Summer has officially begun in Japan, and although you folks in the US are melting in your shoes in this heat wave, here we’ve been having fairly cool weather (continuing the trend of the unseasonably long and cold winter we had, and the very short and very cold spring). I was walking around the rice paddies tonight in the cool humid air and I saw some kids setting off fireworks. I thought about the 4th of July for a minute, and then remembered today is July 7th, or Tanabata.

Tanabata Ukiyoe

Tanabata is a star festival derived from the Chinese festival Qi Xi. In the days when Japan used the Chinese calendar, the 7th day of the 7th month generally fell in August around Obon, and so over the years this holiday has mixed a number of Chinese and native Japanese traditions together. It’s based on the legend of the Princess and the Cowherd. It tells of Princess Orihime, daughter of the Sky King, who lived on the banks of the Milky Way. She was such a skilled weaver that she was always busy with work — too busy to even fall in love. This made her very sad, and so her father arranged her to meet Hikoboshi, the cow-herder, who lived on the other side of the Milky Way (in Japanese the Milky Way is called “Heaven’s River”). They fell in love instantly and got married. However, once they were married, Princess Orihime would never weave again, and her father became so angry that he separated them across the Milky Way from each other and forbade them ever to meet. She cried and she cried, and eventually the Sky King promised her that if she worked hard weaving all year, on the 7th day of the 7th month he would allow them to meet each year. On the first Tanabata, there was no bridge across the Milky Way, so Orihime and Hikoboshi couldn’t meet. Again Orihime cried and cried, and eventually a flock of magpies came and, linking their wings together, created a bridge for her to cross and meet her lover.

Tanabata is celebrated here particularly by young (and single) people. It’s a lovers’ holiday, and people write their wishes on colored paper and hang them on bamboo trees. No doubt if you’re in Japan you’ve seen many of these trees everywhere you go — in department stores, outside of shops, at stations, schools, and so on. A lot of young people — especially young girls — wear summer kimonos called yukatas, which are light, made of cotton, and very beautiful in the summer night city lights.

Finally, if you’re an astronomy nerd like I am, you might be interested in knowing that Orihime is Vega and Hikoboshi is Altair. They’re two of the easiest stars to pick out at night. Even on a hazy night like tonight when the Milky Way isn’t visible, I can see both of them (in fact, I can see both of them, Venus, and not much else tonight thanks to the haze and the light pollution mixing). They straddle the Milky Way, and are the 5th and 12th brightest stars in the night sky, so there’s a good chance you can find them almost any night this season.

Vega and Sol

Thanks to the peculiar rotation of our planet, Vega was Earth’s northern pole star in around 12,000 BCE and will again be so in 13,727 CE. It is 25 light years from Earth, about 1/10 the age of our sun, more than twice the mass, and aging much faster than our sun (so that both stars are now middle aged). Vega rotates so quickly that it is pronouncedly bulging and rotating so rapidly that it almost tears itself apart. Vega also has a dust-belt like our own solar system’s Kuiper belt, and is thought to have at least one larger-than-Jupiter-sized planet. Vega has been important in every human culture that has ever gazed up at the stars, not just East Asian ones.

Altair and Sol

Altair is only 16.8 light years from Earth and is not quite twice as big as our own sun. Like Vega, it rotates at a ridiculously high speed — so fast that the equator is significantly dimmer than the poles and the planet has a very squashed shape. Altair is one of only a handful of stars (including our own sun) to have been directly imaged by humans, so we actually know a bit of what its surface looks like, rather than just knowing the star as a point of light. Altair has also played an important part in many human mythologies. The Altair system was even the setting for the cheesy Sci-Fi classic Forbidden planet. And in astrology (that parasitic profession that plays off human ignorance) Altair is connected with dangerous reptiles.

So go outside tonight if you haven’t already, take a look up at Orhime and Hikoboshi, and wish them luck and love!

Can you spot the star crossed lovers?