From Mon., Jan. 6 until Fri., Jan. 10, the Carleton College Language Center offered a variety of activities and educational opportunities in celebration of Japanese New Year. This celebration is a part of the Language Center’s efforts to celebrate holidays from all of the cultures that Carleton’s language program offers, and this is the second year they’ve hosted a Japanese New Year celebration.
Amy Hutchinson, the director of the Language Center, is in her second year at the Language Center. She’s sought to continue celebrating holidays in the Language Center as well as introduce new holidays to the celebration.
“When I started this job last year, the Language Center already had a sequence of holidays that they decorated for, and I have been thinking about how we can expand our observations to other languages,” Director of the Language Center Amy Hutchinson, who is in her second year at the Language Center, said. “It just so happened that Japanese was the language I was thinking the most about, and I had a conversation with last year’s Japanese Language Associate and she brought up Japanese New Year, so we ran with it and did most of the planning together.”
Japanese New Year, or Shōgatsu, was celebrated from Jan. 1-3 this year. The holiday is among the most important of the year in Japanese culture and has roots in both secular culture and Shinto — the indigenous religion of Japan — practices. Businesses and schools are closed, and families share special meals on both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Many make visits to temples and shrines, and temple bells ring 108 times on New Year’s Eve: eight times to complete the old year and 100 times to usher in the new year, according to asiasociety.org.
While many Americans know very little about the holiday, Japanese New Year is the most popular holiday in Japanese culture.
“When we started planning this, I was thinking that the cherry blossoms would be a beautiful thing to celebrate, but when I had a conversation with the Japanese Language Associate she said that Japanese New Year was the biggest and best holiday,” said Hutchinson.
Another popular tradition is the sending of postcards on New Year’s Day. Japanese people write dozens of cards each year to friends, colleagues and relatives.
“The Japanese government anticipates that there will be a bunch of postcards that need to be delivered on New Year’s Day, so they have a whole system for it,” Hutchinson said. “Activity-wise [at Carleton], this is the holiday that has the most participation. Last year we sent about 50 postcards.”
Students coming back for winter term found the Language Center decorated with Japanese vocabulary cards and a table with supplies for making postcards as well as Ema, small plaques that Japanese people use to write and display prayers and wishes to their gods.
“I like to have a couple of passive activities that don’t involve a lot of human interaction,” said Hutchinson. “We decided that the postcards would be a fun thing to do and then the Ema worked really well because we are doing our New Year’s wishes as we come back for the term, it was perfect timing.”,” Hutchinson said.
Lane Worthing ’27, a language center assistant, has noticed that the foot traffic into the Language Center has increased around the celebration. As students stop into the Language Center for tutoring or to grab a cup of coffee between classes, many have taken advantage of the arts and crafts activities.
“It’s really cool to watch from the desk as people make their postcards,” said Worthing. “There used to be a big stack of postcards, and over the past few days that has really been going down as people have been using them.”
While a significant amount of the decorations are aimed at Japanese language students to learn vocabulary about the New Year, Language Center staff make a point to make the programming accessible to all students, regardless of language.
“For the students who don’t fall into that group, I just want them to have some cultural experience that they wouldn’t have outside of a Japanese class, and just have some cultural awareness,” said Hutchinson.
“Amy really goes all out and makes things cute and makes sure that a lot of people can participate,” said Worthing. “They want to make a point of bringing in cultural events from all of the languages that are taught at Carleton.”
Celebration of the Japanese New Year in the Language Center has ended, but staff are already planning their future holiday observances. In addition to Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras and Dia de Los Muertos, the Language Center will be celebrating Ramadan for the first time in collaboration with the Arabic Department.
Kofsky is a former language center assistant.
