• Podcasts Podcast Feed

    Japan News

    Web and graphic design in Kobe, Japan since 1999

  • Categories

  • Archives

  • Pages

  • Article of the Day

    Provided by The Free Dictionary

    This Day in History

    Provided by The Free Dictionary

    Quote of the Day

    Provided by The Free Library

  • World Oddities
 
Here it comes...
 
11-24-2006
Remembering old friends - Nengajou
Filed Under (Japanese Culture) by Mike

Why is it that Japanese can remember to contact friends they had twenty years ago? This week we are starting the process of “nengajou.” This is when Japanese send as many as 100 postcards to all of their friends, coworkers, contacts, business associates, family and whoever else they feel they need to keep in contact with, which doesn’t leave many out.

Where did this start?

The History of Nengajou
The custom of writing nengajou goes back to the Heian period (794-1185), and when the modern postal service set up by the Meiji government began to print postcards in 1873 (Meiji 6), postcards began to be sent as New Year’s greetings. Sending nengajoo became even more widespread in 1906 (Meiji 39) when the post office started to print specially designated nengajou. In 1949 (Shoowa 24) the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications started its o-toshidama-tsuki nenga hagaki, a nengajo postcard imprinted with numbers in a national lottery,the stakes named after the gifts of money often given to children at New Year’s (see The Japan Forum Newsletter 10, p.11), and the sending of nengajoo became a nationwide practice. Today, national-lottery numbered postcards including a 3-yen donation to various public benefits have been added, and 4.325 billion o-toshidama-tsuki nenga postcards were printed in 1998 for delivery at New Year’s 1999. Statistics show that each household sends an average of 100 nengajou to relatives and friends. People also send nengajou at their workplaces as greetings to clients, regular customers, and business associates.

It was once the custom for people to pay formal visits directly at the homes of relatives, friends, and neighbors to present their greetings and wishes for the New Year. From the end of World War II, however, this practice rapidly went out of fashion, and the sending of nengajou came along as a widely favored substitute. People still make a point of visiting their parents and grandparents. Sometimes company employees go to the homes of their superiors and students present themselves at their professor’s homes even today.

Reprinted from: http://www.embjapan.org/jicc/spotnengajo.htm
—–

     


You must be logged in to post a comment.