|
|
|
|
Japanese New Year
|
| |
|
| |
The Japanese celebrate New Year's Day on January 1 each year on the Gregorian Calendar. Before 1873, the date of the was based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar and celebrated at the beginning of spring, just as the contemporary Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese New Years are celebrated to this day. However, in 1873, five years after the Meiji Restoration, Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar, so the first day of January is the official New Year's Day in modern Japan. It is considered by most Japanese to be one of the most important annual festivals and has been celebrated for centuries with its own unique customs.
nese people eat a special selection of dishes during the New Year celebration called , typically shortened to osechi. A popular soup is , consisting of miso, , , , , and .
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Japanese New Year' Start a new discussion about 'Japanese New Year' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
The Japanese celebrate New Year's Day on January 1 each year on the Gregorian Calendar. Before 1873, the date of the was based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar and celebrated at the beginning of spring, just as the contemporary Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese New Years are celebrated to this day. However, in 1873, five years after the Meiji Restoration, Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar, so the first day of January is the official New Year's Day in modern Japan. It is considered by most Japanese to be one of the most important annual festivals and has been celebrated for centuries with its own unique customs.
Traditional food
Japanese people eat a special selection of dishes during the New Year celebration called , typically shortened to osechi. A popular soup is , consisting of miso, , , , , and . Many of these dishes are sweet, sour, or dried, so they can keep without refrigeration—the culinary traditions date to a time before households had refrigerators, when most stores closed for the holidays. There are many variations of osechi, and some foods eaten in one region are not eaten in other places (or are even banned) on New Year's Day. Today, sashimi and sushi are often eaten, as well as non-Japanese foods. To let the overworked stomach rest, is prepared on the seventh day of January, a day known as .
Postcards
The end of December and the beginning of January are the busiest times for the Japanese post offices. The Japanese have a custom of sending to their friends and relatives. It is similar to the Western custom of sending Christmas cards. Their original purpose was to give your faraway friends and relatives tidings of yourself and your immediate family. In a manner of speaking, this custom existed for people to tell others whom they did not often meet that they were alive and well.
Japanese people send these postcards so that they arrive on the 1st of January. The post office guarantees to deliver the greeting postcards by the first of January if they are posted within a time limit, from mid-December to near the end of the month and are marked with the word nengajo. In order to deliver these cards on time, the post office usually hires students part-time to help deliver the letters.
It is customary not to send these postcards when one has had a death in the family during the year. In this case, a simple postcard is sent instead to inform friends and relatives that they should not send joyful New Year's cards, in order to show respect for the deceased.
People get their nengajo from many sources. Stationers sell preprinted cards. Most of these have the Chinese zodiac sign of the New Year as their design, or conventional greetings, or both. The Chinese zodiac has a cycle of 12 years. Each year is represented by an animal. The animals are, in order: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and boar. 2006 was the year of the dog, 2007 was the year of the boar, 2008 was the year of the rat, and 2009 is the year of the ox. For 2006, famous dogs like Snoopy and other cartoon characters were especially popular. For 2008, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were popular.
The postcards may have spaces for the sender to write a personal message. Blank cards are available, so people can hand-write or draw their own. Rubber stamps with conventional messages and with the annual animal are on sale at department stores and other outlets, and many people buy ink brushes for personal greetings. Special printing devices are popular, especially among people who practice crafts. Software also lets artists create their own designs and output them using their computer's color printer. Because a gregarious individual might have hundreds to write, print shops offer a wide variety of sample postcards with short messages so that the sender has only to write addresses. Even with the rise in popularity of email, the nengajo remains very popular in Japan.
Conventional nengajo greetings include:
(I hope for your favour again in the coming year)
(Happiness to you on the dawn [of a New Year])
(Happy New Year)
(literally "early spring")
Otoshidama
On New Year's Day, Japanese people have a custom of giving money to children. This is known as . It is handed out in small decorated envelopes called 'pochibukuro,' similar to Goshugi bukuro or Chinese red envelopes and to the Scottish handsel. In the Edo period large stores and wealthy families gave out a small bag of mochi and a Mandarin orange to spread happiness all around. The amount of money given depends on the age of the child but is usually the same if there is more than one child so that no one feels slighted.
Mochi
Another custom is creating . Boiled is put into a wooden shallow bucket-like container and patted with water by one person while another person hits it with a large wooden hammer. By mashing the rice, it gets sticky and forms a sticky white dumpling. This is made before New Year's Day and eaten during the beginning of January.
Mochi is also made into a New Year's decoration called , formed from two round cakes of mochi with a placed on top. The name daidai is supposed to be auspicious since it means "several generations."
Because of mochi's extremely sticky texture, there is usually a small number of choking deaths around New Year in Japan, particularly amongst the elderly population. The death toll is reported in newspaper publications the day after New Year .
Poetry
The New Year traditions are also a part of Japanese poetry, including haiku and renga. All of the traditions above would be appropriate to include in haiku as kigo (season words). There are also haiku that celebrate many of the "first" of the New Year, such as the "first sun" (hatsuhi) or "first sunrise", "first laughter" (waraizome—starting the New Year with a smile is considered a good sign), and first dream (hatsuyume). Since the traditional New Year was later in the year than the current date, many of these mention the beginning of spring.
Along with the New Year's Day Postcard, haiku might mention "first letter" (hatsudayori—meaning the first exchange of letters), "first calligraphy" (kakizome), and "first brush" (fude hajime).
Games
It was also customary to play many New Year's games. These include hanetsuki, takoage (kite flying), koma (top), sugoroku, fukuwarai (whereby a blindfolded person places paper parts of a face, such as eyes, eyebrows, a nose and a mouth, on a paper face), karuta, and others.
Entertainment
There are many shows created as the end-of-year, and beginning-of-year entertainment, and some being a special edition of the regular shows. For many decades, it has been customary to watch the TV show Kohaku Uta Gassen aired on NHK on New Year's Eve. The show features two teams, red and white, of popular music artists competing against each other.
Hatsumode, hatsuhinode, the "firsts" of the year
Celebrating the new year in Japan also means paying special attention to the "first" time something is done in the new year. Hatsuhinode is the first sunrise of the year. Before sunrise on January 1, people often drive to the coast or climb a mountain so that they can see the first sunrise of the new year. Hatsumode is the first trip to a shrine or temple. Many people visit a shrine after midnight on December 31 or sometime during the day on January 1. If the weather is good, people often dress up or wear kimono. Other "firsts" that are marked as special events include shigoto-hajime (????, the first work of the new year), keiko-hajime (????, the first practice of the new year), hatsugama, the first tea ceremony of the new year, and the hatsu-uri, (the first shopping sale of the new year).
See also
|
| |
|
|
