As promised two posts ago, we're now going to explain the prizes attached to New Years cards. We pointed out in that article that the custom of sending nengajo (New Years greetings) or nenga-hagaki (New Years postcards) has been declining in recent years, a development that concerns JP because it's always derived a good part of its revenue from the custom. Last year, JP sold 3.27 billion cards, which sounds like a lot, but represents a 20 percent drop since sales peaked in 1999.

Many years ago they started a lottery contest. Each card has a number printed on it, and sometime in the middle of January, JP conducts a drawing for winning numbers. However, the people who buy the cards and send them are not the same people who receive them and thus have the chance to win prizes, so the lottery incentive for buying cards escapes us, unless you assume that the more cards you send the more you are likely to receive, but that sort of cause-and-effect logic wouldn't actually kick in until the following year, right?

, the idea of combining nengajo with a lottery started in 1949, when the price of a postcard was ¥2 yen. In the years right after the war, the exchange of nenga-hagaki took on special meaning, since it was a good way to inform friends and relatives that you were still alive and where you were. The lottery, which is called otoshidama, the term for New Years gifts of cash given to children, made it even more appealing, because so many people had nothing at the time, so the prizes were for the most part practical: sewing machines, skeins of wool, bolts of fabric. As Japanese society became more affluent, the prizes became more aspirational: TV sets and other high-end home appliances, or coupons for international or domestic travel.