Inomata's 108 Lanterns

Inomata no Hyakuhattō: 108 Fires on a Saitama Ridge

On the evening of August 15, a thin line of flame appears along the crest of Dōmaeyama, a low hill on the border between the towns of Misato and Yorii in Saitama Prefecture. The light comes from 108 small earthen mounds set in a row along the ridge, each one holding a single lamp. Lighting them is the work of local children and teenagers, who carry the whole observance from the first preparations to the final spark. This is Inomata no Hyakuhattō, an Obon rite that the village of Inomata has kept alive for more than four hundred years.

The name translates roughly as "the 108 lights of Inomata." Hyakuhattō observances exist in several parts of Japan, but the version performed here has a feature found almost nowhere else, and it is the reason the event carries a national designation.

A warrior the village has not forgotten

The fires are lit in memory of Inomata Koheiroku Norizuna, a warrior of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods. He headed the Inomata band, one of the Musashi Shichitō, the seven warrior leagues of Musashi Province, the region that covers present-day Saitama and parts of Tokyo. Norizuna stood as the fifth-generation head of the main Inomata house, counting from the founder Tokinori, and the byname Koheiroku attached to him through a reputation for exceptional courage.

He sided with the Minamoto early. He fought in the Hōgen disturbance of 1156 and the Heiji disturbance of 1159, and at the battle of Ichi-no-Tani in 1184, serving under Minamoto no Yoshitsune, he cut down the Taira commander Taira no Moritoshi. He went on to fight at Dan-no-Ura in 1185 and died in 1192. His grave lies among those of his kin in a corner of Kōdai-in, the temple at the foot of the hill.

Local tradition places the festival's beginning in a later, harsher chapter. Roughly four centuries after Koheiroku's death, the Inomata clan was broken by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and scattered from the district. An ascetic named Ono Mankai is said to have carried Koheiroku's guardian Buddha image back to the village, and each Obon he lit fires on the hilltop to console the spirits of the dispersed family. That act is held to be the root of what is performed today. The phrasing here follows what residents pass down rather than a documented record, and the festival itself is the clearest evidence that the memory survived.

Why the rite is protected

Japan has many Bon observances built on the number 108, a figure that echoes the 108 earthly desires named in Buddhist teaching. Some households burn 108 small torches; some villages burn them together on a mountainside or a dry riverbed to send off the spirits of the dead. What separates Inomata from the others is the mounds.

Instead of simply lighting torches, the community builds 108 small tumuli along the ridge and burns a fire on top of each one. The Agency for Cultural Affairs designated Inomata no Hyakuhattō an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on January 8, 1987, naming it a clear and typical example of a fundamental form of Japanese folk life. The designation points to two things in particular. One is the way the rite preserves tsuka shinkō, a belief that ancestral spirits return to and gather at mounds. The other is that the entire event is organized and run by the young, which lets observers see how ancestral worship was carried inside the cycle of Bon and handed from one generation to the next.

The hill, the mounds, and the night itself

The 108 mounds follow the spine of Dōmaeyama in a single line. Most are modest in scale, roughly one meter high and 30 to 40 centimeters across. The two at the far ends, called tomezuka, are built noticeably larger. The pair at the center, known as gojū-zuka, are larger still, standing 2 to 2.5 meters high and about 70 centimeters wide. From the ridge on a clear day the eye reaches north to Mount Akagi and west to Mount Asama.

Inomata no Hyakuhattō belongs to its children. Boys and youths of the district between the ages of 6 and 18, about fifty in all, split into a children's group and a youth group and handle every part of the event. The oyakata, an eighteen-year-old, leads. The seventeen-year-old jiōyakata acts as his deputy. The previous year's leader serves as kōken, supervising from a step back. Adults stay out of the running of it. In the weeks before the 15th the young members clear paths, cut grass, dig pine roots for fuel, tidy Koheiroku's grave, build the mounds, and make the lamp vessels.

Work on the day itself starts before dawn. Fresh turf is cut and the 108 mounds are reshaped. Each receives a lamp made from an ordinary teapot filled with oil, its wick twisted from raw silk floss. At the central gojū-zuka, the end tomezuka, and the Gokubō-zuka beside Koheiroku's grave, pine roots are added so the flame burns taller and longer.

At six in the evening a summoning drum sounds in the temple grounds. Once everyone has gathered, a lamp is lit at Koheiroku's grave, and a procession moves off behind flute and drum toward Dōmaeyama. As the 108 lamps are kindled one after another along the crest, set-piece fireworks rise overhead. The children then stand in a line and watch the fires they built, a sight that becomes part of how they remember home.

Planning a visit

The observance takes place every August 15, with the gathering at Kōdai-in starting around 6:30 in the evening; heavy rain pushes it to the following day. Visitors who come to the temple can join the lantern procession and watch the children light the mounds at close range. Admission is free.

One practical caution: in some years the event is conducted for participants and their families only, so anyone traveling a distance should check with the Misato Town Board of Education or the local tourism association before setting out. The path up Dōmaeyama is unpaved hill ground, and sturdy walking shoes are sensible. Bringing a flashlight for the walk back in the dark is wise.

Kōdai-in sits at Inomata 1575 in Misato. By car it is about 15 minutes from the Hanazono interchange of the Kan-etsu Expressway, or about 10 minutes from the Yorii Smart interchange (ETC vehicles only). By rail, Yōdo Station on the JR Hachikō Line is a 20 to 30 minute walk, and Matsuhisa Station roughly 30 minutes on foot.

Around Inomata

Misato is farming country, and the area rewards a daytime look before the evening fires. The town is known for blueberries; from June into late August the Misato farm produce stand, called Man'yō no Sato, sells fresh fruit and vegetables grown by local growers, and about a kilometer from the festival site it makes an easy stop. In spring the wooded slopes of the nearby Tsuburada district hold a colony of katakuri, the dogtooth violet, which draws walkers when it blooms from late March into early April.

The wider Kodama region around Misato is dotted with old shrines, kofun burial mounds, and quiet farm roads, and the unhurried pace of the place suits the spirit of a festival rooted in remembrance.