Shiranui

◆ The legend

Mysterious fires said to appear far offshore at night on the Yatsushiro Sea in Kumamoto Prefecture. It begins with one or two small lights, the story goes, which split apart to the left and right, multiplying until a long line of flames sways across the water. They are said to be easiest to see late at night around the first day of the eighth month of the old lunar calendar, a day called hassaku. Try to get closer, and the fires drift away. Since no one could tell who had lit them, they were called the "fires no one knows" — shiranui — or so the tale of the name goes.

Today they are most often explained as a kind of mirage: the light of distant fishing fires is bent where cold air near the sea surface meets warmer air above it, so each light seems to split and stretch. Even with an explanation in hand, that row of fires swaying over the dark water has long drawn people down to the shore — a famous sight of the night sea.