Kids Web Japan

Firefighters show off their acrobatic prowess atop tall ladders. (Tokyo Fire Defense Agency)

Every year in early January members of municipal fire departments and community firefighting teams put on a display of their skills in a New Year's parade called dezome-shiki. It's a centuries-old New Year tradition that gives the public a peek at the latest firefighting and rescue techniques.

About 2,600 professional firefighters participate in the parade in Tokyo each year. They go through exciting, tension-filled drills.

One highlight of the 1998 parade was a demonstration by the Hyper-Rescue team, which made its dezome-shiki debut in 1997. It's a special unit capable of moving in quickly to save people trapped in collapsed buildings. The decision to create such a unit was triggered by the aftermath of the January 1995 earthquake that devastated Kobe and nearby areas. The demonstration was a high-powered one, with team members using dynamite and cranes to simulate a rescue operation.

Another notable feature was the unveiling of the Yuri-kamome, the world's only helicopter capable of spraying chemicals horizontally to extinguish flames, making it perfect for fighting fires in skyscrapers.

The parade's attraction lies not just in the display of modern firefighting techniques; an important part of the dezome-shiki is a show of acrobatics using ladders that originated with firefighters in the Edo period (1603-1868). Edo, as Tokyo was then called, was known as a city of fires, and so there must have been an awful lot of fires back then. Dezome-shiki began with the stunts that Edo firefighters put on early in the new year.

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Tokyo Fire Defense Agency in 1998, for the first time the dezome-shiki in Tokyo featured a parade of antique fire trucks.