Happy New Year, everyone! We celebrated the new year here a few hours ago. For us, it was a traditional Japanese one. We watched a singing competition on TV called Kōhaku Uta Gassen. It's more or less the Japanese version of Dick Clark New Year's Countdown, the only difference being Kōhaku divides the women and men into two teams—men are white and women, red—and votes to see which team won at the end of the show. It's all playful and not serious. White won this year.
While watching, we ate soba noodles for long life—a silly superstition, but a good excuse for eating soba, which are my favorite noodles. Some mochi, lots of beer, some mandarin oranges. My family doesn't do osechi, which is the traditional New Year's food. It's hard and very time consuming to make, and none of the cooks in this extended family like it, so we go without. Oh well. It's good, but not great, so I'm fine without. Beer, mochi, and soba are good enough.
via Wikipedia
Kōhaku ended about ten minutes before the hour, so we hurried to the nearby temple afterwards to listen to the bell ring in the year. They were serving free sake and I took advantage.
And that was about all to the night.
The temple bell always reminds me of one of my favorite haiku, which I share every year. Long-time followers might recognize it.
toshi toranu tsumori narishi ga kane no naru
did I intend to grow old…
the temple bell tolls
—Jokun
The temple bell is rung 108 times on New Year's Eve, timed so that the last one hits just as the New Year does. This is done to purify us of all earthly sins. In old Japan, they didn't celebrate birthdays as we do today; instead, everyone's age went up on New Year's Day. Old Jokun must have heard one of the bell rings and was reminded of his age.
The idea is a common one: when we are young not only do we never think aging will actually happen to us, but we have some ambition to resist Father Time somehow. But it comes anyway, it sneaks up on us, and before we know it, we've gotten older.
I translate that a little differently every time I do. There is to me a hint of Peter Pan's refusal to grow up, so that (or more likely, the Disney song) is always hovering around the edges of my thoughts, influencing my translation.
The reason behind the significance of 108 lies in numerology. The phrase 四苦八苦 is readshiku hakku and means "8 unavoidable difficulties”. Broken down 四 means 4, 苦 is read as ku which sounds like 九 (9), and 八 means 8. All together we get: (4×9)+(8×9)=108.
Silly? Yeah. But many traditions are rooted in silliness, so this one hardly is unique in that.
Anyway, once again, Happy New Year! Let's hope it's a good one.
†: On the old calendar, New Year's Day was the first day of spring, so many traditional paintings and drawings for New Year's feature cherry blossoms.
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David is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon. |
That is, me! If you like this translation, feel free to use it. Just credit me. Also link here if you can. ↩
あけましておめでとうございます🎍
年とらぬつもりなりし(Toshi toranu tsumori narishi ga) sounds very touching. Yes, the New Year comes every year without fail. I hope your kids enjoyed receiving Otoshidama!
haha yes, my kids enjoyed their otoshidama. Between xmas, all the new years shrine luck things (omikuji, omamori), and my oldest son's birthday (on Jan 18), I have no money left.
Happy new year! 今年もよろしくお願いします
Happy New Year! That was such a fun a nice way to celebrate new year.
We have this too, lol. We do it too even during birthdays.
Any excuse to eat soba is a good one, eh? 😃
My wife and I got some Chinese food for lunch today and this evening we just had appetizers for dinner. We are about two hours away from the new year, but I have a feeling as soon as the Penn State football game is over, we will likely head to bed if not sooner!
Happy new year! It's great that I can greet hivers from all around the world around the clock. May we have a bountiful year ahead !BBH !LOLZ !PIZZA
Happy New Year!
Traditions in Japan are so interesting, but some of them are slowly disappearing like preparing osechi as a family and sending nengajo. Well, I think it's the same in many places... I just hope people would still appreciate these traditions even if they're no longer widely practiced. Have a great 2025! :)
Yeah, but that is the way of things these days. Traditions are going away and/or changing. Nengajo may be dying as physical post cards, but the younger generation has just moved nengajo to online. LINE messages for nengajo have increased in popularity a lot recently.
Anyway, happy new year!!
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