The festival is observed on July 18, 14, and 15, and is sometimes called the Feast of Lanterns. It was first observed in the reign of the Emperor Shomu, A.D. 773, and soon became one of the nation's greatest festivals. Tt is said to have been tone of the great periods of atone ment in China when the people embraced Taoism, but whatever meaning China attached to them, the rites in Japan have long been accepted as of Buddhist origin. To sympathetic mind it is all touched with delicate and haunting beauty. The very thought of ghosts playing and dreaming for a while in places they once particularly loved—say a pine grove ina temple garden or the edge of one of those charming, lakes at the foot of Mount Fuji, inspires one to poetry.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.