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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Shizuoka
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Omuro burns twice for safety: first the crater’s inner slope is charred as a refuge if anyone or an animal remains; then the outer slopes are lit, and the main blaze races over the mountain in about 40 minutes.
Visitors aren’t only spectators: people who wish can join local preservation members and firefighters to light the outer slope with torches. The organizers even sell visitor torches on the day.
The fire began as farm work, not a spectacle: Yamayaki is said to be about 700 years old, and its original purpose was to grow good kaya and control pests. Burning the stems while leaving roots encourages fresh shoots.
Local names even mapped the slopes: sunny ground yielded short kogaya, about 1.2 m tall, for thatch, wheat-field compost and cattle feed; shadier spots grew longer tawaragaya, supple enough to weave.
Grass from the slopes even traveled to Edo: Ikku residents wove flexible tawaragaya into charcoal bales, and charcoal from local kilns was shipped out through Hachiman-no port toward today’s Tokyo.
Firefighters use a fuginribō, or fire-beating stick: a roughly 1.5 m living branch, with its leafy tip folded and tied, used to beat down flames. The old-style tool was also used in wildfire control and slash-and-burn farming.
The firebreak takes days of work: after the village autumn festival, about 5 residents spend more than 4 full days cutting a strip roughly 5.4 m wide. They burn it in advance so fire has less fuel to cross.
As kaya faded from daily use, other Ikku grasslands stopped being burned by the 1950s. Omuro’s tradition carried on into a new era: residents formed a preservation society in 1980 to keep the burn going and support tourism.
The annual fire helps keep scrub from overtaking the grass, preserving Omuro’s smooth, bowl-shaped profile. The volcanic cone itself is separately designated a National Natural Monument.
A clear morning may not be enough: recent rain can leave the grass too damp to burn, and winds can be much stronger at the summit than at the foot. The preservation society checks conditions before deciding.
