Kasama Himatsuri

The Kasama Himatsuri (Fire Festival) is an annual late-April event when the historic 11-chamber Nikko-gama climbing kiln is loaded with 10,000 pottery pieces and fired continuously for 14 hours. The kiln, built into a hillside, uses pinewood fuel to reach 1,200–1,300°C; flames roar through interconnected chambers, and stokers feed logs into fireboxes every 15 minutes throughout the night. The firing is both functional (producing glazed pottery for sale) and ceremonial — a celebration of craft, fire, and tradition.

Visitors can watch the entire process from kiln loading (3 days before the festival) to the final firing (nighttime event, 6:00pm–8:00am). The spectacle peaks after dark when flames burst from chimney stacks and the kiln glows orange against the night. The surrounding hillside becomes a festival ground with food stalls, pottery sales, live music, and workshops. The event culminates 3 days after firing when the kiln is opened and finished pieces are sold at festival prices.

Kasama's standing as a pottery town goes back to the late Edo period, when a local feudal lord invited a potter from the Shigaraki tradition to establish kilns using the area's naturally iron-rich clay, and the craft grew steadily from there into one of the region's defining industries rather than a single-generation revival. What distinguishes Kasama ware from more tightly codified traditions like Arita or Bizen is precisely its lack of a fixed house style — potters here have historically been free to experiment with glazes and forms rather than working within strict inherited rules, which is part of why the town supports several hundred independent studios today rather than a small number of dominant kilns. The fire festival's climbing kiln, built directly into the hillside so heat rises naturally from chamber to chamber, represents a firing method largely abandoned elsewhere in favor of gas and electric kilns, kept alive here specifically because the annual event has given younger potters a continuing reason to learn wood-firing rather than let the skill lapse.