Everyone knows that the holiday season is about giving. With Saturday Spotlight I am able to give all year round. Help me support these lesser-known authors and get their novels into the hands of more readers! Take a chance on something new this holiday season. It is the second to last Saturday Spotlight. Next week I have a crazy special treat for all of you, so be sure to watch for that next week.
Today, I am happy to present Estella Mirai! As you all know, I love Asain culture so I was super happy when she suggested this guest post idea. Estella will be talking about Christmas in Japan! Let’s all give her a warm welcome. (That means clap but I suppose in this case you could like or comment on this post, add her book to your TBR list, or even buy it!
About the Author
Estella Mirai lives just outside of Tokyo with her human family and a very spoiled lap cat. When she isn’t reading or writing, she works in editing and translation—which means that 99% percent of her day is usually words. In her minimal free time, she enjoys watching musicals, cooking (badly), and slaughtering power ballads at karaoke.
Estella’s Novel
The Stars May Rise and Fall
Guest post
Christmas and the New Year in Japan
THE STARS MAY RISE AND FALL is not a holiday book, per se, but as you might have guessed from the title, one of the major themes of the story is the cycle of life—the change of the seasons, the idea that the end of one thing is the start of another. And whatever end-of-the-year holiday or holidays you celebrate, there’s no better time of the year to reflect on where you’ve been and to make goals and plans and dreams for what’s to come.
Some of my very favorite scenes in the book, then, do take place around the end of the year, and I enjoyed taking the opportunity to share some uniquely Japanese ways of celebrating the holidays with my readers. Today I’d like to talk about some of my favorite end-of-the-year customs, some of which made it into the book, and others of which didn’t. Join me for a journey through the holidays in Tokyo—the traditional, the new, and the wonderfully bizarre.
Christmas isn’t much of a family holiday
For families with young kids, Christmas is more or less like a toned-down version of what you’d get in the West. Turkey isn’t readily available here, and ham is only really sold as slices of lunch meat, so a lot of people eat chicken. Yes, KFC is a popular choice, and it’s usually what I eat for Christmas too! But since a lot of Japanese people don’t eat fried chicken often, it really does end up feeling special. Kids usually get one present from a “Santa” they don’t tend to believe in as strongly or for as long as their Western counterparts do, and families and friends don’t tend to exchange gifts with each other. Because Christmas isn’t a public holiday, work and school go on as usual (although some schools are already out for winter vacation around that time), and people tend to celebrate on Christmas Eve night or on the 23rd, the Emperor’s birthday, which is a public holiday (at least until this year; the current Emperor is planning to abdicate next April). Even family Christmases are usually immediate family only—the visits from distant cousins happen over the New Year holiday, instead.
For teens and young adults, however, Christmas often doesn’t involve family at all. It often doubles as a kind of Valentine’s Day (which Japan does too, but also in a very different way!). Everyone must have a date for Christmas Eve! Hotels (both love hotels and more typical hotels) fill up, as do popular restaurants. It’s a big night for first dates, first times, proposals, and just about any other milestone you can imagine. A lot of people also get married on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and while they don’t buy gifts for their parents or siblings, gifts for significant others (at least until you get married and/or have kids) are a must. It’s very much a lover’s holiday for most young people, and plays a role in many love stories (including mine)!
Christmas light displays are also a big THING here, if not usually on homes. Some people do decorate their houses, but the truly gorgeous Christmas lights can be found at department stores, train stations, and especially at places like amusement parks. These are usually crowded, especially on the weekends, but are popular date spots! You can also get a pretty good show just by walking around some of the metropolitan shopping areas for free.
Since only about one percent of the population is Christian, Japanese Christmas isn’t usually a religious holiday. Depending on how old you are, it’s mainly about food and toys, or about love.
New Year IS the big family holiday—and also an important time for entertainers!
Don’t worry—just because we don’t do it on Christmas doesn’t mean Japanese people are immune from drunk uncles and awkward family dinners. It just usually happens a week later, during the New Year holidays.
New Year’s Day is a public holiday, and most people with office jobs get anywhere from about 4 to 10 days off. This is the biggest time of year for people to travel to their parents’ or grandparents houses for the holidays, and there’s also a religious component, as many people visit Shinto shrines on New Year’s Day or shortly thereafter.
Possibly more important to my musician characters, however, is the end of the year entertainment! A lot of artists have New Year’s Eve concerts, which can range from anything from multiple bands taking turns at a small venue to a single artist selling out the 55,000 seat Tokyo Dome. People who don’t go home for the holidays, or who travel a little late, might spend the night of the 31st counting down to the New Year in whatever subculture they’re a part of. At the time my book is set (2000-2001), the trains ran all night on New Year’s Eve, although recently at least some of the lines have been shutting down for a few hours.
Even for people who do stay home with their families on New Year’s Eve, entertainment is key. The closest equivalent to something like the Times Square countdown—in the sense that it’s been around forever and is probably what your grandma wants to watch—is the Kohaku Uta-gassen, or the red and white (celebratory colors) song contest. Being chosen to perform and compete in this countdown show is a mark of status for artists, although it’s not necessarily the most popular artists of that particular year that get chosen. There’s usually a mix of currently popular musicians and older Enka singers—to preserve tradition, and also because the government-owned NHK broadcasting network and its audience tend to be conservative. Recently, there’s been an effort to include artists who were popular when millennials and Gen Xers were young, too. Personally, I might tune in to one or two acts, but overall think the whole show is TOO all over the board to sit through it all… but the people who love it really love it, and others just watch it every year because “that’s what you do.”
Other channels also offer competing shows. Remember the Eddie Murphy blackface cosplay fiasco? That was part of a New Year’s comedy show (which is pretty much always in some sort of bad taste, FYI). It’s probably the second most popular show that night, but every channel has SOME kind of countdown.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of performers don’t get the New Year’s holidays off. A lot of newscasters, etc., will take a break from their shows after the holidays and leave their colleagues in charge!
Everyone rests and shops AFTER New Year’s Eve
After the fun of Christmas and New Year’s, the couple of days after New Year’s Day are usually time to rest. People visit their relatives on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, and if they’re more traditional, they make or buy osechi-ryori, a collection of traditional dishes in a multi-layered box that is intended to be eaten little by little over the course of the holiday, to give homemakers some time off as well. Even less traditional families like mine tend to eat special food during that time. A lot of people these days go for less expensive sushi sets and party trays, which restaurants and supermarkets take reservations for.
“Spring cleaning” is also usually done BEFORE the New Year, for a clean start, and also, again, to buy people a bit of rest.
A lot of shops also have sales either on New Year’s Day or during the following week. One of my favorite parts of the holiday is fukubukuro, or grab bags, where you can buy a mystery bag of items from your favorite shop at what is often a very discounted price. Nowadays, a lot of fukubukuro aren’t very mysterious—some stores create special fukubukuro that are all the same, and show people the contents before they buy. That’s definitely safer, but I always like finding shops where you really are getting a mystery! If it’s a clothing store, you’ll always know the size, of course, but beyond that, I like to be surprised.
There’s way too much to explain it all here!
It feels like I’ve left out so many things! I haven’t had time to explain end-of-the-year parties (bonenkai) or New Year’s postcards (nengajo). How about how, back in the early days of texting, everyone tried to text their friends at exactly midnight on New Year’s Eve, and phone lines could get so congested that it could take hours for anything to go through?
I could probably write a whole book about this, but I’m not sure it would hold anyone’s interest! I do highly recommend visiting Japan during the holidays, though, if you have a chance… and if not, you can always get there through the magic of a good book!
I absolutely loved this post by Estella! I am a huge sucker for Asian culture, especially Japanese or South Korean. It was very fun reading about different traditions there for the holidays and I know I hope I could visit someday.
Giveaway
Estella has offered to give away two e-copies of her book mentioned above!! Be sure to enter and tell everyone, especially international people.
I want to thank Estella again for being a wonderful participant in Saturday Spotlight! If you have not checked out her book yet and want a new read, try it! I really love that it ties in some Japanese traditions.
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