Japanese Obon Festival – St. Paul, MN

Japanese Obon Festival

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Obon is an important Japanese cultural and family holiday, at which ancestral spirits are said to revisit their families for three days. Families pay their respects at grave sites and put out offerings of food and drink on a tray before household altars. They also light lanterns or small fires outside the house to symbolically guide the souls to the home. On the last evening of Obon, lanterns again guide the spirits back to their resting places.

The Obon Festival encompasses Japanese tradition—through music, dance, crafts, martial arts and lanterns. Entertainment on the main stage will include several taiko drumming groups, koto (Japanese zither), shakuhachis (bamboo flutes), traditional and contemporary dance and singing. Martial arts and a host of other cultural exhibits and demonstrations will line several paths through the grounds. Japanese food and culturally-related items will be for sale.

The day will culminate at dusk with the main event—the lantern lighting. Six stone lanterns and floating (on the water, not in the air) paper lanterns throughout the Japanese garden pond and the Frog Pond will create a vision of peacefulness and harmony to commemorate the dead.