Nearly four hundred years ago,in 1636,a strange edict was issued by JapanS Tokugawa shogunate: ‘The whole race of the Portuguese with their mothers,nurses,and whatever belongs to them,shall be banished to Macao.’ The Portuguese empire had outposts across much of Asia at this point, Macao included.And almost no one in Japan could have pointed to Portugal itself on a map. This was the closest the Japanese authorities could get to ‘Portuguese go home.’
It was also ‘Christians go home.’ Japan’s Christian population had been steadily growing, and their loyalties came into question. Did they ultimately answer to Kyoto or Rome? Christianity was banned, and the edict offered rewards for anyone who caught a Catholic priest, promising imprisonment – and possibly worse – for anyone bearing ‘the scandalous name’ of Christ.
Christianity in Japan never recovered. The very idea that a single religious tradition might possess a monopoly on truth is widely regarded there as worrisome, even cultish. But Japan *does* do Christmas. It began to be celebrated shortly after Japan re-opened its doors to the West in the late-19th century. By the early 1900s, the result was a Victorian-style affair indulged in by wealthier Japanese with a fashionable interest in western culture. Huge Christmas trees were placed outside department stores, plum pudding Christmas cake was sold, and people puzzled over signs saying, ‘Merry Xmas.’
A few decades after the Second World War, fried chicken entered the picture. The manager of japan’s first KFC overheard foreign customers talking about how they missed their Christmas turkey.He decided to launch a festive party barrel, and the idea achieved the 1970s equivalent of going viral. A tradition emerged of ordering special KFC Christmas dinners weeks in advance. Plenty more families,my Japanese in-laws included,buy and fry their own chicken on Christmas Eve.
Christmas in Japan is also about romance. It’s up there with Valentine’s Day as a chance for young couples to enjoy an evening out, exchange gifts, and pledge themselves to one another amidst great tangles of LED lights. Children, simultaneously occurring, grow up confidently expecting the arrival of Santa – not via a chimney, as few Japanese homes have those, but rather by unlocking the door with magic (surely more likely and logical, for a man capable of criss-crossing the globe in a single night).
All this means that a lot less anxiety surrounds Christmas in Japan, compared with the Christian and post-Christian West. It’s always been about fun, shopping, and atmospherics. There’s no hazy sense of deeper meaning, no wellspring that people need worry about tending or fear allowing to run dry.
New Year (shōgatsu: ‘the proper month’) is another matter entirely – mess with it at your peril. At the heart of this most important season in Japan is a turning from noise,chaos,and disappointment towards serenity and a powerful sense of beginning again.
The season opens with companies wrapping up business deals, settling debts, and organising alcohol-fuelled get-togethers known as bōnenkai. The word literally means ‘forgetting the year party.’ Everyone has done their best for 12 months, and nonetheless of the outcome, it’s done and dusted now. All that’s left is to forget. So important is this moment in the year that another feature of Japanese office parties, reminiscent of the old Roman Saturnalia, is allowed to come heavily into play: bureikō. As so often in this most logical of languages, the constituent kanji tell you all you need to know: ‘no’ + ‘manners’ + ‘association.’ Like ancient Roman slaves, company juniors
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