A late summer visitor to Salt Lake City or Ogden, Utah, hoping to find some remnants of the Mormon pioneer culture-or at least a few cowboys buying supplies-might be surprised to see a major downtown intersection blocked off and full of Asian people, dressed in kimonos and dancing around a colorfully decorated gazebo. Thus the Japanese American community celebrates the ancient holiday of Obon, during which the spirits of departed ancestors with dances, songs, foods, and prayers of celebration.

The origins of Obon are lost in the mists of history, but the celebration is said to be based on the Ura-Bon-Sutra, which recounts the legend of Moku-ren, a Buddhist monk who wanted to rescue his mother from the Hunger Devil. Buddha inspired him to ask all the local monks to make generous offerings of food so her spirit's pain would be lightened for seven generations. By the early seventh century A.D., the Ura-Bon had been noted in Japan, and by the eighth century the festival had become a regular courtly holiday among Japanese Buddhists.

The event also reflects an older Japanese belief that the spirits of dead - ancestors come home each year to visit their families. In early times, on the first evening of the festival, fires were lit in people's yards and on nearby hills to guide the souls on their way back home. The next evening a neighborhood dance (odori) was performed, using tunes and dance steps drawn from community tradition. On the third day the families sent their spirit relatives back to the "other side" by lighting the way with roadside torches, or with small lanterns that floated down the river or out to sea on the tide.

Many scholars believe that the practice carries on a pre-Buddhist custom of venerating ancestors and demonstrates the reciprocal nurturing that is central to the interaction of generations. In Japan and elsewhere today, celebration of Obon certainly focuses on the idea of responsibility to departed parents, the "debt that can never be repaid." But what does this ancient festival have to do with American citizens of Japanese ancestry living far away and several generations distant from Japan? And how did it find its way to Utah and many other areas of the western United States? Why does it thrive in "Mormon country'?

AIthough their movement has been from west to east rather than the opposite direction, more celebrated in the cultural history of Euro-Americans, the Japanese and Japanese Americans have much in common socially with the Mormons among whom they settled in the intermountain West. As with the Mormons, their way of life centered on customs generated by their religious backgrounds and the area they had emigrated from. Too, their arrival in the area was only about forty years later than the Mormons' 1847 settlement. Many Japanese were employed on the transcontinental railroad and stayed on to work in the mines and on the mine railroads that proliferated in the region. By the turn of the twentieth century, Salt Lake City had become the center of Japanese cultural and social activity in the inland West; it was the place where most Japanese people from Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, and Montana came to do serious shopping, attend cultural events, and bury their dead Buddhist churches were established in both Ogden and Salt Lake City by 1912, and Japanese Presbyterians founded a church in Salt Lake City in 1918.

Of course, most of the early Japanese in the area were not immigrants per se but were laborers who had chosen to spend a few years working in America because jobs in Japan were so hard to find. If it had not been for the various exclusion laws and "gentlemen's agreements" of the late 1800s, probably more Japanese would have come, but even with the heavy restrictions against permanent Asian immigration, thousands of "sojourners" were brought into the region in the early twentieth century to work in the sugar beet fields of Utah and Idaho. Their children, born in the United States, were automatically citizens, even though many were taken back to Japan by their families when work contracts were finished.

This situation led to an interesting classification system among the American Japanese: the issei (literally "first generation," from ichi, one) were mostly those who were allowed into the United States temporarily and were not eligible for citizenship. Many of them stayed on as "resident aliens" when they established families, but most of the sojourners returned to Japan. The nisei (ni = two or second) are mostly U.S. citizens by virtue of having been born here; the sansei (san = third) are the children of the nisei, and the yonsei are the fourth generation in the sequence. The usual number for four, shi, is not used to count people in Japanese, because the phoneme also means "death."

From nisei onward, they have seen themselves not as Japanese living in America but as Americans with a Japanese cultural heritage. Most sansei and yonsei speak little if any Japanese, and the nisei speak mostly the kind of Japanese they heard from their parents at home; it is usually colored with the isseis' home dialect and with usages and vocabulary from the Meiji era, the period when most of the issei came over. Kibei are those who were born in the United States, were taken back to Japan and raised there, and have come back as adults. Although they are U.S. citizens, their culture is more thoroughly Japanese, and they usually speak contemporary Japanese quite well. All of these groups, from the issei onward and including more recent immigrants and visitors from Japan, are often called nikkei, people of Japanese ancestry.

The terms nisei and Japanese American are probably the most important in everyday usage because of the issues brought up by the relocation and internment in 1942 of all coastal nikkei, including almost 100,000 American citizens, who were incarcerated without due process. This unprecedented suspension of citizens' rights brought massive groups of Japanese and Japanese Americans to camps in Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, and Arkansas. After they were released following World War II, many of the internees stayed in the inland West, where they joined the communities of nikkei already established there (the inland nikkei had not been interned). Members of all these groups and their families will be dancing during the Obon, or Bon-odori festival, in late summer.

A typical Obon celebration in the western United States looks much like its counterpart in Japan, with some elements foregrounded, intensified, and maintained even more conservatively than in Japan. For example, in Japan, it is usually the older members of the community who wear kimonos; other participants-neighbors and passersby-wear simple street clothes. In the United States, most of the women dancers and many of the men wear kimonos, though not always in a way that would pass for standard in Japan.

In both countries, the dancing takes place around a small pavilion called a yagura, from which strings of colored lanterns (supplied by Japanese soy sauce or airline companies) run out to nearby moorings. The yagura is decorated with crepe paper and colored banners (the good luck colors, red and white, are often augmented with blue in the United States); it contains a sound system, which supplies the music, and a medium-sized taiko drum, on which the local Buddhist reverend (or sometimes a visitor from Japan) will beat out a vigorous rhythm.

In Japan, it is customary for live musicians to sit and play on the yagura, but in the United States, recorded music is used, partly because there are not as many players of the old instruments (especially the samisen), but mostly because the village and neighborhood musicians in Japan play their own local songs; in the United States, the nikkei have come from many parts of Japan, and it is not considered proper to leave anyone's locality out of the Obon festivities. Thus, Japanese Americans are acquainted with dance tunes and steps from all over Japan, but their distant cousins in Japan usually dance to a more limited local repertoire. The dancing goes counterclockwise in a circle and is usually led-in the United States-by a group of people who have been practicing for some months. As a dance proceeds, others in the community join in, and by the time the song is over, the area may be crowded with several concentric circles of dancers.

Taiko drumming has become more and more popular among Japanese Americans over the past few years, and Obon celebrations in the West now routinely feature several breaks in the dancing to allow taiko teams to put on a demonstration. The drummers are mostly sansei and yonsei, the same generations who now often take up the formal study of Japanese when they attend university. The growth of interest in taiko is one of several indications that the conservation of older customs includes a dynamic element of involvement, selection, and intensification of expressive forms that carry strong ethnic meaning.

The food sold in booths surrounding the Obon arena (or nearby in the foyer of the Buddhist church) is distinctly Japanese, but it is also designed to be palatable to a broad range of onlookers; the focus is on rice, teriyaki chicken, noodles, and sushi (vinegared rice and other ingredients rolled in a sheet of dried sea algae, called nori) and not on raw fish, eel, or octopus, which are thought to be too exotic for the tastes of the general public. Clearly, although the food is distinctly Japanese, it is intentionally geared to the recognized tastes of the larger interethnic community-a concern that does not arise in Japan. Moreover, most of the food is made either in nikkei homes or in the kitchen of the Buddhist church, and it is sold to make money for church projects. Thus, the very presence of the food attests to the ongoing food-preparation traditions that characterize the ethnic dimensions of Japanese American home life as well.

To many Americans, all this gorgeous color, rhythm, gaiety, and tasty food may seem inappropriate as a way of celebrating dead ancestors, but a brief look at Japanese folk custom provides useful perspective. The most distinctly "Japanese" aspects of Obon are its focus on deceased people (early classical Buddhism sees death as normal and focuses more on enlightenment than on the survival of single personalities after death) and its assumption that family ties persist beyond the grave. As a person dies, his spirit moves from konoyo ("this world here") to arroyo ("the world over there, yonder"), the realm where the dead reside. "Over there," a person's spirit remains closely involved with the events going on at home. If the proper memorials and celebrations are observed by the living family, the spirit slowly evolves into a local deity, called a sorei or kami, and responds to the petitions of the living by exercising concern for their fortunes: enhancing the catch of fishermen, assuring the fertility of crops, easing childbirth, and influencing the financial stability of the whole family. In other words, the obligations and debts that are thought to exist between generations of a Japanese family are not interrupted by death but are intensified by it.

In Japan, one facet of this obligation is seen in the complex sequence of funeral memorials: A typical funeral is followed by another memorial funeral on the seventh day afterward, and then-depending on the local custom-the fourteenth, twenty-first, twenty-eighth, thirty-fifth, fortysecond, and forty-ninth days; then, again, on the first year, seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, twenty-eighth, and, in some families, the fiftieth and one hundredth years. In a large family, this can mean that substantial amounts of time and money are expended on memorials; in the words of folklorist Michiko Iwasaka, "We Japanese spend most of our lives dealing with death." Japanese Buddhists in the United States have abbreviated these observances somewhat, for example by holding the seventh-day memorial on the afternoon of the original funeral and by doing the seventh- and fourteenth-year rituals rather than the fully articulated calendar described here.

Many Japanese and Japanese American customs in daily life are also dictated by death traditions, although many people are unaware of it. For example, most Japanese hotels do not have a fourth floor, and usually people do not give gifts or buy items in groups of four. Chopsticks are never stuck upright in a bowl of rice (this is only done with the rice placed beside the body at a funeral); food is not passed from one set of chopsticks to another (because bone fragments are removed from the crematorium in this manner); beds are never arranged with their heads to the north (only the body at a funeral is laid out with the head toward the north); and people do not wear shoes inside a house (only a corpse wears shoes indoors).

Japanese folktales and legends focus overwhelmingly on death and the actions of spirits who act out those cultural obligations that demonstrate their continuing interaction with the living.

In one story, a pregnant woman dies and is buried. Soon afterward, a woman dressed in a white kimono and with long, flowing hair appears in the middle of the night at a confectioner's store, asking to buy sweets. The storekeeper follows her and watches as she disappears into the graveyard in a shower of sparks. Her grave is dug up the next day, and the woman's corpse is found holding a live baby (surrounded by a candy wrapper). The dead mother will not let go until a village woman shows her that she is nursing her own child and promises to nurture the orphan as well. The baby is taken out of the grave, the woman is buried with proper rituals, and the boy later becomes a well-known Buddhist monk.

In other stories, the spirit of a mother appears and asks someone to remove a paper amulet from the door of the house where she used to live so she can enter and comfort her crying baby. A woman rides in a taxi from one part of Tokyo to another, scaring the taxi driver by disappearing (leaving the seat ice-cold) and reappearing when they reach the desired addresses. The driver finds out she has just died, and her spirit has visited the homes of all her children, close friends, and a former lover.

A young girl named Okiku is blamed for losing a priceless plate belonging to her employer; she commits suicide, and every night you can hear her voice counting slowly, "one, two, three. . . :"

Places where people have been murdered or have had an accident are thought to be haunted by ghosts who try to call the attention of passersby to the wrong that occurred there. In the 1960s two sisters were hit by a train at a dangerous crossing, and subsequent engineers on the line were plagued by accusing ghosts whenever they passed the spot. After the proper funeral and memorial services were held and the crossing was improved to make it safe, the ghosts were not seen anymore. These and countless other anecdotes, legends, and tales dramatize the importance of the obligations Japanese people feel toward each other, their families, and their deceased relatives.

In the United States, only some of these stories are told and only a few of the customs are still observed, but Obon continues to intensify and expand-probably as a marker of ethnicity as well as a demonstration of people's continuing recognition of their family obligations. In Japan, Obon brings thousands back to their hometowns and neighborhoods for evening dancing in the streets and daytime reunions with family. Indeed, many Japanese who have moved to larger cities for jobs seem to feel that Obon is only to be celebrated back home, where the kami of the family are situated, and many businesses close down to accommodate the workers' and owners' desire to go home. The Obon season overloads the train and bus systems beyond their famed capacity.

In the mainland United States, Obon consists mostly of afternoon and evening dancing on a Saturday or Sunday, often in a city center or on the parking lot of a Buddhist church. In Utah, the Japanese American communities in Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Honeyville work out a calendar months in advance so their events do not conflict and everyone can attend each other's Obon. In Hawaii, Obon lasts several days in some areas, and the arena often includes the stalls of souvenir and food vendors.

Shinto is the official religion of the imperial household of Japan, and it is characterized by formal rituals performed by priests; Buddhism, although it also has formal rituals, is characterized in Japanese practice by folk customs, foods, and dances that surround the ritual event. In Japan, most people are married by a Shinto ritual and buried in a Buddhist ceremony, and festivals occurring throughout the year may be oriented to either of these systems (sometimes to both). But in America, the Japanese American communities have retained mainly their connection with the Buddhist dimension, partly, it seems, because it represents the everyday, vernacular customs of ordinary people and because the festivals allow for an ethnic expression not based on theology and dogma.

In America, where religious affiliation is one's own business, all nikkei can feel free to participate in the Obon-odori, whether or not they attend the religious services that accompany the event in the nearby Buddhist church. Because of its pre-Buddhist origins and stress on family ties, Obon functions as an essentially secular event, driven by the ethnic identity and family affinities of its participants and not by a formal religious structure. Even so, the most active dancers are usually members of the local Buddhist community. Some Japanese Americans of other faiths, including Mormons, join in the dancing and also form the audience of enthusiastic onlookers (and eaters) surrounding the dance circle. The festival feels particularly "at home" in Mormon country because Mormons, too, express a great interest in family, ancestors, and the idea of family connections between the living and the dead.

Of course, Obon dances are also held across the United States wherever Japanese Americans have settled (including Seabrook, New Jersey, where former internees from the Arkansas relocation camps were invited to move after World War II), indicating that celebration of ethnic and family ties, not geographical placement, forms the core of nikkei involvement in the festival. The famous Japanese folklorist Yanagita Kunio (often referred to as the founder of Japanese folklore study) insisted that festivals like Obon are important precisely because they are physical, dramatic ways of engaging people in forming live symbols of their culture, no matter how abstract the ideas might seem. In the very act of celebrating (and celebrating with) ancestors, he said, people are keeping their culture alive and dynamic.

We can see in the particular elements of Obon still other, subtle reasons for the festival's enduring cultural meaning. In addition to emphases like family and community identity, which are considered positive virtues in America and might have aided acculturation, other features proclaim the distinct differences in nikkei attitudes and worldview. The kimono is a good example, for its design (both in pattern and color) proclaims it to be a different idea about clothing. It says, "this is Japanese." In addition, it restricts movement and thus limits the way a person can walk or dance, which is in stark contrast to American assumptions about personal freedom. Donning a kimono forces the wearer to look different from other Americans and to move in ways that subordinate the individual to Japanese norms. Because women's kimonos are more restrictive than men's (a man's legs can be visible in public, which means he can dance more energetically), the traditional Japanese attitudes governing gendered behavior in public are preserved more clearly here than in everyday kinds of Japanese American expression.

Similarly, the music and dance are patently different from American styles, and they require the dancers to learn the dance steps that go with a given tune. Indeed, people practice every year so the Obon dances will be done "right" and in unison-this in a country where popular dances have featured steps that allow innovation and personal expression. The focus in these dances is not on the American individual, not on the similarities between cultures that might make it easier to fit in, but rather on the Japanese concepts of teamwork, practice toward perfection, group orientation, and engagement with culturally meaningful patterns that relate a single person to the group identity. Rather than being viewed as factors inhibiting acculturation, these are seen by most Japanese Americans as cultural elements that have sustained them in a diverse society.

The taiko drumming, which has become so popular, illustrates the same set of considerations: It is distinctly different from other forms of American music, and it gains much of its impact from the choreographed teamwork of the drummers, whose rhythms represent their culture and its norms in the medium of complex percussive sounds.

The foods served at Obon are not hamburgers and hot dogs but sushi and teriyaki chicken: different without being too different and distinctively, identifiably, Japanese. Folklorists have noted that ethnic foods are the most avidly retained part of culture after a group has been in the United States for a number of years, for they reflect the tastes of identity, which are usually among the earliest and the most emotionally laden memories we have. Yet, in a setting where "fitting in" has allegedly been a paramount consideration for Japanese immigrants, food-like the other examples noted here-provides a way of reexperiencing difference, distinctiveness, survival of one's kind.

In the contemporary Obon festival in the western United States, the dancers are primarily nikkei, that is, Japanese and Japanese American; but the mix is enriched by European Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans, and other people who have married into Japanese American families. This complex of races and religions, all dancing in unison to Japanese music, is a vivid and realistic symbol of the Japanese American community today. This festival is not a romanticized vestige of a vanishing past, not an equivalent of the Ghost Dance-which sought to reverse the cultural and religious erosion experienced by Native Americans-but a dramatization of a culture's survival and achievement in a diverse society.

For Japanese Americans, U.S. citizenship and its attendant responsibilities are highly prized and have been maintained at great cost. Their cultural values have sustained them through difficult times, and one way of bringing their culture with them is by dancing with their ancestors and neighbors at Obon. In doing so, as Yanagita Kunio would surely agree, Japanese Americans are demonstrating that their culture and its shared values are alive and well.•

Stephen Addiss, Japanese Ghosts and Demons: Art of the Supernatural, George Braziller, New York, 1985.

Nancy Araki and Jane Horii, Matsuri: Festival! Japanese American Celebrations and Activities, Heian International, Union City, Calif., 1985.

Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1988.

Roger Daniels, Sandra Taylor, and Harry Kitano, eds., Japanese Americans firm Relocation to Redress, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 1986.

John DeFrancis, Things Japanese in Hawaii, University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1973.

Richard Dorson, ed., Studies in Japanese Folklore, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1963.

Stephen Fugita and David OBrien, Japanese American Ethnicity: The Persistence of Community, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1991.

Ichiro Hori, Folk Religion in Japan: Continuity and Change, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1968.

Ronald Morse, Yanagita Kunio and the Folklore Movement: The Search for Japan's National Character and Distinctiveness, Garland Publishing, New York, 1990.