Chrysanthemum Festival

Chrysanthemum Festival

September-October, including the ninth day of ninth lunar month

The Chrysanthemum Festival was the last of the five sacred festivals of ancient Japan. It lasted over the ninth month and sometimes into the tenth month of the Buddhist lunar calendar, although the ninth day of the ninth month was known as Chrysanthemum Day, primarily an occasion for paying visits to one's superiors. Also known as Choyo, the festival was a unique tribute to the gardening and artistic skills of the Japanese, who developed a method for growing chrysanthemums within a wire or bamboo frame in the shape of a human figure. The boughs were guided around the frame such that the flowers bloomed only on the outside, clothing the figure in flower blossoms. The heads, hands, and feet of these more-than-life-sized figures would be made of wax or paste, but their costumes were made entirely of chrysanthemums, with blossoms of different sizes and colors used to achieve as realistic an effect as possible.
Formerly, kiku ningyo exhibitions were numerous, and could still be seen in the parks of big cities in the early part of the 20th century. But the cost of growing the flowers and erecting the figures became prohibitive, and the exhibits eventually died out. In Japan, Korea, and Okinawa today, Chrysanthemum Day is a fairly unimportant holiday, observed in scattered locations by eating chrysanthemum cakes (a dumpling made from yellow chrysanthemum petals mixed with rice flour) and drinking chrysanthemum wine.

SOURCES:
DictFolkMyth-1984, p. 540
FolkWrldHol-1999, p. 576
JapanFest-1965, p. 186
OxYear-1999, p. 703