A few days ago, July 7th, was Tanabata. (Well, kind of. The dates are confusing. See below). What is Tanabata? Stick around to find out!!
Tanabata (七夕) is one of the most popular festivals. Kids love it because they get a wish, and adults (especially young women) love it because of the romantic story that goes along with it. It involves a cosmic tale of romance, hence the "star" in star festival (星祭り, hoshi matsuri).
The festival celebrates the meeting of the stars Vega and Altair, which represent the gods Orihime and Hikoboshi in mythology. According to the myth, this is the one day of the year that these two lovers can meet. The rest of the year they are separated from each other by the Milky Way.
One of the main ways people celebrate is by writing their wishes on thin notecards called tanzaku (短冊) and these are then hung from bamboo trees. Some people write their wish in the form of poetry (tanzaku were traditionally used for poetry) but many others just write the wish in regular form. In some places the wishes are burned or set afloat on a river.
There are often also typical festival events like games and street food.
It has been celebrated since the Heian Period (794–1185), when little girls would be encouraged to become proficient in weaving as one of their preparations for running a home, and little boys would be encouraged to become masters of penmanship. They would both write wishes for these things on tanzaku. As time when on, farmers adopted the practice and would write wishes for good harvests.
All in all it's a fun event!
Let's cover the origin story and then look at some of the confusion over the date of the day.
There are many versions of the story. Just google around and you'll find a multitude of them. This is the one I was first told back when I learned about it.
Orihime (Weaving Princess, 織姫), was a great weaver of clothes. She was a beautiful girl and the clothes she wove were also very beautiful. Because she worked constantly on her weaving, she had no time to meet anyone; as such she had a quiet sadness about herself.
Her father, Tentei (Sky King, 天帝), noticed her loneliness and arranged for her to meet Hikoboshi (Cowhearder Star, 彦星) who lived on the other side of the Ama-no-gawa (River of Heaven, 天の川, a poetic name for the Milky Way). The two met and fell instantly in love. They soon got married.
So obsessed were they with each other that Orihime stopped her weaving and Hikoboshi stopped caring for his cow, allowing them to roam all over the heavens. Tentei became furious at this and separated the lovers across Ama-no-gawa, forbidding them from ever meeting again.
Orihime fell into a deep depression and begged her father to allow them to meet. Seeing his daughter's sadness, Tendai agreed to allow them to meet one day every year: the seventh day of the seventh month. It is for this reason that we celebrate.
On the old Japanese calendar (very similar to the Chinese calendar), this festival marked the shift from summer to autumn.
With the Meiji period (1868-1912), Japan changed from the traditional calendar to the Western one, essentially shifting everything back about a month. As a result, many traditional events remain on the same date as they have always been celebrated, but this date is in actuality about a month ahead of when they would have traditionally been celebrated. That is why a festival to celebrate the change to autumn is now celebrated in midsummer.
While most of Japan celebrates the day on July 7th, some places in Japan changed the date to try to adjust for the calendar change, usually picking August 7th as the new day. Sendai, which hosts the largest Tanabata festival in Japan, famously does this (theirs is Aug 6-8). 
The actual date if we were trying to match up with the old calendar would be anywhere from the start to the end of august. The old calendar was a lunar one so the actual date of the old seventh day of the seventh month on our Western calendar would be different every year. This year it would be August 4th. Next year it will be August 22nd.
Bashō referenced this day in his book Oku no Hosomichi. In an entry on the 7th day of the 7th month (Aug 21st on the new calendar) he found himself looking out towards Sado Island. He wrote:
荒海や佐渡に横たふ天の河
ara umi ya Sado ni yokotau Ama-no-gawa
a wild sea
stretching to Sado
the Milky Way
Sado was a place of riches, but also a place that many figures in history had been exiled to. The violent sea a metaphor for this violent history. But above all this, illuminating us with their shimmering light, the Milky Way. It is that sudden shift from violence to the profound that makes this one of his most famous haiku.
Amanogawa is a season word for autumn and is very commonly used to refer to the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi in haiku.
I think the story is from China, so perhaps 
I imagine a lot of people reading this blog have never seen the Milky Way with the naked eye. Light pollution being what it is, it's tough to see any stars clearly from all but the smallest cities. In pre-electric Japan it would have been a lot easier to see and enjoy. If you've ever been somewhere away from light pollution when the sky is clear, you know how absolutely amazing it can be to see the Milky Way.
Anyway, in honor of the day, why not make a wish and hope for the happiness of those two star-crossed lovers.
| David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
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