Nozawa Fire Festival
野沢温泉の道祖神祭り
15 January 2027
Nozawa Onsen, Nagano
These dates repeat every year, so they are what to expect in 2027 rather than dates the organiser has announced yet — this page is updated as soon as it confirms them. Last held 15 January 2026.
On the night of 15 January the village of Nozawa Onsen builds a shrine more than ten metres high out of five sacred beech trunks, without a nail or a length of wire in it, and then burns it down. The men turning 42 and 25 that year — the unlucky ages — own the night: the forty-two-year-olds sit on the roof, the twenty-five-year-olds stand at the base beating out flames with pine branches, and the rest of the village comes at them with lit torches. Around two thousand torches are handed down from the roof to be used against it. The defence runs about ninety minutes and nobody comes out of it clean.
Dosojin are the roadside deities that keep calamity away from a village and bring good marriages and healthy children, and this is their festival — a small New Year fire rite of northern Shinano, a fixture since 1863 and designated a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1993. Families whose first son was born in the past year raise a hatsu-doro, a lantern some nine metres tall hung with inked wishes, and lean it against the shrine. When the defenders finally give way and the shrine is let go, the lanterns go up with it and the column of fire lights the whole valley floor.
The evening keeps to a set order. Fire is brought from its source at 19:00, the lanterns arrive at 19:30, fireworks and the dosojin drums follow at 20:00, and the head of the village association lights the first fire at about 20:30. The children attack for a quarter of an hour from 20:35, then the adults from 20:50 until around 22:00. Arrive on the 13th and you can watch the beech hauled down from the Hikage slope by the yakudoshi men, and the shrine assembled through the 14th, finished by noon on the day.
Settle one thing before you book: entry to the festival ground is by ticket, and tickets are issued only to village residents and to guests staying the night in Nozawa Onsen — foreign visitors included, but a day trip will not get you in. Ask your accommodation, which handles them; the village announces the arrangements in early December. Drinks may not be carried in, and the fire-setting is for villagers, so visitors watch. Nozawa Onsen is a ski village with thirteen free public bathhouses, about 25 minutes by bus from Iiyama Station on the Hokuriku Shinkansen, so the day has an obvious shape: ski, soak, then stand in the snow.