United Nations of Beer

Festival of the Dead

by Douglas Gloag
(Beer Delegate, Japan)

O-bon: the Japanese Festival of the Dead

The Ring, The Grudge and now O-bon. Japan is pretty famous for its real horror movies.

If you haven’t already, please compare the Hollywood remakes with the original Japanese flicks – with the lights ON of course! In the spirit of Halloween, I'd like to describe the very unique (but very liquid) Festival of the Dead.

This is of course an English translation of an event called O-bon which actually takes place on and around August 13th. It is one of the few times when:

• Most shops are closed after lunch (open almost every other day of the year)


• Schools are closed – shock horror there! Most schools have special classes over Xmas and although New Year’s Day (and the three days before and after) is a holiday, teachers and students can be seen studying


• The most highly watched sports event on the TV is high school baseball (lots of betting going on there!)

The Festival of the Dead is a time when all the deceased relatives come back and "visit their family home" to check on the living and make sure all is well. People in Japan don't move house like the most of us. In doing so you would be filing for personal bankruptcy after about three house moves!

The young worker does get shifted around the country, but that just means renting another apartment.

The "family home" is built on land that the family has kept for eons. The earthquake-proof houses have about a 30-year life span before they are knocked down and rebuilt on the same land, giving a feeling of roots, I suppose. Each family also has a plot of land where their ancestors' ashes (and one bone) are laid to rest in an impressive marble stone grave.

On the day of the 13th, everybody gets their work done in the morning and then goes through a load of cleansing rituals. Cleaning the work place (they love that!). Cleaning the house (hired cleaners are an alien concept here!) and then cleaning themselves (a proper bath with piping hot water and a change into yukata, or casual summer clothing).

People who have moved away from the family home return to it, sometimes travelling across the whole country, sitting in massive traffic jams or doing the sardine thing in the never-a-minute-late shinkansen (bullet trains).

(Just as an aside, you may think it's getting more and more humid where you live, but apart from those readers in North Queensland, Singapore and Hong Kong (or other Asian countries in that area), you don't even know the meaning of the word humid! Unless you've sweated from the knees – you'll never know!)

A visit to the family grave and more cleaning and lighting of incense is followed by a heavy night of eating and serious drinking. Some families don't eat any food from a living animal, but most modern-day families use this day as an excuse to eat well and get absolutely nightmared with alcohol!

It could almost be seen as an anti-Christmas, with all the relatives forced to come together but with all the ancestors watching from the wings, licking their lips at the great spread in front of them.

The Festival of the Dead is also a time of "sightings". I had a five-day English seminar just after the O-bon holiday. We had kids aged 12 to 18 staying over in an education centre (not as bad as it sounds!). There were lots of English classes during the day and enormous amount of drinking games (with the other TEACHERS, not students) in the evening.

One morning one of our teachers looked a bit sheepish and she told us that she couldn't get any sleep the night before because she had seen a mother and her two children FLOATING AROUND THE ROOM! We all thought she had had too many cold ones but a little later, some of the 12-year-olds were crying and scared saying they couldn’t get any sleep the night before because they had also seen a mother and her TWO CHILDREN floating around their room!

A priest was called and charms were given out. The priest said a few mantras showing the spirits how to get back "home" rather than exorcising them to oblivion. It seems that they got lost after visiting their family home for the Festival of the Dead and needed someone to show them how to get back.

Chilling, eh? Better grab another beer.