Passport Diaries

Where Globe-Trotting meets Beach-Combing

Festival

Children’s Day Koinobori!

Japanese families celebrate Children’s Day May 5th! Traditionally it was just Boys’ Day (Girls’ Day is still March 3). The Japanese admire the carp, or koi, for its stength and perseverance as it swims upstream, so all over our neighborhood people have hoisted up enormous fishing poles all aflutter with fabric koi to symbolically wish their little boys to grow into healthy young men. I tagged along with Mary, Takako and company to see the koinobori (Boys’ Day carp) swimming high above the Sagami River. Surprise! It was a festival, complete with octopus-on-a-stick, roasted corn and everything.

The Children’s Day song hopes kids will grow free and happy like the koinobori:

.
Yane yori takai koinobori
Ookii magoi wa otoosan
Chiisai higoi wa kodomo tachi
Omoshirosoo ni oyoideru
.
Which translates to:
Carp streamers are higher than the roof
The biggest carp is the father
The small carp are children
Enjoying swimming in the skyThe song tinkled around the festival-goers along with the steady flapping of thousands of carp windsocks snapping in the warm wind that zipped up the river from the Sagami Wan (bay). Warm at last!

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  1. Miss Footloose says

    Ah, the things you learn when living abroad! Festivals and the celebrations of traditions are great opportunity for the taking of exotic or artistic photos like yours.

  2. Evelyn says

    How very interesting, and the pictures are so intriguing! Interesting that they are flying fish rather that birds, but I'm sure there's a reason.

  3. AS says

    I remember learning about this as a kid! I feel sorry for the boys that their special holiday got turned into a holiday for everyone. That would be like father's day being turned into parent's day! A good idea to be fair, but the girl holiday was never dismissed. I guess girls and women like to be celebrated, and men love to celebrate a girl/women!