A Fish Out of Water: New Years decorations

2005.12.31

New Years decorations

The neat segue from Christmas to New Years doesn't limit itself to inside the house. The toshigami (New Years gods) need to be informed that dwellings, offices, cars and other places have been purified and are ready for the New Year. Usually this purification involves oosouji, a big clean-up, similar in scale to a Canadian spring cleaning. Since our apartment is still brand-new, this year's oosouji consisted of a quick dust and vacuum (a real relief).

So to let the gods know we were spic and span, the Christmas wreath on our door was replaced by this:

This is a shimekazari, a sacred straw rope twisted and shaped into one or more rings. It has these little symbolic decorations symbolizing one's wishes for the New Year. In our case we have a modest and simple one. The lettering says daikichi, which means best luck, and that little cat is a manekineko. It is holding a golden coin in one paw and beckoning with the other. It is beckoning for more coins- three guesses what our wishes for 2006 are!

Not just our apartment, but our building's lobby is decorated too. I think our landlady goes all out because her son's family, including a her young grandchild, lives in the same building. She had Christmas decorations in the lobby until a few days ago, which is definitely not something most landlords do for their buildings here. The picture above is of a New Years kite.

The shimekazari on our building's front door is quite elaborate. Each one of those decorations is significant, symbolizing a hope for long life, academic success, prosperity and so on. In many cases the association is based on a pun. For example, citrus fruit are used, because daidai (one kind of citrus, actually much smaller than the one in the above display) sounds like "many generations". So it is a wish for fertility and lots of descendants.

I'd love to explain all the rest, but I ~~have no idea what they mean~~ have to start packing- we have to leave for Osaka in a few hours. We're spending the New Year's holidays with the in-laws, as usual. I've set up a few silly entries that will be automatically posted, so do stay tuned. And you can look at the New Years 2005 photo album to see what we did last year.

Tags: new years new year japan oshougatsu 年末　