Day of thanks for work

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The Day of Thanks for Work ( Japanese 勤 労 感謝 の 日 , kinrō kansha no hi , short: Thanksgiving Day ) is a public holiday in Japan , which has been celebrated on November 23rd since 1948 . On this day in Japan the work of others, their rights and the fruits of their labor are commemorated. May Day, observed in many countries around the world, is not a public holiday in Japan.

origin

The day of thanks for the work goes back to the old imperial harvest festival Niiname-sai ( 新 嘗 祭 , "cost of the new rice"), a Shinto ritual in which freshly harvested rice is offered to the gods by the emperor. The emperor is also the chief priest of Shinto ; its sacred function has its origin in the imperial harvest festival. In the first year after the emperor's accession to the throne, the festival is celebrated as daijōsai ( Eng . "Big expense"). A first mention of this ritual, the origin of which is suspected even earlier, can be found in the historical work Nihonshoki from the year 720. There, a ceremony from the year 678 is reported.

During the Meiji period (1868–1912) the ritual was changed to today's date, November 23, and soon spread across the country. Thanksgiving Day was finally established as a national holiday after the Second World War : it has been celebrated since 1948.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Embassy of Japan: Feature: Japanese Holidays in November. Retrieved November 22, 2012.
  2. ↑ Nozomu Shimizu: The "Tenno System". A Constitutional Study on Postwar Japan. In: Yearbook of Public Law. New episode. Vol. 29. JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen, 1980, pp. 623-656; here p. 649.

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