Japan's Children's Festivals & Family Celebrations

About this book

Written and produced in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu (Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC) — a complete guide to how Japan celebrates its children, made in the country where these celebrations live.

Japan measures a childhood in festivals. Seven nights after a baby is born, its name is written in calligraphy. At a hundred days it is offered a first meal it will not eat, with a stone to harden its teeth. At one it crawls toward its fortune carrying a rice cake on its back. At three, five and seven it goes to the shrine in kimono for Shichi-Go-San, holding a bag of thousand-year candy. And between those pillars stands a whole calendar: doll tiers in scarlet every March, carp streamers over the roofs in May, wishes tied to bamboo in July, teeth thrown to the roof, school bags chosen like armour, children's drums and mikoshi in every region, and the family celebrations of New Year, Obon and the turning year.

Japan's Children's Festivals & Family Celebrations gathers 200 of those celebrations in one uniform format. Each entry tells you what happens, at what age, what the family prepares and wears and eats, how to join or how to watch, and the etiquette that matters for that rite — followed by its history and its place in the family's year. Shrine rites and ancestral customs are treated with the respect they are owed. Seasons are given as the typical time in ordinary years, with a recorded check date, so the guide stays useful year after year.

Whether you are travelling Japan with children, raising a family in Japan, or simply want to understand why a family is carrying a baby, a rice cake and a bag of candy through a shrine yard, this is the volume that puts all 200 celebrations in one place.