{"id":4476,"date":"2026-09-09T11:44:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T09:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/?p=4476"},"modified":"2026-09-09T11:47:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T09:47:24","slug":"the-festival-of-long-life-what-choyo-no-sekku-can-teach-us-about-slowing-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/tea\/the-festival-of-long-life-what-choyo-no-sekku-can-teach-us-about-slowing-down\/","title":{"rendered":"The Festival of Long Life: What Choyo no Sekku Can Teach Us About Slowing Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every September 9th, while most calendars stay quiet, Japan marks the last of its five great seasonal festivals: Choyo no Sekku (\u91cd\u967d\u306e\u7bc0\u53e5), the Chrysanthemum Festival. It doesn’t have the fanfare of Hinamatsuri’s doll displays or Tanabata’s wish-strewn bamboo branches. It arrives softly, tied to a single flower and an old belief about balance \u2014 and it might be the most quietly meaningful of them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the Number Nine?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To understand Choyo no Sekku, you have to go back to a numerology borrowed from ancient China, where odd numbers were considered yang<\/em> \u2014 active, auspicious, alive. Nine, the highest single-digit odd number, carried the most potent yang energy of all. September 9th, then, was 9 layered on 9: a date so charged with good fortune that it was thought to tip into danger if left unchecked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution was the chrysanthemum. Blooming right on schedule in early autumn, the flower was believed to hold the power to counterbalance that excess of energy and, in doing so, extend life. On this day, people floated chrysanthemum petals in sake and drank to longevity. They wiped their skin with cotton left out overnight to soak up the dew that collected on the blossoms, a ritual called kiku no wata<\/em> \u2014 chrysanthemum cotton \u2014 meant to preserve youth. Entire households would place chrysanthemums in doorways and alcoves, not just for beauty, but as a kind of protective charm against illness and misfortune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of Japan’s five sacred sekku<\/em>, Choyo is the one time has worn down the most. Ask around, even in Japan, and many people will admit they’ve never marked it. But its quietness is part of what makes it worth returning to \u2014 a reminder that not every tradition needs to be loud to matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Flower Shaped by Hand<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is also the time of year when chrysanthemums appear in wagashi, the traditional confections served alongside tea. Made from nerikiri<\/em> \u2014 a pliable dough of white bean paste and glutinous rice flour \u2014 a wagashi artisan can turn a lump of sweet paste into layered petals so fine they look like they might lift in the wind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s no shortcut to it. Each petal is pinched, pressed, and coaxed into shape one at a time, and the dough is unforgiving if you rush it. Spending an afternoon shaping a single chrysanthemum is, in its own way, a small meditation \u2014 a reminder that some things are only beautiful because of the patience poured into them. It’s easy to see why this particular flower, associated with longevity and care, became the centerpiece of a festival about slowing time down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where Wagashi and Tea Meet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Wagashi was never meant to be eaten alone. It exists in conversation with tea \u2014 specifically the slightly bitter matcha served in the Japanese tea ceremony, or chanoyu<\/em>. The sweetness of the confection and the bitterness of the tea are designed to balance each other, just as the ceremony itself is designed to balance the rush of ordinary life with a few minutes of complete presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tea ceremony asks very little of you and, at the same time, quite a lot: sit, watch, receive what is offered, and be here for it. Every motion the host makes \u2014 the fold of the cloth, the turn of the bowl, the placement of the sweet before the tea \u2014 has been refined over centuries to hold your attention gently in the present moment. It’s a practice built around the same idea that shaped Choyo no Sekku: that beauty and wellbeing come from things done slowly, with intention, at the pace they actually require.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bringing a Little of This Home<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You don’t need a special calendar date to experience this. A wagashi-making workshop puts real nerikiri in your hands and lets you feel, firsthand, why patience is baked into the craft. A tea ceremony session slows your afternoon down to the rhythm of a bowl being turned. Together, they offer something increasingly rare: permission to do one thing, unhurried, for an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Choyo no Sekku has a lesson for those of us outside Japan, it might be this \u2014 that marking the passage of time doesn’t require grand gestures. Sometimes it’s a single flower, shaped by hand, shared over a bowl of tea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curious what that feels like for yourself?<\/strong> Book a seat at our next tea ceremony or wagashi workshop and spend an afternoon doing exactly what this festival has celebrated for over a thousand years \u2014 slowing down, on purpose.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every September 9th, Japan quietly marks Choyo no Sekku \u2014 the Chrysanthemum Festival, and the last of its five sacred seasonal celebrations. It’s a story about longevity, patience, and a flower shaped by hand into wagashi. Here’s what it can teach us about slowing down \u2014 and where to experience it yourself, right here in D\u00fcsseldorf.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_glsr_average":0,"_glsr_ranking":0,"_glsr_reviews":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[148,150],"tags":[151,174,152],"class_list":["post-4476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tea","category-wagashi","tag-japanese-in-dusseldorf","tag-matcha-workshop-dusseldorf","tag-nerikiri"],"mb":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biyori.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0148.webp?fit=1720%2C2294&ssl=1","mfb_rest_fields":["title","jetpack_publicize_connections","jetpack_sharing_enabled","jetpack_featured_media_url"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4476"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4482,"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476\/revisions\/4482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biyori.de\/jp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}