Children’s Day in Japan

by Yosuke Yamashita

May 5 is Children’s Day (Kodomo no Hi) in Japan. It is a day when families celebrate their children’s happiness and pray for their healthy growth. To express these wishes, many families display koinobori (carp-shaped streamers) and kabuto (samurai helmets).

Hanging koinobori symbolizes parents’ hopes for their children’s future success. This tradition comes from an old Chinese legend in which carp swim upstream and eventually become dragons. The kabuto, originally worn by samurai for protection in battle, represents parents’ wishes to protect their children from harm.

I vividly remember my father putting up three or four large koinobori in the garden in front of our house a few days before Children’s Day. They flied beautifully under the blue spring sky. We also displayed a kabuto inside our home. Seeing koinobori around my neighborhood was always one of the signs that spring had arrived.

Today, however, I rarely see large koinobori in my neighborhood in Tokyo. As more people live in apartments and have limited outdoor space, it has become more difficult to display them in the traditional way.

Instead, some families now display smaller koinobori and compact kabuto decorations inside their homes. My family is one of them. My parents and my wife’s parents gave small koinobori and a kabuto to our son. At the end of every April, we display them and take pictures of our son with the decorations to share with our parents—even while living in the United States.

While the way we celebrate may change over time, traditions passed down through generations remain important. They help shape our memories, culture, and identity. I hope that when my son grows up, he will remember these small koinobori and kabuto, and one day pass those memories on to the next generation.