Seijinshiki 2020: Kitakyushu’s Coming of Age Ceremony dazzles in the Year of the 1 min read
Turning 20 marks the societal threshold for adulthood in Japan. Every year on the second Monday of January, known as Seijin no Hi (Coming of Age Day), crowds of Japanese youths who turned 20 the previous year or who will turn 20 by the coming April take part in a ceremony known as Seijinshiki, the Coming of Age Ceremony, in their hometowns. These ceremonies are quite formal in nature and participants are supposed to don their most elegant suits and kimono–most of the time, that is.The city of Kitakyushu in Fukuoka Prefecture has been turning heads for quite some time now thanks to many of their 20-year-olds decking themselves out in the most garish outfits imaginable to mark their entry into adulthood. It’s become something of a tradition for us as well to send one of our reporters to the city to document each year’s most outlandish get-ups. The kinds of outfits that this particular group of young adults tends to wear would likely give their obaachan a heart attack (unless they were part of this idol group from Osaka).