At dusk on a January Saturday, after a firework display, the dead winter grass on the 342-metre Mount Wakakusa above Nara is set alight and the entire hillside burns — visible from across the Nara basin for about half an hour.
The explanations offered range from a boundary dispute between two temples to pest control to driving off wild boar; none is settled, and the city says so.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
The event is weather-conditional in a way a calendar cannot express. If the grass is wet or the wind is up, the burn is postponed, sometimes by a week, and the fireworks may go ahead without it. This is the same class of entry as the Swiss lake events: a sound recurrence rule and a conditional occurrence.
PlanningAnchored to the fourth Saturday of January — and postponed outright if the grass is wet.
Dates
computed from the rule
Computed from the recurrence rule we record for this entry, not copied from a listing. A date marked ~ comes from a calendar conversion and the observance may fall a day or two either side.
ConditionalPostponed in rain or high wind; the hillside must be dry enough to burn.