The last couple of weeks I’ve been noticing people lighting small fireworks in Inokashira Kouen. I asked some of the house mates and it turns out that a celebration called Hanabi is coming up soon.
I know that hanabi means firework because I saw a Japanese movie in Sydney called Hanabi in 1997. The movie starred Takeshi who is a famous actor here and whom I often see on Japanese TV. That movie was about

a violent and unpredictable ex-police detective who quits the force after a terrible incident that results in his partner, Horibe (Ren Osugi), being confined to a wheelchair. After his retirement he spends much of his time looking after his wife Miyuki (Kayoko Kishimoto), who has leukemia. The film moves at a deliberate pace and devotes much time to exploring their relationship. Nishi has also borrowed money from the Yakuza to pay for his wife’s needs, and is having difficulty repaying them. Meanwhile, Horibe takes up painting and creates works of art that are surrealistic and beautiful.

Wikipedia

As you can see this movie has little to do with fireworks except that the guy who takes up painting after being confined to a wheel chair paints some fireworks at some stage. At the time of seeing the movie I must have been curious enough to ask someone what the title meant. Hana means flower and bi or hi means flames. I have known the word ever since.

Everytime someone asks me why I came to Japan I always mention a few bits of Japanese culture that made their way to Australia. I usually mention Monkey Magic or Saiyuuki as it is called here. Hanabi the movie is another example of Japanese culture that I gravitated to without ever having set foot in Japan itself.

In Australia fireworks for personal use are banned. You need a licence to use them at any rate. To get this licence you need to answer such questions as “Is it ever appropriate to light a firework inside? Yes , No , Maybe” and then pay some money to pay for the application process. For those people that like quizes the answer to the above question was Maybe but you should write No if you want the licence.

I think the reason they are banned in Australia is that too many people, mainly children, were doing dangerous things with the  fireworks. To my mind the most dangerous thing that one can do is to painstakingly remove the powder from each firework in order to pool this powder together into one large firework. This process is frought with difficulty and many people, mainly children, lost eyebrows and worse.

The joy that I felt from thinking about being able to do that which had been forbidden for so long finally spurred me into action. I organised some of the house mates to come with me to the nearest park and let loose some of these fireworks high into the cool night air.

But it was not to be. I bought a bag of hanabi from the Seven Eleven. The bag consisted of hand held fireworks and none of the fireworks of the flying variety that I had anticipated. Although I was thinking that these Japanese fireworks were nothing but gorified sparklers, I stemmed my disappointment and with the help of the others tried to light the sparklers as quickly as I could. I decided to light the smallest most boring fireworks first and then progress to the larger ones but one of the Japanese house mates said that the little ones were to be used last.

We all waved the hand held fireworks in the air, took photos and when the fireworks were finished we marvelled at all the smoke we made.

The little fireworks were the last ones to be lit. One of the house mates  said that these were the original hanabi fireworks. This is the type I had seen people using in the park earlier. They are called senkou hanabi and they just look like little lengths of red string.

They are usually lit with a stick of incense, two of which were provided in the pack, but using a lighter was a lot easier. After the flame of the lighter is removed the red string glows orange until the glow turns into a small glowing bulb which hangs to the lower end of the string. The globe gets slightly bigger as it consumes the remaining fuel. At a certain point the globe starts to emit the most exquisite orange sparks. Because the light emitting from these senkou hanabi is so small you can really get a good look at the structure of these sparks as they fly off. For the finish the orange globe falls into the dark ground.