Event 1: Obon Festival

For my first event I attended the 67^th annual Obon Festival in Monterey, CA. The Obon Festival is a 500 year old Japanese Buddhist celebration which honors one's ancestors. Traditionally, it is a holiday where families reunite in order to honor the graves of their ancestors.

“An ancient legend says the folder of 1,000 cranes is assured a wish come true, and it has become a symbol of luck and good health.”

- Obon Festival foreword by Buddhist Reverend Shinseki

The first exhibit I visited was the crane exhibit. At the crane exhibit, I learned about some of the mythology behind the Japanese crane.

In Japanese folklore, the crane is a mythical animal and is said to live for 1,000 years. The crane symbolizes timeless contentment, fidelity, and longevity, and also the wish to carry out the dreams of our ancestors.. In fact, ancient Buddhists believed that the crane carried the souls of the dead to the Pure Land. In time, this belief lead to the practice of folding 1,000 origami cranes in hopes that the folder's wish will be fulfilled.

The crane exhibit ties into the theme of mathematics + art, since origami, the folding of paper to create art, is based entirely on making geometric folds. In fact, the quality of finished piece of origami is entirely based upon the precision of the geometric folds. Just like in mathematics, a small mistake in origami will have a snowball effect and create a misshapen end product.

The next exhibit at the Obon Festival was a koto performance by the local artist Michael Hatori.

The koto is a musical instrument traditionally created using wood for the body, ivory for the bridges, and horse hair for the strings. It is an iconic instrument which many would recognize for its unique sound which creates a distinctly Eastern sound.

Before his performance, Michael Hatori explained to the audience that the piece being played in the video was a musical interpretation of the coming and going of the tides. He further explained that the alternating sounds throughout the song were meant by the composer to mimic the coming and going of the waves in the ocean. For this reason, I thought it was a great example of how the worlds of mathematics, science, and art can come together to create something beautiful, novel, and unique.

The final exhibit was the Taiko drums.

Taiko drumming is an ancient Japanese art that dates back to 500 BCE. It is characterized by large wooden drums covered in animal skin. Historically, they were used in court style music performed in castles as well as to motivate troops.

 

At the Obon festival, the Taiko drums were played by a local group of drummers called Shinsho-Mugen Daiko. The most unique aspect of the Taiko drumming experience, for me, was the visceral feeling of the ground vibrating from the deep booming sound of the drums. On top of that, the Taiko drumming helped me to appreciate the mathematical nature of music. Because Taiko drumming does not have the variety of sounds that many other instruments possess (since it is a drum, after all), the majority of the melody comes purely from rhythm.

I would definitely recommend the Monterey Obon Festival. Whether you are interested in Japanese culture specifically or merely music in general, the Obon festival offers a unique insight into traditional Japanese art and music that the average person would never encounter in their daily life. Most importantly, the Obon Festival makes one appreciate the beauty of mathematics when applied to art.