Japan History and Culture

Japanese badminton (Hanetsuki)

Hanetsuki is a Japanese traditional game, similar to badminton, played without a net, and is played with a wooden paddle called hagoita and a shuttlecock called hane and is made from colorful feathers. This game is a young girls game that is played at New Years.

The game can be played in two fashions, by one person attempting to keep the shuttlecock aloft as long as possible, or by the two people batting it back and forth. Girls who fail to hit the shuttlecock get marked on the face with India Ink by a stroke of a brush. While the game’s popularity has declined in recent times, beautifully ornamented hagoita are still a popular collection item, it has since become a custom to give a hagoita as a gift to celebrate the birth of a girl.