Rohatsu does not seem similar to many other celebrations, especially religious ones.  Consider the parallel celebration in Christianity.  The Easter holiday commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, comparable to the Buddha'a attaining enlightenment.  However, in the United States at least, most schools and businesses close for a significant amount of time.  It is a period of relaxation and rest.  People may attend a few of the many religious services during this time, but they are generally non-active participants.  We have already seen that Buddhists celebrating Rohatsu heighten their work routine and increase their activity in celebration.  They meditate almost constantly, sleep almost never, bathe infrequently or not at all, and eat almost nothing.  Certainly these are alien forms of celebration to westerners and especially to Americans.  But that does not mean that we can discredit Rohatsu as a celebration.  According to Turner and Turner, "rituals celebrate or commemorate transhuman powers which...are regarded by followers as the ...causes of natural or cultural phenomena" (Turner 1982).  Though celebrated in very different ways, both Easter and Rohatsu commemorate through ritual the "transhman" powers (i.e. resurrection and enlightenment) achieved by their respective idols.

     In order to understand the significance of Rohatsu as a celebration to Buddhism, let us examine The Empty Mirror by Janwillem van de Wetering as a case study.  It is an autobiography of the author's time in a Zen monastery in Kyoto, Japan.  His chapter titled Rohatsu, Week of Weeks contains the three parts of ritual described by van Gennep in Les Rites de Passage (1909)--separation, liminality, and reaggregation.  For instance, the author and his fellow monks were locked out of their rooms for the duration of Rohatsu, made to sleep, eat, meditate, live in the meditation hall.  This represents separation.  Though the author was not removed from his surroundings, his routine was vastly changed.  The week following this separation represents a liminal period.  It here is the most important phase, as the monks are intensely, constantly meditating.  During this time they should become closer to that which the Buddha achieved--that which they are celebrating.  According to the story, the Buddha was sitting under the boddhi tree after weeks of meditation and fasting.  It was in the evening, and he opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was a star in the sky.  He said, "I am that star."  And at that moment achieved enlightenment.  It is this moment which the liminal period of Rohatsu prepares.  It is symbolic of the weeks of fasting and meditation spent by the Buddha.  In van de Wetering's case, each meditation period was marked at twenty-five minute intervals by the chiming of a bell.  At this point there were a few minutes of break.  Then the bell would ring and the monks would sit back on their cushions and meditate for another twenty-five minutes (this repeats for 15 hours out of the day, for seven days).  During this meditation, the monks focus on what is called a koan--sometimes a short parable, sometimes just a syllable, but almost always complete nonsense--which upon solving or understanding or transcending, one becomes closer to enlightenment.  The koan represents the sacra in a ritual celebration, as defined by Turner, "sacra...refer to the origins and foundations of cosmic order and also to the unformed void and space held to have existed prior to the ordered universe" (1982).  In essence, the sacra are about as un-solvable as the koan.

     The fundamental difference separating Rohatsu from other ritual celebrations is a lack of ludic recombination.  During most rituals, again according to Turner, participants may be confronted with various masks, costumes, etc that represent a "playful cominbation" of cultural and personal traits (1982).  The monks do not experience this during meditation.  In fact, the point is to experience the complete opposite, that is, to free oneself from your friends, your surroundings, yourself, and time itself (van de Wetering, 81).  Also, the last characteristic of liminality according to Turner, the fostering of comunitas, is not experienced during the ritual.  It is postponed until the very end, just after the end of Rohatsu, when the monks literally bathe together.  The feeling of accomplishment after a week as intense as Rohatsu fosters a great deal of comunitas among the monks.

     Now it is clear how Rohatsu is a celebration.  It is a tremendous amount of work and endurance meant to achieve a higher state of being.  A state of being that transcends mortal consciousness.  Certainly for many Americans, it is a tremendous amount of work and endurance leading to a goal that is beyond even comprehension let alone achievement!  Actually, it is my opinion that the same is true for many Japanese--hence not all citizens of Japan practice Buddhism or ever consider living in a Zen monastery for the required three years.  Yet in all religions, including Christianity and Buddhism, there are "some beings whose natural disposition inclines them toward the religious life" (Hamilton 1950).  These people then enter a seminary/monastery and either become priests/Zen "masters" or realize that the religious life is less appealing than they anticipated and leave.  But then if this trend seems to be cross-cultural, and if not all Japanese even practice Buddhism, how is Rohatsu in Japanese Buddhism an extension of Japanese solidarity?

   To understand the significance of Rohatsu, it is important to look at the characteristics of the Japanese society.  By the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868), the Japanese had developed a unified culture in almost every respect.  A cultural evenness that had been formed for an entire millennia.  The major religion was Buddhism, although it is interesting to note that after this point--industrialization and incorporation in to the modern world--the religion called Shinto became extremely popular, and was officially adopted as the state religion.  Shinto is a religion similar in organization to the Catholic church, while its religious practices are taken from Buddhism.  It was the exaggeration of the ideals of Shinto that led to Japan seeking to overthrow the world powers that led to World War II (Makela 1995).  It is my opinion that though Shinto obviously overpowerd Buddhism on a national level, most of the lay people in the country still held Buddhist values.  These values can be seen in the Noble Eightfold Path, a central doctrine of all Buddhism:  Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.  Caudill listed twelve characteristics that he had extracted from literature covering a century's worth of authors studying Japanese society and culture.  I will list the ones that describe the culture from an individual standpoint.  1) A sense of the group or communality as being of central importance.  2) A strong sense of obligation and gratitude.  3) A sense of sympathy and compassion for others.  4) An underlying emotionality and excitability controlled by a somewhat compulsive attention to details, plans, and rules [to rely on emotional feeling and intuition as much as on reason]  5) A willingness to work hard, and to persevere toward long-range goals.  6) A tendency for understatement, and an emphasis on non-verbal communication.  7) A strong feeling of the ephemeral nature of things.  8) A great pleasure in the simple things of life (1973).  These characteristics are not what Caudill thought the Japanese people should be; they describe how the Japanese are and have been.  I study Buddhism, and it is very easy to match each of the characteristics Caudill listed with each of the ways of the Noble Eightfold Path.  In other words, the Japanese have been following the Eightfold Path--essentially Buddhist values--as a culture.

     This is the most important point to this paper, so I must go somewhat further.  Let us look at a few examples of the characteristics listed by Caudill in the actual society.  It is my opinion that the third characteristic listed above is the most important--compassion towards others.  Smith used the following to describe the unusual compassion displayed by the Japanese even in the lower socioeconomic roles.  Nature in Japan can frequently render agriculture a failure--usually through flooding.  When a common farmer is faced with economic hardship and can't pay his landowner, the landowner "could normally evict the tenant for non-payment of rent; but unless the tenant and not nature or the market were at fault, he rarely exercised this right, for there was no reason to think another tenant could do better, and it was not easy to deprive a whole family known to him and everyone else in the village of the means of life.  So in bad years he reduced the rent instead and, the return from agriculture being highly variable from year to year, made this concession repeatedly.  The relationship was not always friendly, but it was rarely overly hostile, for it was subject to conventions of polite and considerate conduct enforced by community opinion (Smith 1955).  In fact, compassion, community, and politeness--three of the characteristics listed by Caudill--are present in this situation.  It would be unlikely to encounter such forgiving, compassionate behavior from both employer and community (due to competitiveness) in many western cultures.  Further alien to westerners are the kinship values of Japan.  Often, the outstanding substitute for kinship and personal ties is cooperative association (Norbeck 1961).  Regardless of the religion practiced by the people in these examples, it is my opinon that they display specifically Buddhist values.  These values (not necessarily the behavior of all Japanese) are unique to Buddhism.  Thus I can conclude that the values of Buddhism are a major characteristic of Japanese culture and are responsible in large part to the solidarity of the country even today.

     I have one last point ot make, and it is an obvious one.  Rohatsu is to Buddhism what Easter is to Christianity--extremely important.  Though Buddhism is not directly responsible for the development of Japan, Buddhist values provide a basis on which the solidarity of the country is founded.  Remember that Japanese culture includes very strong community ties--compassion for others. Then remember that Japanese Buddhism can be traced to the sect known as Mahayana Buddhism (See Origins).  Mahayana refers to a way of life, a career that is open to all the followers of Buddha.  No longer is the idea of a fully Enlightened One--a Buddha--limited to a few people.  Instead, it is conceived that in the universe there are innumerable Enlightened Ones in both terrestrial and celestial realms (Hamilton 1950).  In other societies, as with other forms of Buddhism, it is the success (enlightenment) of the individual that is most important.  But in Japan and the form of Buddhism practiced there, it is the success (enlightenment) of all people that is most important.  Therefore we can say that Rohatsu is extremely important--as an extension of the core values at the base of society--to the solidarity of Japan.