Hassaku

Date: 8/1
Japanese: 八朔 (hassaku)

Hassaku was an annual festival of first fruits, observed on the 1st day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar, at the end of summer and beginning of autumn harvest. It was also a traditional occasion for samurai and courtiers to give gifts to those who have shown them favor, i.e. their lords or superiors. Hassaku was, during the Edo period at least, one of two annual festivals during which daimyô presented swords, as a show of fealty, to the shogun. The Tokugawa shogunate claimed the date to be in commemoration of Tokugawa Ieyasu's first entry into the Kantô in 1590.^[1]

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References

↑ Anne Walthall, “Hiding the Shoguns.” In The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion, ed. Bernhard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen (Routledge, 2013), 332.

[1] Anne Walthall, “Hiding the Shoguns.” In The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion, ed. Bernhard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen (Routledge, 2013), 332.

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