A Civic Coming of Age

Seijin-shiki is deliberately a civic rather than a Shinto or Buddhist rite, though it descends from older coming of age customs, genpuku for young men and mogi for young women, that were performed within the household and marked with religious observance in earlier centuries. The modern ceremony began after the Second World War, formalised nationally by a 1948 law establishing Coming of Age Day as a public holiday, held on the second Monday of January, at which municipalities across Japan invite every young person who has reached the age of legal adulthood that year to a local hall for a civic ceremony of speeches, congratulation and, in most towns, no religious content at all.

The custom of visiting a shrine or temple afterward for a blessing is common but optional and privately arranged rather than part of the official ceremony, which keeps church and state, or in Japan's case shrine and state, cleanly separated in line with the country's postwar constitutional settlement. In 2022 Japan lowered the age of legal adulthood from twenty to eighteen, but most municipalities chose to keep Coming of Age Day ceremonies pegged to twenty, reasoning that eighteen and nineteen year olds are typically still in secondary education or newly arrived at university and less able to gather for the event.