Though she indulged me if I pestered her, a birthday just wasn’t something people fussed over: every year, no matter what month we were born, we all ate toasted soybeans on New Year’s Eve, a number equal to our age plus one—and suddenly we were all a year older. I knew vaguely that little Zoji had been born in the winter, but there was no way I could have missed Boys’ Day, with its irises and carp-shaped streamers, considering the little god Chio and Kuga would make of him each year in early summer. And both Yukako and I were cosseted and plied with emperor and empress dolls on Girls’ Day, fed
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