good quality, mid-range Western-style hotels available, with prices for doubles starting from AU$60 per night.

TOURS
Ski Japan Holidays offers the widest range of holiday packages to this resort, including accommodation, transportation, lift tickets, lessons, rentals and day tours. Tel: +81 (261) 726 663.

MONEY
Although Japan is one of the world’s most advanced countries, banking services are basic, so bring plenty of cash or traveller’s cheques.