Japan's Golden Week

I'm starting the month of May off in style... with a big holiday! 

Japan is currently celebrating "Golden Week", which is the longest time off for most businesses outside of Year End festivities.  They don't celebrate one thing in particular, but rather it's a bunch of rather random holidays in rapid succession. 

April 29 ~ Showa Day

In honor of the former Emperor's Birthday.  Showa reigned as emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989.   

This is a day to reflect on his 63 years of tumultuous reign.

May 3 ~ Constitution Day

The current Japanese constitution was implemented in 1947, so this day is to reflect on democracy and government.

May 4 ~ Greenery Day

A relatively new holiday to the line-up.  It was formerly celebrated on April 29 in order to recognize nature and to honor the love that Emperor Showa had for plants.  In 2007, April 29 was renamed Showa Day, and this holiday was moved to May 4. 

(Some Japanese critics say it was moved just to extend the Golden Week holiday!  Whatever the reason, I'm not going to complain!)

May 5 ~ Children's Day

This is also refered to as "Double Fifth" in other Asian countries because it is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month.  It began in 1948 with the name of Boy's Day but has been modified to include both genders.  (You may recall that Girl's Day "Hina Matsuri" is celebrated on Double Third, the third day of the third month.) 

The purpose is to celebrate the happiness of children and the express gratitude to mothers. 

I've been seeing these beautiful fish windsocks all over Japan this month and just found out they are related to former Boy's Day.  The koi carp banners symbolize strength and courage for boys.  Chinese legend says that carp which were strong enough to swim upstream and to a waterfall would turn into a dragon.  The banners blowing in the wind look like swimming carp.

Families generally fly a koi carp banner at their homes for each of their sons.  At the Tokyo Tower last week, they had 333 carp banners flying since the tower is 333 meters tall. 

Since families often do something special for their children on this day, I hear that Tokyo DisneyLand will be a crazy mob scene. Somehow that's hard for me to imagine because Tokyo always appears to be a crazy mob scene for me regardless of the day!!

One last factoid:  The name "Golden Week" actually came from the film industry since they saw an uptick in sales during this holiday period.  Back in the 1950's they started calling it the "golden time" for movies to be released, and the name eventually stuck.