Tanabata
Practices七夕 ・ Reading: tanabata
Definition
The star festival of July 7, when the celestial lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi are said to cross the Milky Way to meet. People write wishes on paper strips and tie them to bamboo, and shrines and temples join in with displays and rites.
The lovers and the wishes
Tanabata retells a Chinese star legend: the weaver princess Orihime (the star Vega) and the herdsman Hikoboshi (Altair) loved so well they neglected their work, so the Sky King parted them with the Milky Way, allowing one reunion a year on the seventh night of the seventh month. Blended with a native weaving-maiden tradition, the festival became a night for wishes: write yours on a colored paper strip (tanzaku) and tie it to bamboo, whose high leaves are said to carry words to the sky. Skill in crafts and studies were the classic wishes; today anything goes.
Where to celebrate
Streets, schools, stations, and shrine and temple precincts sprout bamboo thick with fluttering tanzaku in early July, and visitors are almost always welcome to add a wish. Some regions keep the older lunar timing a month later: the grandest celebration of all, the Sendai Tanabata Festival in early August, hangs entire arcades with giant streamers. Shrines may hold Tanabata rites and offer limited seasonal stamps, and afterward the decorations are often ritually burned to send the wishes on their way.
Common questions
- When is Tanabata celebrated?
Mostly on July 7, but regions keeping the old lunar timing celebrate about a month later: the famous Sendai Tanabata Festival runs August 6 to 8.
- Can visitors write a tanzaku wish?
Yes. Wherever public bamboo stands with paper strips and pens beside it, at shrines, shopping streets, or stations, anyone may write a wish in any language and tie it on.
- What happens to the decorations afterward?
Traditionally the bamboo and tanzaku are floated away or ritually burned, often in a shrine or temple o-takiage fire, carrying the year's wishes off with them.