Shichi-Go-San · September to December · Akasaka, Tokyo
The Go Board Five-Year-Olds Jump Off
If you're in Tokyo in November you will see small children in kimono at every shrine. You probably know it's Shichi-Go-San. What the English guides skip is why it falls on 15 November, which shrine Edo's almanacs singled out for it, and the Go board at that shrine that five-year-olds climb onto and leap from.
七五三 shichi-go-san · 碁盤の儀 goban no giHie Shrine · Akasaka Hikawa · Kyoto Hōrin-jiFacts checked October 2026
By now you have seen it, even if you didn't stop: a three-year-old in a kimono at Meiji Jingū, a long red-and-white bag of candy, grandparents with phones out. Shichi-Go-San, "seven-five-three", is when families take children aged three, five and seven to a shrine to give thanks that they've made it this far. The basics are all over English websites.
This piece is about the parts that aren't. It sends you to Hie Shrine (日枝神社, Hie Jinja) in Akasaka instead of Meiji Jingū. It is smaller, it was the shrine Edo writers named when they described the day, and from 1 September to 20 December it keeps a Go board in front of its main hall for a rite that came from the imperial court. You give up the scale of Meiji Jingū's forest. You get the version of the custom that's closest to where it started.
Why 15 November徳松 · Tokumatsu
The explanation almost every Japanese source leads with is a single family event. On the 15th day of the 11th month of 1681 (Tenna 1), the fifth shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, held a celebration for his son Tokumatsu (徳松). The townspeople of Edo copied the date. Meiji Jingū's own FAQ calls this the most decisive reason.
The detail that rarely gets told: Tokumatsu was born in 1679, so in 1681 he was three by the old way of counting age. His celebration was the age-three rite, kami-oki, not a "five-year-old" one, as some retellings say. And he died in 1683, aged four by the modern count. The date that Japan now uses to give thanks that children survived comes from a boy who didn't.
Meiji Jingū's FAQ also lists the reasons the date was already lucky: the 15th of the old 11th month was a full moon and the day of the harvest festival of that month, it was the best day of the year in Onmyōdō divination, and 7 + 5 + 3 makes 15. Another explanation you will see in Japanese writing is that it was a kishuku-nichi (鬼宿日), a lucky day in the 28-mansion calendar. Treat that one as folk explanation; we couldn't find a firm source for it.
The date is 345 years old, but the name is younger than the railway, and most of Japan only took it up in living memory.
Three rites, merged late髪置・袴着・帯解
Shichi-Go-San began as three separate rites. Edo did not even call them Shichi-Go-San. Meiji Jingū's FAQ says the earliest example of the word it knows is an 1878 newspaper article. The National Diet Library's history column puts the custom's spread among ordinary Tokyo households in the Meiji era and its spread across the country in the 1960s. Before that, few rural areas did all three. Meiji Jingū also notes that it was mainly a Kantō custom, rarely done in Kansai.
Each age marks a change in what the child wears. That's why the clothes, not the shrine visit, are the centre of the day.
Ages were traditionally counted the old way, where a child is one at birth and gains a year every New Year. Shrines today accept either. Akasaka Hikawa Shrine's 2026 chart lists both, with a note that celebrating by actual age is increasingly common. That's why you'll see some children who look small for "seven".
Hie Shrine and the Go board日枝神社 · 碁盤の儀
Hie Shrine was the Sannō shrine of Edo, the shogunate's guardian shrine. Its Shichi-Go-San page quotes two Edo almanacs. One from 1803 lists the hair, hakama and sash celebrations on the 15th and says families visit their local shrines, "above all the Sannō shrine in Akasaka". One from 1838 describes the Sannō shrine as busy with music that day. If you want to see the custom in the place Edo writers associated with it, this is that place.
The Go board is the reason to come. At the imperial court, a boy's hakama ceremony was followed by fukasogi (深曽木): the child, holding a fan and sprigs of pine and mountain orange, stands on a Go board on two green stones, has the tips of his hair trimmed, and jumps down facing south. It was done for Prince Hisahito in November 2011, the first time for a boy of the imperial family in 41 years. An Edo-Tokyo Museum answer in the National Diet Library's reference database cites Edo etiquette sources showing ordinary families standing a child on a Go board for the hakama rite as well.
The jump is the point. Shrines explain it as the child stepping off into the world on their own.
Hie Shrine brought this to the public in 1979. A 2011 report in the local Akasaka paper said it was free and that children jump towards the shrine, the lucky direction. A 2022 report counted three boards. The shrine's 2026 photography rules say the boards are set out from 1 September to 20 December, in front of the main hall by the offering box.
Shrines explain the meaning in their own words: growing up straight, opening one's own luck, independence. Kashihara Jingū in Nara, which calls its version the goban no chikai, "Go board vow", says the board stands for the world and the child jumps forward into it.
Getting there: Tameike-Sannō Station (溜池山王駅), Tokyo Metro Ginza and Namboku lines, a few minutes' walk. Akasaka Station (赤坂駅) on the Chiyoda Line also works.
When: Boards out 1 September–20 December 2026. Shichi-Go-San prayers 9:00–16:00, no booking.
Cost: Prayers from ¥10,000, cash only. The board rite was reported free in past years; we couldn't confirm 2026, so check before you go.
Reality check: The rite is for families who come with their child. As a visitor you're watching, not taking part.
Akasaka Hikawa, across the neighbourhood赤坂氷川神社
Akasaka Hikawa Shrine (赤坂氷川神社) is the other Akasaka shrine with a full Shichi-Go-San programme, and the contrast is useful. Hie takes families without booking. Hikawa requires reservations, in 15-minute slots from 9:30 to 16:00, from ¥5,000. Its gifts include chitose-ame and a Shichi-Go-San ema. It also has the clearest photo rule we found: families may photograph in front of the hall, inside the middle gate, only for 15 minutes after their prayer. Nobody may photograph inside the buildings.
Getting there: Akasaka Station or Roppongi-itchōme Station (六本木一丁目駅). Hie Shrine to Hikawa is a walk across Akasaka.
Reality check: Booking is through the shrine, in Japanese. For a visitor without a child there's nothing to book. Just go on a weekend morning.
The candy bag千歳飴 · chitose-ame
You know the long bag. The detail worth having is where the story comes from. The best-documented account comes from the writer Ryūtei Tanehiko's 1825 essay Kangon Shiryō (還魂紙料). It says that in the Genroku and Hōei eras (1688–1711) a candy seller in Asakusa named Shichibei sold the sticks in long bags. Meiji Jingū's FAQ adds that the bags read chitose-ame, "thousand-year candy", or jumyō-ame, "long-life candy". Other origin stories put it at Sensō-ji with a merchant from Osaka, or at Kanda Myōjin. None of them is better sourced.
The Edo-Tokyo Museum has an actual 18th-century chitose-ame bag from a family of shogunate retainers. It is 40.8 cm long and 7.9 cm wide, nearly the shape you'll see in November.
If a family is posing and you'd like a photo of the scene, ask the parents first: 写真を撮ってもいいですか？ (shashin o totte mo ii desu ka?) If they say yes, a quiet おめでとうございます (omedetō gozaimasu) to them afterwards is the normal thing to say.
The 15th itself is a Sunday this year, but an unlucky one. Expect the crowds on 22 November, a lucky Sunday in a three-day weekend.
In Kyoto: the thirteen-year-olds instead十三まいり · jūsan-mairi
Since Shichi-Go-San was a Kantō custom, Kyoto has its own coming-of-age visit that runs at the same time of year. At Hōrin-ji (法輪寺) in Arashiyama, children aged thirteen by the old count come to receive wisdom from the bodhisattva Kokūzō. The temple says the autumn season runs from October to 30 November, with a spring season from 13 March to 13 May. Each child writes one kanji to offer. Prayers start at ¥5,000 and there's no booking. It is a temple rite, not a shrine one, and it is a quieter thing to see than a Tokyo shrine on a lucky Sunday.
Getting there: Hankyū Arashiyama Station (阪急嵐山駅). The temple is on the hill on the south side of the river, on the same side as the station.
Reality check: You may have heard that children mustn't look back on Togetsukyō bridge on the way home or they'll lose the wisdom. Dictionaries and tourist pages repeat it; the temple's own page doesn't mention it.
The honest part
This is someone else's family day. The child, the kimono and the photographer are the event, and you are standing at the edge of it. Hie Shrine's rules ask visitors not to photograph shrine staff or other worshippers without permission. Tripods, monopods, large flashes and bubble toys are banned, as is any commercial filming. Take that seriously, especially with children.
On a weekday you may see very little. Shichi-Go-San isn't a holiday, and families come on weekends and lucky days. On 22 November you may see too much: queues, photographers and wedding parties, since Hie and Kanda Myōjin also hold weddings, and Kanda Myōjin warns that weekend prayers can overlap with them.
The Go board rite happens when a family chooses to do it. There's no schedule, and you may wait a while or not see a jump at all.
Some of what you'll read elsewhere is uncertain. The kishuku-nichi explanation and the "under 1 m long" rule for chitose-ame both come from secondary sources we couldn't trace further.
If you only have one day
Pick a Saturday or Sunday in November and do the Akasaka pair in the morning.
Tameike-Sannō Station. Take the escalators up the hillside to Hie Shrine.
Find the Go boards by the offering box in front of the main hall. Stand well back and watch for a jump.
Walk across Akasaka to Akasaka Hikawa Shrine. Watch the 15-minute photo slots in front of the hall from outside the middle gate.
Lunch in Akasaka.
Ginza Line from Tameike-Sannō to Suehirochō Station (末広町駅), then walk to Kanda Myōjin, one of the shrines named in the chitose-ame origin stories. Its Shichi-Go-San prayers run until 15:45, no booking. Our Kanda town-name walk ends at the same shrine.
Done. If it's 22 November and Akasaka was packed, skip Kanda and go home early.