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July the 7th is a festival day called "Tanabata (Seven Evenings)." This is the very day when Orihime and Hikoboshi meet each other just once a year across the Milky Way.
Orihime(Vega,left) weaves cloths and Hikoboshi(Altair,right) breeds cattle in the heaven.
On this memorial day we celebrate, from the ground, their rendezvous with the offerings of livestock miniatures made of the first harvested vegetables in the season.
In those days, we could have early summer vegetables only in the season. We put short-cut chopsticks into the body of eggplant, cucumber, and corn to compare them to the legs of cattle and horse miniatures. The miniatures were put under the bamboo bush. I still wonder what the meaning of the customs was. Cattle and horse were once useful animals for farming.
I remember it was really a pleasant festival in my childhood. Rather, it was one of the important ceremonial events of the season. We went to a vegetable field early in the morning to gather crystal-like dew on the broad leaves of taro.
Then we grind down an ink stick using the dew to make India ink. With the ink and a writing brush, we write our asking and wishes on the tablets. The tablets are hang down on bamboo leaves expecting they will convey our wishes to the heaven and be granted by God.
I recall the old days when I firmly believed it and gathered the dew in earnest What had I asked God ? To be skillful in writing characters, to be friend with him and her. As I grew up a little, I wished for a sound life of family, passing of exams, and so on. In a summer night, I look up faint flickering of the stars on the background of vague cloud of the Milky Way, calling back my dear old days.
This is a festival in which children and young women find much enjoyment. Fairylike in its fantasy is its legend: That on the eve of July 7 Shokujo, or Weaver Princess Star, is supposed to meet Kengyu, or Herdboy Star, on the bank of the Amanogawa (River of Heaven), or Milky Way, for their annual tryst. Veda is the Princess Star, Altair, the Herdboy Star - the stars known as Lila Aquila. the legend back of this meeting is that the celestial princess, daughter of the celestial king, a most skillful weaver and the embodiment of industry, while engaged in weaving cloth for the king's garments, fell in love with a handsome lad, a cowherder, and as a reward for her diligent industry the king allowed them to marry. But so much in love were they that the princess gradually neglected her weaving and the herder allowed his cows to stray, which so experated the king that he finally separated the coupld forcing them to remain on opposite side of the Mily Way, and permitting them to approach each other only one a year. But there is no bridge over the Milky Way and the princess, on her first visit, wept so bitterly at the impossibility of meeting her husband that she roused the sympathy of a Kasasagi (magpie) who assured her that a bridge would be contrived for her. This was done, the magpies with wings spread forming a bridge on which the princess crossed. but, further says the legend, if the eve of July 7 is rainy the magpies will not form the bridge and the celestial lovers must wait another year before meeting.
Although the modern celebration of Tanabata varies widely according the localities, a common feature of this festival is the display of bamboo branches decorated with long narrow strips of colored paper and other small ornaments and talismans. The paper strips are inscribed with poems expressing the wish for fulfillment of romantic aspirations, young firls firmly believe that when they observe the festival earnestly, they would gain skill in weaving and sewing. The decorated bamboo branch is tied to a pole and placed in front of the house. At the end of the Tanabata festivies, the bamboo branches are thrown into a river to be carried away, thereby dispelling misfortune, or are placed in rice paddies as a meas of repelling insects or as a thanksgiving offering for what is hoped will be a bounteous harvest.
Yet, all those traditional and picturesque habits of the Tanabata festival have mostly disappeared in recent days. The festival is observed at some kindergartens and national school, but rarely city dwellers now celebrate the day as it was done by their mothers and grandmothers. Today, girls are not so romantic as to believe in the story. Yet in rural districts, its is still observed, not knowing the significance of the festival. yet they enjoy the day as with it comes something good to eat and their mothers are in good spirit.
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