# Himatsuri
**Himatsuri** (火まつり, Fire Festival) is a 1985 Japanese drama film directed by Mitsuo Yanagimachi and written by the [Akutagawa Prize](https://www.edgepedia.org/akutagawa-prize)-winning novelist [Kenji Nakagami](https://www.edgepedia.org/kenji-nakagami) (1946–1992), for whom it was the first original screenplay.[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/) Set in a small town in the Kumano region of the [Kii Peninsula](https://www.edgepedia.org/kii-peninsula), it follows a lumberjack named Tatsuo who, after a storm in which he believes he hears the voice of the mountain god, kills his family and himself with a hunting rifle.[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/) The film premiered at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival and was screened at the 23rd New York Film Festival.[2](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Japanese title | 火まつり (Himatsuri); English title Fire Festival[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/) |
| Director / screenplay | Mitsuo Yanagimachi; original screenplay by Kenji Nakagami, his first for film[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/) |
| Release | 1985 in Japan, distributed by Cine Saison[3](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17585) |
| Runtime | 125 minutes per Japanese databases; 126 minutes per the National Film Archive of Japan; 120 minutes per some international listings[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/) • [4](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=110365) • [5](https://japansociety.org/events/himatsuri/) |
| Production | Seibu Saison Group, Cine Saison, and Gunro Productions[3](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17585) |
| Key crew | Cinematography Masaki Tamura, music Toru Takemitsu, art direction Takeo Kimura[3](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17585) |
| Festival showings | Un Certain Regard, 1985 Cannes Film Festival; 23rd New York Film Festival[2](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1) • [6](https://jffau.jpf.go.jp/film/fire-festival-himatsuri/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The story is set in Nigishima, a small seaside town in the Kumano region of [Mie Prefecture](https://www.edgepedia.org/mie-prefecture), historically known as Kishū, squeezed between the sea and the mountains.[2](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1) • [1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/) The town's people are divided between lumberjacks and fishermen, who have little contact, and it is unsettled by a planned marine park and the money rights surrounding it.[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/)
Tatsuo, played by Kinya Kitaoji, is a lumberjack who breaks local taboos: he swims in the god's inlet, builds traps from the sacred sakaki tree, and boasts that the mountain goddess is his lover.[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/) • [7](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/487) He has a wife and two children, but begins an affair with Kimiko (Kiwako Taichi), a childhood friend who returns to town; she deceives a land broker out of money and recovers a snack bar in Shingū that was about to be lost to debt.[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/) • [10](https://lp.p.pia.jp/event/movie/7360/index.html) When heavy oil is spread on the sea and the farmed hamachi fish die, the townspeople assume Tatsuo is responsible.[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/)
Tatsuo and the young Ryota (Ryota Nakamoto), who admires him, enter the mountains; a storm hits and the others descend, but Tatsuo stays alone. Amid the movement of clouds, the sound of trees and streams, he senses something supernatural, possibly the voice of the mountain god, and comes down after the storm clears.[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/) Days later, at the annual fire festival, he runs wild; then, at a family meeting about the land question raised by the park construction, he prepares a hunting rifle and shoots his mother, wife, sisters, and children one after another before putting the muzzle in his own mouth and firing it with his foot.[1](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/)
## Origins
Nakagami wrote the screenplay from an original premise rather than adapting one of his own stories, although Yanagimachi had earlier filmed Nakagami's novella *Jūkyūsai no chizu* (A 19-Year-Old's Map) in 1979.[2](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1) The script was inspired by a real incident: the 1980 murder of seven members of a family in Kumano, Mie Prefecture.[7](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/487) Yanagimachi said he researched the facts in detail before writing; the real murderer was a stone mason in his mid-forties, married with two children, who had lost his father early and grown up in a matriarchal household with his mother and four elder sisters.[8](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/japan%202021%3Cbr%3E100%20years%20of%20japanese%20cinema/2021/12/20/fire-festival/) The film was completed in 1984 and premiered at Cannes in May 1985, released in Japan the following month concurrently with [Akira Kurosawa](https://www.edgepedia.org/akira-kurosawa)'s *Ran*.[8](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/japan%202021%3Cbr%3E100%20years%20of%20japanese%20cinema/2021/12/20/fire-festival/)
The film was the first production of the Seibu Saison Group.[9](https://happylibus.com/doc/793202/%E4%B8%AD%E4%B8%8A%E5%81%A5%E6%AC%A1%E3%80%8E%E7%81%AB%E3%81%BE%E3%81%A4%E3%82%8A%E3%80%8F---%E5%AE%87%E9%83%BD%E5%AE%AE%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%A6-%E5%AD%A6%E8%A1%93%E6%83%85%E5%A0%B1%E3%83%AA%E3%83%9D%E3%82%B8%E3%83%88%E3%83%AA%EF%BC%88uu-air%EF%BC%89) Nakagami worked on parallel texts at the same time: the script was published in *Hi no Bungaku* (The Literature of Fire, Kadokawa, 1985) together with documentation and interviews about the festival, and he serialized a same-title novella as a novelization in the magazine *Bungakukai*, later issued as a book by Bungeishunju in 1987 and collected in his complete works.[7](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/487)
## The fire festival of the title
The festival shown in the film's second half is the Otō matsuri (お燈祭り), the annual rite held every 6 February at Kamikura Shrine in Shingu, Wakayama Prefecture, Nakagami's hometown.[7](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/487) Men in white robes called noboriko carry torches and run down the shrine's stone steps.[7](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/487) Nakagami himself, after moving to Tokyo, returned home repeatedly to receive the sacred fire as a noboriko.[9](https://happylibus.com/doc/793202/%E4%B8%AD%E4%B8%8A%E5%81%A5%E6%AC%A1%E3%80%8E%E7%81%AB%E3%81%BE%E3%81%A4%E3%82%8A%E3%80%8F---%E5%AE%87%E9%83%BD%E5%AE%AE%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%A6-%E5%AD%A6%E8%A1%93%E6%83%85%E5%A0%B1%E3%83%AA%E3%83%9D%E3%82%B8%E3%83%88%E3%83%AA%EF%BC%88uu-air%EF%BC%89) The film's climax is aligned by Nakagami and Yanagimachi with this local fire festival.[2](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1)
The original working title was *A Festival of Forests and the Sea*; the producers changed it because it sounded too anthropological, which, one analysis argues, shifted emphasis toward the Wakayama fire festival and away from the forest-and-sea theme that remains in the script's dialogue.[11](https://analepsis.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/japanesecinema.pdf)
## Production details
The storm scene was shot in the forest, with the rain produced by a fire hose connected to a nearby stream and the wind made by a large industrial fan and a helicopter flying above the tree canopy, according to the film's promotional brochure.[2](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1) In an interview with the sociologist Ueno Chizuko, Nakagami said the high-angle shot of the climax represents "the point of view of the goddess (kami no shiten)".[2](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1) Filming received cooperation from the city of Kumano in Mie Prefecture, the city of Shingu in Wakayama, the Nigishima fisheries and aquaculture cooperatives, the Kamikura Shrine association, and local forestry cooperatives.[4](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=110365)
## Reception
The film was selected for both the Cannes Film Festival and the 23rd [New York Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/new-york-film-festival) and was well received at both; with this recognition and interest in Nakagami's involvement, it sold around seven thousand advance tickets in Japan.[2](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1) In Japan it placed third in Kinema Junpo's Best Ten for 1985, and at the Mainichi Film Concours it received the script award for Nakagami and the best actor award for Kitaoji.[9](https://happylibus.com/doc/793202/%E4%B8%AD%E4%B8%8A%E5%81%A5%E6%AC%A1%E3%80%8E%E7%81%AB%E3%81%BE%E3%81%A4%E3%82%8A%E3%80%8F---%E5%AE%87%E9%83%BD%E5%AE%AE%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%A6-%E5%AD%A6%E8%A1%93%E6%83%85%E5%A0%B1%E3%83%AA%E3%83%9D%E3%82%B8%E3%83%88%E3%83%AA%EF%BC%88uu-air%EF%BC%89)
Criticism has been divided along two lines. The film has been criticized for its male narcissism and praised for Masaki Tamura's on-location cinematography.[12](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/1988/01/himatsuri/) The critic Donald Richie, who promoted Yanagimachi's work internationally, described it as a modern macho lumberjack facing vengeful nature, with luminous photography by Tamura and a ravishing score by Takemitsu.[5](https://japansociety.org/events/himatsuri/) Later festival programming has called it a landmark of 1980s Japanese cinema, noting Takemitsu's score and the film's portrait of a community between ancient beliefs and an uncertain future.[6](https://jffau.jpf.go.jp/film/fire-festival-himatsuri/) Scholarly work has read the film as narrating the collapse of a local forestry economy amid the globalized circulation of natural resources during Japan's postwar recovery, and as constructing what one study calls a botanical subjectivity that draws the human characters into the larger assemblage of the forest.[2](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1)
## References
1. [火まつり : 作品情報・キャスト・あらすじ, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/39073/)
2. [Becoming Botanical: Entanglements of Plant Life and Human Subjectivity in Modern Japan, eScholarship](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5998q3r1)
3. [火まつり - 作品情報・映画レビュー, KINENOTE](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=17585)
4. [国立映画アーカイブ 所蔵映画フィルム検索システム: 火まつり](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=110365)
5. [Himatsuri, Japan Society](https://japansociety.org/events/himatsuri/)
6. [Fire Festival (Himatsuri), The Japanese Film Festival Australia](https://jffau.jpf.go.jp/film/fire-festival-himatsuri/)
7. [火まつり, 武蔵野美術大学 美術館・図書館 映像作品データベース](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/487)
8. [Fire Festival - BFI Southbank Programme Notes](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/japan%202021%3Cbr%3E100%20years%20of%20japanese%20cinema/2021/12/20/fire-festival/)
9. [中上健次『火まつり』解説, 宇都宮大学学術情報リポジトリ (UU-AIR)](https://happylibus.com/doc/793202/%E4%B8%AD%E4%B8%8A%E5%81%A5%E6%AC%A1%E3%80%8E%E7%81%AB%E3%81%BE%E3%81%A4%E3%82%8A%E3%80%8F---%E5%AE%87%E9%83%BD%E5%AE%AE%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%A6-%E5%AD%A6%E8%A1%93%E6%83%85%E5%A0%B1%E3%83%AA%E3%83%9D%E3%82%B8%E3%83%88%E3%83%AA%EF%BC%88uu-air%EF%BC%89)
10. [火まつりの作品情報・あらすじ・キャスト, ぴあ映画](https://lp.p.pia.jp/event/movie/7360/index.html)
11. [Mitsuo's Fire Festival, analepsis.org](https://analepsis.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/japanesecinema.pdf)
12. [Himatsuri, Jonathan Rosenbaum (1988)](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/1988/01/himatsuri/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1980s › Released 1980 to 1985*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license