Taking a Fresh Look at How to Celebrate a Festival
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Yukiko
Hattori
from Japan
Yesterday's paper had a short article about the Coming-of-Age ceremony in a large city in Japan. According to the article, the mayor of the city formally apologized to an enraged professor who delivered a speech at the ceremony that was all but ignored by 20-year-olds in the city.
The officials prepared 7,000 seats in a gymnasium where the ceremony was held for the 17,000 twenty-year-olds residing in the city. But most of the seats were empty during the speech. And many of the 20-year-olds who did show up ignored the professor and spoke among themselves or talked on their mobile phones. Some even made a ruckus outside the gymnasium.
One 20-year-old who attended the ceremony said youngsters came to the ceremony not to listen to speeches but to see their classmates. The mayor criticized the young generation at a news conference on Tuesday, saying such behavior "is symbolic of the postwar era which failed to nurture healthy character and social intelligence."
Personally I feel people should not generalize the whole generation or the whole era when he criticizes something. But it is also true generation gap is getting bigger and bigger regarding the ceremony of Coming-of-Age Day. So far this ceremony has been held with citizens' tax money. Many older generation understand this festival as an entrance ceremony of adults' world which requires maturity including responsibility, patience, and cooperativeness. Older people tend to be "educational" to younger ones, while younger people tend to feel they finally obtain a right to behave freely because they are now adults. Though, ironically, young people have to ask their parents to buy them new clothes for the ceremony. (A kimono costs from half million to one million yen.)
It is about time to change the way we celebrate this festival, I think. The idea of blessing new 20-year-olds is not so bad. But there seems to be some other ways to celebrate more properly. The present way seems to me a little superficial and materialistic. It can provide solutionless arguments between different generations, instead of friendships and respects. Instead of eternally complaining about the young's behaviors at the ceremonies, people should consider how they can make their ceremonies worthier, I feel.
More on the Coming-of-Age Day
Coming-of-Age Ceremony | Coming-of-Age Day
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