Carp Streamers (2004-05-05)
Today is Children's Day and traditionally families who have a newborn baby boy celebrate it by flagging carp streamers called koinobori on top of their houses. However carp streamers display is not limited to just this day, they can be seen "flying in the air" from April to May 5th and I believe some people put out carp streamers every year just for the fun of it.
A carp streamers set-up begins with two wheels at the top known as
Tenkyu which serves as a mark for God to descend, followed by a
colorful streamer called Fukinagashi and finished with colored
carp-shaped streamers that graduate in size. The black carp is
the largest among them and represents the father, the red one stands
for the mother and blue one the son; green and yellow symbolize the
other children in the family. They are traditionally hung atop of
houses so that they can fly briskly in strong spring wind to make them
look like robust carps swimming in the river. Families put up
carp streamers to wish their newborn good health and future
success.
I wrote a haiku, the Japanese seventeen-syllable poem, using carp streamers as the subject in a Japanese class before. It goes like this:
Koinobori
Sora ni
waratteru
Haru no
kao
The poem roughly translates into:
Carp streamers
Laughing in the sky
The face of Spring
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