Chushu no meigetsu (Mid-autumn festival)
2010年09月22日
Today Sep. 22nd is this year’s “chushu no meigetsu” (仲秋の名月), that is known by “Mid-autumn festival” in English, mainly for Chinese immigrants’ annual autumn festival.
The origin of mid-autumn festival is China. It is, watching the autumn full moon all through the night while enjoying prepared delicacies, held on every night of Aug. 15th of traditional “lunisolar calendar”, that is based on cycles of the lunar phase, unlike a solar calendar that is based on the cycles the Sun takes to return to the same position in the cycle of each seasons (but, in turn, unlike pure lunar calendars such as Islamic calendar, “lunisolar calendar” has a system to adust itself in order not to deviate from solar year so much, because the lunar phase only takes 29.5 days. So in East Asia’s “lunisolar calendar” every 2 or 3 years an additional 13th month will be added for adjustment, that isn’t the case for Islamic calendar).
This tradition spread from China throughout East Asia – Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. In modern China it is famous for people eager to exchange each other gifts of rich and delicious confectionaries called Mooncake – yue bing (月餅) in Chinese.
In Korea it is much more celebrated. There today and some previous and following days are called “Chuseok”, and that is regarded by Korean people as a big holiday season to stop all their works in cities and return their own ancestral hometowns for worshiping their ancestors.
In Japan today is much less celebrated. Our traditional way of celebrating “Chuchu no meigetsu” is only enjoying some special foods such as rice dumplings called “tsukimi dango” (月見団子) or prepared taro called “satoimo” (里芋) at night, while watching the moon – if it can be seen.
Around this season night and daytime are getting nearly equal. So we have a chance to see full moon almost from dusk to dawn (on “lunirsolar” calendar 15th of every month is inevitably nearly full moon phase). The date of Mid autumn festival is set for this reason. A festival all through the night, that was only barely permitted by people who lived in the past time…
But weather forecast tells us that tonight mainland Japan is going to be struck by thick rainy clouds, so possibly we won’t be able to watch this year’s “Chushu no meigetsu”.
(Oda Mitsuo, the president of “Asian-curd”)
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