An odd Edo Period drawing is kept at Waseda University Library in Tokyo. A designated important cultural asset, it shows 29 Japanese men wining and dining around three tables as they celebrate New Year's in 1795. Some hold wine glasses, others chat over what appear to be Western dishes. On the wall is a portrait of the ancient Greek "Father of Medicine," Hippocrates (c. 460-c.377 B.C.).
This ink drawing by Ichikawa Gakuzan and titled "Shirando Shingenkai-zu (Shirando New Year's Party)" is no mere depiction of a party, but of enlightened scholars of rangaku (Dutch learning) gathered for Japan's first New Year's party based on the Western calendar -- a calendar that was not officially adopted until about a century later by the Meiji government.
The banquet on the 11th day of the leap month of November in the sixth year of Kansei (1794) was sponsored by Otsuki Gentaku, head of the Shirando rangaku academy in Edo's Kyobashi, who had succeeded to that post from his teacher Sugita Genpaku.