Category: Tezutsu - Hand Fires

TEZUTSU -「手 筒 花火'

Hand tube fireworks

Tezutsu are hand tube fireworks (portable firecrackers cannons), it is a bamboo cylinder filled with firecracker powder, it is burst with a person holding the tube with his hands, blowing a flame towards the sky . The brave person must keep the tube immobile for 30 seconds without shaking, and finally ending with a spectacular explosion.

They say that fireworks were developed as a weapon in the beginning, but ended up becoming fun. Rumor has it Tokugawa Ieyasu he lit hand-held fireworks in the early XNUMXth century after the unification of Japan. After that, firework making came to be inherited in the Mikawa district, where Ieyasu was born.

The Yoshida Shrine, in Toyohashi CityAt Aichi Prefecture, is considered the birthplace of Tezutsu fireworks. At the Sanctuary there is a memorial written ¨ Tezutsu fireworks birthplace¨, which describes the history of the development of Tezutsu fireworks since the beginning of the XNUMXth century.

Tezutsu is made of bamboo with a diameter of 10 cm and a length of 70 cm, and wrapped tightly with strings of rice stalks braided around it, and 1.8 kg to 3 kg of black powder mixed with grinding wheel or sulfur and ash in a manual cylinder. It is a hand made tradition, from cutting bamboo to placing gunpowder and rope.

Dressed in traditional clothing, including special padded jackets made of thick, fireproof cotton that cost more than 150.000 yen each, the men line up in the darkness and are assisted by a person carrying a small flame, used to light the cannon.