Whence
Hanetsuki (New Year battledore)
Game

Where does Hanetsuki (New Year battledore) come from?

Hanetsuki comes from Japan, where it has been a New Year game for centuries. Players bat a feathered shuttlecock back and forth with decorated wooden paddles called hagoita, with no net, and a miss can earn an ink mark on the face.

A game of the imperial court

The game's old name was kogi-no-ko shōbu. A court diary, the Kanmon Gyoki, records a match at the imperial court in 1432: a game for adults, played for stakes. A dictionary of 1444, the Kagakushū, writes the paddle's name as hagoita. The shuttlecock, called hane, is a soapberry seed with three to five feathers stuck into it. Japanese accounts say the game grew out of gitchō, in which players struck a ball with a stick.

From the court to the streets

Hanetsuki was a New Year game at court from the Muromachi period and spread to ordinary people in the Edo period. Counting games, in which one player keeps the shuttlecock up while singing a counting song, became the usual way to play, and hanetsuki turned into a girls' game played outside the house. Samurai families gave hagoita to celebrate a daughter's birth, and townspeople took up the custom, giving paddles at the end of the year to households with girls.

Why people think of China

Shuttlecock games are played in many countries, and a hagoita can look like a cousin of the badminton racket, so hanetsuki is often taken for a borrowing. Some accounts do link the paddles or the shuttlecock to China. The Japanese encyclopedia Nipponica looks closer to home: it says the game's roots probably lie in Japanese folk customs, such as a New Year paddle game of young men and women on Miyake Island, called hagii. Over the centuries the paddles grew so ornate that many became New Year decorations rather than toys.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Hanetsuki ↗ · ja.wikipedia.org ↗ · kotobank.jp ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Hagoita ↗

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