New Year Celebrations (Gillian)

Japan, as a Shinto/Buddhist country, considers the New Year a more spiritually significant celebration than Christmas. As a result, in Japan, New Year is a bigger celebration than Christmas (although these days the Japanese certainly enjoy some aspects of Christmas, like Christmas lights and present-giving, as well). As the most important celebration in the Japanese calendar, New Year in Japan is an aspect of traditional Japanese culture that is certainly not to be missed, if one is ever given the opportunity to experience it.

The first realisation that New Year is coming is the furious writing and sending of nengajou (New Year’s Day postcards). This started as a means of letting faraway friends and relatives know that you and your family are alive and well. In retrospect, they are incredibly similar to Christmas cards. You can make them or buy them in stores, they often contain standard messages (“Happy New Year”, “Happiness to you in the new year”, “I hope to see you again this year”, etc) written on the front of them, and they are aimed to be sent so that they arrive on or around New Year’s Day.

Above are some designs for nengajou. The message is generally written on the front. The bottom picture is of the back of standard nengajou, where the recipient’s address is written.

The few days before New Year’s Eve are spent cleaning, which as an incredibly uncool activity (in my opinion) shall be mentioned no further in this article. By New Year’s Eve this cleaning is finished, and the day is spent eating buckwheat noodles called toshikoshi soba, which are supposed to ensure prosperity and longevity.

A few pictures of toshikoshi soba.

Many people spend the evening watching a selection of several nationwide New Year’s Eve television shows. The most famous of these shows is probably Kouhaku Uta Gassen (“The Red and White Song Festival”), where male (white team) and female (red team) singers compete against each other, singing songs that were popular during the year and being judged by a panel. This show has been running for over 60 years, and is pretty popular amongst the Japanese people.

AKB48 (top) and Arashi (bottom), during previous broadcasts of Kouhaku Uta Gassen. Notice that AKB48 are dressed in red and Arashi are dressed in white.

At around 11pm on New Year’s Eve, people will start heading down to their local shrines for midnight. As they while away the time before midnight, Japanese people will peruse the stalls, where you can play little games or buy food like crepes and takoyaki. Before midnight there is sometimes a countdown, and at midnight the people standing in front of the shrine will sometimes release balloons (at least, they do in front of Tokyo Tower).

Above is a line of New Year’s Eve stalls, and below are a bunch of balloons that have been released in front of Tokyo Tower to welcome the year 2011.

At midnight, the Buddhist temples will ring their bells 108 times, to symbolise the 108 human sins in Buddhist belief. Ringing the bell is believed to rid the Japanese of their sins during the previous year. At the Shinto shrines, people get as close as they can to the main altar and throw coins at the doorsteps of the shrine, then clap their hands (to summon the Gods) and pray. At local, smaller shrines people will throw their money into offering boxes, ring a bell, then clap their hands and pray.

Before praying, you are supposed to wash your hands and mouth at a basin in front of the doorsteps to the shrine like the one in the upper photo. The lower photo is of an offering box behind a long rope connected to the bell of the shrine.

After praying, Japanese people will often draw their fortune from a stall run by shrine maidens, who wear white kimonos. After paying 100 yen or so for the privilege of having your fortune drawn, a box with bamboo sticks with numbers etched on them, is shaken until the tip of one stick pokes out of the hole on the top of the box. The shrine maiden then gives you a piece of paper, called an omikuji, with a fortune written on it that corresponds to the number on that stick. After reading the fortune, many people tie their fortunes to branches of trees, or to strings strung between the trees.

A couple of lines of string, on which people have tied their omikuji.

New Year’s Day is the major family-gathering day of the year. Instead of presents, children (just children, mind) are given little decorated envelopes, called pochibukuro, containing a sum of money, known as otoshidama. Instead of communal lunch-cooking between the women of the family, communal rice-cake making, called mochitsuki, often occurs. With mochitsuki, boiled sticky rice is placed in a wooden shallow bucket-like container. One person pats the rice down with water, while one or more people beat the rice with a large, heavy wooden mallet. This creates a sticky rice paste, called mochi, which can be made into little dumplings and used in a number of different dishes. Sometimes it is toasted and put in soup, or it is mixed with different flavours, like kinoko (mushrooms) or anko (sweet bean paste) or natou (fermented beans). To be honest, mochi is probably one of the worst celebratory foods out there, because it is so sticky that people, particularly children and the elderly, choke on it. Every year a death toll by mochi choking is reported in the newspapers. But, the Japanese will not be shaken from their traditions.

Above are pochibukuro of several different designs. Below is a typical mochitsuki.

New Year’s lunch features a fantastic array of strictly Japanese foods, laid out on a lovely low table or kotatsu (low table with a lowered floor for leg space, a blanket that covers your legs, and often a heater). The family sits together and enjoys their lunch, converses, and has fun with each other. These sorts of communal lunches and dinners will continue up until the 3^rd of January, when New Year celebrations are officially considered over.

Above, a rather elaborate New Year’s breakfast. Below, a kotatsu.

Personally, I enjoy how Japanese New Year’s is quite similar to Christmas in a western country, but with a distinctly Japanese flavour. It is truly an experience worth experiencing, and from my perspective it is one of the coolest traditional events in Japan.