LD's Guide to Japan

We are, sadly, nearing the end of Japan’s largest national holiday event, Golden Week (often commonly referred as GW).  GW is one week in Spring that contains 4 of Japan’s 14 legally-established national holidays.  Add in Saturday and Sunday** and you get 6 out of 7 days off (and most people will take a paid vacation day to get all 7 days off).  The timing of the holidays in the calendar (Spring: flowers are blooming, it’s finally getting warm) makes GW the busiest time of year for travel/tourism within Japan (and the most expensive, which is why I stayed in Kurobe).  Side note: “Golden Week” is the official name for it; that’s not a translation from the Japanese name—they actually call it, in English, “Golden Week.”  I don’t know why.

** This is assuming the timing works out right with the weekend (luckily, it does this year).  There is, however, a provision of the law stating that if any national holiday falls on a Sunday, the next working day becomes a substitute holiday.  You’re shit-outta-luck if it falls on a Saturday, though.

GW begins on April 29th with Showa Day.  Well, it’s only been called Showa Day for a few years.  April 29th was originally celebrated as the birthday of the Emperor Showa—whose reign began in December of 1926—until 1989, when his reign ended and April 29th became known as Greenery Day.  Then in 2007, for some reason, Greenery Day was moved to May 4th, and April 29th became Showa Day: a day for remembering and reflecting on Japan’s Showa Period—during which Japan recovered from WWII to become one of the world’s most powerful economies.  There aren’t really any traditions or festivals held for this holiday.

The next holiday of GW is Constitution Memorial Day, observed on May 3rd.  There’s not much to say about this day.  The Japanese Constitution was first enforced on May 3rd, 1947, so it became a national holiday.  Again, there aren’t really any traditions or festivals for this day.

The following day is now, as mentioned above, Greenery Day (May 4th).  This is a day to commune with nature and give thanks for all nature’s blessings.  As far as I’m told, there is no tradition or guideline as to how you do that.  Just, I dunno, go have a picnic or something.  ”But Lawrence, you said Greenery Day was moved to this day in 2007, so was May 4th just a regular day up until then?”  I’m glad you asked!  It turns out there is a little law in Japan that was pretty much made specifically for May 4th, and it states that if there is a work day that falls between two national holidays, then that day also becomes a national holiday, referred to as a “Citizens’ Holiday.”  So up until 2006, May 4th—which falls between 2 holidays (I’ll get to the other one in a moment)—was a Citizens’ Holiday, but now it is Greenery Day and that little law is completely useless.

Which brings us to May 5th, the last holiday of GW.  May 5th is officially called Children’s Day, but because girls already get Hina Matsuri on March 3rd, “Children’s Day” is mainly for the boys.  There aren’t really any festivities for this day, either, but there are a few traditions, mainly the eating of leaf-wrapped mochi, displaying warrior-dolls dressed in armor, and koi nobori (flying carp streamers).  Families with boys will hang streamers with images of koi on them outside their houses.  When blowing in the wind, the koi look like they are swimming upstream, to represent the strength and persistence of men.  Families will hang one streamer for each man in the family (and one for the mother).  The top one, representing the father, is the biggest and is generally black.  Below that is a shorter, red one for the mother, and then a smaller blue one for the first son.  If there are more sons after that, they are usually green and get gradually smaller in size.

And with that, GW draws to a close.  I am certainly not excited about going back to work, but at least I only have two days of it before the weekend comes!  Happy Golden Week, everybody!  Cheers.