INTRODUCTION:
Please watch this video before you read the rest of the article.

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Tanabata (tah.nah.bah.tah), meaning ‘Evening of the Seventh’ is a Japanese Star Festival, originating from the Chinese Qixi/The Festival to Plead for Skills/Kikkōden.  It celebrates the meeting of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi (represented by the stars Vega and Altair respectively).
According to legend, the Milky Way separates these lovers, and they are allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month.   The 7th of July?

In Sendai where the festivity is most elaborated, it is held on the 7th of August (see video at the bottom).

The Tanabata festival was imported to Japan by the Empress Kōken in 755.  Celebration was adopted in the Kyoto Imperial Palace from the Heian period. The festival gained widespread popularity amongst the general public by the early Edo period.  Originally, girls wished for better sewing and craftsmanship, and boys wished for better handwriting by writing wishes on strips of paper.  At this time, the custom was to use dew left on taro leaves to create the ink used to write wishes.

The name Tanabata is remotely related to the Japanese reading of the Chinese characters 七夕, which used to be read as Shichiseki.  It is believed that a Shinto purification ceremony existed around the same time, in which a Shinto priestess wove a special cloth on a loom called a Tanabata near waters and offered it to a god to pray for protection of rice crops from rain or storm and for good harvest later in autumn.  Gradually this ceremony merged with Kikkōden (Chinese Qixi/The Festival to Plead for Skills) to become Tanabata.  The Chinese characters 七夕 and the Japanese reading Tanabata joined to mean the same festival, although originally they were two different things, an example of ateji.

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Like Qixi, Tanabata was inspired by the famous Chinese folklore story, ‘The Princess and the Cowherd’.
Some versions were included in the Man’yōshū, the oldest extant collection of Japanese poetry.
The most popular version is…

Orihime/Weaving Princess, daughter of the Tentei/Sky King, wove beautiful clothes by the bank of the Amanogawa/Heavenly River/Milky Way.  Her father loved the cloth that she wove and so she worked very hard every day to weave it. However, Orihime was sad that because of her hard work she could never meet and fall in love with anyone.  Concerned about his daughter, Tentei arranged for her to meet Hikoboshi/Cow Herder, who lived and worked on the other side of the Amanogawa. When the two met, instantly they fell in love with each other and married shortly thereafter.  However, once married, Orihime no longer would weave cloth for Tentei, and Hikoboshi allowed his cows to stray all over Heaven.  In anger, Tentei separated the two lovers across the Amanogawa and forbade them to meet.

Orihime became despondent at the loss of her husband and asked her father to let them meet again.  Tentei was moved by his daughter’s tears and allowed the two to meet on the 7th day of the 7th month if she worked hard and finished her weaving. The first time they tried to meet, however, they found that they could not cross the river because there was no bridge. Orihime cried so much that a flock of magpies came and promised to make a bridge with their wings so that she could cross the river. It is said that if it rains on Tanabata, the magpies cannot come and the two lovers must wait until another year to meet.

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Tanabata recorded in historical arts…

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In present-day Japan, people generally celebrate this day by writing wishes, sometimes in the form of poetry, on tanzaku, small pieces of paper, and hanging them on bamboo, sometimes with other decorations.  The bamboo and decorations are often set afloat on a river or burned after the festival, around midnight or on the next day.  This resembles the custom of floating paper ships and candles on rivers during Obon Festival.  There is also a traditional Tanabata song.

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