A shiver down the spine is one way of keeping cool during summer in Japan -— traditionally viewed as a time when the spirit world makes its presence felt.
Last month saw millions of Japanese return to their home towns for the Obon season, in which relatives gather to temporarily welcome back the spirits of their dead forebears.
Despite its association with the deceased, Obon is a cheerful period that frequently involves fireworks and dancing in yukata, a light summer kimono. However, it is also a time for ghost stories, with dozens of temporary haunted houses opening up across the country to mark the season.
Photo: AFP
“Goosebumps can be very refreshing,” said Sayaka Makabe, a schoolgirl who came to witness “The Cursed Tooth” at Tokyo Dome, which tells the story of a woman driven to madness after sacrificing her once pearly white teeth for her child, and who has been condemned to pull them out one by one.
To allow her to rest in peace, visitors must pluck a black tooth from her mouth and take it to the exit.
As her screams echo around the building, a loudspeaker relays the public’s fearful cries to those queuing up to get in.
Photo: AFP
Three small children cling to their father, Ryuta Sato, in terror as they stand in front of an old woman with a knife stuck in her throat, surrounded by pools of fake blood.
“I used to visit these kinds of things when I was a kid,” said 42-year-old Sato, who admitted he was more scared than he was letting on. “The dead come back to the human world in August. This is a period in which all kinds of terrifying things are supposed to happen,” said Hirofumi Gomi, the creator of “The Cursed Tooth,” who is credited with setting up dozens of other haunted houses around the country.
The tradition goes back to the Edo period (1603 to 1868), when people packed Kabuki theatres in August to see ghost stories.
Obon religious ceremonies are based on the popular belief that ancestral spirits spend a few days on Earth in the month of August.
Families craft small horses from cucumbers and toothpicks, symbolizing a form of transport for spirits to come from the netherworld. As the festival ends, small boats with lanterns are set adrift, taking souls back to heaven.
“I have always practiced this tradition because I think my parents really come back, I sometimes feel their presence with me,” said Yumiko Tominaga, visiting a cemetery in Hitachiota, north of Tokyo, with her husband to sweep the graves of his ancestors.
“When I die, if I go back to Earth, I will certainly be happy if my children greet me the same way,” she said.
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
RSS