{"id":23460,"date":"2012-02-08T10:35:02","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T14:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=23460"},"modified":"2012-02-08T13:07:05","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T17:07:05","slug":"why-japan-does-not-celebrate-the-lunar-new-year-to-the-extent-of-its-asian-neighbors-by-jessica-kennett-cork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2012\/02\/08\/why-japan-does-not-celebrate-the-lunar-new-year-to-the-extent-of-its-asian-neighbors-by-jessica-kennett-cork\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Japan does not celebrate the Lunar New Year to the extent of its Asian neighbors – by Jessica Kennett Cork"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Japan does not celebrate the Lunar New Year to the extent of its Asian neighbors<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>By\u00a0Jessica Kennett Cork<\/a> (CIR, 1997-2000,\u00a0Hiroshima<\/a>-ken)<\/strong><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/em><\/em>With the large number of Asians in the U.S., it was hard to overlook the fact that the Year of the Dragon by the\u00a0lunar calendar\u00a0began on January 23. But had we been in Japan, January 23 would have passed quite uneventfully. Have you ever wondered why Japan does not recognize the lunar New Year to the extent of its Asian neighbors? And as we approach the Doll Festival (Hina Matsuri), has it ever struck you as odd that this festival is also called the Peach Festival, and yet March 3 is way too early for peach blossoms? The explanation is actually quite fascinating.I am sure that most of you are aware that the Meiji Period (1868 \u2013 1912) was a period of rapid modernization in Japan. The new Meiji government undertook a variety of reforms intended to demarcate the new government from the old and shift the focus of the nation to the emperor. This is why the people of Japan awoke on the ninth day of the Eleventh Month (by the lunar calendar) of Meiji 5 (1872) to the startling news in the form of an imperial decree that the calendar they had been using for over 1,200 years is \u201cfalse, has no factual basis, and hinders the development of human knowledge,\u201d and the emperor would, in just twenty-three days hence \u201cabolish the old calendar, adopt the solar calendar, and order the realm to obey it for eternity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Meiji oligarchs, of course, were all for adopting the Gregorian calendar. Fukuzawa Yukichi went so far as to comment, \u201cThose who doubt the reasonableness of the calendar reform are surely only the illiterate and uneducated, because anyone who is used to making efforts to learn must approve of it. Therefore, this reform serves as a test to distinguish the wise from the foolish among the Japanese people throughout the country.\u201d\u00a0 But imagine the chaos that ensued among the general public which, thinking they had another month and a half until the New Year, were suddenly told that the New Year would begin in just three weeks. Asano Baid\u014d\u2019s (1816-1880) commentary catches the public reaction perfectly: \u201cThere was no time to make year-end rice cakes, so one had to buy New Year rice cakes at the rice cake shop. Some people put up the kadomatsu [New Year\u2019s decoration] on the second day of the Twelfth Month and some didn\u2019t put it up at all\u2026There were no scenes of blossoming plums by which to write New Year\u2019s poems\u2026The cherry trees were in bloom completely out of sync with the calendar, the harvest moon was gone, and the moon rose on the thirtieth day of the month. The newspaper said that if there was a [visible] moon on the thirtieth day [of the month], then square eggs must exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the chaos continues today. Because the new calendar was adopted virtually overnight, most people continued to celebrate the old holidays by the new calendar dates without properly converting them first, which caused a disconnect between the calendar date and the proper season.\u00a0 The gosekku, five holidays brought to Japan from China, were originally celebrated on the seventh day of the first month, the third day of the third month, the fifth day of the fifth month, the seventh day of the seventh month, and the ninth day of the ninth month. This is the reason that even today, the Seven Herbs Festival is celebrated on January 7, in the dead of winter when there are no herbs to collect.\u00a0 The aforementioned Doll Festival, also known as the Peach Festival, is on March 3, although peaches do not bloom until April. Children\u2019s Day, which originally was a day to pray for the health of sons during the rainy season, is now celebrated May 5, one month before the rainy season begins. The Star Festival, which was celebrated on the night of the first quarter moon (visible only in the afternoon and early evening) so that it does not hinder viewing the stars in the night sky, is now celebrated in most areas on July 7, in the middle of the rainy season and sometimes on full moon nights, often making it impossible to view the stars. The Chrysanthemum Festival is celebrated September 9, although chrysanthemums do not bloom until late autumn.<\/p>\n

It is such a shame that most Japanese have forgotten about the lunar calendar because understanding it adds so much to one\u2019s understanding of Japanese culture. How many times have you seen \u201cwelcome spring\u201d on a New Year card and wondered why you are welcoming spring in the coldest part of winter? By the lunar calendar, spring starts on the first day of the year.\u00a0 And without an understanding of the old calendar, classical literature often does not make sense.\u00a0 Take this line from Poem 61 in the Kokin wakash\u016b: \u201cO cherry blossoms- \/ even in the longer spring \/ of this special year \/ must you refuse once again \/ to grant us satiety?\u201d But armed with the knowledge that the old calendar had intercalary (leap) months which sometimes caused seasons to be four months long rather than three, the passage makes perfect sense. There are countless examples of this throughout Japanese literature. I encourage you to read up on the lunar calendar \u2013 it\u2019s one of the keys to Japan\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

Obligatory shameless plug: If you would like to read more about Japan\u2019s lunar calendar, please visit
\nhttp:\/\/www.dissertation.com\/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1612337600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Japan does not celebrate the Lunar New Year to the extent of its Asian neighbors By\u00a0Jessica Kennett Cork (CIR, 1997-2000,\u00a0Hiroshima-ken) With the large number of Asians in the U.S., it was hard to overlook the fact that the Year of the Dragon by the\u00a0lunar calendar\u00a0began on January 23. But had we been in Japan, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,4,305,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic","category-articlejournalism","category-cultural-outreach","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-66o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23460"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23462,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23460\/revisions\/23462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}