An explosive assignment

Question: How do you launch a 120cm diameter, 420kg “yonshakudama” fireworks shell – the largest in the world?

Answer: Spend a year making it, bury a length of ex-oil pipeline in the ground, insert the shell, blast it 800 meters in the air, make sure spectators stay nearly a kilometer away, watch and enjoy.

Question: How do you photograph the factory where the shells are made?

Answer: Pretty much the same as normal except . . . I was instructed . . . not use flash in case it sets off explosive dust floating in the air.

One of the more anxiety-inducing assignments I’ve had of late.

This is a picture of Masanori Honda, the CEO of Katakai Enka Kogyo a major Japanese fireworks maker. His company produces possibly the world’s largest firework, certainly the largest circular shell. He’s standing next to it giving it a friendly pat. [a replica, luckily]

fireworks factory

I spent a couple of days up in Niigata at the factory last month. This is a picture of some gunpowder coated cork drying in the sun. “About enough to kill 10 people,” Honda said.

making fireworks

A wheel-barrow full of smaller fireworks. Steady there!

Japanese fireworks

One of the factory workers painstakingly applying layers of paper to the 120cm “yonshakudama” shell. It is crucial that it is perfectly round, so each of the several hundred layers have to be left to dry before the next can be applied.

yonshakudama firework

This is the pipe they use to fire the “yonshakudama”. The fireworks engineers who launch it crouch in a bunker several hundred meters away.

fireworks firing pipe

Honda-san explaining how a firework is made. Note the packet and lighter. Japan’s premier pyrotechnist is a chainsmoker !!!

The full set of photos is here: Japanese yonshakudama fireworks factory photos

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 5:10 pm. It is filed under my photos, travel and tagged with fireworks, yonshakudama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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Jes says:

June 6, 2009 at 6:40 pm

Dear sir,

I’m a firework maker from Malta and I work in the fireworks factory of Lija. You have the website of our factory above.

I’m consentrated more on colours and stars. One of the most problem I have is this: When I produce a sperical shell , I have a problem how to change from one colour to another with all stars at the same time in a fast mode. What I’m making now to change from one colour to another in a very slow mode.

In other words, I want mto produce my shells something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lVWkdSuHn4&feature=related

I hope that receive a good reply,

Thanks alot and if you have questions on our fireworks just ask me,

Jes.