Travel Tips

Key facts about this holiday:

This year’s fall equinox happens on 23rd September

The Fall equinox is celebrated as a public holiday in Japan.

Occuring every year on either 23 or 24th September, this festival is a public holiday for everyone in Japan.The Autumn Equinox is a time when the Japanese remember their dead relatives, and co-incides with the beginning of Fall.

Japan Fall Equinox History

Fall Equinox Day is one of the most established Japanese National Holidays. There are two ideas of the origin of this festival.Some believe that this holiday originated from the agricultural society of Old Japan to celebrate the changing of the seasons. This day is usually when both night and day have even lengths.Due to leap year, the actual date of the Fall Equinox Day may change from year to year, but is generally around September 23rd. From this day for the rest of the year, nights become longer and days shorter.

Autumnal Equinox Day in Japan is also called HIGAN NO CHU-NICHI. Other people believe the roots of this festival to be in Buddhist teaching. Buddhist teaching decrees that this day should be used to pay respect for dead relatives, and so it’s possible that this is the true origin of the festival. It’s traditional to bring flowers, incense and food as an offering to graves during this time.Especially popular is round-shaped food!

The Traditions of Higan No Chu Nichi

As we already mentioned, this festival is primarily used to pay respect to deceased relatives.This is one of the times when families have the chance to pull out the weeds and clean up the graves.The Japanese families will be engaged in these rituals during the one-week period straddling the equinoxes (higan) of spring and autumn.

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