About Children's Day
Children's Day (Kodomo no Hi), on 5 May in Japan, honours the personalities of children and celebrates their happiness. It is the closing day of Golden Week — the cluster of four national holidays falling within a single week that runs from late April through early May. Historically the day was Tango no Sekku, the Boys' Festival, paired with Hinamatsuri (the Doll Festival, 3 March) for girls; the 1948 holiday law renamed and recast it as a celebration of all children and gratitude to mothers. The festival's deeper roots reach into ancient Chinese seasonal practice and Japanese samurai-era customs around the display of armour and weapons to wish for the healthy growth of male heirs. Children's Day is a public holiday throughout Japan and one of the most visually distinctive days in the Japanese calendar.
Families with sons traditionally display indoor sets of miniature samurai armour (yoroi) and kabuto helmets, and hang outdoor koinobori — large carp-shaped streamers in black, red, blue, green and pink — from poles or balconies, one carp per family member. The carp is chosen because Chinese legend holds that a carp swimming up a waterfall becomes a dragon, an image of perseverance and rising above adversity. Families bathe in shobu-yu, a bath scented with iris leaves whose long thin shape recalls a sword. Special foods are eaten: kashiwa-mochi (rice cake stuffed with sweet bean paste, wrapped in oak leaves whose persistence symbolises family continuity) and chimaki (sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves). Riverside parks fill families flying their koinobori from temporary rope lines, with several thousand carp streaming over the water at the most famous spots like Kazo and Tatebayashi.