[ { "id": 210280, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 251, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "230\n\nTHE CHINESE “YUE LAN” GHOST FESTIVAL IN JAPAN: A KOBE CASE STUDY,\n\nAUG. 31 SEPT. 4, 1982*\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nKobe is one of the three places in Japan where the Chinese hold a community-wide celebration for the \"Yue Lan\" festival.1 According to 1974 statistics, there were 8585 Chinese living in Hyogo prefecture of which Kobe is the capital. About 82% of them lived in Kobe.2 Although only 11% of the Chinese living in Hyogo are Hokkienese, yet the Hokkienese Association has been in charge of the festival since the end of the Second World War. The festival I am describing here took place at the Kobe Kwan-ti Temple (關帝廟).\n\nI. The Location\n\nThe festival area can mainly be divided into four parts:3\n\n1) The Tao-ch'ang (道場) area, where the priests performed most of the rituals (this used the building normally the offices of the Association).\n\n2) The Ming-che (冥宅) area. (Min-taku in Japanese meaning House of the underworld) (this used the temple courtyard, with a temporary tented roof).\n\n3) The Temple area.\n\n4) The Association Hall and the Kitchen area(s).\n\nAll rituals took place at these places except the Lantern Floating ritual which took place at the sea-shore half an hour's ride from the temple by mini-bus. In addition, there was a screen between the temple and the Tao-ch'ang where Chinese movies were shown for three nights.\n\n* Unless specifically stated, all explanations of the rituals during the festival are as given by the participants. See Plates 15-32.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210284, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 255, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "234\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nof water (Kan Lu #), the chief priest passed the dish to the priest on his right-hand side, who then used a small pine leaf to sprinkle water as he walked through the festival area himself. (See routes 1 and 2 in the plan of the Festival Area at the Appendix to this article.) The participating worshippers regarded the former walking ritual as one to show respect to their 'Ancestors', and the latter one as a kind of offering and purification of the area.\n\n13\n\nThe 'Reporting' ritual, which took place between entrance A and entrance C, started with the throwing of several Man Tau (Man-Juu in Japanese, a kind of bread) and ten-yen coins to those attending. It created a lot of excitement among those attending as well as the priests. Then the chief priest, who was standing on a table, read a Pang (a name list =, yellow in colour, which was burnt on the last night) of 165 names, and then a Shi-ma (a paper-made figure riding on a paper-made horse), the supposed messenger to Heaven, was burnt with paper money and incense sticks. The 'messenger' was to report to Heaven that this place was now holding a festival for (a) all the soldiers who died during the World Wars, (b) the Ancestors of all surnames, and (c) all wandering spirits. It was hoped that through this generous offering (Gong De), the worshippers could obtain family happiness and good luck.\n\n=\n\n16\n\n=\n\n17\n\n#3). At about 3 p.m. on Sept. 2, a bus took fifteen Hokkienese committee members (including 3 females, 1 boy, 2 youths in their 20s) and six priests to the Shumanoura beach, which is in Hyogo Prefecture. There, 21 lotus lanterns (Lien Dan, each with a burning candle inside) were sent out to sea. At the same time, two women put 60 sets of 3 small incense sticks and 2 sets of 3 middle-sized incense sticks into the sand, while the priests chanted facing the sea. After that, the committee members threw vegetarian food around the site. The whole ritual took fifteen minutes. The ritual, according to the Japanese priest, was to send off the ghosts and the ancestors, and some committee members said that it was to send off the orphan ghosts (Wu Zhi Gui 無杞鬼 = Muen butsu in Japanese, meaning ghosts which have no worshippers).\n\nDuring the night offerings, the chief priest first made some\n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210291, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 262, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "241\n\ning here and not give them trouble\". According to the introduction in the Pang (see Appendix), as posted up at the main entrance, \"the festival was held for the purpose of assisting the reincarnation of i) the soldiers who died during the world wars, ii) the ancestors of all surnames, and iii) the ghosts who were not worshipped by anyone. And it was hoped that through the mediation of the priests, the Three Buddhas and all the spirits would give their permission and open the door for them to cross-over and become human beings again. However, the worshippers, being more interested in self-prosperity, were more concerned about their own ancestors who are the only ones who can guarantee their prosperity.\n\nV. Conclusion; History of the Festival in Kobe\n\n34\n\nAccording to an appeal to the Hyogo Government in 1873, the Ningpo merchants were the first to hold a Ghost Festival for the Chinese in Kobe. Mr. Chan (70 years old, Cantonese, born and educated in Kobe, now vice-president of the History Museum of the Kobe Chinese) told me that before the Second World War, the festival was organized by the Cantonese who then out-numbered the Hokkienese. The Cantonese were wealthier and 'had more knowledge'. Mr. Chan continued to tell me that during that time the Hokkienese were relatively poor. They were mostly travelling merchants (f). They therefore had no stable residential place neither were they economically strong enough to be the organizers of the festival. Though there was a bachelor-centre for about 17 Hokkienese laborers in Nagoya about 30 years ago, there was no Hokkienese cluster in Kobe. Today, however all the three Chinese Ghost Festivals in Japan are organised by the Hokkienese\". Mr. Chan's narration agrees with the information given by Li Ta-shen.36 The Hokkienese, now organisers of the Festival, had never been an influential group until the end of the Second World War. However, since then, until 1978, the Hokkienese were said to be the centre of the Kobe festival.37\n\nDue to the anti-Chinese incident in Kobe in 1976, the Chinese started to pursue unification among all the different Chinese territorial groups, and to disregard their origins. In 1978, the Kobe Chinese News (US) was changed to the Kansai Chi-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210292, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 263, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "242\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nnese News (MA###); reports about the Ghost Festival in Kobe no longer emphasised the role of the Hokkienese. Thus, the secondary identification (identity of being a Chinese and/or of being a resident in Kobe) instead of the primary identification (identity of blood relation and/or of origins) became the central idea of the Festival. Thus the Festival is more inclusive now.\" The Festival, though including all elements of the secular world as well as the sacred world, stressed only ancestor-worship because only ancestor worship supercedes the boundaries of all social groupings and categories, eases the tension of group competition among the Chinese, and connects all social groupings and categories into one worshipping group which is based primarily on the relationship of the worshippers with Kobe, and secondarily on their territorial identity as Chinese.\n\nNOTES:\n\nThe original meaning of 'Yue Lan' is \"hanging upside down” (of the hungry ghost in Hell). However, during the festival, participants used terms like: Obon (Mah, Japanese term for the festival), Chung Yuan (†, middle of the year, which is a term mainly used by the taoists for the same event), and/or Kuai Chie (m, ghost festival). Some Cantonese even called it a Chiao (M) (simply meaning a festival dedicated to the Gods). Moreover, the documents used during the festival spoke of it as 'Pu Tu' (#), meaning general offering and place where spirits can cross over to this world, e.g. the papers that hung over the entrance of the Tao Ch'ang (entrance A) wrote \"The water and earth Pu Tu is held in this Tao Ch'ang' (*), at the entrance B, it was written 'the Great Occasion of Pu Tu' (E), the invitation card wrote \"the great meeting of Pu Tu' (#★#), and the same term was also used in the P'ang.\n\n1 See Kobe Kakyou Ho (#), no. 71, 1976.3.10. In 1974, there were 46944 Chinese in Japan. 8585 of them lived in Hyogo Prefecture of which 7071 were concentrated in Kobe city. The distribution of the origins of the Chinese in Hyogo Prefecture was as follow: Taiwan (41%), Cantonese (21%), Hokkien (11%), Kiangsu (11%), Shantong (5%), Chekiang (4%), others (7%).\n\nSee plan at the Appendix to this paper, and Plate 15.\n\nPlate 16.\n\n3 Plates 17, 18, 19.\n\n6\n\nSometimes informants called the paper-made houses \"Cho' () without distinguishing between the house for the 'Newly Dead', and that for the gods. Here, Ming-che is used for the house of the \"Newly Dead', and Cho for that of the gods.\n\n7 Plate 20.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 } ]