A boat is set on fire and floated down the river. In Morioka, in Iwate, on the sixteenth of August—the night that closes Obon—the funekko nagashi is held near the Meiji Bridge on the Kitakami River. Neighborhood associations and temple congregations build dragon-headed boats by hand, paste on memorial tablets, and decorate them with lanterns and offerings. Then they set them alight and let them go. The burning boats drift and burn down near the bridge, flames mirrored on the water. They send off the spirits of the ancestors and pray for health—the spirit-farewell that ends the festival of the dead. The custom began about three hundred years ago, when a domain lord's daughter is said to have held a great river memorial rite. Later, to console the spirits of courtesans who had drowned in the Kitakami, boats bearing tablets and offerings were floated as well, and the two customs merged into the town's own. It is a designated intangible folk cultural property of Morioka. After dark comes the throwing of torches: children spin lit torches in one hand and hurl them up toward a high basket. And at the end, fireworks. A Morioka summer ends out on the river. Morioka is a town of water, run through by the Kitakami. At the end of summer, from the bridge, you watch the lights drift away downstream.