About this event
The "Kebesu Festival" is an extraordinary, world-renowned bizarre festival held every year on October 14 as the autumn grand festival at Kushiku Shrine (Iwakura Hachiman Shrine) in Kushiku, Kunimi-cho, Kunisaki City, Oita Prefecture. It is a fire festival whose origins and history remain entirely unknown. At dusk, participants called "Touba," who have undergone ritual purification in the sea near the shrine grounds, gather dressed in white robes. Together with the strange masked figure "Kebesu," they parade through the grounds, and eventually fire is set to a pile of "shida" (ferns) in a corner of the grounds. As the festival reaches its peak, the Touba attach burning bundles of ferns to the tips of the poles they hold and run rampantly around both inside and outside the shrine grounds, while worshipers run about to avoid the flying sparks. The spectacular fire ritual lasts several hours, and it is said that being showered with flying sparks grants sound health and freedom from disaster. The struggle between the strangely masked "Kebesu" and the white-robed "Touba" in front of the raging bonfire, reaching its climax as the "Touba" run through the spectators carrying huge blazing flames, is a breathtaking sight.
Source website (Japanese) ↗Venue
Iwakura Shrine (Kushiku Shrine)
3707 Kushiku, Kunimi-cho, Kunisaki, Oita 872-1406
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