Obon
Foreign sounds floated on invisible wings through our camp that night. My father said it was obake music, ghost music. In a way, he was right. That summer, when Obon season began, my childhood in Hawai`i adopted yet another ethnic tradition, different from my own.
Obon is the Japanese Buddhist ceremony of remembering the departed with incense, dance and celebration. Each mission throughout Maui (and all the islands) takes turns in producing Obon, when the congregation and friends participate.
During Obon, joss sticks burn profusely in the temples, their curling smoke act like prayers ascending to their beloved long gone into the next world. The incense signals to the departed that they are remembered, and are welcomed to return and dance with their earth bound families.
When I was a child, I watched my first Obon dance standing in the dark, on the low stone wall that surrounded the Buddhist mission in Pa`ia, just next to our Filipino camp. It was not far to walk. We were like natives blazing on a narrow dirt trail between gandule bushes and tall weeds. The loud speakers already carried the melody of the strumming samisens and throaty singers. Depending on the tropical breeze, the sound floated over our houses and over the sugarcane fields for miles.
We were not Japanese nor Buddhists, so we kept our distance. The dancers assemble in circles, sometimes two or three deep depending on the number of participants. I was mesmerized by the beautiful silk kimonos the women wore. They wore white tabis on their feet, and inserted them into velvet strapped tatami covered slippers. The men wore hip length hapi coats or their long traditional kimonos. They wore tabis too, but on elevated wooden footwear. Their expressions were proud and reverent.
The dance movements were simple hand gestures and the direction always moved forward in the circle. There was one particular dance that depicted harvesting-a shoveling gesture with two shuffles forward, left and right, and then two steps back. Then a sweeping motion of the hands on either side while again stepping ahead. The dancers repeated this combination until the music ended. I copied them on the rock wall, memorizing the steps in my brain so that when I went home, I reenacted it in my living room.
It wasn’t until my adult years when I realized it was all right to join in, no matter what ethnicity or religious affiliation. So I danced. Each time I danced, the emotions of my first Obon danced with me.
One summer, we attended an Obon celebration in Kula, 4000 ft. above sea level on the slopes of Haleakala, the dormant volcano on Maui. The cemetery is built on the hillside of the property, so we walked downhill to view the grave sites. Paper lanterns or luau candles graced each headstone, bits of food such as oranges, candy or rice laid next to them. I heard someone translate the Japanese kanji characters on the head stone to another. The descending clouds pillowed the music and the voices.
From the bottom of the hill, I turned around to look behind me. The pine trees cast shadows of a distant Japanese countryside. Fog had settled and the golden glow from each grave set off their beacons from behind the screened mist. Someone remembered, someone had visited. The skin behind my ears prickled. I was surrounded by spirits.
Glossary:
obake - Japanese word for ghost or spirit
gandule - pigeon peas
Pa`ia - Town that I grew up in on Maui on the Northshore
samisens - Japanese string instruments
tabis - cotton socks with soles and separated between the first and second toe, usually clasped at the ankles.
tatami - Japanese straw mats
luau - Hawaiian feast
Kula - Town on Maui
kanji - Japanese writing
Forefathers
