BON
Commonly called Obon (the ‘O’ is honorific, as in okane— ‘money’), this is the Buddhist ‘Festival for the Dead’, which occurs from 13—15 July in the east of Japan (where the Western solar calendar is favoured) and the same dates in August in western parts of the country (where the Chinese lunar calendar is still followed).
You’ll see the countless sprawling cemeteries within Japan full of people cleaning the family haka (a Buddhist tomb) and paying their respects to the spirits of their ancestors, who return to earth on the thirteenth of either month for a total of three days.
During this time, the spirits generally fly around and look in on their loved ones, who as well as cleaning the family haka may also hang lanterns outside their homes by way of welcome.
BONSAI
In the film The Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso first comes to know Mr Miyagi through helping him tend his many bonsai. As bonsai require constant care and attention, Mr Miyagi would have needed all the help he could get. In fact, with that many bonsai to look after, it’s doubtful that Mr Miyagi would have been able to hold down his job as a handyman, never mind teach young Danny boy the finer points of Japanese fisticuffs.
One of the things The Karate Kid doesn’t teach you—or maybe it does; it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it—is that bonsai first came to Japan from China, where they’d been around since the days of the Tang Dynasty (that’s a long time, believe me).
Controversy amongst bonsai aficionados continues to rage as to whether Chinese bonsai were merely trees already dwarfed by nature, thus making the Japanese the first people who were able to stunt a normal, healthy tree so that it can grow only between twenty-five centimetres to one metre tall.
Of course, you can’t just stick a young sapling in a pot and expect it to flourish. Because it wouldn’t; it would die. No, what you must do is to continually prune the fledgling bonsai, carefully removing every excess branch and twig until you’ve created the image you want for it. Perhaps you’d like it to resemble a wind-gnarled tree that’s situated on the very edge of a seaside cliff—your choice.
With sufficient care and attention—including frequent re-potting, root pruning and fertilisation—bonsai can last hundreds of years, passed down through generations. Though I suspect that the one Mr Miyagi gave Daniel’s mum probably ended up in the bin about a week later.
BOWING
‘Oh boy—anything to do with Japanese etiquette is an absolute minefield …’
So runs the usual reply from someone claiming to be expert on all things Japanese, in response to a question concerning when to bow, how to bow, and so on. In reality, if you get an answer like this then the person speaking probably doesn’t know too much themselves—or is just trying to scare you.
Certainly, Japanese etiquette can be incredibly complicated. But that’s something to worry about if you’re Japanese, or have lived and worked in Japan long enough for it to become an issue. And even then, quite often it won’t become an issue, simply because, whether you like it or not, you’re a gaijin who’s presumed not to know too much about such matters.
Smile—but not too broadly—when you meet someone (excessive smiling can be an indication of unease in Japan, and can also make you look a bit weird), and for the purpose of this exercise give something like a ‘half-bow’ from the waist. Don’t just nod, because that looks a bit half-arsed in any country. If you’re male, keep your hands by your waist; females should put their hands on their thighs with their fingers touching.
When saying goodbye, another bow can be given, though not as deep as the first one. And that’s about it. I’ve given the information about where to put your hands as general guidance, though to be honest the fact that you’re prepared to give any sort of bow will be appreciated by most Japanese people.
Oh, and by the way, it may well be that some Japanese people will offer to shake hands. It’s not true that the Japanese never shake hands; I’ve shaken hands with numerous Japanese men, as well as several women (albeit in a business environment). But let the person you are meeting offer their hand first—if they don’t, stick with the bow.
One final piece of advice: don’t ever try to embrace or kiss someone upon meeting them, even if it’s for the fourth or fifth time and you think that you’re getting on just fine. It might just result in you being branded a chikan and arrested.
BUDDHISM
Obviously anything like a detailed account of Buddhism is not going to be supplied here. All I can do is to provide the briefest overview, as the Japanese perceive it.
Around 623 BC, a baby boy was born to the king of a tribe who existed on the Indian border of present-day Nepal. SiddhĚrtha Gautama, as the boy was named, was destined for a life of great luxury and indolence, his father determined that he should never be exposed to human suffering. At sixteen, Gautama married his cousin, and all in all spent twenty-nine years of his life stuck behind the walls of his father’s palace.
Then one day he grew so sick of his cosseted, uneventful existence that he ventured outside the palace. And what he saw shook him to the core: there was Old Age (an elderly man), Illness (a leper or someone with an obvious disease), Death (a decaying corpse) and—spot the odd one out—an ascetic.
Gautama was profoundly depressed by three of these sights, and so decided that the only way to defeat Old Age, Illness and Death was to follow the ascetic’s example and become a monk, disowning his inheritance and trying to understand how he could overcome suffering through meditation.
And meditate he did, on his own and with other hermits and monks; but still this didn’t give him satisfaction. So off he roamed around India, where he decided to try and gain ‘Enlightenment’ through depriving himself of all creature comforts, including food.
After nearly perishing of starvation, Gautama decided that starving himself wasn’t really such a good idea. He instead chose what Buddhist’s refer to as the ‘Middle Way’: neither over-indulging nor denying himself something to the extent that this denial became physically harmful. Aged thirty-five, Gautama decided to sit beneath a bo tree, and not stand back up until he’d achieved Enlightenment. Which, to cut a long story short, is eventually what happened.
Ignorance was the principal course of human suffering, he realised, and he had the Four Noble Truths (which are really a bit too deep to go into here) or ‘steps’ that anyone could follow to defeat ignorance and thus become Enlightened.
To bring this story to a rather abrupt conclusion, Buddha (as he was now known) spent the last forty-five years of his life travelling extensively and gaining many followers. He died aged eighty, having fallen ill after eating a meal of what is commonly believed to have been pork. Exercising true benevolence, however, he refused to blame the man (named Cunda, a blacksmith) who’d given him the meat dish.
‘All composite things pass away. Strive for your own salvation with diligence,’ were Buddha’s final words before dying.
What’s important to point out here is that Buddha didn’t claim to be any sort of god. Nor was he unique; he was merely the last in a long line of people who could also be called Buddha, people who’d also gained Enlightenment. In fact, according to my brother-in-law Taigi, who is the Buddhist head-priest of a temple belonging to the Jodo—‘Pure Land’—sect of Buddhism, there are (and this is a direct quote, including the pluralising of the word ‘Buddha’) ‘…as many Buddhas as there are grains of sand in this world…’
I suppose it just so happens that