November 3 is Bunka no Hi, Culture Day, a national holiday in Japan. It is one of the quieter ones. There is no parade and no special food. Museums in many cities open free, schools hold their autumn culture festivals in the weeks around it, and at the Imperial Palace the Order of Culture is presented to a handful of scientists, writers and artists for the year’s work.

Underneath the holiday is an idea that the Japanese household keeps all year, and that kakeibo gives a column to: culture is not a luxury that comes after the necessities. It is a line of its own.

Where the day comes from

November 3 was first a holiday as the birthday of the Emperor Meiji, and was kept after his death as Meiji-setsu. In 1946 the postwar constitution was promulgated on the same date, and when the holidays were reorganised in 1948 the day was renamed Culture Day, with the stated purpose of loving freedom and peace and advancing culture. The constitution came into force the following May 3, which is its own holiday, Constitution Memorial Day.

The day has a small reputation of its own. It is one of the dates in the Japanese year with an unusually high record of fine weather, what forecasters call a tokui-bi, a day that tends to be clear more often than chance would suggest. Autumn festivals and school events are planned around it partly for that reason.

What people do with it

Most people do nothing in particular, which is the point of a holiday. But the things that cluster around the date are consistent. School bunkasai, where classes put on plays, exhibitions and food stalls. Free entry at national museums and many municipal ones. Art exhibitions timed to open that week. Awards: the Order of Culture at the Palace in the morning, and in the same season the Persons of Cultural Merit are named.

It is, in effect, a day the calendar sets aside for the things that are not strictly necessary, and names them as a public good.

The kakeibo column

Hani Motoko’s kakeibo, published in 1904, divided household spending into categories, and one of them has no equivalent in most Western budgets: culture, bunka-hi. Books, concerts, lessons, a museum ticket, the newspaper, the trip to see the leaves. It sits beside needs and wants as a column of its own, which means it is planned and recorded rather than squeezed out of what is left.

That column is the same idea as the holiday. A household that keeps a culture line is saying, in its own accounts, that a month without a book or a concert is not a complete month, however well the needs were covered. Kakeibo users who skip the column tend to find, at the year’s review, that it quietly disappeared in the months when money was tight, and that those months were the thin ones in memory too.

Ikigai, in the small sense

In Japan ikigai is used for small things more than grand ones: the reasons a day is worth getting up for. A lesson on Tuesday evening, the exhibition booked for Saturday, the novel on the bedside table. Most of what people name when asked about their ikigai would, in a kakeibo, land in the culture column. The column is where the ledger meets the question.

For a home outside Japan

Three small things carry the day anywhere.

Give the column a name. If the household budget has no line for books, music, lessons and going to see things, add one, and fund it before the wants. Even a small fixed amount changes what the month contains.

Pick one date. Put a day in the calendar, November 3 or any other, when the household goes to see something: a museum, a performance, a place. Fixed dates survive busy years; good intentions do not.

Write it down. At the month’s review, read the culture column aloud. It is usually the shortest list on the page and the one that best describes what the month was actually like.

Culture Day is a holiday for something most calendars leave out. The kakeibo column is the household version of it, kept twelve times a year.

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This article is part of a series exploring Japanese philosophy and intentional living:

• The Category Most Budgets Forget: Kakeibo and the Culture Line
• Ikigai Is Not Your Life’s Purpose. It Is Smaller, and Better
• Kakeibo and the Culture Line, Month Two: When Ten Dollars Is Not Enough
• Koyo and Momijigari: How Japan Watches the Leaves Turn