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Show Odd Japanese Custom Fixing Age of Babies I Japanese babies are precocious, for they are a year old the moment they are born, and two years old the first New Year's day. writes Carroll Y. Zim-j Zim-j merman in Babyhood. That is the I way the Japanese reckon age, counting ' the year in which the baby is born one. the next year two, and so on. If you had been born in Japan just as the temple gong was about to boom 12 on the night of December 31, you would be, according to the Japanese mind, two years old with the first resounding re-sounding clang. So in Nippon, one of a pair of twins might indeed be a year older than the other. This addition of another year to a person's age on January 1, irrespective irre-spective of the actual month of his birth, came about in this way: When in 1870 the Japanese calendar was changed to conform to the European months, the people at large could not understand why they should be done out of their real, as opposed to the ollicial new year, and so, at the beginning be-ginning of February, the same thing starts again, and everybody considers It his duty to celebrate the occasion : just ns his ancestors did. i I : A |