Spectacles in the Sky

Firework displays are as much a feature of summer in Japan as the energy-sapping humidity and shaved ice.

The three pontoons anchored off Zushi Beach in southern Kanagawa Prefecture were loaded with 7,500 firework shells, each up to 30 centimeters across. A mix of Bruno Mars, Eric Clapton and Antonin Dvorak songs blared from 70 Electro-Voice speakers installed along 600 meters of shoreline. Everything was set for the first large-scale fireworks display of the 2015 season for pyrotechnics firm Marutamaya.

The day before the show in May, Marutamaya’s president, Toshikatsu Ogatsu, inspected the site. The ¥25 million production, which took three months to prepare, was expected to draw 85,000 spectators. But for Ogatsu, safety is paramount.

“You can’t only think about design and making new types of effects and forget about safety,” says Ogatsu, 65, sitting in his Nihonbashi office. “Of course, we do our best to give people thrilling moments. At the end of the show, when everybody is happy—sometimes 1 million people, sometimes 2 million—that’s [when I’m reminded] why I am in the fireworks industry.”

The Zushi Beach “pyromusical” is an example of the new brand of Japanese fireworks display, or hanabi taikai. Japan was once one of the world’s largest exporters of fireworks, and Japanese technology is still coveted, but the export business has dried up.

“During the summer season, every night, every weekend, any city you go anywhere in Japan, you see a fireworks show,” says Ogatsu, who joined his family’s fireworks business in 1978. “I would like to go overseas to promote Japanese artistic shells, but we cannot compete with Chinese rates.”

While fireworks were invented in China, it is said Japanese pyrotechnicians perfected the art. The aerial shells used today were created by Japanese manufacturers, who also produced the first rockets to change color multiple times during a single launch.

By the 1960s, Japan was shipping around ¥1.5 billion of fireworks overseas each year. Then, in the 1970s and ’80s, the Chinese government eased restrictions on private manufacturing, and fireworks became one of the country’s first major exports.

By 2007, Japan’s annual exports fell to ¥70 million. Japanese fireworks are up to six times more expensive than those from China, which now controls 90 percent of the worldwide fireworks trade. The decline is also due to Japan’s stringent shipping regulations, which categorize fireworks as more dangerous than dynamite.

“We don’t export, only for special occasions, and for each occasion we have to negotiate. It is very hard,” says Ogatsu, who once produced shows in New York, Cairo, Moscow and Paris, as well as a July Fourth display in Seattle. “It is my dream to export overseas, but the problem is the transportation.”

Ogatsu limits himself to one overseas competition a year. Last year, Marutamaya won third place at the Baroque Fireworks Competition in Hanover, Germany, using the inventory on hand.

According to Ogatsu, while exports were shrinking, displays in Japan were growing, particularly following the opening of Tokyo Disneyland in 1983. Domestic production is now worth ¥65 billion.

Ogatsu, whose company produces the nightly fireworks display at Tokyo Disney Sea, says the American entertainment giant changed attitudes toward fireworks in Japan. “This was different from the traditional Japanese fireworks show,” he says. “I was inspired to combine the entertainment business with fireworks by adding music and some other effects.”

When Ogatsu founded Marutamaya in 1990, he was the first Japanese designer to choreograph fireworks to music. Next month’s Kanagawa Shimbun festival in Yokohama, for example, features a 25-minute, 13-song soundtrack that took three weeks to synchronize.

“You need a sense to understand the music, harmony, rhythm and melody,” says Ogatsu, who favors Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” for the grand finale. “Also, you have to understand how to draw the fireworks with the music, which color, which effects, what size of shells, etcetera.”

Today, Ogatsu’s firm of 27 employees produces around 300 firework shows a year, including the Tokyo Bay Fireworks in August. Last year, Marutamaya pyrotechnicians shot a round of cannons from 160 positions around the roof of Ajinomoto Stadium in 12.5 seconds.

In another Japan first, designers have developed a shell that displays five colors. “Now most of the young people working for the fireworks industry are focused on improving shows,” says Ogatsu. “They have some very good ideas, so it is very good for the future.”

 
Illuminating History

In 1776, future United States President John Adams wrote that the signing of the Declaration of Independence should be a “great anniversary festival…solemnized with pomp and parade…and illuminations.”

A year later, the first Fourth of July firework exhibitions were held in Philadelphia and Boston. The tradition spread throughout New England and eventually across the country.

The first public fireworks festival in Japan took place not long before the American Revolutionary War. In 1733, the shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune, held an aerial display along the Sumida River to dispel evil spirits and comfort the souls of the 1 million cholera epidemic victims.


Summer Displays

Adachi Fireworks
July 18
The Arakawa River display kicks off the Tokyo fireworks season.

Yokohama Sparkling Twilight
July 18–19
This spectacle by the sea features fireworks and illuminated boats off Yamashita Park.

Sumida River Fireworks Festival
July 25
A contest between rival pyrotechnic groups, this festival attracts more
than 1 million spectators.
 
Tachikawa Fireworks Festival
July 25
Showa Kinen Park hosts an array of family activities before the fireworks spectacle.

Kanagawa Shimbun Fireworks Festival
August 4
15,000 fireworks launched off Minato Mirai 21 in Yokohama.

Tokyo Bay Fireworks Festival
August 8
One of Japan’s largest firework festivals can be viewed from Odaiba and Harumi Pier.

Words: Nick Narigon