Japanese Culture & Traditions
Thank for your interest in Japanese Culture & Traditions. Have you visited my other pages, such as Introducing Mary Ohno, Kabuki Academy, and Japanese Language?
On this page, I would like to introduce you to timely Japanese culture and/or traditional events. Almost every month we Japanese have an event to celebrate and I'm positive that you want to know what it is all about. You can visit this page every month and find it out.
The topic of August 2008 is
"O-BON"or "The Festival of Souls"
The Bon Festival. It was originally
held on July 15 by the lunar calendar.
Today it generally refers to the period from
August 13 to 16. In old times, ancestral
spirits and departed souls were believed
to return to their families during this period.
It is a festival for welcoming them home,
making offerings to them and holding
memorial services.
People pay a visit to the family grave and
pray for the repose of the dead, offering
candles and bunches of flowers and burning
incense sticks. It is customary in many
districts to make bonfires for welcoming the
ancestral spirits.
On the last evening of the festival, bonfires
for speeding them back (okuri-bi)to their
world are also made in some districts.
In seaside districts, wooden or straw lanterns
replace okuri-bi.
In towns and villages across the country
people in yukata (light cotton kimono) gather
for outdoor dances known as bon-odori.
For many Japanese, summer wouldn't be
summer without a bon-odori.
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