My Love, Who Comes at the Tanabata Festival

A young man reclines on the floor, writing. A writing box with brushes, an ink stone, and ink sticks sit in front of him. A small, portable book case is open behind him. The candle suggests that he is working at night. He is writing the word “Tanabata...” on a slip of paper. Tanabata is the name of an important festival in Japan celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. A tradition from China, the festival marks the one day of the year that the legendary lovers, the Weaver Princess (Orihime, or Tanabata-tsume) and the Oxherd (Kengyū), can reunite. The pair was banished to live in the sky as the two stars Vega and Altair, separated by the Milky Way. A tradition during the festival is to write wishes on slips of paper and tie them to branches of sasa bamboo. In the print, the young man is writing a wish, with a sasa branch at the ready behind him. We can see that his wish already is being granted: Orihime is descending on a cloud with her own wish branch.