Dishing the Ancestors

Everything I Did Not Know About Obon

Even before 2023 and this brutal northern hemisphere summer we’re living through, July and August in Japan, the two months wedged between the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the typhoon season, are, on average, stinkingly hot and swelteringly humid. Or maybe I should switch those adverbs. Anyway.

Before I moved to Japan, I was not an undershirt person. Two days of August heat after arriving and transferring to my new job in central Saitama Prefecture, just north of Tōkyō, in 1988, however, and I arrived at a conclusion: I was going to sweat. A lot. Through my anti-perspirant. Through my clothes. Undershirts were critically necessary to prevent as much pittage—the damp stains under the arms—as possible.

Yes, there was air-conditioning. My room in my first homestay was the only room, I was immediately informed, where air-conditioning was available. But there was none at work. There were fans in the teachers’ room, and a fan in the teachers’ lounge, but nothing in the classrooms.

Glistening in the teachers’ room, at my desk, both as vain (glasses off for the photo!) and as mischievous as ever.

And as my first year blended into a second, I noticed that there were lots of festivals in Japan during the summer. For the most part, however, people attended after dusk, when temperatures began to cool down. This was normal, of course, for any celebrations of fireworks. Gathering with friends on the levee of a river to watch a pyrotechnic orgasm that had to be vaginal—it just kept going. Not that I would know anything about that. Anyway.

There was one summer festival that never really blipped on my radar until 1992. I was on the precipice of realizing that the relationship I had always wanted was actually toxic—my partner was using and manipulating me. But I hadn’t been able to put the problem into words.

Until I met Masa.

I only have the one photograph. I met him at an International Friends meeting in Tōkyō early in August. International Friends was one of the best ways for gay Japanese men to meet gay non-Japanese men back then, and when I arrived at the meeting, Masa came right over to meet me.

As he introduced himself, I blurted out a question: Are you from Australia? His English was clearly informed by Oz, and Masa explained that he lived in Canberra after studying there for years.

As to why he was in Japan? It was for お盆 (obon), and his mother had asked him to come home and help her ready the house for the ancestors.

What I treasure from the roughly twenty-four hours I was able to spend with Masa was not the Obon education, even though he did remind me of some of the things I learned at Williams when I studied Japanese religions there from professor Robertson.

Masa and I left the International Friends and walked to a park near Tōkyō Bay. We sat on benches for a while, then on swings, and then on the train back to my apartment. And throughout it, Masa let me talk about my relationship. And the more I talked, the more the problems came into focus. There were tears involved too, and those conversations with Masa are one of the reasons why my memoir’s title is Crying in a Foreign Language.

When Masa left my apartment early the next morning to catch a train to his mother’s home, I had made a decision to bring the relationship I had always wanted to an end.

Fast forward to the autumn of 1993, and Hiro and I began a relationship that included lots of festivals—our first and third dates were at festivals. But Obon never entered the equation.

Hiro’s parents weren’t particularly religious and Hiro doesn’t remember them observing Obon. But what is there to observe? What is Obon?

An Obon celebration this past weekend in Seattle inspired me to do some more research. Like any Japanese summer festivals, there were food stalls—give me my shaved ice, called かき氷 (kakikōri) in Japanese, and no one gets hurt. But Obon celebrations always include folk dancing. I was familiar with one of the most famous dances, the 阿波踊り (awa odori) from Tokushima, a region of Japan once known as Awa.

The Seattle event, however, included dances from all over Japan.

This is just a small segment. Hiro and I stood in the shade but one year I’ll convince him to dance with me.

But again, what is Obon?

Etymologically, Obon is an abbreviation of 盂蘭盆会 (urabon’e), a word for a Buddhist observance held in mid-July on the lunar calendar. Japanese people love abbreviations and お盆 (obon, literally meaning honorable dish, which threw me when I first learned the term) is a shortened form of 盂蘭盆会. It was believed that urabon had its origins in a Sanskrit word, but recent scholarship on the Urabon Sutra, on which the observance is based, have found that sutra to be apocryphal, with no basis in either any Sanskrit or ancient Tibetan texts.

And yet Obon lives on in Japan, in part because the Buddhist teachings from that sutra melded closely with Japan’s earlier practice of ancestor worship. Urabon’e is also celebrated in Hong Kong, and the observance there hints at a potential Taoist source for the sutra in question.

In Taoism, the month of July was known as 鬼月 (kidzuki in Japanese), the month of demons. On the first of the month, the Demon King of Hell lifted the lid from Hell—interesting to see an image beyond the gates of Hell Western thinkers conceive of— and demons are free to roam until the lid is replaced on the fifteenth day of that month. There are some places in Japan, however, that still know the first of lunar July as 釜蓋朔日 (kamabuta tsuitachi), pot-lid first day.

On the lunar calendar, Obon is celebrated on July 13, 14, and 15, but it is not demons the Japanese welcome with dances and lanterns (迎え火 mukaebi, welcoming lights, are lit on the thirteenth and 送り火 okuribi, sending lights, are lit on the sixteenth). It is the spirits of our ancestors. During Obon, it is believed that our deceased ancestors come to visit their families where they live (although families return the favor and visit ancestor graves on both the vernal and autumnal equinoctes).

There are some restrictions on such visitations, however. In Buddhist tradition, families of the deceased must observe forty-nine days of mourning and Obon can only be celebrated if that mourning period has ended.

And although Obon was originally tied to the lunar calendar in Japan, when the Meiji Emperor promulgated the adoption of the Gregorian calendar on January 1, 1873, Obon was set for July 15 on that new calendar. Some places in observe Obon on July 15, some places (including Okinawa) continue to follow the lunar calendar, but most places have settled on an Obon observance on or around August 15.

Most companies in Japan create holidays for employees on or around August 15, to encourage people to return home for the observance, which makes Obon one of the busiest times of year for train travel. This reminds me of a Japanese aphorism, 盆と正月が一緒に来たよう (bon to shōgatsu ga isshō ni kita yō), meaning as if Obon and New Year’s fell on the same day!

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Last week, I wrote about my years at college. Several friends (and my favorite aunt) wrote to tell me that I had indeed been worth knowing back then. One of the things I failed to write about was how my closet (and how being in that closet for the first three years of college) compounded my flavor of introversion.

I was nervous about making friends, especially among men—and yes, I was in an all-male dorm freshman year, and that set with me up with a great corps of male friends (although I relied on the closet with them). Beyond that, I was apprehensive. I was never straight-acting and I wonder if too many dropped hairpins would end with a bashing. Looking back, I can’t imagine physical violence happening to me at Williams, but at the time the closet and my insecurity painted countless devils on the walls.

Long story short, I was hyperbolic last week and my friends called me on it. Thanks especially to the new friend who wrote from the other side of the world. I am truly blessed.