Days for the Dead

"Celebrations and festivals are necessary for society and for the individual. They are about cultural identity, life  transitions and personal identity." --Mooncakes and Hungry Ghosts by C. Stepanchuk and C. Wong

Around the world societies and individuals celebrate, commemorate and remember. In doing so, festivals of many places serve tradition, often ancient. Festivals and other remembrances serve to connect us with our past, with the face that was before our self existed; they are links to the ancestor, or to the great intelligence and wisdom of the community. By linking the living with the dead, many cultures celebrate a sort of 'day(s) of the dead.'
The Spanish cultures have their Day of the Dead; the Indonesians (Balinese), their Day of Silence, the Bengali of India observe a festival called, The Day of the Dead. In China this is called the Qing Ming Festival. Its date is determined by the Lunar calendar; this year it will be observed on April 5, 2011.
Its origins stretch back at least 2,500 years. Sometimes it is called 'sweeping the graves.'
In Hong Kong, Tiawan and within the official Ethnic minority regions of China, Vietnam, Thailand and established communities abroad, the festival endures; however the Communist party of mainland China has only recently reinstated the official observance of this ancient tradition in 2008 .

Written in a reference style, the easy reading text, Mooncakes and Hungry Ghosts: Festivals in China by authors C. Stepanchuk and C. Wong, tell a bit about this and other events part of the calendar year. The authors while describing these events, write, "to experience a festival... you are required to set aside all day-to-day worries and cares in favor of a mood of make-believe and masquerade... For a time, we play the game of, "as if," freeing our mind and spirit, dissolving the laws of time and space, standing on the borderline between belief and disbelief."

The authors note that these festivals may be cathartic to the participants; they give rise to much appreciated levity. After all, a good laugh is uplifting; the festival may as well connect us with the past, or with spirits in a purposeful worship.
There are, the authors note, local variations to the major festivals. Regardless of the possible regional variations, these festivals share a common religious root. "Chinese festivals have a strong religious background, even though many are highly secularized today... there still is the strong belief in paying homage to spirits today."

So it is that, we, in many places throughout the world honor, remember and memorialize those foregone spirits. In doing so, we also play out an important reality in each life, that is the inescapable connection of time and the limits of our known, mortal life. Paradoxically, most often participants in  ritualized events are comforted by these festivals, many of whom express themselves with tremendous joy and enthusiasm. We continue to celebrate.

Shintoism and Japan Today

"Human beings have the potential to become Kami." --The Essence of Shinto: Japan's Spiritual Heart by Motohisa Yamakage

In the Shinto mind there are many, many symbols of heaven here in earth. Armed with no other knowledge, the casual observer while traveling in Japan may remark upon the many shrines. There are about 80,000 Torii-gated Shinto shrines in Japan. They are located throughout the countryside and in towns and cities as well. Passers-by may spontaneously pause at these little edifices for prayer and reflection, taking a moment of their busy, modern day. A few of the best known: Ise Jingu Shrine, the most sacred site of Japanese Shintoism, as it enshrines the ancestry of the Japanese Imperial family. It may be said to represent the 'grander' side of things. Shrines to the Imperial family, both old and modern, serve to strengthen the state and its core symbol, the heavenly-descended Emperor.

 Ise Jingu and Yasukuni Jinja shrines, stand as products of the modernizing influence of revolution. Ise Jingu resulted from a Chinese led coup in a seventh-century palace that altered an earlier style of loosely affiliated clan-ship into the more centralized style of the Chinese invader. Yasukuni Jinja was a result of the Meiji Revolution. Built in 1869, its original name was Kyoto Shokonsha. Today it is best known as a memorial to World War II.
Increased contacts with the West  prompted the evolution of Japanese society into a more Westernized military-industrial complex over time. While the result of  the Meiji Revolution was the restoration of the Emperor, he no longer ruled singularly or directly.

 Ise Jingu Shrine, while emphasizing the Imperial ideals within Shintoism, composed of the inner and outer buildings, Naiku and Gekku, focuses upon a remarkable ritual symbolizing the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, from whom the Emperor is traditionally thought to have descent; so it is with great importance of place many Japanese regard this shrine, an essential element of beauty. Curiously, both Naiku and Gekku portions of the Shrine are completely taken apart every 20 years, then identically rebuilt on adjacent sites. This has been going on for almost 1,500 years; it will again  occur in 2013.

Author Motohisa Yamakage writes in The Essence of Shinto, "the union of the sacred and the mundane is a distinctive feature of Shinto... Shinto is found in our relationship and interdependence with Kami... Shinto is the path with which we seek to realize ourselves fully as human beings by acquiring the noble characteristics of Kami... but we must first become attuned to Kami... the essence of Shinto..."

He writes further that in the modern, consumer world values such as the intangibles of spirit, selflessness and sacrifice are increasingly lacking. He makes reference primarily to the 'invisible' world, the world that may be felt but not seen. Many disregard, or actively disbelieve what they cannot see before them. Simply put, as a point of reference: can we believe in the winds that bring rain, though we do not see them? We may only feel the wind. So what is wind? What is Shinto or Kami? Yamakage challenges his reader to find the unseen, the Spirit in the modern world today. He writes of a lack, a hunger to reconnect with these spiritual values within a living, breathing Shintoism.