3-017-089 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

New-Year's Day in Japan - game of battledore and shuttlecock in the streets of Yokohama, 1865. Illustration of '...Japanese manners and customs which we have received from our Special Artist and Correspondent at Yokohama...you meet a procession of officers in butterfly wings going to pay visits, and bowing to the ground whenever they meet a procession higher in rank than their own. Everybody wishes everybody else happiness on this day. The good old Chinese custom of paying all the debts contracted during the year on or before New-Year's Eve is in full force here; and the man who has not wiped out his score by this time is disgraced, from which custom I think we might take a profitable lesson. During the first month of the year each class of the people, in turn, has one day's holiday - for instance, the hairdressers' holiday, the fire brigades' holiday, and so on. It must be confessed, however, that many men and more women get pleasingly intoxicated under these circumstances, and they insist on making everybody else like them if their persuasive hospitalities are accepted'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.