Omisoka/Hogmanay & Oshogatsu/New Year
New year, in comparison to Christmas, is a definite holiday in Japan. At the shipyard, every single member of staff was out contributing to a big tidy up (known as osouji) to end the year well. Whether your work apparel was a boiler suit or smart suit, no difference. Gloves were donned, brooms were lifted and a close to fastidious tidy was undertaken. I made a similar effort at home, but no doubt without the efficient attention to detail which the Japanese seem to display at every turn.
Tamano began to take on even more of a ghost town appearance than usual, as most people left to travel home to celebrate New Year with their families. The shipyard covers 20 square kilometres and employs close to 3000 people. Mostly the employees reside in dormitories in the town, leading to a mass exodus for this special holiday. It had the effect of making us seem very far from our own home in the Highlands, where I suppose not so long ago (in fact throughout Scotland) New Year was the big celebration, Christmas not really registering on the calendar at all. Nowadays, they have equall-ish pegging and I’m certain it would rest happier with me if I was sure that change had been motivated by our wish to celebrate and share during the dark months, as opposed to the desire of shops and their owners, marketing departments and trend analysts to make as much money as possible.
Still, though there are some things which change or are lost with time, Hogmanay and New Year do seem to have held on to many traditions and practices where ever you are in the world – without interference from the world of commerce. The beliefs and actions we undertake on the 31st and 1st bring a sense of ritual and reverence to the night, along with a genuine charm and affection for the customs believed to be worth doing on this special night, just once a year.
In an odd bit of synchronisity, or perhaps it is just such an exceedingly good plan, folk here throw wild drink fueled parties, not on, but in the run up to December 31st. These parties are known as bonenkai, literally meaning “forget the year” parties, where the aim is to lose all the unpleasant memories of the passing year and enter the new year with a fresh and serene mind. Well that’s the theory, anyway. I wonder if that’s what we are doing in Scotland, too? Just that we’ve made such a good job of it, we’ve forgotten that we were supposed to be forgetting … and by leaving it to the 31st don’t manage the “fresh head” on the 1st.
At the office or work related bonenkai, managers encourage their staff to relax from the formal modes of address and use the more familiar terms of expression. I’d love to have enough of an understanding of the language to really get to grips with this. I’ve often been annoyed that we don’t have a plural “you” in English (I don’t think the Glasweigan “yous” counts) and that it does seem odd that we don’t have a sibh, as in Gaelic or vous as in French if we want to, well, I suppose show someone more respect … but I think here it is even more complex than just personal pronouns.
So how wise, to have a night where all of that is relaxed and people get to let their hair down a bit … after all, the hierarchy is there to maintain a sense of order, an indication of where the buck stops and who is in charge in the work place, but away from it, as I fondly remember of one former employer saying you are just “a man in a pub”. I reckon though, that even in their relaxed language mode, the Japanese are still more polite and well spoken than we are and it seems a shame that we’ve lost some of the respect and consideration people used to show one another. I’m not advocating we all go back to having pokers in our derrieres (see, that’s me trying to be polite), but a little formality can be a good thing and can aid or ease the progress of a relationship, working or otherwise.
Back to Japan and the 31st. After all the tidying and parties, people here tend to gather at home perhaps sharing a special meal of toshi-koshi soba – extra long noodles that are said to symbolize longevity. Most folk will visit a shrine, and our own neighbourhood was resonating with the sound of the large Buddhist bell being struck – 108 times to represent the 108 human weaknesses. I’m yet to find a list and discover how many of them we were committing as we polished off our curry, played cards and drank in the new year. No doubt lack of perseverance into what those 108 human weaknesses were will be in there somewhere …
We didn’t have a late night. With only two of the bungalows occupied, first footing was pretty easily accomplished and so we were tucked in I think before 1 am. Now, I am not one for sharing dreams, fascinating as I find my own, I know they tend not to make a great deal of sense to anyone else. A bit like arty movies, the only explanation is that the sequence of events must make sense or have made sense to someone, somewhere, sometime. Here in Japan though, the “firsts” of the new year are considered particularly important – the first visit to a shrine, the first food you eat, the first bit of work you do and particularly your first dream, which - what with visits to a shrine, possibly staying up to watch the first sunrise - normally doesn’t come around until the night of January 1st.
The first dream is called hatsuyume, and is supposed to foretell the luck you will have in the ensuing year. Apparently, it is thought to be particularly auspicious to dream of Mount Fuji, a hawk and an aubergine. That’s not what I dreamt of and I genuinely amn’t going to share what was in my hatsuyume. I don’t think there is anywhere in the world it would make sense and even if someone could decipher its meaning, I’m not sure I would want to know what it meant. And I definitely don’t want an interpretation of what it might mean for my fortune (or lack thereof) in the year ahead.
I’m just hoping that my desire to deal with whatever comes up in 2010 as it arrives, rather than with forewarning, is considered a good thing by the Buddhists and isn’t on their list of human weaknesses. And I hope that my belief that some things – or at least some dreams – should be kept to oneself, isn’t thought impolite.
