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The Obon festival explained:
Each year in Japan, people celebrate ohigan, a period of seven days around both the vernal and the autumnal equinoxes, and obon, which stretches over a few days on either side of August 15. Employers grant leave to staff. Trains filled with people returning from big cities like Tokyo and Osaka to their family homes (referred to as ie) in the countryside. These national holidays are an opportunity to rekindle relationships with grandparents and extended family. They are also a time when people visit their family graves. Many Japanese people do not profess a particular faith. Yet, at these specific points in the year, they visit family graves in a practice likened to ancestral worship. While to western sensibilities, the idea of “worship” implies a religious connection, as anthropologist Jason Danely has put it, “ancestor memorial is such a common-sense and mundane practice that, for most people, it is indistinguishable from the non-religious world.”
theconversation.com
JREF's entry on Obon:
jref.com
Each year in Japan, people celebrate ohigan, a period of seven days around both the vernal and the autumnal equinoxes, and obon, which stretches over a few days on either side of August 15. Employers grant leave to staff. Trains filled with people returning from big cities like Tokyo and Osaka to their family homes (referred to as ie) in the countryside. These national holidays are an opportunity to rekindle relationships with grandparents and extended family. They are also a time when people visit their family graves. Many Japanese people do not profess a particular faith. Yet, at these specific points in the year, they visit family graves in a practice likened to ancestral worship. While to western sensibilities, the idea of “worship” implies a religious connection, as anthropologist Jason Danely has put it, “ancestor memorial is such a common-sense and mundane practice that, for most people, it is indistinguishable from the non-religious world.”
Japan's Obon festival: how family commemoration and ancestral worship shapes daily life
Each summer, during the obon festival, apanese people clean altars and family graves to welcome back their ancestors. These contemporary traditions are rooted in ancient rituals.
theconversation.com
JREF's entry on Obon:
Obon Festival
The Bon (盆) or Obon (お盆) Festival, also known as Urabon (盂蘭盆), is a Buddhist observance to honour the spirits of ancestors. It is traditionally observed from 13 to 15 July in the Kantō and Tōhoku area (Shichigatsu Bon, Obon in July) and from...
jref.com
