It's been quite a while since I spent the New Year's holiday in Japan or had a Japanese-style New Year's celebration. I want to say it's been around 8 years, but what I know for sure is that I have spent the past few New Year's with my (now) fiance and, at times, his family. That's been fun, but I've started missing the Japanese traditions and the Japanese New Year's food that we eat on New Year's Day. So, instead of writing about coerced and tired New Year's resolutions, today's post is about the Japanese New Year's traditions I grew up with.
New Year's is the biggest holiday in Japan--a time when families come together, much like Thanksgiving in the United States. Traditionally, everything would shut down starting early evening on New Year's Eve (Omisoka) and would stay closed until January 4th (the first three days of January are called Shogatsu Sanganichi and have traditionally been part of the New Year's holidays). Some of this has changed recently, but when I was in elementary school (think '90s), this was still mostly the case, and the only major exception was convenience stores. Nowadays, many supermarkets stay open to regular hours on New Year's Eve, and fewer establishments are completely shut down after New Year's Day. But that hasn't changed the variety of New Year's traditions that my family and many others follow.
There are several things that my family would always do during the New Year's holiday as I was growing up. It started out with making osechi ryori, which is the collective name for traditional New Year's food (ryori means "cooking" or "cuisine"), on New Year's Eve. Most of the dishes symbolize something (many of which are puns) and is intended to bring some kind of good fortune to the New Year. We usually spent the New Year's holiday with my grandparents (my mother's parents), so on December 31st, I would be helping my mother, my aunt (my mother's older sister), and my grandmother make osechi. Some of the tasks that I frequently did as a kid include cutting the mochi (rice cakes) into squares for the zoni (a type of soup or stew), cutting the vegetables and other contents of the zoni into the right shapes (e.g., we would use a metal mold to cut the carrots into a cherry blossom shape), mashing the Japanese sweet potatoes for the kurikinton, and tasting the kuromame. This usually takes all day, and we would order nice takeout for dinner.
At 7:30 pm, towards the end of dinner or right after, we would start watching Kohaku Uta Gassen (literally "Red and White Song Battle"), which is an annual music show starring successful artists in Japan's music industry, both old and new. The female singers and female-led groups are on the "Red Team," and the male singers and male-led groups are on the "White Team," and the judges are a bunch of celebrities, athletes, and others who have been in the news during the year. Both the live audience and the viewers get to vote live as well. The participants and the songs they will be performing are announced ahead of time, as well as the song order (which generally alternates between Red and White) so that people don't have to watch the entire 4 and a half hours if they don't want to. There is a "main" host and one host from each team (although I think I've seen duos be joint-hosts for one team). Hosting the show is akin to hosting the Oscars in the U.S., in the sense that it is (or at least was when I was growing up) a big deal and the choice can affect the ratings and evaluation of the show. Hosts are generally celebrities (and often participating singers) or popular news casters from NHK (Japan's public broadcaster which broadcasts the show). In recent years, the show has not been as popular as it was in its golden years, but if I were in Japan on New Year's Eve (or if I someday decide to purchase NHK, which is available overseas, in my cable package), I would be watching it, while likely being rather sad about all of my favorite artists now being some of the "experienced" participants.
Kohaku ends right before midnight after the winning team is announced and all participants sing "Hotaru no Hikari" ("Glow of the Firefly"), which is "Auld Lang Syne" with different lyrics. The broadcast switches over to another special live program, the ringing of the Joya no Kane (a special ceremonial ringing of the bells) at Buddhist temples across the country. During this ceremonial ringing, most temples ring their bells 108 times, which is the number of evil/worldly desires in Buddhism, starting from before and around midnight of the New Year. According to this most popular theory (there are other theories as to from where the number derives), the ringing is supposed to remove these desires. Yes, I know, it sounds weird to watch bells ring for a monotone 108 times, and it would be if NHK showed the entire ceremony at multiple locations. But the program usually has reporters who explain the quirks of the traditions at his or her respective temple, and I don't think that any location broadcasts an entire ceremony.
As we watch the bells ring, my family hastily prepares (we're always running late with things) and eats toshikoshi soba (literally "year-crossing buckwheat noodles"). I was trying to double-check the meaning of this tradition, but the online community seems to have several extremely similar but slightly different explanations for it, so I'm just going to go with what I was told (honestly, I think the real reason we always had it was because my dad really likes soba and wants to eat it at midnight). The soba symbolizes letting go of the bad fortunes of the old year and bringing good fortune to the new year. In my family, we serve the toshikoshi soba before midnight and eat it so that it is already the New Year by the time we finish.
Many people go to hatsumode ("first visit") to a Shinto shrine or a Buddhist temple right after midnight to ask for wishes they want to come true during the year. (Of course, you can go to hatsumode during any time at the beginning of the year.) And yes, it is quite strange that a good number of people go to religious institutions considering that most Japanese people are atheists. There was never much of a tradition in my family to go to hatsumode, maybe because my mother is a Christian and other members of my family don't really practice the religions with which they self-identify. Either way, I think I went maybe once during the day on New Year's Day when I was in elementary school just to cross it off the list.
Another one of my family's New Year's traditions--or, more accurately, pseudo-traditions--is seeing the hatsuhinode ("first sunrise"). Seeing the hatsuhinode is supposed to bring happiness and good health for the year. My mother, by virtue of staying up all night cleaning everything up or continuing to prep the osechi, usually sees the sun come up every year (assuming it is clear). My parents' home has a nice rooftop porch where we can see sunrises and sunsets, meteor showers that are bright enough to be seen in a not-too-bright urban area, and the biggest firework show in my home city in the summer. My grandparents' home has several porches that has a good view for the sunrise as well. So, the biggest challenge for me growing up was either staying up all night or getting out of bed early. My mother would always try to wake me up, and there are times when I have somehow managed to drag myself out of bed. Most years, I failed.
You may have noticed at this point that I haven't yet talked about eating the osechi. That is because osechi is what Japanese people eat on New Year's Day, with the expectation that there will be leftovers for the days to come. My family makes and/or buys a good range of dishes, but my favorite is probably the kurikinton, which is essentially sweet paste of mashed Japanese sweet potatoes with chestnuts.
And finally, the most important part of the New Year's for a kid is otoshidama, a cash gift given to children by their adult relatives. Kids often receive 10,000 yen (around $100) or more, which I imagine would seem surprising to many non-Japanese persons. This money, at least in my family, was not meant to spoil the child (I am the only granddaughter on my mother's side) but functioned as an opportunity for the child to learn about saving. Sure, I would use some of the money I got for candies or CDs, but when I was maybe in third grade or so, my aunt took me to the post office to open my first Yucho account (yes, in Japan, the post offices are involved in banking...see link or Google it for further explanation). I tried to save as much of any otoshidama I got as a kid, though I probably could have saved more. While otoshidama is generally a practice intended for children, my mother's parents give "adult otoshidama" (I just made up that word) to my mother and her siblings (all of whom are in their sixties or fifties) as well as to me. Much of the otoshidama I have received as an adult (and perhaps, to some degree, as a teenager) went to my excessively priced American higher education costs, and I've been thankful that I had that extra money for it.
In the end, I think what I miss the most about Japanese New Year's is the food. Flank steak and ham and mashed potatoes and all the other holiday foods I can eat with my lovely Midwestern almost in-laws are delicious and wonderful, but I really, really miss the taste of all the osechi. Maybe I should start my own tradition next holiday season, when my soon-to-be husband and I celebrate our first New Year's as a married couple, by making osechi and having some toshikoshi soba on New Year's Eve. I suppose that could be a New Year's resolution.
