Wakakusa Yamayaki | I Was Heading Down the Mountain — Then I Watched the Whole Thing Burn

I had already finished walking around Wakakusa-yama and was heading back down when I noticed people lining both sides of the road.

Not a few — a whole crowd, standing quietly, all facing the same direction. I stopped without thinking too much about it. Just curious what they were waiting for.

About the Festival

Wakakusa-yama is an ancient mountain — ancient burial mounds sit along its slopes, and the belief has long been that wandering spirits inhabit the hill. The Yamayaki festival, held every January, is in part a ritual to subdue those spirits with sacred fire. At the same time, it burns away the accumulated misfortunes and ill omens of the past year, so that the new year can begin from a clean, scorched hillside.

The ceremony has continued for hundreds of years and is now conducted jointly by three of Nara's major religious institutions: Kasuga Taisha, Kofukuji, and Todaiji. It's the biggest event in Nara in January.

The fireworks that open the event are worth noting on their own — 600 shells in 15 minutes. The pace is fast enough that each burst hasn't fully faded before the next one goes off.

The Sacred Fire Procession

I waited in the crowd for a while. Then a line of white-robed figures appeared carrying torches, moving slowly up from below. That's when I understood — this was the sacred fire procession.

The lighting isn't something spectators follow up the slope — the burn zone is cleared and controlled before ignition, and the sacred fire is set across the whole mountain at once by the fire crews. We all waited at the base, standing with the crowd. Before long the fire line began to glow across the slope — first a few points, then wider and wider, faster than I expected. Standing there watching it move, I understood why so many people had come just to wait for this.

What It Feels Like When the Mountain Burns

I'd only ever seen an entire hillside on fire in movies — the kind of scale that seemed like it belonged to special effects or historical battle scenes. When Wakakusa-yama caught fire, I was standing at the base watching the flames spread across the ridge, smoke rising into the sky, thousands of people going quiet around me.

It wasn't the silence of fear. More like everyone around me registering at the same moment that what they were watching was slightly beyond the scale of everyday life — and not quite knowing what to say about it.

Fireworks — Including a Heart

Fireworks run before and after the burning, and there are plenty of them. I was lucky enough to catch a heart-shaped firework — that kind of shape is rare, and I almost missed it before it faded. Glad the photo came out clear.

Getting Out Afterward

After the event ended, I discovered another kind of spectacle — Kintetsu Nara Station.

The exits were completely blocked, arrivals and departures all compressed into the same space, staff on megaphones trying to manage the flow. I stood there for about twenty minutes before making it onto the platform. If you go, don't rush straight to the station after it ends. Wait nearby for half an hour — the crowd clears significantly.

The Story of This Place

Don't be fooled by Wakakusa's usual carpet of green and its dozing deer. This gentle 342-meter slope, also known as Mt. Mikasa, is the stage for the heaviest fire in Nara's winter. The real intrigue sits at the summit: the Uguisuzuka Kofun, a keyhole-shaped tomb built in the latter half of the early Kofun period, around the turn of the 5th century, roughly 103 meters long. In 1936 (Showa 11) it was designated a National Historic Site, and today it is cared for as part of Nara Park. In other words, what you stand on isn't just a grassy hill, but a burial mound that has endured for some fifteen centuries.

First, let's keep legend and history apart. As the story goes, spirits of the dead haunt that summit tomb, and people believed the only way to pin them down and drive them off was to burn the whole of Wakakusa to the ground; it is also said that failing to burn the mountain before the following New Year would invite disaster. That belief is the most widely told root of the burning custom. It is also said that the name \"Uguisuzuka\" (Warbler Mound) came from associating the tomb with the \"Warbler's Mausoleum\" mentioned in Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book. And there's the tale you'll hear most often on tourist guides: it is said that in 1760 (Horeki 10), Todai-ji and Kofuku-ji quarreled over the mountain's boundary, the Nara magistrate stepped in to mediate, and the burning became a custom thereafter. But this is only a long-standing popular account. In recent years it has been called into doubt, as no such record can be found in either temple's histories, so take it with a grain of salt rather than as settled fact.

The more defensible account runs like this: in the Edo period, people often lit fires on the mountain to console the spirits, and with the superstition that \"not burning it brings misfortune\" running rampant, unauthorized fires were common. Because these wildfires repeatedly threatened Todai-ji and other temples below, in December 1738 (Genbun 3) the Nara magistrate even posted a notice board banning them. Only in the late Edo period did Todai-ji, Kofuku-ji, and the magistrate begin carrying it out together in an organized way. Around 1900 (Meiji 33) it shifted from daytime to night, and after World War II (around 1946) the nighttime form was revived and fireworks were added. Today the fire is lit jointly by three great religious institutions, Kasuga Taisha, Kofuku-ji, and Todai-ji, praying for the repose of ancestral spirits, fire safety across all of Nara, and peace throughout the world. Standing there the moment the entire hillside roars into orange flame, you suddenly understand: this is no fireworks show, but a rite burning for more than two centuries, sending fear, remembrance, and prayer up into the night sky all at once.

Event Information

・Held every fourth Saturday of January (Jan 24, 2026; confirm the exact date on official Nara tourism sites)
・Fireworks start around 18:15 (about 600 shells); the mountain is lit around 18:30, set alight across the whole slope at once by fire crews
・Viewing spots: the base of Wakakusa-yama and throughout Nara Park — closer is better
・Free admission; the burn zone is cleared and controlled before ignition — spectators watch from the base and around Nara Park, not up the slope
・Kintetsu Nara and JR Nara stations are extremely crowded after the event — wait 30 minutes before heading in
・You can find Nara day-trip packages and guided tours on Klook or KKday

I strongly recommend making a special trip to Nara for this festival. You don't need to know anything in advance, there are no tickets to buy — just find a good spot and wait for the mountain to catch fire.

It won't disappoint you.