Summer Exodus

Byline: Tokyo

Slight relief in our schedule from lunch and dinner every day to just one meal a day with friends and business associates. The source of relief: O'bon. O'bon is the long summer period when Japanese officially return to their ancestral roots. Even fourth generation Tokyoites know their roots or claim to. O'bon is the occasion for giant bon fires, picnics in the local cemetery and the wildest most raucous dancing I've ever seen. (Probably derived from earlier sex orgies.*) The occasion is ostensibly to call the ancestral ghosts home for a meal of sake, fruit and incense.

The city of Tokyo is a little less busy because of O'bon. Summer is unlike New Years, when the city really does empty out and resembles an American city on Thanksgiving or Christmas morning.

*One year I pursued the theory of Japanese summer dance festivals being derived from summer orgies.

I went to the most remote Japanese islands. No names, just Island One, Island Two, etc. I was regularly told on these islands that within living memory there used to be orgies, but not anymore.

Finally I found Island Five. I was not allowed to visit Island Five because the ferry stopped for a week. Non-Japanese were not allowed on the island for the week before that special no-ferry week.

That cleared up my suspicions about summer dance festivals being derived from sex orgies.