Koinobori is a tubular streamer shaped like a carp, hung together with similar streamers on a pole for the Boy’s Festival. Families with little boys put them out to wish for a healthy and successful life.

A carp climbing up a water stream is considered a symbol of success in life. It’s based on an old fable from China, which talked of many fishes trying to climb up the waterfalls called Touryumon in the rapid stream of Kouga river. Only a carp could do it. They say that samurai families began the Koinobori practice during the Edo Period.

Nowadays, however, we do not see many of them anymore, because there are few families with small boys who can own a house with a garden large enough to fit big Koinobori streamers.

So there are alternatives to use inside an apartment: small Koinobori ornaments, or a doll of a Japanese boy with a carp in his hand.