Urbanities,
Vol. 3
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No 1
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May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
76
observed in the celebration pattern of Shichigosan. Today, the performance of Shichigosan
requires a number of goods and services purchased on the market (dress, accessories, family
meal, photo and beauty assistance etc.). Organizing and selecting options between the
available services and goods requires a sufficient amount of research and a corresponding
period of planning. The aim, as declared by most mothers, is to organize a highly successful
celebration; one that is memorable and pleasant to all family members. In order to do so,
mothers must become skilled organizers and also ‘informed consumers’. Indeed, magazines
and web sites all emphasize the importance of early preparation, underlining that the secret of
a successful Shichigosan is an early start to planning. Mothers are encouraged to set up
detailed schedules and they are guided by samples of calendars provided by magazines where
lists of things to do, to decide, and to prepare, are inserted into tables divided by months and
weeks.
Today Japanese women hold a central role in the construction of family life not solely
on the physical level, but also on the symbolical level (Skov and Moeran 1995). Celebrations
such as Shichigosan, connected to the first years of the child’s life, acquire importance as
milestones of the most intense phase of the childrearing period. These are the years when the
family as a unit is affirmed and which represent the most tiresome period in mothers’ lives.
The celebration contributes to the symbolical construction of the family as an emotional
entity. Moreover, for mothers it can represent an occasion when the fruits of the mother’s
labor performed thus far can be rendered visible and potentially rewarded.
Conclusion
Rituals, even those claimed to have roots in the distant past, are never static events as they
reflect changes in the social as well as economic context of the examined culture. Ritual, as
any social phenomenon, needs to be congruent with the everyday life of its actors in order to
be capable of fulfilling the needs of individuals and therefore it cannot be excluded from the
stream of changes taking place within society. It has to interact in an ongoing process with its
social reality. It is undisputable that the contemporary urban pattern of Shichigosan diverges
in many aspects from the old rural forms. In the pre-modern society, the form of a ritual
observance and its meaning were largely defined by the value system and cosmology of the
traditionally organized society as well as by social class belonging. Customs and rules by
which to abide were strictly delineated for all its members. With regard to the situation in
present-day Japan, Ishii argues that these rules are missing and consequently, individuals find
