Western Obon Celebrations

[archivistal]

i’ve been spinning this fic idea around in my head for a bit now, but i’ve been unable to find much conclusive information on, uh, anything to facilitate writing it. so:

the character in question is a diasporic (white-passing, half-)japanese person living in the west. for personal reasons, they don’t flaunt or exhibit their culture much, but they would privately observe some traditions out of respect. if they were to observe obon, what exactly would they be doing? obviously, where they live, there wouldn’t be a big festival or anything, nor would they participate in one if there was.

keeping in mind that this character is a very private person who doesn’t like to draw much attention to themself or be seen as anything “abnormal”, which aspects of obon would they realistically observe/celebrate? or would they not do it at all and i should scrap the fic idea? i am not japanese (but i am diasporic with some baggage related to that, which is where a lot of this comes from) so i don’t want to blindly misstep into something potentially offensive or that rings untrue.

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

Where specifically in The West does your character live?

[lilacsigil]

Unlike a lot of Japanese festivals, Obon is Buddhist in origin. Is there a Buddhist temple or organisation where they live? Do they have a butsudan in their house or other mementos of deceased family members?

[brokenallbroken]

Pretty much every Buddhist temple here (Los Angeles/Orange County conurbation) does Obon at some point in late summer, and people will go to multiple throughout the season. I have no idea if the temples coordinate their calendars to minimize conflicts.

The one I went to (mostly for the taiko) had a few carnival games and booths from local Japanese restaurants/food trucks in addition to the dancing.

[torachan]

Like the commenter above, I am in LA, too, and was like, well, that really depends on where they live! In July you can basically go to multiple obon festivals every weekend. So if your character is living somewhere with a decent Japanese population and at least one Buddhist temple, there will almost certainly be a festival.

Here's an article about this year's obon season in southern California: https://laist.com/news/los-angeles-activities/its-obon-season-how-to-attend-one-of-socals-biggest-japanese-american-celebrations

And in the US, it's celebrated in July, as opposed to August in Japan. That's because it is traditionally during the seventh month of the lunar calendar, which would be August-ish. Japan doesn't use the lunar calendar anymore, but they kept that timing, whereas in the US it was just converted to the seventh month, so July.

That said, for Japanese Americans, obon is primarily a social event. The article I linked includes a section about how obon is celebrated differently in the US vs Japan. If your character does not have any ties to the local community, then their ideas of the holiday might be based on what their Japanese parent told them from their life in Japan, in which case it would be probably better to look into how obon is observed in Japan, rather than in the west (and as the article linked mentions, the way it's celebrated in the US is directly tied to the history of Japanese Americans and the internment, so if it's in another country, that might be different, too).