Before the Meiji period, there were different ages of majority for Japanese boys and girls. For boys at 10-16 years old, their bangs were cut off, and the remaining hair was braided into a ponytail and fastened on the crown. This was the hairstyle not of a boy, but of a man, a samurai. The young man received a new name in place of his childhood name.
Ceremonies for girls took place at 12-16 years old; they were dressed in an adult kimono for the first time and had their teeth blackened with dye. But now Coming of Age Day, or the Seijin no Hi holiday, is celebrated on the second Monday of January. On this day, all peers who have turned 20 become adults simultaneously, gaining the right to vote, consume alcohol, enter into legal marriage, and complicate life for themselves and those around them.
The main events of the celebration are held at the city hall; the ceremony is called seijin shiki. After that, a Shinto ritual called Momote Shiki (Momote Shiki) is performed – ritual archery.
This is a temple ceremony; many rituals have survived to this day in various forms, such as prayers for peace and a bountiful harvest, exorcism of spirits, purification ceremonies, horseback archery yabusame, the Ota ritual where archers shoot at a suspended 160-cm target from about 20 meters. Belonging to this series is the Momote Shiki ritual, during which dozens of archers release one hundred arrows one after another.
The Momote Shiki ritual is a standing foot archery. The canonical method of conducting the ceremony is that adopted by the Ogasawara family, one of the oldest schools of Japanese archery. The Ogasawara clan has long been associated with martial arts, especially archery. The founder of the Ogasawara dynasty lived in the mid-12th century, and the clan served the Tokugawa shogunate until 1868. Until that time, archery was a closed art; only with the abolition of the samurai class did schools teaching this art appear at the end of the 19th century.
Today, the Ogasawara school performs ritual archery throughout the year at several temples, including on Coming of Age Day at Meiji Shrine. At the beginning of the ritual, two priests dressed in white make a shot into the air. An arrow with a special tip is used, emitting a howling sound that attracts kami deities and repels evil. Later, such arrows were also used before the start of a battle.
Then ten archers simultaneously shoot twice at the target. Momote means 'one hundred hands.' The archers release two arrows each at the target – haya (male, twisting clockwise in flight) and otoya (female, twisting counter-clockwise in flight).
The archers wear a kimono called kariginu, which was the daily attire of samurai in the Kamakura period, worn for hunting. On their heads they wear eboshi – a type of hat worn by court nobles. The left side of the chest is exposed. Traditional kimono is loose and flowing, which is not very convenient for archery. Female archers, however, do not expose their shoulders and chest; they slip their arms through special openings in the sleeves of the women's kimono and then tie the sleeves.
The main thing in the archery ritual is not the accuracy of hitting the target, but the spiritual peace that the archer achieves and maintains throughout the ceremony.
After all archers have shot the required number of arrows, the ceremony is considered complete. This means that in the current year, the young men and women who have come of age will be greeted with health and good luck.