Fire is passed from a shrine's flame to the lanterns, and the festival begins. On an October night in Nihonmatsu, in the hills of Fukushima, seven wheeled floats move out from seven neighborhoods, each carrying more than three hundred crimson lanterns. The flame of Nihonmatsu Shrine is carried out and touched to them one by one, and slowly the dark fills with light. The festival is about three hundred and seventy years old. A domain lord, Niwa Mitsushige, enshrined the local deity and let any commoner come to pray, and the people's gratitude, over generations, became this. It was once held under the old lunar calendar, in the eighth month; after a great fire in the Taisho era it moved to October. The tallest lanterns—suginari, stacked into a triangle—rise more than ten meters. The floats are lacquered and gilded, and when the young men's calls and the drums and flutes begin, three thousand flames drift through the streets, reddening the night sky as they go. There are three days. The first night is the yoimatsuri, the only time all seven floats gather together, lit at the shrine and pulled down to the station. The second day carries the portable shrine through town; the third is the quiet after. Most of the year Nihonmatsu is known for its chrysanthemum dolls and the ruins of Kasumigajo castle. Come for the festival and you get the other town: the daytime for the castle hill, the night for following lanterns, and, a little further out, the hot springs of Dake. Go on the first night. October in Fukushima is cold; bring a layer, and wait for a float to climb the slope toward you. As the light comes closer, the sound of it reaches your body before the meaning does.