Japanese New Year Traditions: The Complete December to January Guide

Japanese New Year traditions run from mid-December to mid-January and centre on shōgatsu (正月), the New Year period itself. The season has one organising idea: the household prepares to receive the toshigami (年神), the deity of the incoming year. Everything else, the cleaning, the decorations, the food, the shrine visit, follows from that.

One Long Sequence, Not One Night

The first thing to understand about the Japanese New Year is that it is not an evening. It is a month, and it moves in a particular direction.

Western New Year points forward: the countdown, the resolution, the toast. The Japanese sequence spends four weeks pointing backward, closing accounts. Debts settled, gifts sent, the house scrubbed to the tops of the door frames, the year’s frustrations drunk away at an office party. Only once the old year is properly finished does anyone begin the new one.

The second thing is that the season is quiet at its centre. Offices close from roughly December 29 to January 3, small shops shut for days, and families sit indoors eating cold food out of lacquer boxes. It is the closest Japan comes to stopping.

The Timeline

December 13: Kotohajime

The season formally opens on December 13 with shōgatsu kotohajime (正月事始め), the beginning of New Year matters. Historically this was the day households cut pine for decorations and cleaned the family altar, and it is still observed at temples and in traditional trades. Kyoto’s geiko and maiko visit their teachers on the 13th to give thanks for the year. Nobody starts scrubbing that early any more, but the date marks the boundary after which the season is under way.

Oseibo: Settling the Debt of Gratitude

Oseibo (お歳暮) are year-end gifts, sent in the first three weeks of December to the people who supported you across the year: a manager, a mentor, a doctor, a long-standing client. They are almost always consumable, ham, sweets, fruit, beer, coffee, on the principle that a gift which disappears leaves no obligation behind.

Department stores build temporary floors for oseibo and the deliveries arrive by courier. It is the season’s most formal custom, and the one younger households most often skip.

Bōnenkai: Drinking the Year Off

Bōnenkai (忘年会), the year-forgetting party, is the loud half of December. Companies, departments, clubs, and groups of old friends book izakaya private rooms through the month, raise a glass, and agree to leave the year’s frictions on the table.

The convention that makes it work is bureikō (無礼講), the announced suspension of hierarchy for the evening. It is honoured in part rather than in full, but it is real enough that things get said at a bōnenkai which would never surface in a meeting.

Nengajō: The Cards That All Arrive at Once

Nengajō (年賀状) are New Year postcards, written through December and posted by around the 25th so that Japan Post can hold them back and deliver every one of them on the morning of January 1. Each card carries the year’s zodiac animal, which for 2027 is the Sheep, hitsuji (未).

One rule matters more than the rest: a household in mourning sends a mochū hagaki (喪中葉書) in November instead, notifying contacts not to send cards that year.

The Imported Half: Cake and Fried Chicken

Before the traditional season begins in earnest, Japan spends a fortnight on a Christmas it has entirely rewritten. Almost every household buys a Japanese Christmas cake, a white sponge with cream and strawberries, on December 24. A very large number of them order KFC for Christmas, a custom built almost single-handedly by a 1974 advertising campaign.

Neither has any religious content in Japan and neither is a holiday. December 25 is an ordinary working day. The cake and the barrel are the season’s cheerful, commercial prologue, and then the mood changes.

Ōsōji: Clearing the Year Out of the House

Ōsōji (大掃除) is the year-end deep clean, and it is the practical heart of the whole season. Cupboards come out. Windows get done. Light fittings and the tops of things receive attention they get once a year. Schools, offices, and temples do it too.

The logic is not hygiene. The incoming year should not have to arrive into the residue of the old one. Most households aim to finish by December 30, since cleaning on the 31st is considered rushed.

The Decorations

Three objects do three different jobs, all of them set out around December 28. December 29 is avoided because nine reads as suffering, and December 31 is avoided because one-night decorating, ichiya-kazari (一夜飾り), looks like leaving the guest until the last minute.

Kadomatsu (門松), pine and bamboo arrangements, stand in pairs at the gate as a perch for the arriving deity. A shimenawa rope or shimekazari wreath goes on the door to mark the space as purified. And kagami mochi (鏡餅), two stacked round rice cakes topped with a bitter orange, sits indoors as the offering itself. The name means mirror rice cake, after the round bronze mirrors of Japanese antiquity.

Ōmisoka: The Last Evening

Ōmisoka (大晦日) is December 31, and it is a domestic evening rather than a party. In the coming season it falls on Thursday, December 31, 2026.

Sometime after dinner the household eats toshikoshi soba (年越しそば), year-crossing buckwheat noodles. Long strands mean a long life, and soba snaps cleanly under the teeth, which reads as cutting the year’s troubles off rather than dragging them across. The bowl should be finished before midnight. The television carries Kōhaku Uta Gassen (紅白歌合戦), the NHK song contest that has run since 1951, with the year’s musicians split into a red team and a white team.

Near midnight, temples begin joya no kane (除夜の鐘), striking the great bell 108 times, once for each of the earthly desires Buddhist teaching counts as a source of suffering. Most strike 107 times before midnight and hold the last blow for the far side of the boundary. Many let visitors take a turn, which makes it the season’s most accessible ritual.

January 1: Ganjitsu

Ganjitsu (元日), New Year’s Day, falls on Friday, January 1, 2027. Four things happen, roughly in this order.

Hatsuhinode (初日の出), the first sunrise, draws people to beaches, mountains, and rooftops before dawn. It is one of the few New Year customs performed outdoors and in silence.

Osechi ryōri (お節料理) is the New Year food, packed into tiered lacquer jūbako boxes and cooked days in advance so nobody has to work in the kitchen. Every dish carries a wish: black soybeans for health, herring roe for children, rolled kelp for joy, candied sardines for a good harvest.

Otoshidama (お年玉) is money for children, given in small decorated envelopes called pochibukuro (ぽち袋). The amount scales with age, commonly a few thousand yen for primary-school children and five thousand or more for junior high. A 2019 survey of parents found more than three-quarters describing it as some degree of financial burden, mostly on account of relatives’ children rather than their own.

Hatsumōde (初詣) is the first shrine or temple visit, made during sanganichi (三が日), the first three days. It is the largest single movement of people in the Japanese year, with something close to a hundred million visits counted in those three days. Visitors buy omamori charms, draw omikuji fortunes, and hand in last year’s charms to be burned.

In the coming season sanganichi runs Friday to Sunday, January 1 to 3, 2027, a clean three-day weekend, which means heavier crowds than in a year that breaks midweek.

January 2: Firsts

January 2 is the day for doing things for the first time.

Hatsu-uri (初売り) is the first sale, and it brings fukubukuro (福袋), sealed lucky bags sold below the value of their unknown contents. The bags began at the Ginza department store Matsuya in the late Meiji era and are now split between dawn queues and online lotteries that close in December.

Kakizome (書き初め) is the first calligraphy: a chosen word or phrase brushed on washi. The sheets are kept until the mid-January bonfires, and the higher yours flies in the flames, the better your brushwork is said to become.

Hatsuyume (初夢) is the first dream, counted as the one on the night of January 1 into 2. The luckiest omens, in descending order, are Mount Fuji, a hawk, and an aubergine.

The Season Closes

Matsu no uchi (松の内), the period within the pine, ends on January 7 in the Kantō region around Tokyo and January 15 in Kansai. Decorations come down accordingly. January 7 is also nanakusa-gayu (七草粥), a rice porridge of seven spring herbs eaten to settle a stomach that has spent a week on osechi and sake.

Kagami biraki (鏡開き), on January 11, is the breaking of the kagami mochi. The rice cake, hardened after ten days on the shelf, is cracked apart with a wooden mallet rather than cut with a blade, because cutting suggests severing ties. The pieces go into soup or are grilled with sugar and soy.

Dondo-yaki (どんど焼き), also called sagichō, is the closing act: communal bonfires at shrines and on open ground around January 15, where kadomatsu, shimekazari, spent charms, old daruma dolls, and kakizome sheets burn together. The smoke sends the toshigami back, and sparks landing on you count as good luck.

Seijin no Hi (成人の日), Coming of Age Day, falls on the second Monday of January, which in 2027 is Monday, January 11. Municipalities hold ceremonies for that year’s new adults and the streets fill with furisode and hakama. By the following morning Japan is fully back at work.

If You Are Visiting

• Book food and transport early. Trains from December 29 to January 3 are among the busiest of the year, and many restaurants close for the whole period. Convenience stores stay open and are the reliable fallback.
• Go to a temple on the night of the 31st. Many let members of the public strike the bell, sometimes with free numbered tickets handed out on the night.
• Expect quiet, not fireworks. Shibuya has a countdown, but it is the exception. The default sound of the year turning is a bronze bell heard from a few streets away.

FAQ

When is Japanese New Year celebrated?

Japan celebrates New Year on January 1 under the Gregorian calendar, having switched from the lunisolar calendar in 1873. The main holiday period, sanganichi (三が日), covers January 1 to 3, and most workplaces close from around December 29 until January 3. In the coming season, January 1, 2027 falls on a Friday.

What are the most important Japanese New Year traditions?

The core ones are ōsōji cleaning, kadomatsu decorations, toshikoshi soba on New Year’s Eve, the joya no kane bells at midnight, osechi ryōri on January 1, otoshidama money for children, and hatsumōde, the first shrine visit. Almost all serve one purpose: closing the old year cleanly and receiving the toshigami.

What is the Japanese New Year deity?

The toshigami (年神), sometimes toshitokujin, is the deity of the incoming year, understood to visit each household bringing that year’s fortune and harvest. The kadomatsu at the gate gives it somewhere to alight, the shimenawa marks the house as purified, and the kagami mochi indoors is the offering left for it.

How long do Japanese New Year celebrations last?

The preparation runs from mid-December, the holiday itself covers January 1 to 3, and the decorated period, matsu no uchi, ends on January 7 in eastern Japan or January 15 in the west. The season truly closes with the mid-January bonfires and Coming of Age Day, which in 2027 falls on Monday, January 11.

What do Japanese people eat at New Year?

Toshikoshi soba on New Year’s Eve, then osechi ryōri from January 1: tiered boxes of black soybeans, herring roe, rolled kelp, candied sardines, sweet chestnut paste, and simmered vegetables, each dish carrying a wish. Alongside them come ozōni (お雑煮), a mochi soup whose recipe changes by region, and on January 7 a herb porridge called nanakusa-gayu.

Is Japanese New Year the same as Chinese New Year?

No. Japan moved its New Year to January 1 when it adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873, so the two now fall on different dates and the customs differ substantially. Japan does keep the twelve-animal zodiac cycle, which is why New Year cards carry that year’s animal. The 2027 sign is the Sheep, hitsuji (未).