Question What game is this?

[Ger]

This new year postcard with best wishes shows children playing a sugoroku game.
Any idea of the name or rules of this game?
The description read: "絵葉書 年賀状 オメデタウ すごろくで遊ぶ少年少女 カラー 田沢貼実逓便"
should オメデタウ be オメデとウ ?

 

[Majestic]

おめでたう is the old/classic spelling (and close to the old pronunciation). The pronunciation gradually changed, and the spelling took some time to catch up with the new pronunciation.

 

[Ger]

Would the sugoroku board merely be an abstracted simplification of an arbitrary, general, game design?
After all the children are drawn as similarly simplified figures as well.
Is it possible to read the date from the stamp?

 

[Majestic]

Looks like an abstraction to me. I don't know the exact date, but those stamps were introduced in 1928.

新大正毛紙1銭5厘 | 普通切手,新大正毛紙 | 趣味の切手専門店・マルメイト

新大正毛紙1銭5厘をお探しならこちら。あなたのコレクションを一段と華やかに！趣味の切手専門店・マルメイトが厳選した切手を安心通販でお届けします。

www.kitteya-marumate.com

 

[Ger]

Looks like an abstraction to me. I don't know the exact date, but those stamps were introduced in 1928.

新大正毛紙1銭5厘 | 普通切手,新大正毛紙 | 趣味の切手専門店・マルメイト

新大正毛紙1銭5厘をお探しならこちら。あなたのコレクションを一段と華やかに！趣味の切手専門店・マルメイトが厳選した切手を安心通販でお届けします。

www.kitteya-marumate.com

It looks like it is Scott #129. Here it says it was issued in 1914:

https://www.hipstamp.com/search?keywords=japan scott 129

Although there are variations, I assume it is the ordinary first issue.

 

[Ger]

From this example I make the date to be Taisho 8 (1919), January 1 [New Year]:

How to Ascertain the Date (or Time Period) of Prewar Japanese Picture Postcards – East Asia Image Collection Blog

This would make it likely the postcard was designed for that same year 1919.
Considering these New Year designs were often very complicated puzzles I would rather have expected an allusion to the 19 19 game of go

 

[Majestic]

Maybe yours is also Taisho 8 (January 1st, which makes sense since its a New Year's card).

 

[Ger]

Maybe yours is also Taisho 8 (January 1st, which makes sense since its a New Year's card).

As for the stamp it is.... The left example has 11 on top of 3.26 making it taisho 11.3.26, where mine has 8 on top of 1.1 making it taisho 8.1.1
But of course the card might have been produced for an earlier year and only been sent for taisho 8.

 

[Ger]

As to the puzzles that New Year's cards used to show, here an example with the solution given in red. It shows the larger (30 days) and smaller (29 days) of the months in the lunar calendar for the coming year (here 1794).

Explanation:

Ekireki Dainotsuki and Small Moon by Asunaro | Chuo-ku Tourism Association correspondent blog

When I visited the bookstore, a new calendar was lined up. Autumn has deepened, and you can gradually feel the sign of the end of the year.

en.tokuhain.chuo-kanko.or.jp

Here is an ingenious one constructed for the year 1803. It is both a proper go-problem and a mnemonic for the large and small months:

Again, now including the solution in red. Numbering from top left, the black stones represent large months.

Explanation:
https://www.ndl.go.jp/koyomi/quiz/level1_a9.html

In my postcard the year's months might have been encoded in the colored rectangles...