Editing Tanabata (section)

== History ==
The festival was introduced to Japan by the [[Empress Kōken]] in 755.<ref>{{cite book | url=http://www.psychicsophia.com/aion/chap7.html | title=Shinto and Its Festivals | first=Denny | last=Sargent}}</ref> It originated from {{Nihongo|"The Festival to Plead for Skills"|乞巧奠|Kikkōden}}, an alternative name for [[Qixi]]<ref name="Hearn1905">{{cite book|last=Hearn|first=Lafcadio|title=The Romance of the Milky Way, and other Studies & Stories|url=https://archive.org/details/romanceofmilkywa00hear|year=1905|publisher=Houghton Mifflin and Company}}</ref>{{rp|9}} which is celebrated in [[China]] and also was adopted in the [[Kyoto Gosho|Kyoto Imperial Palace]] from the [[Heian period]].

The festival gained widespread popularity amongst the general public by the early [[Edo period]],<ref name="Hearn1905"/>{{rp|19}} when it became mixed with various [[Bon Festival|Obon]] or Bon traditions (because Bon was held on 15th of the seventh month then), and developed into the modern Tanabata festival. Popular customs relating to the festival varied by region of the country,<ref name="Hearn1905"/>{{rp|20}} but generally, girls wished for better [[sewing]] and [[Artisan|craftsmanship]], and boys wished for better [[handwriting]] by writing wishes on strips of paper. At this time, the custom was to use [[dew]] left on [[taro]] leaves to create the ink used to write wishes. Incidentally, Bon is now held on 15 August on the [[solar calendar]], close to its original date on the [[lunar calendar]], making Tanabata and Bon separate events.

The name Tanabata is remotely related to the [[Kun'yomi|Japanese reading]] of the Chinese characters 七夕, which used to be read as "Shichiseki" (see [[Kanji#Readings|explanation about the various kanji readings]]). It is believed that a [[Shinto]] purification ceremony existed around the same time, in which a Shinto [[miko]] wove a special cloth on a loom called a {{Nihongo|''tanabata''|棚機}} and offered it to a god to pray for protection of [[rice]] crops from rain or storm and for good harvest later in autumn. Gradually this ceremony merged with ''Kikkōden'' to become ''Tanabata''. The Chinese characters 七夕 and the Japanese reading ''Tanabata'' joined to mean the same festival, although originally they were two different things, an example of ''[[jukujikun]]''.