The Little Prince Day (Hoshi no Ōjisama no Hi)

What Is The Little Prince Day?

Every year on June 29, fans in Japan celebrate "The Little Prince Day," named for the birthday (June 29, 1900) of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author and aviator behind the world-famous classic The Little Prince. On this date in 1999, the world's first museum dedicated to him, the "Saint-Exupéry Little Prince Museum" in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, opened, and the day is said to have been established to mark the opening (the museum closed on March 31, 2023). The day invites us to recall the book's message, "what is essential is invisible to the eye," and to look again at our bonds with the people around us.

Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince

The Little Prince grew out of the author's experiences as a pilot, combined with poetic imagination.

• A career as an airmail pilot: Born in Lyon, France, Saint-Exupéry flew airmail routes in Africa and South America. At the end of 1935, while attempting a long-distance flight from Paris to Saigon, he crash-landed in the Sahara Desert and wandered for several days before being rescued. This experience is said to have laid the groundwork for the story's desert setting.
• Published in America: The Little Prince was published in 1943, during World War II, in New York, where the author was living in exile. He drew the illustrations himself.
• Read around the world: It has been translated into hundreds of languages and dialects and is said to be one of the most translated books in the world apart from religious texts. Total sales are often put at around 200 million copies.

The Little Prince in Japan

In Japan, the book was published by Iwanami Shoten in 1953 in a translation by French literature scholar Arō Naitō. The original French title means "The Little Prince," but the Japanese title Hoshi no Ōjisama ("The Prince of the Stars") was Naitō's own creation. After the copyright expired in Japan in 2005, many new translations by different translators were published.

Fascinating Facts About The Little Prince

• "The elephant inside the boa constrictor": At the start of the story, a drawing that grown-ups take for a hat is actually a boa constrictor that has swallowed an elephant — a scene that pokes fun at adults' fixed assumptions.
• The fox's words: "What is essential is invisible to the eye" is what the fox tells the prince when they part after becoming friends.
• Asteroid B-612: In honor of the prince's home, "Asteroid B-612," an asteroid discovered in 1993 and numbered 46610 was named "Bésixdouze" (French for "B-six-twelve"). Playfully, 46610 written in hexadecimal is "B612."
• The last flight: On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupéry took off on a reconnaissance flight and never returned. Later, a bracelet engraved with his name and the wreckage of the plane he was flying were found in the sea off Marseille; his body was never found.

Ideas for Spending The Little Prince Day

• Reread The Little Prince and notice how the lines that stay with you have changed since childhood.
• Compare several translations and enjoy the differences in each translator's choice of words.
• Write down the "invisible things that matter" in your own life.
• Look up at the night sky and think about the stars and asteroids in the story.

What Is Essential Is Invisible to the Eye

June 29 is Saint-Exupéry's birthday and a day to turn our thoughts to the world of The Little Prince. In busy daily life, our attention tends to go to visible things such as numbers and results. Today, pause for a moment and think about your relationships with the people close to you, and about what you truly value.