The festival takes place from July 13 to 15. At such a time most of the houses are mere skeletons, being open to the summer breeze on all sides. People saunter about in the lightest of garments. Butterflies and dragon-flies disport in countless numbers, flying over a cool stretch of lotus or settling on the purple petal of an iris. Fuji rears her great head into the clear blue sky, bearing like a white scarf a patch of fast-fading snow.
When the morning of the 13th arrives new mats of rice straw are spread upon all Buddhist altars and on the little household shrines. Every Japanese home on that day is provided with a quaint, minute meal in readiness for the great company of ghosts.
At sunset the streets are bright with the flames of torches, and the entrances of houses gay with brightly coloured lanterns. Those to whom this festival applies in a particular sense and not in a general one—that is to say, those who have recently lost some dear one—go out on this night to the cemeteries, and there pray, make offerings, burn incense, and pour out water. Lanterns are lit and bamboo vases filled with flowers.
On the evening of the 15th the ghosts of the Circle of Penance or Gakidō are fed, and in addition those ghosts who have no friends among the living to care for them. There is a legend bearing upon this particular phase of the Festival of the Dead. Dai-Mokenren, a great disciple of Buddha, was once permitted to see the soul of his mother in the Gakidō. He grieved so much on account of intense suffering that he gave her a bowl containing choice food. Every time she tried to eat the food would suddenly turn into fire, and finally to ashes. Then Mokenren asked Buddha to tell him what he could do to ease his mother's suffering. He was told to feed the ghosts of the great priests of all countries "on the fifteenth day of the seventh month." When this had been done Mokenren returned, to find his mother dancing for joy. In this happy dance after much tribulation we trace the origin of the Bon-odori, which takes place on the third night of the festival.
When the evening of the third day arrives preparations are made for the departure of the ghosts. Thousands of little boats are packed with food and loving messages of farewell. Into these boats step the departing ghosts. Loving hands set these frail craft upon river, lake, or sea. A small lantern glows at the prow, while pale blue clouds of incense float up from the stern. Hearn writes: "Down all the creeks and rivers and canals the phantom fleets go glimmering to the sea; and all the sea sparkles to the horizon with the lights of the dead, and the sea wind is fragrant with incense."
There is a pathetic charm about this festival. It is by no means unique, for it corresponds to the Indian Sraddha; but in Japan it is touched with a more delicate and haunting beauty. No one has been able to solve conclusively the origin of the Torii, that wonderful gateway that leads nowhere. What a charming entrance or exit for a company of wandering souls! What a place for ghosts to play and dream awhile is a Japanese garden, with its lake and moon-shaped bridge, its stone lantern, its paths of silver sand! And what a street for ghosts to wander in is the Street Everlasting that is so near to the Street of Aged Men! Thus Yone Noguchi sums up the magic of a Japanese night, one of those three nights when souls come in touch with old earthly memories:
"The scented purple breezes of the Japanese night!
The old moon like a fairy ship of gold
Softly through the dream sea begins to rock on:
(I hear the unheard song of Beauty in the moon ship,
I hear even the whisper of her golden dress.)
The hundred lanterns burning in love and prayer,
Float on the streets like haunting memories.
The silvery music of wooden clogs of the Japanese girls!
Are they not little ghosts out of the bosom of ancient age?
Are they returning to fulfil their thousand fancies forgotten?
O the fancy world of the Japanese night
Born out of the old love and unfulfilled desires!
The crying love-song of the Japanese night,
The samisen music of hungry passion and tears!
O the long wail of heart through the darkness and love!"