There are no bona-fide ghosts in Himatsuri, but when the trees shimmer and sway, it is not just the wind we are "seeing." The film, like its protagonist, the woodcutter Tatsuo, is imbued with a pervasive animism that is central to Shinto, which teaches that "every natural object, a man or a mountain or a cherry tree, possesses to various degrees of intensity, kami, 'soul'" (John Stevenson). In a small fishing village surrounded by lush mountain forests, Tatsuyo (Kinya Kitaoji) is a burly, surly but popular ladies' man who is not kidding when he declares, "The mountain goddess is my girlfriend" and greets her with a naked salute. But the land where he alone enjoys a sensual but mystical harmony with the gods is threatened by a move to bring the area into the eighties with a marine amusement park and, perhaps, a nuclear power plant. In a village where priests have become real estate agents, it is a welcome development; Tatsuo's family awaits his go-ahead to sell their land. "If one persists in analyzing the film from an ecological viewpoint," director Yanagimachi has said, "the main theme will be overlooked, namely that of ikenie (the scapegoat)... At the moment of the (Shinto ritual) Fire Festival, Tatsuo identifies so completely with nature that in the end he sacrifices himself to it." Perhaps he is the willing agent of a pantheistic vengeance that cannot, like a ghost, stalk the living.