Next to the New Year's holiday, perhaps the most important festival of the Japanese year is _O Bon_, the Feast of the Dead. This is, in its present form, a Buddhist institution, but in spirit it fitted so exactly into the ancient Japanese ideas of the tastes and habits of departed spirits that it merely supplanted the old Shintō feasts of the dead, and it is a little difficult to-day to determine whether its observance is more Buddhist or Shintō in its character. To find the O Bon ceremonies in their most perfect form, it is necessary now to go into the more remote country villages, for though, even in Tōkyō, this feast is still one of the most important in the whole year, it seems to be more distinctly itself in a small village, where all the old forms are still kept up. In Tōkyō, the three days' festival is kept by the new calendar, and occurs on the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth of July. At O Bon, as at New Year's time, it is customary to square off all obligations by a general giving of presents. This, while not quite as important a matter as at the beginning of the year, is still a severe tax upon the time, purse, and memory of the wife and mother in any large family. At this time, too, as at New Year's, _mochi_ or some other festival dish must be provided, but at this point the resemblance between the two occasions ceases. In accordance with its character as a feast of departed spirits, the observance of O Bon is distinctively religious. On the twelfth, the family go to the graveyard and clean and put in order the graves and tombstones, so that the returning spirits may find all properly cared for. Fresh water and flowers are placed before each stone, and sometimes rice and fresh vegetables. At home, the ancestral tablets in the _Butsudan_ form the centre of the ceremonies. Before the shrine are placed, on the thirteenth, offerings of food of any kind that can be made without fish or meat. Great balls of _mochi_, _saké_, flowers, and choice new varieties of vegetables are appropriate offerings. All are tastefully arranged, the lamps are carefully lighted every night, and special services are held before the shrine. For the three days of the feast, the souls of the dead are believed to be visiting their old haunts, and to need light and food and all the conveniences that their descendants can spare them. Each house is decorated with lanterns, that the spirits may be able to find their way. It is from this custom that the feast is often called by foreigners the Feast of Lanterns.