The bloom of Japan’s iconic cherry blossoms begins in late March and ushers in a season of nostalgia for people of all ages. This nationwide burst of soft pink coincides with graduation season and the end of the fiscal year. Petals fall softly from above over bittersweet goodbyes and exciting, new starts in schools and workplaces.
The collective feeling of spring is something I am grateful to feel deeply through my experience working in Japanese schools. As the students learn and grow, Japanese schools make significant efforts to mark the passage of time through its unchanging ceremonies and traditions. The graduation photos framed in the teacher’s room hallway at my school showed a timelessness betrayed only by the yellowing of sun-bleached photo paper.
The emotion of this annual tradition is carried by the idea of seishun, youth, for older generations, as the children mark another step towards adulthood and experience bittersweet goodbyes for the first time. And trust me, nobody cries harder during the graduates’ choral performance of Tabidachinohini (旅立ちの日に) than those tough-looking baseball club boys who slept through every single English class that year.
Gift-giving is common during this time, particularly from younger students to their senpai, or from the graduating students to their teachers. One common gift is called yosegaki, a thick, square message board covered in tiny, scrawled handwritten notes from classmates or students which usually read as brief messages of appreciation or well wishes for the future. The students carry out the signing of the board for a teacher in the back of the class with a measure of feigned, giggly secrecy.
Having received several of these boards from students over the years, bringing them home after graduation and reading the messages is always a happy remembrance of the year. This is compounded by an extended span of time. The tiny, multicolored names of students, coworkers, and friends represent the people who surrounded me during that time of life. The yosegaki symbolizes not only the time we had together and the relationships we built during that time, but a continuation of mutual positive consideration, no matter how far apart our various lives may take us.
So this is the story I sat down to write about yosegaki. As a former teacher, I wanted to share this sweet, meaningful tradition that I hadn’t seen before moving to Japan. However, a simple search of the word yosegaki led down a rabbit hole which warranted further digging. And that is the story I bring to you today.
What is the meaning of yosegaki?
The word yosegaki (寄せ書き) combines the verbs yoseru (寄せる), meaning to bring near or draw together, and kaku (書く), meaning to write. The compound word essentially suggests a coming together of various writings. In modern usage, it implies that many people have come together to write something.
What is the difference between yosegaki and shikishi?
An important distinction to make is that the word yosegaki refers to the custom of gathering writings from multiple people, and does not refer specifically to the square, thick board which is written on.
The board itself, which is sold in 100-yen shops around the country, is called shikishi (色紙). This word combines the kanji for “color” (色) and paper (紙), but refers to the cardboard-like square rather than normal colored paper. Standard colored paper, such as construction paper and the thinner, square paper used for origami, is called irogami, which is written with the exact same kanji as shikishi because Japan likes to make things as confusing as possible. Shikishi are usually white, but nowadays often feature simple designs or characters. They are also commonly used to collect signatures of celebrities, and you will often see them on the walls of restaurants and izakaya featuring the names of their most famous past guests.
Shikishi are not a new phenomenon. Above is an image of a folding panel adorned with writings of the Emperor Gosai, who reigned from 1655-1663. The folding panel itself is less than two feet high, and the colored shikishi panels pasted on it are 17cm high and 16cm wide. The emperor himself wrote quotes of multiple authors on each panel, and they were arranged as a collection. The decoration of the panel with shikishi looks eerily similar to the way that stickers are now used to arrange writing on shikishi themselves, though I was not able to find any direct connection to the modern custom.
What started the tradition of yosegaki?
This is where the story gets interesting. To my knowledge, yosegaki were a domestic phenomenon, parting gifts to a member or members of a community such as a school or workplace. However, as I looked into it more, I realized that the tradition had deep historical connections to the Second World War which are still relevant today.
When a young man left for war, his family and community would sign a hinomaru (日の丸) flag as a keepsake for good luck. For the soldiers, they were a sight of home in the hell of war, a “spring of the heart” for boys far from home.
Realizing that the innocent tradition I had seen at my school had wartime roots was a shock, but it made sense. War is hatred, the enemy of the human spirit, and I believe something about our connections with others keeps us from being absorbed in that darkness. Throughout history, soldiers have carried reminders of loved ones they left behind as a comfort in a world so far from home.
I am reminded of a quote from a survivor of the Himeyuri corps, a troop of teenage girls from the Himeyuri school in Okinawa who were assigned to be military nurses during the American invasion of the island in 1945. These girls were years into a military education which taught that loyalty to the emperor came before all, and the valiant Japanese military would never stop defending the throne. They were introduced to the horror of war in caves full of dying, injured men, lacking supplies, fresh water, and medicine to soothe the agony of wounded soldiers they were tasked to help. One survivor recounted her shock that in their penultimate moments, the dying wounded failed to shout glory to the emperor as all proper Japanese had been trained, but instead called for their mothers and other family members with their last breaths. The idealism of the military state and the reality of war clashed jarringly in the young girls’ minds, and what remains is the tragic affirmation of the lives war takes from us.
Current Japanese departures from schools and workplaces are thankfully in times of peace, but this origin of the yosegaki tradition reaffirms my earlier hypothesis about the custom as a continuation of mutual positive consideration. When seen in the brutal context of war, yosegaki represent a deeper communal affirmation of this sentiment.
It is easy to imagine why the hinomaru yosegaki were an important keepsake for the Japanese soldiers as they went into the battlefield. It is also possible to imagine that for the American soldiers who found these flags, they were no more than spoils of war littered with meaningless, exotic characters. But their story does not end there.
Returning yosegaki
Hinomaru yosegaki were taken back across the sea by American soldiers, where they sat in attics or sold at auctions and military shows. In recent years, there have been significant efforts to return these flags to the families of the soldiers who were lost.
The Obon Society, founded in 2009, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the return of hinomaru yosegaki, which they consider “non-biological human remains.” The organization was founded by Keiko and her husband Rex after a flag owned by Keiko’s grandfather, who had disappeared in the jungles of Burma during the war, was returned to their family via a Canadian collector and a years-long search by the staff of a hotel where the flag happened to be left behind. To Keiko’s mother, the miraculous journey signified the determined spirit of her father finding his way home, and the family founded the Obon Society in the hopes of reuniting other families with the spirits of their long-lost relatives. So far, they have helped return over 500 items to families in Japan, and they are still active today.
How to Make Yosegaki
Today, yosegaki remains a popular custom to mark a peaceful, bittersweet parting of ways. It is a wonderful way to send off a member of your community. They're simple to make and great to receive!
You can find shikishi boards at almost any 100-yen shop in Japan, along with small message bubble stickers, multicolored pens, and anything else you may need to make a beautiful yosegaki for your classmate, coworker, or friend. In the era of corona, online yosegaki have also been gaining popularity, though I much prefer the physical artifact to a digital message board.
If you're not any Japan, any type of thick paperboard will do. After all, the true meaning of yosegaki is the collection of messages which the one departing can take with them to look back on fondly. Having received yosegaki over the years, I can assure you that it's not the form that counts, but the names and messages which mark the times we spent together.
Summary
This exploration for me represents a significant reason why looking deeper behind the history of our daily lives can be such a rewarding endeavor. I started with a simple, light-hearted topic in Japanese culture, but I found a storied history which continues to touch many people’s lives.
The topic of war is not always easy to write about. For my part, I will continue trying to center the human experience in my interpretations of history, as I believe this acknowledgement of our shared humanity is one key to promoting peace.
I hope this has been an interesting read, and I hope you’ll try out making a yosegaki soon! Please feel free to leave a comment below to let me know what you think, and thanks for reading.
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