The hot water of Tea pot of Segaki shelf a girl changes 　Issa Kobayashi
　In Bon festival, Frog calls at a neglected grave　　　　Shiki Masaoka
　
　We have said, "Bon festival and New Year holidays came together" when we have something to be happy. Bon Festival is the days when the ancestral spirits come home, and the relatives meet together and remember the ancestors and the deceased. It is also the days when you thank them for that you owe what you are to them. Bon Festival is the national event as well as "the equinoctial week". It has been supported and transmitted by the feeling of the people who took good care of ancestors from the Middle Ages until today.
　The origin of the Obon festival is the Urabon-e festival originated in Buddhism. Urabon is a transcription of "ullambana," a Sanskrit word that means the pains that are hung in reverse. Buddha tells us as follows. "The temporal parents can keep life and the parents of the past seven generations can avoid the trouble of hungry spirits, if you offer various kinds of alms to hold a service to three treasures(Buddha, law, Buddhist priest), when ascetic practices are over on July 15 every year".
　When I was young, I asked my mother, "what is Bon festival?" "Why do you light fire?" Then my mother answered, "Bon festival is the day when ancestors returns. The fire is for the ancestors to be able to find the home". I had new questions sprang out in sequence. "What is the ancestors?", "Why do they come home?", "Where are they now?", etc.. But I remember I went out to play without keeping it in mind. After all I seemed to have the recognition that "it is the important day when dead persons came home" somehow, even if I did not know what it was.
　The parishioners perform the making display shelves and the visit to graves as Bon festival event mainly in Taikeiji temple. All the members almost attend ceremonial dinner in the temple. Ten relatives in the home that has Bon for the first time attend ceremonial dinner in the temple and the family makes the display shelf which is more gorgeous than an average home and when the priest came, the neighbors advocate a prayer and appease the soul.
　In the forwarding Bon Festival of the evening of 16th, they gather in the Amitabha hall in Nakano and send the ancestors back in a farewelling bonfire. All the members in Okubo gather in Taikeiji in evening. If there is a home that has the first Bon service, people gather there and advocate a prayer. After that they come to Taikeiji and advocate a prayer with all. And they go to the graveyard and burn a farewelling bonfire and send an ancestral spirits back by sutra-chanting afterwards. I cannot help thinking that this good tradition can continue forever.