Author: admin

It’s a familiar picture for everyone in the Western world: Every year when Christmas comes, the trains, planes, and roads are full to the bursting point since all the families and loved ones want to gather at their hometown or at some special place like a lovely remote hotel or even go to a country far away.

Japan is not much different in that regard, except that this takes place the days before the turn of the year, the most important public holidays in Japan.

New Year’s Eve falls on a different weekday every year, but beginning December 28, it is the same spectacle: Literally millions of people are on their way to the train stations or airports, the roads are totally jammed, the trains and planes heavily crowded and not only are all fares skyrocketing due to the sudden demand peak, also the usually available deductions are suspended. Needless to say that all seats are reserved months in advance, so those who don`t plan their trip well face a hard time.

Another however rather unpleasant occurrence is the every year recurring flu epidemic. When half a nation is on the move, it is easy for viruses and bacteria to spread out, and what was a locally confined matter soon gets a nationwide problem.

Many Japanese who want to escape the cold climate in December and January might have booked a flight to Guam or Hawaii, and others prefer to spend the holidays in Europe or Northern America. So it is no surprise that even the long-distance flights are booked out.

But there are also those for whom these holidays are not a happy time, since they have nowhere to return to. Those who don’t have a family or no one to be with at the turn of the year most likely feel especially lonely and melancholic at this time.

Quite a characteristic happening occurs on the big express motorways, most of all on the Toumei Express Motorway, the main east-west link between Tokyo and Nagoya (continued by the Meishin Express Motorway to Osaka). On this motorway, traffic jams up to 30 km are then no unusual occurrence, and TV stations provide live coverage of the development of this super-traffic jam and how the people in the jam feel about it.

When after the end of the holiday around January 3rd or 4th all the people return to their homes and workplaces – the so called U-turn rush – the same thing happens in the opposite direction. TV and radio stations send out reporters to the big train stations and airports to catch some families with kids for an interview, since the Japanese like the cute answers the kids give on how the New Year was at, say, their grandparents place. The kids might say something like “It was so much fun building an igloo with Grandpa” or “When we waved goodbye to Grandpa and Grandma at the train station, we were a little bit sad that we already had to part”. This gives the TV and radio audience a heartwarming feeling, and might help keeping the recreation of the holidays despite all the exertions of the big travel rush.

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are the most important holidays throughout the year in Japan, and there are countless traditions and events to celebrate the turn of the year.

It is customary to do a big housecleaning at the end of the year – to be accomplished by the day before New Year’s Eve at the latest. This is called oosōji, “the big cleaning” (where oo means big and sōji means cleaning). People want to get rid of all the dirt that accumulated over the year and get tidied up to welcome the New Year with a sense of inner and outer freshness.

At midnight, an impressive and somewhat mystique Buddhist tradition is practiced, the joya-no-kane. This is the tolling of temple bells at New Year’s Eve. The bell is tolled 108 times, as this is, according to Buddhist beliefs, the number of evil desires that mankind suffers from on earth. Each stroke drives away one evil passion, and eventually those who partake in this ceremony are purified for the upcoming year.

Food is – of course – another important part of the New Year traditions, like the Toshikoshi-soba, the “year-crossing noodle”, a traditional Japanese noodle bowl dish eaten on New Year’s Eve.  It symbolizes ending the old year and beginning the New Year, as the lengthiness of the noodles can be understood as a prayer for longevity.

New Year’s Day, the very beginning of the New Year, is called oshōgatsu, and is the highest of the holidays in Japan. Since Japan is not a Christian country, there are no holidays during Christmas, but instead most employees and workers have a few days off around the turn of the year. During these holidays, family members living all across Japan travel to their hometown and relatives get together to celebrate the New Year – you can just imagine how heavily crowded the public transport and streets are at this time!

At New Year’s Day, many people pay a visit to a Shinto shrine, often opposite to visiting a Buddhist temple the day before (as most Japanese see no contradiction in practicing rites of both religions), and see their relatives to exchange customary New Year’s greetings. Many women put on a kimono this day as a festive dress.

Nenga-jyo, traditional New Year’s greeting postcards, are sent in excessive numbers to friends, colleagues, teachers, superiors or just to those recipients the senders want to maintain or establish some kind of relationship with. Since it is important that they arrive this very day, cards marked as nenga-jyo are withheld by the postal service in order to be delivered exactly on New Year’s Day.

Osechi-ryōri is another traditional New Year food, prepared for three days in five or three stacked lacquerware boxes called jūbako. The arrangement of the food in the jūbako symbolizes good wishes for the family’s well-being and prosperity, for example, kuromame, cooked black beans, are associated with health because of the alternative meaning of mame “healthy”, gold-colored kurikinton, mashed sweet potatoes with sweetened chestnuts, represent prosperity, and kazunoko, herring roe, stands for fertility. However, since preparing osechi-ryōri is quite a laborious matter, there are not few ones these days who don’t prepare osechi-ryōri at all or prepare them for only one or two days.

You might have heard of mochi, Japanese rice cakes, or ozōni, a regionally different mochi-soup. Mochi, usually hard like a brick, are fried until they get soft enough to eat them, but as they are very sticky and chewy, each year some unlucky persons suffocate while eating them. Ozōni with all its variations might just appear as a good alternative!

Kakizome is the event where the first calligraphy of the year is written with a brush, and takes place on January 2^nd. A Chinese character or a phrase serve as a resolution for the New Year and conveys the wishes and hopes for the New Year. Frequently used characters are those for “dream”, “success”, “health” and so forth.

January 7^th is the day to eat nanakusagayu, rice porridge prepared with the seven herbs of spring. This symbolizes the wish for good health throughout the year and beyond this metaphorical meaning, this porridge can bring relief to the stressed stomachs of all those who have eaten too much osechi or mochi.

All these traditions and customs, whether one follows all or just some of them, help the Japanese to start refreshed and well prepared into the beginning year.

Nowadays Christmas is celebrated all over the world, and Japan is no exclusion. Although Christianity is not an original religion in Japan, the Japanese have a tradition of getting inspired by non-Japanese traditions and customs to enrich their own cultural and spiritual life.

How did Christmas come to Japan? It was in the year 1552 when the first Christmas mass was held by Jesuit missionaries in the Yamaguchi prefecture. However, Christmas was soon banned by the Edo government in 1612 and could only be celebrated hidden until it was allowed again in the Meiji period around 1868, when Japan actively sought innovations and ideas from the West to reduce its technological and economic backlog at that time. Since then, the perception of Christmas was mainly influenced by the American way of celebrating Christmas.

All over the world Christmas is becoming more and more a commercial rather than a religious event. People are encouraged to get in a Christmas mood by Christmas decorations in the shopping streets and shop windows, by playing Christmas songs everywhere and by special Christmas offers for food, gifts, or getaways. Japan is not different in that regard, but where in many western countries Christmas is celebrated in the families, in Japan it is first of all a day for couples, and, to a lesser extent, for families with little children.

Especially in the big cities in Japan, Christmas means “enjoying a romantic time with the loved one”. On Christmas Eve, many young couples spend their time together in an exclusive restaurant or in an expensive hotel, which are booked out months in advance. Also giving each other expensive gifts like watches or jewelry plays an important role, and of course not having a boyfriend or girlfriend can put quite some pressure on the lonely ones.

As for food, many people in Japan like to have chicken for Christmas dinner, mostly at KFC (which made the Japanese believe that this is the very way Americans celebrate Christmas). Even more common is the custom of eating Christmas cake, which the Japanese like to buy in luxurious hotels, in department stores, or just in ordinary convenience stores. Since white (like snow) and red are typical colors for Christmas, the typical Japanese Christmas cake is a sponge cake frosted with whipped cream and decorated with strawberries.

In Japanese family homes you’ll hardly find real fir trees, since small artificial trees fit better into the often not too spacious houses. Parents of little kids often fill stockings with presents for them in the night before Christmas, mostly electronic gadgets or computer games, which the kids will find in the morning. As the kids are growing up, this tradition is becoming less frequent, until the kids are old enough for the couples’ part of Christmas.