Windward

Chart the season by the wind that carries it.

Windward is the open almanac of the Tamagawa Children's Day Association — every koinobori station read like an instrument: wind speed, streamer count, the bloom of riverbank green, and the daylight that raises the carp.

Enroll a streamer station 37 stations reporting on the river right now
4.2 m/s
WSW · valley wind
Live reading · Setagaya bank 4 · 06:00
01 / Program

The fifth of May, plotted as a day-curve.

The festival programme is published the way the almanac reads everything else — as a measured natural event. Wind rises through the morning, peaks for the noon raising, and eases toward the lantern-fold at dusk.

Program day-curve · 05 May · Tamagawa banks 1–6 0609121518 048 opening raisenoon · grand raisingriver parade
wind m/s — sky linegreenery bloom — leaf band
Order of the day
First light · banks unfurled05:54
Opening raise · 200 streamers09:00
Noon grand raising · bank 412:00
River parade · kashiwa-mochi14:30
Lantern fold · readings logged18:42
02 / Live readings

An instrument panel for the festival.

Every station on the river feeds the registry. The four headline readings are charted live; the wind-rose on each panel turns toward the prevailing bearing, the graduated arc marks the scale.

Valley wind · live
4.2 m/s

Steady west-southwest off the Tanzawa ridge. Ideal raising conditions, holding since dawn.

Streamers raised
1,184

Across 37 stations — 92 more than the same hour last season. The black magoi lead every pole.

Riverbank bloom
78 %

Leaf-out along the banks, measured against the ten-year median. The green is two days ahead.

03 / Almanac ledger

Villages and readings of record.

The registry keeps an open ledger — measured columns in mono, region names in serif, hairline dividers, each row tagged with a small status dial. No heavy rules; the page reads like a well-set reference table.

Station / villageWind (m/s)StreamersTallest (m)BloomReading
Setagaya · bank 44.62149.081%Strong & steady
Nakameguro · weir3.11687.574%Gentle rise
Chōfu · gravel flat5.224010.088%Strong & steady
Komae · footbridge2.4966.069%Light · watch
Tamagawa · banks 1–24.03028.579%Strong & steady
04 / Enroll a station

Add your banks to the registry.

Any household, school, or ward can enroll a streamer station. Your readings join the open almanac; your poles appear on the live map. Three memberships, one squared form.

Household
¥0
  • One pole, up to 5 streamers logged
  • A station dial on the public map
  • Season retrospective by post
Enroll free
Ward station
¥4,800
  • Up to 40 streamers, calibrated anemometer
  • Live wind & bloom feed in the dashboard
  • Printed almanac plate of your bank
Enroll a ward station
School & archive
¥12,000
  • Unlimited poles, multi-station registry
  • Open-data export of every reading
  • Ten-year comparison plates & methods
Enroll a school
05 / Methods

How a festival becomes an almanac.

Kodomo no Hi has marked the fifth of May for centuries — carp climbing the wind as a wish for a child's resolve. The Tamagawa Association reads that wish as data: not to dim the festival, but to keep it honestly, year over year.

Every enrolled station logs four measures at fixed intervals — wind speed and bearing from a calibrated cup anemometer, the count and tallest height of raised streamers, and the riverbank leaf-out scored against a decade of photographs. Each reading is timestamped, attributed to a station, and published open. Nothing is smoothed away; a quiet morning reads as a quiet morning.

The wind-rose you see on every panel is the association's instrument: a graduated dial that turns toward the prevailing bearing so a glance tells you which way the carp are flying, and how hard. It is the same dial in the registry, the ledger, and the printed plate.

Method, in brief
Reading interval30 min
Anemometer3-cup · calibrated
Bloom baseline10-yr median
Bearing precision±5°
Open data licenceCC-BY 4.0
Records since2014
06 / Site map

The river, station by station.

Six banks of the Tamagawa carry the festival, each with its own dial. The map is the registry's chart — find a station, read its wind, walk to its poles.

Tamagawa river chart · 6 stations Komae Chōfu Setagaya · bank 4 Nakameguro Tamagawa 1–2
Stations & current bearing
Setagaya · bank 4
WSW · grand raising site
4.6 m/s
Chōfu · gravel flat
W · tallest streamers
5.2 m/s
Nakameguro · weir
SW · school enrollment
3.1 m/s
Komae · footbridge
N · light · watch
2.4 m/s
Season finale · 05 May to 06 May retrospective

When the wind is logged, the season keeps.

At dusk the dials are read one last time and the day is sealed into the almanac — a charted retrospective for every household, every ward, the whole river. Next year's curve begins where this one closed.

1,184
streamers of record
4.2 m/s
mean valley wind
37
stations sealed
10 yrs
continuous record