#06 in Kimono With Flower project - When in Furisode?

When do Japanese ladies wear Furisode kimonos?

It is Coming of Age Day when a lady is celebrated as being 20 years old. Coming of Age Day is every year on the 2nd Monday of January and is a Japanese national holiday to celebrate people who have reached the age of twenty.

⁠⁠My coming of age day celebration party was in 2007. The photo above is the one taken in 2007.
Those days, about 80% of girls who attended the celebration party wore a Furisode kimono. ⁠⁠⁠⁠And most of them had book the Furisode for rental a half year before of party at Kimono rental store. Yes, we don't have Furisode. We just borrow the shop.

Only that day, the market demand for Furisode is very high. As a result, the prices at the rental kimono shop skyrocket.⁠It cost about 2000 US dollars ( 200,000 JPY) to rent a furisode and related things! Oh mom, thank you for saving the money😂😂⁠⁠⁠

Pretty shocking that a kimono rental only for 1-day ⁠costs 2000 USD, right?⁠

The story of A half-century ago

According to my 72-year-old mother-in-law, Kimono is shared in the family in the past. ⁠

My mother-in-law has her Furisode. She worked from 18 years old, and she saved money to buy hers.⁠
There weren’t many rental shops back in those days.

At first, she bought a fabric roll. It is for Furisode. And asked the kimono tailer to fit her body. ⁠In those days, every kimono is tailormade. She says it might cost about 1 million Japanese yen including the Obi and other related things.⁠

More people wore wafuku; Japanese-style clothing, in those days, and the number of family members was usually bigger back then. My mother-in-law's sister also wore my mother-in-law's furisode at her coming-of-age party.⁠

When it comes to my 63-years-old mother in Gifu, she didn't wear a Furisode at a party. She was a junior college student and poor, so she didn’t have such a luxury. Because of that, she might have saved the money for my Furisode, I think.

⁠My mother-in-law and my husband want my daughter to wear a Furisode for a coming⁠ of age party.⁠
But then, her furisode will be over 60 years old... Will she want to wear it or not? I have no idea.⁠

Photo by studio Shimomura, Kawasaki Daishi

Except for the coming of age day, the unmarried woman will wear when attending at a wedding party! The bride also wears at the party, and guests also can wear. It is formal wear for unmarried ladies in Japan.

2021,4.11 Mikiho