2024 New Year's Celebration: Oshogatsu (Japanese Cultural Events, Live Taiko, Rice Pounding, Calligraphy, Kite-Making, Lion Dancing..)NEW

Celebrate the New Year Japanese-style at our Oshogatsu event that’s filled with fun for the whole family! After watching a riveting Japanese taiko drum performance, kids are invited on stage for a hands-on drum mini-workshop. Families can then welcome the New Year with exciting and traditional activities like New Year’s calligraphy, lion dancing and other New Year’s-themed crafts. With such wonderful activities for the whole family, you are sure to ring in the New Year with great joy!

Japanese boxed lunches and snacks will be available for purchase on-site from BentOn. An inside picnic area is provided for eating.

New Year's Oshogatsu Date
January 28, 2024, Sunday

Time
12:30 pm - 3:30 pm

Schedule Performances
• Taiko Drumming & Shishimai Lion Dancing (1 pm)
• New Year’s Calligraphy (Kakizome)
• Rice Pounding (Mochitsuki)
• Kamishibai Storytelling
• Kite (tako) Making
• New Year’s Postcards (Nengajo)
• Paper Dragon Puppet Making

Tickets
$18/$12 Japan Society members; children ages 2 and under free. Free for Cool Culture members. Advance ticket purchase required. This event will be photographed. Recommended for children ages 3-10 and accompanying adults.

Activities Include

Taiko Drumming & Shishimai Lion Dancing (1 pm)
Enjoy a dynamic taiko drumming performance by Taiko Masala. Following the show, children are invited to practice and perform on stage with the troupe of drummers. Before the performance, there will be a shishimai lion dance procession. A lucky bite from this lion will give you luck throughout the whole year!

New Year’s Calligraphy (Kakizome)
Begin the New Year with kakizome-calligraphy written at the beginning of a new year. Children and parents of all ages can experience the time-honored classics of brush and sumi ink calligraphy art.

Rice Pounding (Mochitsuki)
Families take turns pounding rice dough (mochi) in a large mortar (usu) with a wooden mallet (kine) and enjoy this traditional cultural experience first hand!

Kamishibai Storytelling
Enjoy this traditional form of Japanese storytelling as you listen to popular New Year’s folktales such as “Hats for the Jizos” and “How the Years Were Named.”

Kite (tako) Making
Design your own traditional Japanese kite! Assemble the frame from bamboo and decorate it with any number of festive designs to add your personal touch.

New Year’s Postcards (Nengajo)
The practice of sending and receiving New Year’s postcards is a popular tradition in Japan. Children can create their own New Year’s-themed postcards to send to friends and family this New Year!

Paper Dragon Puppet Making
Celebrate this year’s zodiac animal with fun and adorable crafts! Create your own paper dragon puppet to take home and keep you company all year long.

About Japan Society
Japan Society programs are made possible by leadership support from Booth Ferris Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Family Programs are generously supported by ORIX Corporation USA; Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas); public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Masako Mera and Koichi Mera, PhD Fund for Education and the Arts; The Norinchukin Foundation; and Friends of Education and Family Programs

Oshogatsu Location
Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, NY 10017

About 大晦(Ōmisoka) New Year’s Eve
Of all the festivals in the Japanese calendar, New Year’s is by far the most important and elaborate. Traditionally, preparations for the New Year began in the middle of December with a thorough house cleaning (susubarai) from top to bottom. These and other preparations were made in anticipation of the all-important visit from Toshigami-sama, the ancestral deity of the New Year. If Toshigami-sama was pleased with the preparations a household had done for the New Year, it was believed that he would bestow good fortune, energy and spirit, on all the members of the household for the year ahead. On Ōmisoka (New Year’s Eve), people would stay up all night to greet this ancestral deity, who in some stories, much like Santa Claus, would go from house to house with a sack on his back to add a year to everyone’s life. That meant that in the old days in Japan, everyone turned one year older at the same time on New Year’s!*

The custom of placing decorations with pine branches outside the front of the door (kadomatsu) comes from the notion that the Shinto gods (kamisama) prefer to manifest in pine trees so these decorations were believed to entice the ancestral deity into people’s homes. Placing decorations made of rope and paper and often various auspicious symbols (shimenawa), over doorways was also meant to welcome Toshigami-sama into the house. And perhaps most importantly of all, the offering of two large round rice-cakes (kagami-mochi), placed one on top of the other, was meant to contain the spirit of Toshigami-sama, who was also considered to be a deity of the harvest. Rice cakes play such an important role in the New Year’s festivities that people would traditionally do a large-scale mochi-tsuki (rice-pounding to make mochi rice cakes) in preparation. In the days leading up to New Year’s, people would also make an assortment of special New Year’s foods (collectively called osechi-ryōri) that all have symbolic meaning to ensure good fortune for the year to come. Preparing this food in advance also allows families to relax without having to worry about cooking during the holiday itself.

At temples and shrines, cleansing and purification are the focus of New Year’s eve, when all around Japan temple bells are rung 108 times to cleanse the world of what, in Buddhist terms, are the 108 worldly desires and afflictions. As the old year crosses over into the new, people eat buckwheat noodles called toshikoshi-soba (literally, crossing-into-the-Year soba) to ensure that, like the long noodles, they will also have long life.

お正月(Oshōgatsu)-New Year’s Day
In honor of Toshigami-sama’s visit and to celebrate the harvest, people in Japan eat a special soup on New Year’s called ozōni, as well as osechi-ryōri, or auspicious foods prepared in advance. Each region of Japan has a different recipe for ozōni, depending on what they typically harvest in that area, but the one thing they all have in common is mochi, or rice cakes. These rice cakes were originally called toshidama (年魂-meaning, the spirit of Toshigami-sama), but today toshidama (年玉-meaning “year’s treasure”) refers to the much anticipated envelopes containing money that grownups give to children for New Year’s.

Decorations and festivities relating to Toshigami-sama continue for the duration of his visit, which was traditionally believed to last until January 7th (matsu no uchi). Also on January 7th, people celebrate the first sekku of the year (nanakusa no sekku) by eating a seven-herb rice gruel (nanakusa-gayu), which is meant to keep one healthy in the coming year. By January 7th, certain rituals have to be accomplished, like receiving New Year’s cards (nengajo, which would have been sent out in mid-December), making ones first visit to a shrine (hatsumōde), and congratulating all ones friends and neighbors on the successful start of a New Year with the greeting, “Akemashite omedetō gozaimasu” (literally, “Congratulations on the opening [of the New Year]”.) Every first (hatsu) of the New Year-the first dream (hatsu yume) and first sunrise (hatsu hi no de)-is celebrated and carefully noted. In schools, the first writing of the New Year (kakizome) is still treated as a special event, often involving competitions where children write their goals for the coming year in their best calligraphy.

After the 7th of January, the kagami-mochi rice cakes-where Toshigami-sama’s spirit is believed to reside during his visit-are smashed into little pieces for the whole family to eat. Each little piece is believed to retain the spirit of Toshigami-sama, and, by sharing the kagami-mochi with every member of the family, everyone receives the spirit of Toshigami-sama and the strength they will need to last them through the year ahead. A popular way to eat the kagami-mochi and mark the end of the New Year is to roast it and put it in a sweet red-bean soup called oshiruko.

Another important element of the transition into a New Year in Japan and other parts of Asia is the change from one animal in the Chinese zodiac to the next in the following order: mouse, bull, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, rooster, dog, boar. Long after the switch to the Gregorian calendar in the Meiji period (1868-1912), Japanese continue to use the Chinese zodiac as an important organizing principle behind how they calculate, for example, their own or other people’s age and year of birth. New Year’s cards (nengajo) in Japan almost invariably are decorated with the zodiac animal for the New Year.

As outlined above, Oshōgatsu (New Year’s) is really a series of festivals wrapped into one, lasting in some regions of Japan until at least the 15th (or 20th) of January, which is called Little New Year’s (Ko-shōgatsu). This is the time when all the New Year’s decorations are ritually burned so that Toshigami-sama’s spirit can be welcomed in afresh the following year. -Tara McGowan, PhD. Literacy, Language and Education. Costen Children’s Library, Princeton University

* By the old reckoning (kazoe-doshi), babies were thought to be one year’s old at birth. Then they would turn two at the New Year’s, even if they were just recently born, and they would turn three by the next New Year’s. In other words, a child as young as one year’s old by modern reckoning, would have been considered to already be three!