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 New Year Decoration The oldest calendar used in Japan was “lunar calendar” = “nature calendar”, and then it was switched to “lunisolar calendar” = “old calendar”, which eventually was switched to “solar calendar” = “new calendar”. “Lunar calendar” or “nature calendar”, was created by the phases of the moon, from a full moon to the next full moon as one month. It was born in China along with “lunisolar calendar”.
“Lunisolar calendar” was introduced from China during the Asuka period. It had been used for 1200 years as the basic of calendar, until a new calendar was adopted in the Meiji period. It counts from a new moon to a new moon as one months also, but because of the phases of the moon is 29.5 days on the average, if it is repeated, there occurs a time lag between 365 days of one cutting cycle of the sun and the phase of the moon. As years go by, this lag becomes wide and that’s why there was a leap month (intercalary month) every two to three years.
For example, “leap month April” was added after a regular April to make that year have 13 months to solve the problem of the time lag. On the other hand, for rice cultivating life, an accurate standard based on the four seasons brought by the sun was necessary. For this reason, what is called “Nijuhshi-Sekki, or twenty-four seasonal divisions” which divided one cutting cycle of the sun into twenty four, was used as well).
It has to be noted that the lunar calendar reflects the climate of the midstream and lower basin of the Yellow River in China, which is different from the climate, or the sense of the season, in Japan. That is why Zassetsu, Higan, 88th night, and nyubai were added to the calendar along with Nijuhshi-Sekki to match the Japanese climate. With those changes added to the original lunar calendar, a new calendar called The Tempo Calendar was adopted in the Edo period. THis is what is called the old calendar and many events have been followed according to this old calendar until now.
The calendar we are using now is called the new calendar or the solar calendar which new calendar or the solar calendar whcich replaced the old calendar in the 5th year of Meiji. Meiji government followed suit of the solar calendar=the Gregorian calendar which was widely adopted by the international society then and set December 3rd of the 5th year of Meiji (1872) in the old calendar as January 1st of the 6th year of Meiji (1873) in the solar calendar. From this moment, the new calendar moves about a month earlier than the old calendar.
Some of the events taking place now, like O-bon, still follow the old calendar even after the new calendar was adopted. If we know that calendar has a history like this to have two phases, we can fully understand the background why there is a lag of seasonal feelings when events take place. ###
:: JAPAN, How we breathe & How our Hearts beat. (New Millenium Corporation, 2008).
 Naomi Moriyama wrote on Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat:
Talking about living so long and so healthy for most Japanese, food is not the only answer. Another factor is the automatic workout they get in their everyday lives. ‘The Japanese are in good health and in excellent shape’, announce Time Magazine in 2004 cover story, ‘How to LIve to be 100′. The reason is that they are in active people who incorporate plenty of incindental exercise into their days.
The older people of Japan are escpecially active. Makoto Suzuki, a professor at Okinawa International University, said, ‘As apposed to America, seniors in Japan do not have to purposedly go out and seek exercise –everyday life makes them more slim and heathy’. Along with nutritious eating habits, he noted, ‘It’s a winning combination’.
Take my family, for instance. Not only does my mother, Chizuko, crisscross the streets of Tokyo on foot all day, often dashing up and down flights of stairs, but at weekends she goes hiking in the mountains with her friends. Last summer, my parents took Billy and me on a hike up Mt. Takao, a 600-meter hill in a national park west of Tokyo. When we got 600-metre hill in nantional park west of Tokyo. When we got to the summit after a ninety-minute climb, my mother announced matter-of-factly, ‘I’m not tired at all!’
Like tens of millions of Japanese, my father, Shigeo, who is in his early seventies, gets around the neighbourhood on a basic old-fashioned bicycle. It’s not exactly a Lance Armstrong high-tech bike : in fact it’s a one-speed. He regularly bikes over to my sister’s house twenty blocks away to babysit his grandchildren. In turn, my sister, Miki, rides her bicycle all around town, sometimes with groceries in the front basket and one of my nieces, four-year-old Kasumi, or two-year-old Ayaka, riding in the child seat behind her. She often picks up my six-year-old nephew, Kazuma, from school in the same way – on the bike. Miki’s husband, Shiko, is even more active, because he’s in an exercise-intense line of work: he’s a leading instructor of classical Japanese dance and conducts dance classes around the country.
On narrow streets and pavements all over Tokyo, you’ll see businessmen doing their rounds on bicycles and women on bikes running errands and going grocery shopping. And what happens in Tokyo holds true thorughout the nation.
Lined up outside every train station in Japan, you’ll notice row upon row of parked bicycles that belong to commuters. One of them belongs to my uncle Kazuo, who is in his early seventies and commutes to Tokyo from a suburb. Rain or shine, every weekday you’ll see him leaving home and pedalling over to the station to park his bike and board the train, a dapper figure in his suit and tie. ‘What happens when it rains?’ I asked him. He gives me a broad grin : ‘Why, then I just hold the umbrella in one hand and the bike with the other!’
His wife, Yoshiko, swims everyday and is a scuba-diving buff. The simple act of taking the tube in Tokyo is itself a workout. The stations are sprawling, maze-like affairs, requiring lots of stair-climbing and walking between the different tube lines for transfer. In addition to ‘incidental’ everyday exercise, lots of Japanese are getting out there and deliberately working up a sweat.
Every morning in Tokyo at the crack of dawn, you’ll see a lean hundred-year-old man named Keizo Miura pounding the pavement for a power walk, before a breakfast of eggs and seaweed. At age ninty nine, he skied down Mont Blanc in the Italian Alps. “Older Japanese are remarkably healthy, doing things at their age that most youngsters couldn’t do,” the younger Mr. Miura told a visiting reporter doing a story on Japanese longevity. “People over sixty five here are climbing mountains, going to China to plant trees, travelling abroad to teach Japanese. It’s about diet, it’s about exercise, it’s about making the most out of long life.” ###
 3 Proverbs that Describe Japanese Concepts :
1. 以心伝心 ishin-denshin = shared communication that need no words.
2. 温故知新 onko-chishin = preserving and respecting doctrines and manners handed down from old times helps one understands the new.
3. 石の上にも三年 ishi no ue ni mo san nen = a cold stone becomes warm if one sits on it for three years. Difficult work or probleatic matters will eventually be settled if one perseveres.
:: 日本まるごと辞典。Kodansha International.
 Japanese people who have been blessed with rich nature have the “nature worship” as their roots. The “nature worship” is the feeling of awe of nature and a gratitude to its blessings which has two opposite faces. This includes a gentle face and horrible face. Japanese people adopted the rythm in life of a rice growing culture.
The roots of traditional rites, rituals and ceremonies lie in the simple gratitude and prayer to the blessings of nature in daily life. Then they gradually changed themselves into ceremonies which make their life each year enjoyable and pleasant. Eventually they became the ceremonies which stood for various junctures in their life.
This form of traditional rites, rituals and ceremonies is influenced strongly by the ideas from the Chinese Continent. This has been formed with Buddhism, Confucianism and Fifve Elements (Go-Gyo(G)) of In-Yo all mixed together. Japanese accepted them, could adopt them into Japanese climate and transformed them into Japanese rythm in life. It was made possible because there had been simple “nature worship” in the roots of the Japanese.
Thus, the traditional rites, rituals and ceremonies rooted in Japan have been carried through different times up to now, into their modern society. In order for them to understand the present traditional rites, rituals and ceremonies, they have to take into account the following three circumstances in addition to the influence from the Chinese Continent.
Three Circumstances : Number 1
Differences in traditional rites, rituals and ceremonies are the differences by the areas, typically represented by Kanto area (eastern Japan, typically around Tokyo) and Kansai area (western Japan, typically around Kyoto and Osaka). A prominent example is the shape of “mochi” (rice cake) for the New Year. In Kansai area, they are round shaped whereas in Kanto area, they are square cut. Kanto area has a base on Samurai culture and these two are the main big streams of traditional rites, rituals and ceremonies.
Number 2
Japanese people still live by “two calendars” even now. In the fifth year of Meiji (1872), Japanese government adopted a Western solar calendar instead of the old calendar (ref. shinreki & kyureki, in order for Japan to compete with Western countries as an industrial country. At that time, the government set December 3 of Meiji 5 in the old calendar as the January 1 of Meiji 6 in the new calendar. Therefor when they celebrate the event according to the new calendar, it is a month earlier than what we used to celebrate according to the old and conventional calendar.
O-bon is a good example. Most people in Japan celebrate O-bon in August according to the old calendar, while in some Kanto area, people celebrate it according to the new calendar in July. Buddha must be confused which one to follow.
Number 3
Traditional rites, rituals and ceremonies have a long history, but during the Edo and through the Meiji period, they changed their forms greatly. What they are following now, as traditional rites, rituals and ceremonies, were formed during that period, and so they have a relatively short history. For example, temples came to be involved in funerals in Edo period, and kaimyo (posthumous “Buddhist” name) and other rules about funerals were made during that period.
It cannot be overlooked that even though traditional rites, rituals and ceremonies have their roots in simple nature belief, they had to go through changes in their forms according to religions or policies of the government of the time. ###
:: JAPAN : How we breathe & How our Hearts beats. New Millenium Corporation, 2008.
“Speker” or “speaker”? A typo in a big electric shop in Fujisawa-shi, Kanagawa-ken.
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