Tomorrow, February 10, is the Lunar New Year. Happy Lunar New Year, everyone! It falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice and is celebrated in places such as China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, and Mongolia. Japan, of course, was one with them before the Meiji Restoration. But sadly, most Japanese people today don't even know that tomorrow is a proper new year's day all our own. The people of Okinawa, Japan's southernmost islands, are the only exception. During the Meiji Restoration, Japan adopted the solar calendar and almost completely abandoned the traditional lunisolar calendar. After a long period of national isolation, Japan rapidly adopted a more westernized outlook. In my view, Japanese culture was partly fractured at that time, and it still bears those scars. I'm not a nationalist, but I love my country in my own way. I want to understand who we are, while appreciating other world cultures. That's one of the reasons I'm learning English.
Headline image by purplepanther761 on Unsplash
title: The Lunar New Year
What a beautiful and interesting post! Not only are you curious about other cultures — and that shows in your love of and proficiency in English — but you teach us about your own culture so eloquently. I absolutely love this post. Happy Lunar New Year!
PS: If I were writing this, it'd be one single paragraph. I think the white spaces take away from the flow of this post.
Yeah, I was surprised to find out that Japan doesn't observe Lunar New Year. Interesting though because in my Japanese brand planner the Rokuyou are still printed and, I am not sure the official name of them, but recently it was 立春 and soon it'll be 雨水, they are included too.
I'm quite into the symbolism of the animal zodiacs so I quite love the lunar new year!
@CocoPop Happy Lunar New Year, and thank you for your kind words, Uly! I really appreciate your help in expressing what I want to say. It's so exciting to do this in English.
@via-chan 立春 and 雨水 are two of the 24 solar terms, which are based on the movement of the sun rather than the moon. The lunisolar calendar is hybrid. We say 月 (moon) for month in Japanese, and the English word month also comes from moon, right? Before the Julian calendar, Western cultures relied on the moon as well to keep track of the seasons. It's interesting! As for the animal zodiacs, I was born in the Year of the Boar.