The Japanese New Year’s Festival, Games and Pastimes

The Japanese prints with which we are most familiar in this country are those known as nishikiye, literally “brocade picture.” Generally speaking, they are portraits of actors and famous beauties or landscapes and nature studies. Of the many festivals enjoyed in Japan, none is attended with more ceremony than that which opens with the New Year and is celebrated with more or less formality for fourteen days.

It was customary in the old days to celebrate the New Year at the time when the plum first blossomed and when winter began to soften into spring, somewhere between the middle of January and the middle of February. Since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, this festival opens on January 1st, and is attended by many of the interesting ceremonies that were practised in former times. On the thirteenth day of the preceding month, a special stew (okotojiru) is made from red beans, potatoes, mushrooms, sliced fish and a root (konnyaku). About this time a cleaning of the house takes place. It is partly ceremonial and partly practical, and is known as “soot-sweeping” (susu-haraki). Servants are presented with gifts of money and a short holiday.