Kayahara Tondo

Chihara no Tondo: A Winter Fire Ritual at the Birthplace of Shugendō's Founder

On the night of January 14 each year, two torches roughly six meters tall and three meters wide are set ablaze in the precincts of Kisshōsōji, a temple in the small farming district of Chihara in Gose City, Nara. The torches weigh about 700 kilograms apiece. They are bound by hand from green bamboo, rice straw, and the local susuki and miscanthus grasses that gave Chihara its name. One torch is shaped as the male; the other as the female. Locals call them simply the ōtondo, the great tondo.

The ritual is held to mark the end of shushōe, the New Year's rite observed inside the temple's main hall, and to send off the year's first crops of unease and disease. By the time the flames take hold, the precincts go bright as midday and the heat is felt across the road.

This is Nara Prefecture's largest fire festival of its kind, designated an Intangible Folk Cultural Property by the prefecture on March 15, 1983, and selected at the national level by the Agency for Cultural Affairs in 1978 as a folk practice requiring formal documentation.

A Birthplace, a Mountain Order, and an Early Modern Festival

Chihara is the traditional birthplace of En no Ozunu, also known as En no Gyōja, the seventh-century ascetic credited with founding Shugendō — the syncretic mountain religion that blends esoteric Buddhism, Shinto, and Daoist elements. The peaks where he is said to have trained, Mount Katsuragi and Mount Kongō, rise sharply to the west of the temple.

Kisshōsōji itself is traditionally regarded as having been founded by En no Gyōja. According to temple records the precincts once stretched some four kilometers east-west and five kilometers north-south, with forty-nine subsidiary halls; nearly all of these were destroyed in the Nanboku-chō wars of the fourteenth century, and the present main hall dates to a rebuilding during the Ōei era (1394–1428).

Origin stories for the tondo gather around two threads. The older tradition holds that En no Gyōja first lit such a fire during the reign of Emperor Tenji to pray for peace and harvest. A second account says that when Emperor Monmu fell ill, he retreated to Kisshōsōji for seven days, recovered, and ordered a great rite of thanksgiving — the bonfire was kindled to warm the assembled crowd through the winter night. A third version dates the festival to 701, the year En no Gyōja is said to have returned from exile in Izu, where villagers met him with torches.

Archaeology has so far confirmed only a more modest antiquity. An excavation in front of the main hall in 2005 revealed a layer of burnt earth from the early Edo period, indicating that the practice was well established by the seventeenth century. What is unusual, and what gives the festival its scholarly importance, is the fusion: an agricultural tondo — the village bonfire that returns the New Year deities to the heavens — has here been wedded to the Shingon-school Shugendō rite of shushōe. Few such combinations survive intact in Japan today.

The Pair of Torches and the Two Villages Who Build Them

The torches do not arrive ready-made. They are built in the precincts over the course of the day before, and on the morning of the 14th, by villagers from two neighborhoods: Chihara, where the temple stands, and Tamade, a short walk to the north. Traditionally a third district, Higashi-Terada, also took part — Tamade built the male torch, Higashi-Terada the female, and Chihara was responsible for the wooden poles that hold them upright. Higashi-Terada dropped out in 1963, and Chihara now builds the female torch alongside the stakes.

Each torch begins with a fan-shaped base of thirty-seven green bamboo poles bound into a wide disc — thirty-eight in leap years. Straw is laid across the fan, then bundles of split brushwood are gathered, lashed tight, and lifted by crane onto the bamboo platform. The male torch is finished with a single tall bamboo standing up from the crown, the female without. Hachimaki of woven straw are tied around the body of each torch in a knot specific to its sex, the work done in unison by neighbors who have practiced the procedure since boyhood. The completed torches are then hoisted upright with cranes and braced with timber.

The distinctive silhouette — wide at the base, narrow at the head — is called asagao-gata, "morning-glory shape," and is rarely seen in tondo elsewhere in Japan.

What Happens on the Night

The rite inside the main hall begins around three in the afternoon, with the chanting of the Heart Sutra. As dusk falls the two village processions set out from their respective neighborhoods, meet near the temple gate, and clap hands in greeting before being led into the precincts by a column of yamabushi, mountain ascetics in checkered tunics and small black caps. Stalls open along the approach; the precincts begin to fill.

At around eight in the evening, flames carried directly from the altar lamp of the main hall are touched to the base of each torch. The bamboo and straw catch instantly. Within seconds the towers become columns of fire ten meters and more in height, throwing embers high into the cold air. The chanting continues through the burning. Households send a representative to take a piece of the fire home on a rope wick: this is used the next morning to cook azuki-gayu, red bean rice porridge, said to ward off illness through the year.

The whole structure collapses to a glowing heap within roughly thirty minutes. After the torches have fallen, visitors walk between the two smouldering mounds — a passage meant to bring good health.

Around the Temple

Chihara sits in the southwestern corner of the Nara Basin, with the Katsuragi range immediately to the west. The area is rich in early sites associated with the same mountain cult: Katsuragi Hitokotonushi Shrine, the Tenpōrin-ji ruins at the foot of Mount Katsuragi, and the Kongōsan Tenpōrinji higher up. Takakamo Shrine, one of the oldest of the country's Kamo lineage shrines, is a short drive south.

Gose's old merchant town, Gose-machi, lies between the temple and JR Gose Station. The townscape — preserved low-eaved tradesmen's houses and white-walled storehouses — was registered in 2020 as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, and rewards an unhurried walk in daylight before the festival begins.

For visitors planning to attend on the 14th, dressing for sustained cold is essential — the rite stands outdoors from dusk until late, and Chihara's nights run several degrees below those of central Nara.