{"id":364,"date":"2006-07-16T21:37:49","date_gmt":"2006-07-17T04:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=364"},"modified":"2006-07-18T15:57:24","modified_gmt":"2006-07-18T22:57:24","slug":"bon-odori-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/16\/bon-odori-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Bon Odori Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bon<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for Bon Odori music (Windows Media Player) and here<\/a> for pictures.<\/p>\n

During the Bon Odori festival in Seattle, our Japanese American neighbors put on traditional dress and dance in the streets to honor their ancestors. There are taiko drums and snacks and exhibits in the Buddhist temple. It’s also a very welcoming festival – everyone can join in the dance. While the dancers circle the street, there are leaders in the middle where you can see them. The motions are fairly simple. There’s a fishing song that includes the motions of throwing nets in to the sea and pulling them back in, and a digging song, where it’s easy to imagine the shovels. There’s a lantern dance with slow and deliberate motions. Once, when the street was particularly packed, the MC joyfully called out – “Ah, the ancestors are very happy now!”<\/p>\n

The religions underpinnigs of the festival are found the story of the monk, Mokuren. <\/strong>While meditating, he saw his deceased mother starving in the Hell of Hungry Ghosts. Any food she touched burst into flames. Mokuren appealed to Shakyamuni Buddha to save her. Shakyamuni told Mokuren that in order overcome his mother’s selfish past life karma, he should feed his fellow monks upon their upcoming return from a retreat. The monk followed Shakyamuni’s instructions and danced for joy when his mother and seven generations of his ancestors were freed from their suffering. (Copied and edited from the San Francisco Buddhist Church site<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s a nice morality tale. Feeding your fellow man makes the ancestors happy. And that makes you happy. Seeing our neighbors dancing together in the streets certainly made me happy.<\/p>\n

[tags]Bon Odori, Seattle, Japanese culture, dancing[\/tags]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here for Bon Odori music (Windows Media Player) and here for pictures. During the Bon Odori festival in Seattle, our Japanese American neighbors put on traditional dress and dance in the streets to honor their ancestors. There are taiko drums and snacks and exhibits in the Buddhist temple. It’s also a very welcoming festival … <\/p>\n


…read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-seattle","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}