Okinawa Shiimii Escort

 

On the island of Okinawa located to the south of mainland Japan, local Japanese people observe a holiday known as Shiimii (清明) festival or Obon as it’s called in mainland Japan. The festival is held during the two-week period in the beginning of April. The holiday is a celebration of the family’s ancestors. The day of Shiimii family members will go to their family’s ancestral tombs and sweep, wash, and clean the area to provide offerings for the dead. After all the preparations are done, they prepare a picnic of food drinks and prayer. For the Shiimii festival, traditional boxed food called “Usanmi (御三味)” is prepared. Usanmi is a style of food for offerings to the gods and ancestors, which consists of ingredients harvested in the “sky, soil, and sea”. Usanmi food is normally packaged in lacquered wooden square boxes. These boxes are stacked up and brought to the tomb. A typical Usanmi box contains fish cakes (processed fish paste), deep-fried tofu, tempuras, grey sweet potatoes, kelp, burdocks, konjac (jelly-like food made from corm of konjac potatoes), pork belly (with skin).



Along with Usanmi food, a box of mochi, rice cakes are brought to the tomb. It is a normal practice to put 9 or 15 rice cakes in a box. Numbers which cannot be divided by 2 are considered numbers with good fortune.

 

Unfortunately for the island of Okinawa most of the land and tombs that reside there are located inside of United States military bases. When I was stationed at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa I worked in the munitions systems area where over 25 family tombs are located inside of our 5,900-acre restricted area. Once a year member within our work center will volunteer in early April to go help clean the shrines for the families and prepare them for the holiday. The tombs are in dense jungles so we would use weedwhackers, machetes, and other gardening tools to help us remove the overgrowth from the previous year.

 




Once the tombs have been cleaned and prepared for the families to come visit, we would set up groups of escorts to let people in and spend time at the tombs. We would have over 100 volunteers from our work center to make this event happen. Families will bring tents, blankets, tarps, and even toys for the younger family members to play while spending time with their ancestors. The event would be all day from 8am until when the families would like to leave (around 2pm). Unfortunately, every Shiimii escort that I have participated in it often would rain due to the time of year the holiday takes place. Around 200 Okinawans would come to visit their families’ tombs with the largest family being around 30 people.

 




The ceremonies are not intended to be in mourning and, instead, are joyful celebrations of the lives of the ancestors. The people I worked with and the work that we do to be able to escort the families plays an important role in the annual festivities. I take much pride in being able to be apart of this tradition to help families still be able to connect with their ancestors. Once the families finish spending time in the tombs, they would often show their gratitude and thanks by offering us some of the food that they ate or inviting us to spend time with them at the tomb. While I was stationed in Okinawa, I was able to participate in three of these events and it was an experience I will never forget.


WORK CITED

https://groups.oist.jp/resource-center/okinawan-culture-01-shimi

https://www.lonite.com/education/japanese-obon-festival-culture.html

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/shimi-festival-okinawa

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/128158/18th-muns-helps-locals-celebrate-shimi

https://www.5af.pacaf.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1156009/a-labor-of-love/

https://www.pacaf.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/591468/18th-muns-helps-locals-celebrate-shimi/


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