What Is September 9th in Japan? | Chōyō, the Forgotten Chrysanthemum Festival, Explained Gently for Beginners

January 7th. March 3rd. May 5th. July 7th.

If you have spent any time around Japanese culture, some of those will ring a bell — the seven-herb rice porridge, the doll festival, Children’s Day, the star festival of Tanabata.

And September 9th?

Almost nobody, including most people in Japan, can tell you. But it has a name too. It is Chōyō, the Double Ninth — also called Kiku no Sekku, the Chrysanthemum Festival. It is the last of Japan’s five seasonal festivals, and by a wide margin the most forgotten.

Today, the forgotten one. Once you know why it slipped away, you also start to see the places where it never quite did.

What this article covers

What “Chōyō” means, and why the date is September 9th
Why the chrysanthemum
The old Chinese tale the day grew out of
The kisewata — cotton left overnight on a flower — and a morning Murasaki Shikibu wrote down
Why Japan forgot this one and kept the other four
Where it still survives: a Kyoto shrine, the autumn festivals of Kyushu, a second doll display
How Taiwan spends the very same day
The smallest possible way to keep the festival this year

What “Chōyō” means

The characters look forbidding. The idea is simple.

In old Chinese thought, odd numbers are yang — bright, active, auspicious — and even numbers are yin. The largest single-digit yang number is nine.

On the ninth day of the ninth month, that largest yang number lands twice. Chōyō means, literally, “yang doubled.”

Line up the five festivals and the logic is right there on the surface:

January 7th — Jinjitsu, the seven-herb porridge
March 3rd — Jōshi, the doll festival (Hinamatsuri)
May 5th — Tango, now Children’s Day
July 7th — Shichiseki, Tanabata
September 9th — Chōyō, the Chrysanthemum Festival

Three, five, seven — and then nine, the end of the line. On paper, Chōyō should be the most auspicious date of the five.

Why the chrysanthemum

The flower is the whole point of the day.

The chrysanthemum has long stood for long life in East Asia. It blooms late into autumn when little else does, its scent is strong, and it has a history as a medicinal plant. Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, in the guide text it publishes for visitors, puts it plainly:

This day has long been associated with the chrysanthemum, a symbol of longevity and protection from misfortune.

So everything people did on Chōyō points the same direction. Display chrysanthemums. Drink sake with petals floating in it. Wipe your face with dew gathered from the flower. All of it means: may you go on living, and living well.

If Hinamatsuri in March is a wish for a child’s growth, Chōyō is the day the grown-ups wish for themselves — that they stay well a while longer. Put that way, it stops feeling remote.

The tale it grew out of

Chōyō came to Japan from China, and the story usually told about its origin comes from a sixth-century collection called the Xu Qi Xie Ji (Japanese: Zoku Seikaiki).

A man named Huan Jing is warned by his teacher that on the ninth day of the ninth month, disaster will fall on his household. He does as he is told: that morning he gives every member of his family a pouch of zhuyu (a strongly scented berry), leads them all up to high ground, and there they drink chrysanthemum wine. When they come home at dusk, every animal on the farm is dead.

From this, the custom is said to have spread: on the Double Ninth, you climb to a high place and you drink chrysanthemum wine.

One honest note. This is a legend, not a historical event. The Xu Qi Xie Ji belongs to a genre of collected strange tales. But it has been retold for fifteen centuries, and people across the Chinese-speaking world still climb hills on that day. A story made a habit — which is the interesting part.

What happened once it reached Japan

Exactly when the festival arrived is not settled. It is most often placed in the early Heian period (from the late 8th century), though some accounts push it back to the Nara period. Treat it as an open question.

What is clear is that it was firmly established at the imperial court. The Kikka no En — the Chrysanthemum Banquet — brought the emperor and his nobles together to view the flowers, compose poetry, and drink sake with petals floating on the surface of the cup.

And there was one other custom, quieter and stranger and rather beautiful.

Kisewata: cotton left on a flower

Here is how it goes.

On the night of September 8th, you lay a piece of raw silk floss lightly over a chrysanthemum in the garden.

You leave it there all night. By morning the cotton has drunk the flower’s dew and taken on its scent. You then wipe your face and body with it — and, it was believed, age would leave you and long life would stay.

The medicine, of course, is not something modern science would sign off on. But look at the gesture itself: you cover a flower with cotton, and in the morning you wash your face with the night. Nothing is eaten, nothing is drunk. You simply take in what the dark left behind.

A morning Murasaki Shikibu wrote down

Murasaki Shikibu, who wrote The Tale of Genji, recorded one such morning in her diary — the ninth day of the ninth month, some time around the year 1008.

A lady-in-waiting arrives carrying the chrysanthemum cotton. It is a gift from Rinshi, the principal wife of Fujiwara no Michinaga, the most powerful man at court. The message attached is, in effect: wipe your old age away with this — thoroughly, mind.

Murasaki answers with a poem:

Kiku no tsuyu / wakayu bakari ni / sode furete / hana no aruji ni / chiyo wa yuzuramu
Let my sleeve brush the chrysanthemum dew just enough — the thousand years of youth I leave to the flower’s own mistress.

She tries to send the cotton back with the poem, the diary says, but the messenger has already gone.

Scholars disagree about the tone. Some read gracious deference; others hear the faintest edge of irony aimed at the great man’s wife. Either way, on one September 9th more than a thousand years ago, a piece of chrysanthemum-scented cotton passed from one woman’s hands to another’s — and someone wrote it down.

So why was it forgotten?

Under the Tokugawa shogunate the five festivals were official, government-fixed occasions, and Chōyō spread from the samurai class into ordinary towns: chrysanthemums on display, chrysanthemum sake, and chestnut rice. The nickname Kuri no Sekku, the Chestnut Festival, is said to date from around then.

Then the Meiji era arrived.

On January 4th, 1873, a Grand Council of State proclamation titled “Abolishing the Five Festivals and Establishing Holidays” ended their status as official holidays. That same year Japan switched from the old lunisolar calendar to the solar one.

Losing official status did not kill Hinamatsuri, Children’s Day, or Tanabata. Only Chōyō quietly slid off the calendar. Why?

The explanation usually given is the shift in the calendar.

Chōyō was a festival of the ninth day of the ninth lunar month — which, in the solar calendar, falls around mid-October. Peak chrysanthemum season.

The new September 9th sits in the tail end of summer. The Chrysanthemum Festival, with no chrysanthemums in bloom. A festival whose central character fails to show up is a hard festival to keep.

This is a common explanation rather than a proven one, so hold it loosely. But it does make sense. Peach blossoms in March and bamboo in July survive a month’s drift; chrysanthemums in early September simply are not there yet.

Where it survives anyway

This is the part we most wanted to get to. Chōyō is not actually gone.

Kamigamo Shrine, Kyoto: the Chōyō rite and the crow sumo

At Kamigamo Shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Chōyō Shinji is still held every September 9th. At ten in the morning a procession of priests approaches the main hall and offers chrysanthemums to the deity, praying for long life and protection from misfortune.

What follows is unusual. In the karasu-zumō — crow sumo — two men in white robes imitate a crow’s movements, hopping nine times, then take turns calling out nine crow cries. Local children then wrestle sumo bouts as an offering. The rite is linked to the shrine’s ancient association with the three-legged crow of Japanese legend.

At the end, chrysanthemum sake is poured for visitors — yellow petals floating in it, ladled from a golden pot into small ceramic cups. The same thing, a thousand years on.

The “kunchi” festivals of Kyushu

Nagasaki Kunchi, Karatsu Kunchi, Hakata Okunchi — the great autumn festivals of Kyushu all carry that word, kunchi.

One explanation is that it comes from kunichi, “the ninth day” — because these were originally festivals of the ninth day of the ninth lunar month. Another traces it to kunichi written as “offering day,” for the harvest offered to the gods. Neither has won. Still: the name of Kyushu’s biggest autumn festivals may well be a fossil of September 9th.

Nochi no Hina — the second doll display

In Edo-period towns a custom appeared of bringing the Hinamatsuri dolls back out on September 9th. It is called Nochi no Hina, “the later dolls.”

The dolls packed away in March come out again six months later — this time not to wish a child well, but so the adults may live long. The same figures, a different season, a different meaning. A number of shops and museums have started reviving the display in recent years.

The same day, still being kept

One more thing worth saying.

All the while Japan was forgetting it, the Chinese-speaking world was not. In Taiwan the ninth day of the ninth lunar month is the Double Ninth Festival, and it is very much alive.

In 1974, Taiwan designated the Double Ninth as its Respect for the Elderly Day. The reason is a pun: the doubled nine, jiǔ-jiǔ, sounds like jiǔ-jiǔ meaning “long and lasting.” A day for wishing long life became a day for honouring those who have already had a good deal of it.

Counties and cities hand out gift money and commemorative presents to older residents. People climb hills, visit chrysanthemum exhibitions, and gather the family for a meal. Radio Taiwan International describes it this way:

Climbing to a high place on this day has long been held to ward off misfortune and invite good fortune.

Huan Jing’s fifteen-hundred-year-old walk up the hill, still being taken.

One place forgot the day; another kept it. Neither is the correct version. But if you ever want to bring Chōyō back, it is oddly reassuring that a working example is right next door.

The smallest possible Chōyō

Nothing here requires preparation. One item is plenty.

Put a single chrysanthemum somewhere you’ll see it. Small ones start appearing at florists around now. One stem on a table is enough to make the day Chōyō
Cook chestnut rice. This is taking up the “Chestnut Festival” side of the day. Chestnuts come into season right about now
Try chrysanthemum sake. Float a pinch of petals on sake and wait a little for the scent to move across. Use petals sold as food. Chrysanthemums for altars and for display are not grown to be eaten
Try the kisewata. The night before, rest a piece of cotton on a chrysanthemum; wipe your face with it in the morning. Not for the effect — just to do the thing someone did a thousand years ago
Or hold it in October, on the old calendar’s timing. Honestly the most sensible option. The flowers will actually be out

Four of the five festivals have hardened into events: fixed foods, fixed objects, fixed obligations.

Chōyō never did. Being forgotten has left it free.

To close

September 9th is Chōyō, the last of the five seasonal festivals — the day the largest yang number falls twice
Its flower is the chrysanthemum, the symbol of long life
The Heian court held chrysanthemum banquets and laid cotton on the flowers overnight; Murasaki Shikibu wrote one such morning into her diary
It lost official status in 1873, and with the calendar shift the flowers no longer bloomed in time — so it faded
It survives at Kamigamo Shrine, in the name of Kyushu’s kunchi festivals, and in the second doll display
In Taiwan the same day is Respect for the Elderly Day, and has been since 1974

This year September 9th falls on a Wednesday.

If you pass a flower shop that day, buy one chrysanthemum. That is all it takes for a thousand-year-old festival to continue, in your room.

Sources

Japan Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, multilingual commentary database, “Chōyō Shinji and Karasu-zumō” (September 9th; chrysanthemum as symbol of longevity and protection; the imperial custom of dew-moistened cotton and petal sake; the 10 a.m. rite; crow sumo and the three-legged crow legend; chrysanthemum sake served to visitors)
https://www.mlit.go.jp/tagengo-db/common/001558320.pdf
Japan Doll Association, “Chōyō no Sekku (Kiku no Sekku)” (transmission to the Heian aristocracy; the chrysanthemum banquet; the method of the kisewata; the Edo-period “later doll festival”)
https://www.ningyo-kyokai.or.jp/sekku/choyo
The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu, original text (the passage beginning “Kokonoka, kiku no wata o Hyōbu no Omoto no mote kite…” and the reply poem “Kiku no tsuyu wakayu bakari ni sode furete hana no aruji ni chiyo wa yuzuramu”)
https://koten.blog/murasaki-shikibu-nikki-org/
Wikipedia, “Sekku” (the Tokugawa shogunate’s official five festivals; abolition by the Grand Council of State proclamation “Abolishing the Five Festivals and Establishing Holidays,” January 4th, 1873)
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/節句
Radio Taiwan International, Japanese service, “Taiwan Mini Encyclopedia: the Double Ninth Festival” (designated Respect for the Elderly Day in 1974; ninth day of the ninth lunar month; hill climbing, gift money for elders, chrysanthemum exhibitions)
https://www.rti.org.tw/jp/programnews?uid=4&pid=89161
The tale of Huan Jing in the Xu Qi Xie Ji (instructed by Fei Changfang, he carried zhuyu pouches, climbed high ground and drank chrysanthemum wine; the livestock were found dead on his return)
https://www.epochtimes.com/b5/17/10/22/n9758786.htm
All About, “What is Chōyō no Sekku / Kiku no Sekku?” (chrysanthemum sake; the cotton laid on the flower on the night of September 8th and used the following morning)
https://allabout.co.jp/gm/gc/220562/
Wikipedia, “Kunchi” (the “ninth day” derivation and the “offering day” derivation)
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/くんち
Kyoto City official tourism site, “Chōyō Shinji and Karasu-zumō at Kamigamo Shrine”
https://ja.kyoto.travel/event/single.php?event_id=4822

The Huan Jing story is a legend, not a documented historical event. The date of Chōyō’s arrival in Japan (early Heian or Nara), the calendar-shift explanation for its decline, and the etymology of “kunchi” are all unsettled, and are not presented here as established fact. Ritual dates and details can change from year to year; please check with the organisers before travelling.