Traditions have always died hard in Japan, and festivals traditionally carry on ideas, symbols and practices that are often venerated out of a sense of cultural continuity, not because they are especially relevant to today. The “needle festival,” for example, harks back to when sewing was a major industry in Japan and when honoring the kami if discarded needles was seen as vital.

     “Shichi-Go-San” Festival (reversed by Westerners in translation to “3-5-7 Day”)  is a festival, held every November15th,  whose origins are lost in antiquity, but whose basic theme is clear – survival. It’s a day that marks several very important “initiation” moments in a child’s life, the idea being that if a child survived past these ages, he or she would make it into adulthood. Of course, medical care and science have advanced tremendously over the last few decades, so infant mortality is now very low (especially in Japan) but it wasn’t so long ago that many infants and toddlers did not make it to three years old. When they did survive the rigors, diseases and perils of their first three years, they were presented to the Kami  of the local shrine in their finest ceremonial clothes to thank the deity for life and to receive luck and divine blessings.

     The process is again repeated, on the same day, when girls reach the age of seven and boys reach the age of five. At this point they are said to be past the most dangerous and potentially fatal years of their young lives, it is also at this time that they were (in the past)  fully accepted as a permanent part of the community.

     It seems that long ago, infants were not even given permanent names until they were three years old, so often were they taken away from their parents. Thus this ritual probably marked the point when the child was actually given his or her “real” name. In the West, this process was also the origin of the Christian “Christening” ceremony, the ritual naming of a child in recognition that it would probably survive.
 

Nowadays this may all seem a bit archaic and, to a certain extent it is, but parents are not much different then they were hundreds of years ago and every mother or father worries about their child’s health and life.       So, on November 15th, you will see no lack of beautiful children flocking to shrines with their proud parents in tow. Girls traditionally wear fantastic kimono and boys wear hakama (traditional pleated skirt,) but lately many parents have been dressing their perfectly groomed children in western dresses and suits. In days gone by, Shichi-Go-San was the first time for three year old girls to have their hair put up. It was also the time when five-year-old boys were dressed-up in their first hakama and girls of seven received their first obi (kimono sash.) Some conservative-minded families still follow these traditions, but probably not as many as yesteryear.

     Children who are brought to shrines quite often receive special Shichi-Go-San Omamori (magic charms that contain the blessing of the shrine deity) as well as a long colorful bag of special milk candy called Chitose-ame  and, sometimes, balloons as well. “Chitose” means “one thousand years old” and denotes the wish all parents have that their children live a long time. Cranes are usually pictured on the packages,  these also mean “1000” due to a play on the Japanese written character for crane and for this period of time. 

     Other foods associated with his festival are tai  or sea bream, a pink fish, oseki-han, red beans on white rice: two colors that signify good luck As well as (respectively) boys and girls.
 

Often other special children’s Omamori  (charms) are purchased as well for the children, usually for protection from accidents or to help with studying. These can often be seen dangling from their book-bags during the rest of the year.      There is always, of course, a plethora of camera equipment, video recorders and so on at all the major shrines. The atmosphere is much like the Western Easter Sunday, with everyone in their best clothes all set to show off their kids to the world. Many people bring picnic lunches or make a full-day outing of it.     Those parents who pay an extra fee can be seen at various points during the day receiving a special ceremonial blessing by the priest inside the actual shrine building. This consists of special prayers being chanted to invoke the deity, offerings being made and all negative influences being “swept away” by the ritual waving of a special paper and flax wand by the priest.

     If you wish to bring your child to a shrine on this day, feel free!  More and more foreigners are showing up at shrines on November 15th with their freshly scrubbed progeny to enjoy the festive spirit and maybe even catch a little good luck for their kids.

     Keep in mind that Japanese count the “year” of pregnancy as the child’s first year of life, so by Western reckoning, the children who show up are actually “2-4-6” and not “3-5-7!”