Kyoto Festival: Fire Festival at Fushimi Inari Taisha (Ōhitakisai)

On a crisp day in early November the Kyoto Fan team took a trip to Fushimi Inari Taisha, one of the most famous shrines in the whole city. With the harvest season at an end, it was time for the Ōhitaki Fire Festival! Being the head shrine for the 30,000 plus Inari Shrines around the country, Fushimi Inari attracts a great number of visitors and parishioners from around Japan, and many come to Kyoto to participate in this event. The first part of the ritual begins in the shrine’s main hall where priests present offerings of food and drink, the head priest reads prayers aloud, priestesses perform a sacred kagura dance to classic gagaku music, and the priests lead those gathered in paying their respects to the deity Inari. From 13:00 the priests and parisioners move on to a cleared space on the shrine grounds where three bonfires have been set up. Once everyone is assembled the fires are simulatenously lit. Once the smoke clears priests begin tossing bundles of prayer sticks in to fires in large, drama