Senko hanabi

Tokyo has always loved fireworks. Using gunpowder languishing in his warehouses, the Shogun filled Edo summer nights with thousands of firework explosions. This July and August some seventy thousand "fire flowers" in fusillades of brilliant colors and cannon shots of thunder reflected and echoed over the Sumida, the Arakawa, the Edogawa rivers, and over Tokyo Bay.

But in corner parks, at beaches, in driveways, or in backyard gardens, summer is also feted by smaller, family-centered celebrations of fireworks purchased at the local convenience store. After the sun has gone down and with cicadas still singing from the trees, young boys and girls wearing wooden geta or zori and in freshly-ironed cotton yukata, printed perhaps with red goldfish or blue bell-flowers and with a wide red obi sash bow-tied around their waists, will watch as parents or grandparents light fuses and nervously back a safe distance away.

Then after the flashy sparklers and the torch-like roman candles, after the spouting fountains of golden sparks or the wheezing-spinning-cracking firecrackers, after launching the whistling bottle rockets, after all the loud, brash, bright fireworks -- the ones you distance yourself from or risk a finger -- after all that flash and noise, comes the subtle introspective firework safe enough to be enjoyed by small children. It's time for senko hanabi.

A senko hanabi (incense stick firework) is a thin shaft of twisted paper about 20 centimeters long with one end containing a few grains of a special gunpowder. Senko hanabi are always included in the packets of fireworks and are always done last to finish off the family fireworks which wouldn't be complete without them.

Children squat next to a plastic bucket half-filled with water and intently set their senko hanabi alight over a candle set in an empty tin can. You hold a tissue-like paper ribbon at one end, while the business end quickly ignites releasing a bit of acrid smoke and tiny spurting flames which swing the paper thread around like a pendulum. Soon the burning end congeals into a red-orange droplet -- a glowing molten pearl suspended on a string.

For a heartbeat or two the molten bead seethes, then with a soft "ffffutt," a branching spark of golden lightning shoots out, then another, and another, quickly erupting into a cascade of hundreds of miniature starbursts shooting out as far as ten centimeters.

After you light a senko hanabi and start it going, you must hold on to it. You feel the sizzle of the little fireball, quickly shrinking with each spark, vibrating the paper shaft in your careful fingers. You must keep the shaft as still as possible for if you shake, the bead drops and all is lost. But if you're lucky, of steady hand, and if the wind is right, the display will continue until the bead has shrunk as small as a mustard seed. The cascading sparks weaken to delicate arcs like falling petals or tracks of shooting stars until only the tiniest, thinnest traces remain. From start to fade it's over in less than a minute. The spent paper thread is tossed into the bucket, and another senko hanabi is lit.

Children will sometimes have a contest to see whose senko hanabi lasts the longest, or they will have a battle holding theirs close to the opponent's so that sparks might shoot into the other's bead to knock it off.

Like watching a campfire or the flames in a fireplace, your eyes are drawn to the fiery bead, the molten heart, of the senko hanabi. Everyone is quiet, intent on keeping their tiny fireball steady and sparking for as long as possible. For the parents or grandparents, watching the sparks branch and fade, years will drop away to senko hanabi held in distant back gardens of memory.

There is a sadness to senko hanabi. They evoke mono no aware, the flash of sadness at the beauty and briefness of life. The poignantly ephemeral has long been appreciated in Japan and is still felt in the quiet celebration of senko hanabi blossoming from a child's hand.

-- mjk