In Japan, people are regarded as the adults when they turn 20 years old. The coming-of-age ceremony is usually set in the second Monday of January as a national holiday, and the new adults (adults who just turned 20 over the past year) gather together at their local towns or cities. The older adults including the mayor and the celebrity from the region attend the ceremony and congratulate the new adults and wish their good luck. Most of the new adults attend the ceremony wearing the traditional Japanese clothes: furisode, the formal long-sleeved kimono for women, and hakama, the formal dress for men. Everyone enjoy the ceremony only once in his or her life. You will the ceremony hall covered with full of dazzling flowers!
Coming-of-age ceremony in China. Chinese people used to celebrate at the age of 20 in a traditional manner in ancient China. In the ceremony adult were crowned and that was called “jakkan”. However the custom gradually disappeared and changed. The age comes to mean eighteen years old, so those who celebrate coming-of-age are high school students. Most of them do not hold rites now. One of the reasons is that the ceremony is thought as distraction from studying for examinations. Nevertheless some of schools still have ceremonies. In the ceremony Chinese grown-up men and women wear school uniforms and express their ambitions. China is located close to Japan, but the customs are really different!

 

 

The Aborigines have a very different kind of initiation rites. It is well known that at birth Jewish people are circumcised. The Aborigines basically do the same thing, except they do it when one shows signs of puberty. This is supposed to represent the boy’s detachment from the mother. Normally before the circumcision, the boy is told by the elders that The Great Father Snake smells the foreskin. What is interesting about this ritual is that according to famous mythologist Joseph Campbell the images used in rites like the one above are innate images. According to him, one of Dr. C. G. Jung’s patients recorded that he “dreamt that a snake shot out of a cave and bit him in the genital region”. This dram occurred “when the patient was beginning to free himself from the bonds of his mother-complex”. Interesting stuff huh? When I first found out about this, I thought back to the time when I hit puberty. But as we all know, dreams are unbelievably unretainable and I had no memory of such dreams. So hats off to the aborigines for remembering. Let us know in the comments below if you had any snake related dreams before!

Authors: kittyloverh, hrk8631, borisjohnson

Works Cited:
http://www.tcs-languagestudy.com/tcsmailmaga20110112.html
https://magazine.furisode-ichikura.jp/3-knowledge-that-person-going-for-a-class-reunion-and-a-drinking-
session-after-a-coming-of-age-ceremony-should-know/https://magazine.furisode-ichikura.jp/3-knowledge-
that-person-going-for-a-class-reunion-and-a-drinking-session-after-a-coming-of-age-ceremony-should-
know/
Campbell, Joseph.The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New World Library, 2008, California.