Style / Jewellery

Tanaka Goes for Gold on Japan’s Children’s Day

The Ginza jewelry store designs ornate samurai helmets for the May 5 festival.

Mar 21, 2016 | By Staff Writer

Jewelry store Tanaka, located in Ginza, is celebrating Children’s Day in style this year with a sale of samurai helmets ornamented in gold and silver, worth tens of thousands of dollars each. The festival occurs May 5, and the sale went on ahead of time last week.

Children’s Day was originally a celebration exclusively for boys and fathers, and was called Boy’s Day in the past. This was in contrast to another festival called Girls’ Day, that occurs March 3. During this period of celebration (for Children’s Day), displaying items signifying vitality and strength is common, including carp-shaped flags and traditional samurai helmets. For Girls’ Day, also called Doll’s Day, ornately crafted dolls are displayed instead.

The Tanaka Kikinzoku Group, in charge of the Tanaka store, have celebrated the festival with such glitz before. In 2013 they designed gold samurai helmets with Disney Mickey Mouse logos. This year’s collection has designs modeled off helmets actually worn by famous warriors in the past (one example being the legendary shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu). They often had original helmet designs for self-identification, with traits like deer antlers or crescent moons.

According to the store, each helmet is made with up to 430 grams (15 ounces) of gold, worth as much as six million yen ($53,700), and are suited as an investment asset besides being beautifully crafted objects.

This story was written in-house, referencing wire stories. The image is courtesy of the AFP.


 
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