Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (65 page)

THIRTEEN

S
UMMER
V
ISITORS

G
RIEF IS NOT A
one-way street in Japan, for the dead miss us as much as we miss them. Even if we cannot take the time to go on a pilgrimage, the dead are always longing for us and waiting to return to us.

It is believed that the souls of the dead come home to their loved ones on the autumnal equinox and again on the vernal equinox. Both times of the year are called “Ohigan” in Japanese, a term that roughly means “gathering on the other shore.” The curtain separating the mortal and spirit worlds is said to be thin, allowing the spirits to return home. In some parts of Japan, people believe that the ancestors also return home on New Year’s Eve. The biggest holiday for the ancestors in Japan, however, is called Obon, and it takes place during the most romantic time of year: summer. It is during Obon that all the dead return home, and the Japanese go all out to welcome them.

I
N THE SUMMERTIME
in Japan, girls wear colorful
yukata
, sheer kimonos, designed to keep them feeling cool but looking attractive. In the summer, people eat chilled watermelon and shaved ice and carry fans and handkerchiefs. One of the most popular decorating
motifs in the summer is the goldfish swimming in a pool of clear, cold water. Japanese people are nostalgic about little children carrying bags of goldfish in the summer, because “goldfish catching” is a traditional game available in the carnival-like environment of the
matsuri
, or Japanese festival. In goldfish catching, participants are given a paper net, which they must use to quickly scoop up goldfish before the paper breaks. Novice scoopers routinely break their nets before getting anywhere near a fish, and experts—usually parents—are often called on to scoop quickly, to staunch a weeping child’s tears. At night, surrounded by paper lanterns and the sound of vendors calling out, “Beer!” or “Yakitori chicken!” young people wear traditional Japanese clothing and engage in these games, often with parents and grandparents in tow. The festive, romantic atmosphere of the
matsuri
is a hallmark of Japanese summer.

Historically,
matsuri
were timed around the rice-harvesting cycle and often doubled in meaning as fertility rites. During a
mat
suri
, normal social rules are relaxed, as during Carnival in the West. Youths dye their hair, drink, and enthusiastically participate in parades, often pushing and pulling mammoth floats and competing against each other in teams for who can put on the best show. Pretty much every Japanese person I’ve ever spoken to has agreed that a
matsuri
is the “true face of Japan,” and even the most cynical expat will wax nostalgically about
matsuri
past, and how there’s no real equivalent in the West.

When I was around five years old, my mother took me to Aomori to see the famous Nebuta
matsuri
. On that particular trip, I became fixated on elaborate, oversized hats for sale in conjunction with the
matsuri
. The hats were made from straw and decorated with enormous paper and plastic flowers, birds, and tinsel. This was to be fastened under the chin with a blue-and-white gauze handkerchief. I begged and begged my mother for one of these magic hats, but she
was adamant. There was no reason for us to buy such a thing, and anyway, how would I carry it home?

Still, I pined. Everywhere we went, people were wearing The Hat. I remember seeing two foreigners—two
gaijin
—in these hats. Even
they
had hats, but still my mother said, “No.” I continued to beg, and I suspect I was something of a handful on that trip. We were staying with my mother’s college friend, who was looking after her nephew. She and my mother hoped that we two children would get along, but I was younger, tremendously shy, and insecure about my language skills. The nephew had never seen a foreigner before and was not sure how to talk to me. I spent a lot of time sulking.

At last it was the evening of the big
matsuri
, and we all lined up on one side of a road. My mother and her friend urged us to be patient, feeding us snacks while they talked nonstop about college and their lives since graduation. From far away, I heard the boom of a drum. Suddenly, a flood of dancers rushed down the street. Men and women dressed in
yukata
danced in unison while wearing smaller versions of the straw hats I had admired all day. “
Ressa sah! Ressa sah
!
” they cried. Their costumes were festooned with little bells, and as they danced, a few bells invariably fell off. The nephew brazenly darted into the street to grab a bell. I could not stand the thought of someone else getting a bell while I had nothing.

We started a game—an unspoken competition. We would battle to see who could gather the most bells. As the dancing and the music grew more urgent, we dove in and out of the parade with greater daring, and I stuffed my pockets. It grew darker and darker and then the gods arrived.

They were enormous, as long as thirty-six feet, and each one was a lantern. They were dragons, warriors, and ships gliding through the street. They were demons, samurai speeding on horses, and roaring tigers. Around us, music pulsed, and dancers zigged and zagged
across the asphalt. It was dark now, and the lanterns encased us in an orb of yellow light. Then there were new dancers, dressed in even more elaborate
yukata
and headgear. I became drunk on atmosphere, dancing and diving and marveling at the floats. And then, an incredible thing happened.

A man stopped in front of me. His head looked like a tiny sun supporting an enormous galaxy of animals and flowers and metal streamers. On his head was the largest, most elaborate hat yet. He looked at me and asked, in perfect English, “Where are you from?”

“America,” I answered instantly.

“Would you like my hat?” Without waiting for a response, he removed the hat from his head and placed it on mine. Then he took my hand and led me into the auburn bubble of the parade and its lights, and we were dancing.

My mother watched me go. It happened quickly. Her five-and-a-half-year-old child, always so obedient at home, simply disappeared, swallowed into the crowd. My mother told me that she watched for a moment, certain I would turn around and come back. But then I drifted out of sight, carried downstream by the superhuman current of the parade. She tried to run after me, but there were too many dancers in the way. She said she tried to cut through the mob to find me, but there were so many people she could not move. In desperation, she finally approached a policeman and explained what had happened.

“Oh, yes,” he shrugged. “This happens during Nebuta
matsuri
. The children in particular get so excited.”

“But my daughter is a foreigner.”

“Well, then. She’ll stand out and you’ll be able to spot her when she comes back.”

On that trip, I learned that time does not always move at the same speed—at least as we perceive it. My mother says that I was gone for a long time—up to an hour.

I remember time moving very quickly. I held hands and danced with the strange man. Some other people joined us, and we all danced down the street together, buoyed by the golden light and the pounding of the drums. After what felt like only a few minutes, I offered the man his hat back, but he told me to keep it. I said good-bye and worked my way back up through the parade, toward my mother, who wisely did not scold me when I finally arrived by her side. The nephew looked at me, stunned. I had won our game.

The next day, Aomori was abruptly struck by one of Japan’s intense rainstorms, and the streets were flooded. The shoes in the entry to the house where we were staying bobbed along in a stream of water. My mother—still healthy then—carried me on her back to the train station. Taxis drove along slowly, sending waves of water up to her thighs. With one hand, I gripped her neck, and with the other, I held the hat in a large plastic bag. I had been urged to leave the hat behind, but I considered it a very special gift, perhaps even a sacred one, and nothing would ever part me from this treasure.

The gods, however capable of fun and however appreciative of our parade and our costumes, could still send us a downpour. My mother carried me carefully to the train station. The track was elevated. We departed—slowly—out of the boggy town and headed south, away from Aomori. The rain lifted, and we continued on to T
ky
, to neon signs, to skyscrapers, to the subway, where a greater power than nature seemed to have the upper hand.

The hat lived in my grandparents’ house for years. For a while it was in the front room, on the
tokonoma
, a slightly raised platform where treasures are displayed. Later, my grandmother moved it to a closet in my mother’s bedroom. When I was sixteen, I told my parents I wanted to take the hat home. My mother and grandparents protested. The hat was too large, but I insisted that it would fit in the overhead cabin of the plane. And so it did. Now the hat sits in my childhood bedroom in California. The metal streamers are still
bright and dance when the heat comes on in my room, as though they carry a trace of the dance in which we met.

D
EEP SUMMER IN
Japan holds the promise of romance. During the Tanabata
matsuri
, usually celebrated on July 7, a pair of mythical lovers is reunited for one day only. Their names are Orihime, the celestial princess weaver, and Hikoboshi, the celestial cow herder. The princess lived in the sky and wove beautiful garments beside a river called the Amanogawa, otherwise known as the Milky Way. One day she met the cow herder, and the two fell instantly in love and married. Now that she was a wife, the princess stopped weaving, but her father, the Sky King, had loved her beautiful creations, and he angrily separated the lovers, placing them on either side of the river. The princess was distraught. She cried and begged her father to let her see her husband, if only a little. Her father took pity. Once a year, a flock of magpies cluster together, forming a bridge across the Milky Way, and the two lovers cross the bridge and reunite.

The lovers are represented by Altair and Vega, two stars that are particularly bright in the summer sky. On Tanabata, the day the lovers reunite, Japanese children write their wishes down on colorful strips of paper, then hang these on bamboo branches. Cities put on large-scale Tanabata displays, veering away from the traditional decorations to hang up massive chandeliers made of brightly colored plastic. The city of Sendai is notable for its display. When I visited T
hoku in July, four months after the tsunami, train stations were universally decorated with these branches, and the childish scrawl on each piece of paper asked for “peace.”