Tanabata or the festival of the stars

Year Published: 1959

Creator: KQED San Francisco Winifred Schmale Wil Maruyama Robert Hagopian Robert Nissen T. Mikami

Format: 16mm

Description: Each year on July 7, the seventh day of the seventh month – the festival of the stars is celebrated in Japan. Artist T. Mikami tells the history of this festival, which is based on the legend of Shokujo, the daughter of the King of the Heavens, who fell in love with a herd boy. Shokujo and her lover were permitted to see each other only once a year, as the Milky Way would overflow and be impossible to cross. Each year at the festival of stars, the Japanese pray it will not rain and they decorate their homes with bamboo trees, from which they hang strips of colored paper upon which poems about lovers are written. Brush paintings of bamboo are drawn by Mikami.

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