Card Trivia:Mitama Festival


 * The Mitama Festival is a widely celebrated festival in honor to the dead in Japan, particularly at the, and typically in mid-July.


 * The Japanese word mitama (御魂・御霊・神霊, honorable spirit) refers to the spirit of a or the soul of a dead person. It is composed of two characters, the first of which, mi (御, honorable), is a simply an honorific. The second, tama (魂・霊) means "spirit". The honorific "mi" is removed from the name of the four "-tama" Spirit Monsters.


 * Many Japanese thinkers state that the mitama consists of several "souls", relatively independent one from the other, and mantain a Shinto theory which states that the spirit (霊魂 reikon) of both kami and human beings consists of one spirit and four souls. The four souls are the ara-mitama (荒御霊・荒御魂, rude soul), the nigi-mitama (和御霊・和御魂, harmonious soul), the saki-mitama (幸御魂, happy soul) and the kushi-mitama (奇御霊・奇御魂, wondrous soul). According to this theory, each of the souls making up the spirit has a character and a function of its own; they all exist at the same time, complementing each other.