New Year's Eve visitors, from Suzuki Bokushi's "Snow Country Tales" (1835):
"The New Year always finds us still buried under the snow. It is packed hastily onto the elevated snow pathways that run between the houses, higher than their roofs in many places, and naturally many slippery dangerous spots are bound to appear. One New Year's Eve I set out with my friend, Tokakishi, to pay a visit ... . As the talk wandered pleasantly from topic to topic, my host's wife addressed a question directly to me: 'I've heard that in Edo ...on the eve of New Year ... demons are bound to make their appearance that night.'
"The thirteen-year-old daughter ... interjected: 'Have you ever seen a demon?' 'Sure I have. Quite a variety of them exist, believe me,' Tokakishi replied. 'In general, demons are either red or blue. Those with white faces are a little less frightening and are called white demons. The roly-poly black ones are called black demons. Now if demons are around and about on New Year's Eve even in bustling Edo, you can be sure that there are plenty of them here for our snowy New Year's Eve. Why, one might be peering into the window at this very moment,' he hinted darkly, and glanced up at a high window that was directly above where the three women were seated. ... Just then there was a great crash as the window behind them burst open and an avalanche of snow came thundering into the room, carrying with it a dark figure. At this the women shrieked and threw themselves prostate on the floor, shaking in terror.
"And now, as all stared at the strange creature buried in the heaps of packed snow from the collapsed pathway outside, they recognized the little blind masseur Fukuichi (whose name, you must know, means 'Good Fortune'), a frequent visitor to their home. 'Well, if it isn't Good Fortune!' they all shouted, laughing -- as Fukuichi did, too. But the daughter and the daughter-in-law were of one voice: 'We thought you were a demon! How dare you scare us so.' ... Fukuichi ... said to Tokakishi, 'I've composed a poem. Would you write it down for me?' Fukuichi's verse went like this: Out of the lucky direction, Fukuichi, the little blind man comes tumbling --with a foolish thump on his rump. But the poem could also be read to mean: Out of the lucky direction, Good Fortune! -- A rice barn appears with the festive pounding of rice cakes sounding. Everyone was immensely entertained by this, and they applauded Fukuichi ... as the sake cups were passed around again."
A big thorough cleaning before the New Year is essential to the celebration in Japan, but I choose to put it off until the lunar new year according to the old calendar, or keep finding other cultures' New Years and postponing it indefinitely.