JAPAN

Obon is a time for celebrating life, and welcoming ancestor spirits home for a family reunion. It’s a Buddhist event, where ancestor spirits are believed to return to the human world in order to visit relatives. Traditions are everywhere, and you will see them at every turn during these three days.

The people that go to the festival dress in many different fabrics and types of dresses (females) and robes (males). Many females have the same type of style of dress. And the males have many different kinds of robes.

It is important to offer food that the family members liked when they were alive because they want to wish happiness to the deceased.

The Festival - Obon
The dates can vary depending on what part of Japan you live in. Like said before the festival last for three days! The Bon Odori varies from region to region in Japan, with different songs and dance styles, including some adaptations from other parts of the world where Okinawans have settled. The Bon dance is held in the streets, as well as in temples across the island. Obon is an important event socially, as well as from a religious perspective. It is a time when it is nearly mandatory that family members return home to be together.

The festival does coincide with the last harvest. The festival is held every year around the month of August.

To offer items to the dead they put it in the family altar!

Obon is a joyous festival because they believe their loved ones are around at the moment.

The Obon was started from a story of Mokuren, who used his supernatural powers to rescue his mother!

INTERESTING FACTS

• Obon has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance known as Bon Obon.
• It is said that on this single day of the year, the iron port of hell is opened, and the deceased are allowed to leave. Buddhist services are held at temples and in private homes for ancestors, friends and relatives who’ve died, with particular focus on those who’ve died within the past year

INTERESTING FACTS CONT.

• the first day of Obon, Unkeh, is a time for families to gather at the primary family residence to purify the home and its altar. Family members will place fruit, water, sake, tea and a pair of sugar cane stalks on the altar in preparation for the visiting spirits. In the evening, the family lights candles both at the altar and the gateway to the house to invite the spirits inside. Obon is a time of celebration, and Okinawa’s second unique custom, Eisa, is performed in streets everywhere. Eisa is a traditional dance. Obon is a time of gift-giving, and a time for sharing. Children and grandchildren return from mainland Japan to Okinawa to pay homage to the ancestors. It’s a time for Ochugen, the presenting of gifts to relatives and bosses and colleagues in the workplace. Okinawa stores rack up hundreds of millions of yen in sales, with typical Ochugengift sets running ¥2,000~5,000. Food seasonings, towels, beer and gift certificates are popular choices.

INTERESTING FACTS CONT.
the final day of Obon, is Uukui, a time when the family gathers and celebrates with a lavish dinner before preparing to send the ancestral spirits back to the other world. A variety of foods are offered and special paper money, uchikabi, is offered to the spirits for use in the other world. Uchikabi is paper imprinted with a coin pattern. About midnight, family members will remove the offerings from the altar and move them to the family gate in front of the home. Incense will be lit, the uchikabi burned, and the families say goodbye to the ancestral spirits for another year. Okinawa tradition is that spirits will carry the uchikabi money with them, and use the sugar cane stalks as walking sticks.

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