Marine Day: Coast of Futo, Ito, Shizuoka ©Mio Yamada
Japan likes to add and adjust its national holidays, often with the aim of creating long weekends for a better life-work balance. Recently, it’s most recent addition was in 2016 with National Mountain Day on August 11, but before that is Marine Day on July , a day to celebrate the ocean and seas surrounding the island nation.
It’s a day to offer thanks for the seas’ bountiful harvests but also to show an appreciation of the importance of oceans and waterways to the economic prosperity and cultural wealth of Japan.
Designated a national day off in 1995, Marine Day was first officially celebrated on July 20, 1996 as the first holiday in the summer months. Later, as part of a “Happy Monday” initiative designed to reward workers with a longer period of rest, the holiday was moved to every third Monday of July to create a three-day weekend.
It may be one of Japan’s newer official breaks, but its roots lie in the late 19th century and its celebration also commemorates Emperor Meiji’s 1876 voyage aboard the Meiji Maru, an iron ship that was made in Scotland for the Japanese government. That journey took the Emperor from Aomori in northern Japan across the Tsugaru Strait to Hakodate and then skirted the country to end in Yokohama in July.
The Meiji Maru ship in a photo taken in 1874 before its Imperial voyage around Japan. Public Domain
Today, Marine Day offers plenty of opportunities to celebrate. Most holidayers choose to take a day trip to the coast or head to a local beach for a swim to cool off in the hot and humid weather of mainland Japan’s midsummer. Other popular long-weekend Marine Day activities unsurprisingly include diving, snorkeling and surfing at resort destinations such as Isshiki Beach in Hayama.
Though it’s a holiday that doesn’t have traditional celebrations, plenty of sea-related family-friendly events and venues are promoted instead. National aquariums host water sports competitions and water shows, while Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force dress their ships with flags and banners to mark the occasion. In Odaiba, Tokyo, volunteers arrange hundred of paper lanterns in a pattern on the beach, attracting visitors to its sea-front cafes and beachside music events. Just to the south of Tokyo, the Port of Yokohama, where the Meiji Maru docked to end its Imperial voyage, an annual firework display takes place, and people visit to watch the parades and entertainers perform.
Marine plastic waste collected from the shores of Japan by volunteers for Buoy's recycled ocean waste series of homeware products. See the Buoy collection at NiMi Projects.
In addition to these events are others that focus on the holiday’s underlying message of respecting and preserving Japan’s waterways. Across the country, many volunteers organise beach-cleaning days, but it's the curious activity of “EM mud ball throwing" that has recently become popular. Here, volunteers toss thousands of dried mud balls containing effective microorganisms (EMs) into lakes and rivers. The balls slowly dissolve to release the EMs, which inhibit algae growth and help break down sludge and grime — an apt little Marine Day gift from the people to the waters of Japan.
Celebrate with us — see our Buoy collection of recycled marine plastic goods and our ocean hued and sea green homeware in our Indigo Blues collection.
Buoys on a beach in Matsushima, Miyagi. ©Keith Ng