Yesterday I had a nice day with my daughter, taking in a movie at a local shopping mall then grabbing some crepes at a shop with the awesome name of “Dessert Kingdom.” While we were on our way out of the mall, we ran into a wall of young people coming the opposite direction, smartly dressed young men in new suits and young women in beautiful kimonos. It was Seijin-no-hi, or Coming-of-Age Day, and the young people had just gotten done with their Coming-of-Age Ceremony, officially celebrating their arrival as full-fledged adults in Japanese society. Every year in early January, Japanese cities hold official ceremonies in which hundreds of new 20-year-olds gather to hear congratulatory speeches by the mayor and other wise members of the city, pose to take pictures with friends they haven’t seen since junior high school, then usually go off to buy their first beer as legal adults. (Residents of Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, are extra lucky — they get to have their ceremony at Tokyo Disneyland.) Of course, Japan’s population is facing a sharp decline, and every year the number of newly-minted adults is lower — this year there were just 1.2 million new adults, down about half what the peak was in 1970. While it seems that most Japanese customs have a history going back 1200 years or more, the Coming-of-Age day got its start in 1946, when a city in Saitama Prefecture, looking to forget the devastation of World War II, started celebrating new adults with an official ceremony.
Japanese 20-year-olds come of age…with Micky Mouse.
