How Did Seasonal Festivals Operate In Heian Japan Culture?

This could be me elbowing my way through rows of people in layers of kimono. Holding a little plum branch for a picnic at court. The Heian festivals were perhaps a social calendar, too – in gorgeous, intricate detail, to inspire, and to govern. The grandest festival of all, the Haru no Miyage, part of the New Year celebrations, is a famously ornate affair. Then, there are the quiet moon-viewings. Throughout the four seasons, particular foods are eaten on particular days (seven-herb porridge, for example, is a speciality of January). Sake and rice are offered to shrines, and wooden dolls are sent down rivers, to be washed away by the current, and taken with them, all the bad luck of the year.

But beyond the walls of the imperial court, local customs and rituals were adapted to fit in with the seasons. Processions to celebrate the harvest, purification rituals at the shrines and communal meals all combined the spiritual with everyday life. The rituals and festivals seemed so endearingly human that I would love to be able to join in a moon-viewing party with a poetry prompt to match.

Stepping into the Heian festivals portrayed so vividly in Heian literature makes me a visualize the glorious attire of the nobles and aristocrats of the time, the odor of scented perfume wafting through the air. The festivals depicted were centered around the very formal imperial court where the whole year was divided into seasons. The beginning of the year was marked by Gantan, the Five Seasonal Festivals known as Gosekku (January 1, March 3, May 5, July 7, and September 9) and a host of other festivals that were celebrated according to the lunar calendar, including Mioga Faxuri (large treeanus) viewing, yuri (moon viewing), and kaoni (flower viewing).

I can imagine scenes like these from ‘The Pillow Book’ and ‘The Tale of Genji’ – the moment of inspiration for a noble to write a waka under the moon, the time for a noble to prepare and arrange seasonal flowers, or to compose a scented letter. Foods for purification could be eaten on the seventh day after New Year’s, like nanakusa-gayu to prevent illness, and drift down a river in a boat in the form of dolls or pieces of paper which were then carried away by the current with all impurities. Rice and sake would be offered to the kami and the buddhas.

Even when practiced outside of the capital, these local festivals carried out the courtly rituals at the appropriate local shrines, yet remained true to the cycles of the seasons (planting, harvesting, sickness, recovery and celebration). These so-called “festivals” made up a great deal of a cultural language to express the passage of time as a ceremony of taste as currency and of nature as conversation. This is why I can return to these Heian scenes on a rainy afternoon and feel so alive and intimate.

It is well-known that seasonal festivals in Heian Japan were greatly organized and symbolized. Gosekku, or five major seasonal festivals of a year, were hold on January 1 (New Year’s) , March 3 (dolls/peach festival), May 5 (iris festival of boys), July 7 (star-weaving festival Tanabata), and September 9 (chrysanthemum day). To hold these festivals were included in the Imperial Court’s protocol, and were organized and managed by officials and chamberlains of the Court. The list of participants was prepared, and the day’s program, which consisted of various performances, was fixed in detail.

Heian-era festivals combined practices of Shinto purification, Buddhist services and Chinese calendars. The ceremony of offering rice, sake, fragrances and foods of the season was combined with poetry recitals, music, dance and drama performances. These entertainments displayed public virtue and taste, and underscored the role of the festivals in plotting imperial relationships and earning social status. The aristocracy, at leisure, adopted colors for clothing, chose scents for fragrance and composed poems to celebrate the time of year. Similar practices, with some local variations were observed by rural communities who held ceremonies of purification before sowing and processions of thanksgiving after harvest.

The seasonal festivals memorated the passing of the year through the medium of social memory, recording a balance of health, purification and agricultural timing with the aesthetic and philosophical values of the aristocrat: miyabi and mono no aware. Many rituals, whatever their original meaning, had, by the Heian period, become little more than occasions to observe the passing of the seasons.