Bōnenkai (忘年会, ぼうねんかい) is the Japanese year-end party, held through December by companies, departments, clubs, and groups of friends. The name means year-forgetting gathering. The purpose is to close out the year’s frustrations over food and drink, and for a few hours the usual workplace hierarchy is loosened by agreement.
The Private Room in December
An izakaya in December runs at a different frequency. Every private room is booked, the corridors smell of grilled fish and beer, and the staff move at a pace that suggests they have been doing this for three weeks straight and have two more to go.
I sat through my first bōnenkai in Osaka with a small design company. Twenty-two people around low tables. The most junior person in the room had spent a fortnight booking the venue, collecting money, and building a seating plan, and she introduced the evening standing up with a microphone she clearly did not want. The president gave a two-minute speech. Everyone raised a glass. Then a man in his fifties who had said almost nothing to me all autumn spent forty minutes explaining, with great seriousness, what he thought was wrong with the company’s approvals process.
Nobody mentioned it on Monday. That was the point.
“The year is not forgotten because it was bad. It is forgotten because carrying it into January would be rude to January.”
What the Word Means
Three characters. Bō (忘) is to forget. Nen (年) is year. Kai (会) is a gathering. Year-forgetting gathering, quite literally.
The older word for the same idea is toshiwasure (年忘れ), the native Japanese reading of the same two characters. It carries a slightly warmer, more domestic feeling, and you will still see it on izakaya banners in December.
The thing being forgotten is not the year’s achievements. It is the year’s accumulated friction: the project that went wrong, the client who never replied, the argument in March. Japanese year-end custom treats unfinished business as something that should not be carried across the boundary, which is the same instinct that runs through ōsōji cleaning and the buckwheat noodles of toshikoshi soba, which snap cleanly precisely so the old year can be cut off.
Where It Came From
The tradition traces to the Muromachi period in the fifteenth century, when gatherings called nōkai (納会), closing meetings, were held to give thanks at the end of a working year. By the late sixteenth century, samurai households were holding year-forgetting gatherings around December 30, and those were literary affairs, with linked verse and feasting rather than raucous drinking.
The word bōnenkai itself settled into common use by the eighteenth century, in the Edo merchant towns, where the drinking became the main event rather than an accompaniment to poetry. When the feudal class system was dismantled in the late nineteenth century, the custom spread out of the samurai and merchant classes and into general use.
The version most people mean today is younger than that. Post-war Japanese companies, built around long-term employment and departmental loyalty, institutionalised the December party as a standing fixture of the corporate calendar, paid for at least partly by the company, and expected of everyone.
What Actually Happens
The shape is consistent enough that you can predict most of it.
Someone becomes the kanji (幹事), the organiser. It is usually a junior employee, and it is real work: choosing a venue in the most contested month of the year, confirming headcount, collecting cash, and managing the seating chart. A good kanji is remembered.
The venue is normally an izakaya with a private room, booked with a nomihōdai (飲み放題) all-you-can-drink course, typically two hours. Per-head cost commonly lands around 5,000 yen, sometimes subsidised by the company. Cash is still frequently expected.
The evening opens with a short speech from the most senior person present, then kanpai (乾杯). Nobody drinks before the kanpai. Food arrives as a set course. Conversation moves between tables as people get up and reseat themselves, which is expected rather than rude.
At the end there is a closing speech, sometimes a rhythmic group clap called tejime (手締め). Then a substantial fraction of the room goes to the nijikai (二次会), the second party, usually a bar or karaoke. The nijikai is optional. The sanjikai, if it happens, is a decision you make about the following morning.
The Etiquette
Most of the rules are about attention rather than formality.
Pour for other people, not yourself. This is the central one. Watch the glasses around you, and when one is low, offer the bottle with both hands. When someone pours for you, lift your glass to meet it. Filling your own glass while a senior colleague’s sits empty is the one genuine misstep.
Let the kanpai happen. Hold the first drink until the toast, and on the toast, keep the rim of your glass slightly below the rim of anyone more senior. It is a small gesture and people notice.
Seating is not random. The seat furthest from the door is the kamiza (上座), the upper seat, and it goes to the most senior person. The seat nearest the door is the shimoza (下座), and it is where the organiser and the most junior staff sit, because they are the ones getting up to receive food and flag down staff.
You do not have to drink. Ordering oolong tea is entirely normal and increasingly common. Take the glass, join the kanpai, and nobody who matters will comment. Pressuring someone to drink has a name, arahara (アルハラ), alcohol harassment, and it is now treated as a workplace problem rather than a joke.
Do not skip the greeting. Say something to the senior people in the room at some point in the evening. Attending and speaking only to your own team slightly defeats the purpose.
Bureikō and Its Limits
The concept that makes a bōnenkai different from an ordinary dinner is bureikō (無礼講), which translates roughly as a gathering without formality. Announced by the senior person at the start, it means that for this evening, rank is set aside and people may speak frankly.
In practice bureikō is real and partial at the same time. Genuine things do get said at bōnenkai that would never be said in a meeting, and Japanese working culture, which routes most disagreement through the careful groundwork of nemawashi, needs a valve. But the person announcing the suspension of hierarchy is, by definition, the person at the top of it, and everyone can feel that.
The reliable read is this: bureikō permits honesty about work. It does not permit rudeness about people. Say what you actually think about the process. Do not test the boundary on anything personal.
Bōnenkai and Shinnenkai
The pair is easy to keep straight once you see the direction each one faces.
Bōnenkai happens in December and looks backward. It closes the year, releases its irritations, and thanks people for getting through it. It is the drinking counterpart to oseibo, the year-end gift sent to those who supported you.
Shinnenkai (新年会), the new-year party, happens in January, usually after the holiday break, and looks forward. It is generally more formal, more likely to include a proper address from leadership, and more about setting the tone for the year than dismantling the last one. Historically, samurai households favoured shinnenkai precisely because it reinforced hierarchy rather than suspending it.
Many companies hold both. Some now hold only the January one, on the grounds that December venues cost more and everyone is already exhausted.
How the Custom Is Changing
The bōnenkai is not disappearing, but it is thinning, and the data is unusually clear.
Tokyo Shoko Research has surveyed Japanese companies on year-end and new-year parties since the pandemic. In its December 2025 survey of 6,196 companies, 57.2 percent said they would hold one. That was down from 59.6 percent the previous season, the first year-on-year fall since the pandemic ended, and still far below the 78.4 percent recorded for the 2019 season before it began.
The reasons companies give are cost, scheduling, and, increasingly, staff reluctance. What is interesting is that the reluctance is not where you would expect it. Surveys consistently find the youngest employees the keenest to attend and those in their forties and fifties the least, which inverts the standard story about young Japanese workers rejecting drinking culture.
The parties that survive tend to be shorter, cheaper, more likely to be held on-site or at lunchtime, and much less likely to involve a mandatory nijikai. The obligation has softened. The custom has not.
FAQ
What does bōnenkai mean?
It means year-forgetting gathering, from bō (忘) forget, nen (年) year, and kai (会) gathering. It refers to a party held in December to leave behind the past year’s troubles and frustrations before the new one starts, not to forget the year’s achievements.
When are bōnenkai held?
Throughout December, with the heaviest concentration in the middle two weeks. Companies with a fiscal year ending in December often hold theirs after the last working day, and venues in major cities are typically booked out weeks in advance. In the coming season the last working days before the New Year break fall around Friday, December 25 and Monday, December 28, 2026.
Is attending a bōnenkai compulsory?
Formally, no, and legally these are not working hours in most cases. In practice attendance at your own team’s party is strongly expected, and skipping it without a reason is noticed. Declining a nijikai afterwards carries no cost at all.
What is bureikō?
Bureikō (無礼講) is the convention that hierarchy is suspended for the evening, announced by the senior person present. It licenses frank talk about work that would be awkward in a meeting. It does not extend to personal remarks, and the suspension ends when the evening does.
What is the difference between bōnenkai and shinnenkai?
Bōnenkai is held in December and closes the old year. Shinnenkai (新年会) is held in January and opens the new one, usually with a more formal tone and a speech about the year ahead. Some organisations hold both, some only one.
How much does a bōnenkai cost?
Per-head cost commonly sits around 5,000 yen for a course meal with two hours of all-you-can-drink, though it varies widely by city and venue. Companies frequently subsidise part or all of it. Bring cash, since the organiser often collects on the night and many izakaya still split bills that way. The wider December-to-January calendar this sits inside is mapped in the guide to Japanese New Year traditions.