Shirahama Ama Festival

The Shirahama Ama Festival, held at Minamiboso in Chiba Prefecture, is the largest night festival in the prefecture and one of the most striking - close to a hundred women dressed in white wade into the sea carrying burning torches and swim out into the dark.

The ama are Japan's traditional free-diving women, who for centuries have gone into the water without breathing equipment to gather shellfish and seaweed. Shirahama is one of the places where they still work.

The festival is dedicated to Benzaiten, the goddess enshrined at the local Itsukushima Shrine, and it carries three purposes at once: a prayer for safety, a prayer for a good harvest from the sea, and a memorial for those who have died in it. First held in 1964, it has run for over sixty years and is treasured locally as the event that announces the start of summer.

The heart of it is the yoei, the great night swim. The divers enter the water in their white robes with torches raised, and the line of flames moving across the black water is what people come to see. The evening closes with fireworks.

Since 2014 the festival has been staged as something more elaborate still, using the harbour wall to combine the divers' torches with projected images, music, fireworks and the beam of the Nojimazaki lighthouse standing above the whole scene. In this form it has been recognised as a Chiba Cultural Asset. There is also a dance-drama telling of a wicked dragon that once haunted these waters and preyed on the villagers, and of Benzaiten's battle against it.

The festival takes place on the open ground in front of the Nojimazaki lighthouse in Shirahama, Minamiboso. It is usually held over a weekend in July and is cancelled in bad weather, so it is worth confirming the current year's dates before travelling.