Obon

When the Family Gathers with Those Who Came Before

Every summer, millions of people in Japan make their way back home. Highways fill with traffic, bullet trains carry travelers with large bags, and airports become unusually busy.

It is a scene repeated every year, and yet it always feels a little extraordinary.

Each person is heading somewhere different. But for many, the destination is the house where they grew up, or the town where their grandparents once lived.

They visit family graves. They offer incense before the household altar. Then relatives gather, sharing a meal around the same table once again.

Children run about, while the adults begin telling stories from long ago. Before long, the living room is often far livelier than the room with the family altar.

Perhaps fewer people today think consciously, “Our ancestors are coming home.”

Even so, when Obon arrives, people somehow find their way back.

Every year.

Sometimes, a quiet thought comes to mind.

Perhaps our ancestors do not return simply to be remembered.

Perhaps they have found a gentle way of saying,

“It’s been a while. Why don’t you all gather again?”

Because of that, brothers and sisters laugh together after months or even years apart. Parents are relieved to see their children and grandchildren doing well. Cousins, awkward only moments before, are soon playing as though they had never been apart.

Looking at such a scene, it is easy to imagine someone smiling quietly and thinking,

“Good. Everyone made it home again.”

Whether that is true, no one can really know.

But it is rather pleasant to think that it might be.