With Christmas over, it's time for nengajo-zukuri (making New Years postcards). Japanese send nengajo to friends, relatives and other acquaintances during the New Years holidays, just like we send Christmas cards. These days many people design and print their postcards at home on their computer, often including a picture of a new baby or the family together. 2006 being Inudoshi (the Year of the Dog in the Chinese zodiac), you can bet every dog owner will send nengajo featuring a picture of their pooch.
We don't have a dog, or a good printer; nor do we have many chances to indulge our creative, artistic urges these days. So we make our nengajo the old fashioned way, with stamps (we being me, of course).
It's a lot of fun deciding on the design, and in the months leading up to New Years stationary shops will display hundreds of stamps, dozens of ink colours and plenty of accessories like stickers and special pens. Since each postcard requires a few stamps to fill up the space, the combinations are almost limitless. There are no hard-and-fast rules, but generally a nengajo should have a picture of the year's zodiac animal and a New Year's greeting, perhaps with some auspicious vegetation like pine needles or plum blossoms in the background.
The actual making of the nengajo is as enjoyable as choosing the design. For a few days all available flat surfaces will be covered with postcards in various stages of done-ness. The ones above are almost done, but the last step will be the hardest. I'm going to add an embossed gold dog on top of the red circle, and that involves stamping with a kind of glue, then sprinkling with gold dust, then melting the dust with a special embossing heater. Hopefully it will look pretty neat when I'm done. (Update: here is the finished product.)
While I had all my stuff out, I thought I'd show you a few nengajo from past years. The ones I kept are mostly the rejects that weren't nice enough to send though, so don't expect anything awesome.
This was for Toridoshi (Year of the Rooster), this year. The blank space is meant to have a short handwritten greeting, as Japan Post doesn't allow any writing other than addresses on the other side. I think this was pretty nice, and I've just noticed that it looks a lot like this year's. Oh well, I don't think anybody is keeping track.
2004 was Sarudoshi (Year of the Monkey). This one is my favourite, but it took a long time as the deer and monkey were coloured by hand rather than stamp.
The Hitsujidoshi (Year of the Ram) card involved pasting on little squares of paper, which was a lot of work for not such a great result.
Umadoshi (Year of the Horse) and Hebidoshi (Year of the Snake) were both awfully plain, but left lots of room for hand-written messages.
Then there's Tatsudoshi (Year of the Dragon). This was for 2000*, the first New Years after we got married. I had been wondering what to do about nengajo, since as a single person in Japan I had never been required to send them before. My friend Yoko taught me how to do it with stamps, and the above postcard is what I came up with. Not bad for a first try!
Stay tuned to see my final design for next year's nengajo (update: here it is)
* Now that I think about it, that was half the zodiac cycle ago. Holy crap, seems like a couple months ago! Just imagine, another 6 years and I get to use those stamps again...
Amy;
lovely cards.. I never thought of post cards. Its much more economical than cards in envelopes...our postage rises to 39 cents as of Jan. 1... I sound cheap, don't I? tee hee... I'm not...just tons of cards to send after all these years....
Posted by: Carlyn | 2005.12.30 at 01:51 AM
Hope we get one this year. I do have a couple, but not all of your cards. This one looks great.
Happy New Year to both of you. MOM
Posted by: Mom | 2005.12.30 at 05:03 AM
Yes, postcards are definitely more economical than cards. A bit impersonal though, since you can't really write anything you don't mind the whole world seeing. (Strange thing for me to say, as I am terrible at remembering to send cards to people...)
Mom, you guys are on our list, don't worry! Of course with my timing you can expect to receive them around sometime around Easter.
Posted by: Amy | 2006.01.05 at 12:40 AM