New Year Traditions in Japan

New Year is the most celebrated holiday in Japan. Preparations actually start a week or two before New Year’s Day with a thorough cleaning of the home known at osouji. In addition to cleaning the home, osouji is a symbolic purification of the mind to show respect for the New Year deities.

Although crowds were smaller for the 2021 New Year preparations, many still flocked to markets to buy traditional foods (osechi), and decorations made of straw, pine, and bamboo. These decorations are meant to welcome the New Year deities and ward off evil.

Supermarkets, hotels, department stores, and even convenience stores offer prepared sets of osechi, which offer a variety of food for family and friends to eat during the first three days of the New Year. In more typical years, families will celebrate New Year’s Eve by eating osechi and a few cups of sake before making their way to the shrine for a midnight visit to greet the New Year, but not before eating one more dish known as toshi-koshi soba, a bowl of long soba (buckwheat) noodles symbolizing a long-life. Usually, enough food is left over to be able to serve visitors and relatives who drop by on January 1st and 2nd to offer a cheery “Akemashite Omedetto!”, the Japanese equivalent of Happy New Year! Thus, most osechi is made to be eaten cold, except for the bowl of ozouni which is a miso flavored soup of rice cakes (omochi) and vegetables usually eaten on the morning of January 1st.

The first shrine visit of the New Year is known as hatsumode. In normal years long lines of people shuffle their way forward to toss a coin or two into the collection box and say a prayer. With Covid infections climbing to record highs shrines (jingu) are taking extra precautions to avoid close contact of worshippers. This year some shrines will be closed to avoid crowds at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and those that are open will require masks and remind everyone to be mindful of social distancing.

Most shrines will also close their Chōzu-ya (hand washing stations) to avoid crowded situations. In normal years, the ritual is to take a dipper, rinse one’s left hand, then right hand, then mouth, and finally the ladle’s handle by letting the water run out of the cup and down the handle to purify themselves before entering the main shrine grounds. The Chōzu-ya at our neighborhood shrine, Hachiman-Jingu, was open on December 30th, but as of New Year’s Eve it was covered with a plywood box to keep it from being used.

When visiting the shrine worshippers bring last year’s hamaya, the ceremonial arrow sold by the shrines and meant to ward off evil from the home. The old arrows will be burned in a special ceremony held a few weeks after the start of the year. New arrows are purchased and placed in the home until the next New Year. (In our case, when we were living out of Japan for 14 years, we kept the same arrow and moved it from country to country with us, finally returning it for burning when we moved back to Japan. That poor arrow was probably exhausted from all those years of protecting us.)

Not to be left out, Buddhist temples celebrate the New Year with joya-no-kane, the ringing of the bell. The bell is rung 108 times to symbolize the cleansing of the 108 worldly desires that have permeated mankind during the past year. Maybe a 109th ring should be added to rid the world of Covid this year!

Most Japanese don’t mail out Christmas cards, but millions of nengajou (New Year greeting postcards) will be mailed keeping thousands of postal workers busy delivering them to homes on New Year’s Day. Some people, and many companies, have gone digital now with animated cards sent to customers by email. Most physical nengajou have a special post office lottery number printed on them, which will be used for a chance to win prizes ranging from postage stamps to money. The winning numbers are printed in newspapers and online a few weeks after the start of the year.

New Year’s is also a good time for children to increase their personal wealth. Family, relatives, and friends hand out envelopes containing otoshidama (New Year gift money). Lucky kids may get several hundred dollars in gift money. Their parents will typically allow them to spend a bit of it on something they want while putting the rest into a savings account. Adult children may sometimes gift their parent’s money, too.

In normal years (i.e., non-Covid years) in the first week after returning to work, which usually happens on the first Monday after the New Year, business people will visit their customers’ offices to wish them a Happy New Year and a kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu (please give us your business / be kind to us again this year). Since their customers may also be out visiting their customers, the visitors may leave one of their meishi (business cards) rubber stamped in red ink with a New Year greeting, to show that they have made the effort to visit their customer. Like many things in Japan, the gesture shows sincerity to the customer and goes a long way for keeping the relationship alive and well into the coming year.

I leave you with a heartfelt Akemashite omedetto gozaimasu! Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu.

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