Japanese RitualsEvery major Japanese seasonal observance, month by month, with a countdown to the next one and add-to-calendar links for the fixed dates.
The Japanese seasonal calendar is the yearly cycle of observances that structures ordinary life in Japan: the first shrine visit of the New Year, bean throwing at the turn of winter, cherry blossom picnics, ancestor welcoming in August, moon viewing in autumn, and a deep clean before midnight on December 31. Some fall on fixed dates. Others move with the moon or the weather.
The full year is listed below, month by month. Fixed dates carry add-to-calendar links.
January 1
Shogatsu and Hatsumode 正月・初詣
The New Year is the largest observance in the Japanese year. Families make hatsumode, the first shrine or temple visit, eat osechi ryori from stacked lacquer boxes, read the nengajo cards that arrive on January 1, and watch for hatsuhinode, the year's first sunrise. Your first dream of the year has its own name, hatsuyume, and the shops open with queues for fukubukuro lucky bags.
January 2
Kakizome 書き初め
The first calligraphy of the year, brushed on January 2. A word or short phrase written once, with intent, to set the tone for the twelve months ahead. Tea schools hold their own first gathering, hatsugama, in mid-January.
Second Monday of January
Seijin-shiki 成人式
Coming of Age Day, a national holiday honoring everyone who reached adulthood in the past year. Cities hold ceremonies, and the streets fill with furisode kimono and new suits. The date moves, so it gets no fixed calendar link here.
February 3
Setsubun 節分
The eve of the old first day of spring. Roasted soybeans are thrown at the door with the shout "oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi," demons out, fortune in. Because it tracks a solar term, it slips to February 2 in a few years, as it did in 2021 and 2025.
March 3
Hinamatsuri 雛祭り
The Doll Festival, a day of wishes for the health and happiness of daughters. Tiered displays of court dolls go up with peach blossom, and custom says to pack them away promptly once the day is over.
Late March into April, moving with the bloom
Hanami 花見
Cherry blossom viewing. There is no date, only a forecast. The sakura zensen (桜前線), the blossom front, opens in Okinawa as early as late January and reaches Hokkaido by mid-May, with Tokyo and Kyoto usually peaking between late March and early April. Hanami is the clearest expression of mono no aware in the Japanese year.
May 5
Kodomo no Hi こどもの日
Children's Day, a national holiday and the last day of Golden Week. Cloth koi streamers fly from poles above the rooftops, one for each member of the family, wishing children the strength of a carp swimming upstream.
Early July into mid-August
Ochugen お中元
The midsummer gift season, when people thank the colleagues, clients and relatives who supported them through the first half of the year. Kansai often starts earlier. Its year-end twin is oseibo in December.
July 7
Tanabata 七夕
The star festival. Wishes are written on tanzaku (短冊) paper strips and tied to bamboo on the one night the separated lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi can cross the Milky Way. Some regions, notably Sendai, keep it in August on the old calendar.
August 13 to 16
Obon お盆
The days when ancestors are believed to return home. Families clean graves, light welcoming fires, dance the bon odori, and send the spirits off again with lanterns. Parts of Tokyo and Kanto keep Obon on July 13 to 16 instead. It is the deepest point of the year's connection with the dead.
Mid-September into early October, on the lunar calendar
Tsukimi 月見
Moon viewing. Jugoya (十五夜), the main night, falls on the fifteenth night of the eighth month of the old lunisolar calendar, which lands somewhere between mid-September and early October. A second viewing, jusanya (十三夜), follows in October. Check the concept page for this year's exact dates.
Mid-October in the north, mid-November in Kyoto and Tokyo
Momijigari 紅葉狩り
Autumn leaf hunting, the mirror image of hanami. The koyo (紅葉) front runs the opposite way, starting in Hokkaido around mid-October, reaching Kyoto and Tokyo around mid-November, and continuing into December further south.
November 15
Shichi-Go-San 七五三
Seven-five-three, the celebration of children at ages three, five and seven. Families dress the child in kimono, visit a shrine to pray for healthy growth, and buy a long stick of chitose-ame, thousand-year candy. Many families go on the nearest weekend rather than the day itself.
Late November to December 20
Oseibo お歳暮
The year-end gift season, and the close of the cycle that ochugen opens in July. Gifts landing in the first two weeks of December read as timely. After the 20th, the country's attention has already moved to New Year.
Throughout December, heaviest in the middle two weeks
Bonenkai 忘年会
The year-forgetting party, the December evening when a workplace closes out the year together and rank is briefly suspended. Venues in the big cities are booked weeks ahead. Its January counterpart is the shinnenkai, the new-year party.
December 13 to 28
Osoji 大掃除
The great year-end clean. December 13 is shogatsu kotohajime (正月事始め), the traditional starting day. December 28 and 30 are the preferred finishing days, since the 29th and the 31st are both considered unlucky for putting up the kadomatsu pine gate decorations that follow. Related in spirit to danshari.
December 24
Kurisumasu クリスマス
Christmas in Japan is a secular romantic evening rather than a family holiday, and it comes with two fixed rituals: a white strawberry shortcake, the Japanese Christmas cake, and a bucket of KFC ordered weeks in advance.
December 31
Omisoka 大晦日
The last day of the year. Households eat toshikoshi soba for a long life and a clean break, then listen for joya no kane, the temple bell rung 108 times through midnight to release the 108 worldly desires.
Japan runs on two calendars at once. The official one is the Gregorian calendar, adopted in 1873. Underneath it sits the older lunisolar reckoning, which still decides when the moon is viewed, when the ancestors come home, and when spring officially begins. Most seasonal observances sit somewhere between the two.
The year has a clear shape. It opens loudly, with the New Year period taking up the first days of January and touching almost every household in the country. It then thins out through late winter, picks up again with the cherry blossoms in spring, goes quiet through the rainy season, swells for Obon in August, and closes with a long December of gift giving, cleaning, eating and bell ringing.
Two of these clusters carry most of the weight. New Year is the largest, and Obon is the second largest. Both are travel seasons, when millions of people go back to a hometown they may only see once or twice a year.
Three kinds of dates appear in the list above, and it is worth knowing which is which before you put anything in a calendar app.
Fixed dates land on the same day every year: setsubun on February 3, hinamatsuri on March 3, kodomo no hi on May 5, tanabata on July 7, shichi-go-san on November 15, omisoka on December 31. These are the ones with add-to-calendar buttons, set to repeat yearly.
Moving dates are calculated. Seijin-shiki always falls on the second Monday of January, so its Gregorian date changes each year. The tool resolves the next one for you rather than giving you a repeating entry that would drift.
Windows have no single date at all. Hanami follows the blossom forecast, tsukimi follows the lunar month, and momijigari follows the temperature. These get a range and a link instead of a button, because pinning them to one day would be wrong.
Look at the banner at the top for whatever is next, use the month buttons to jump around, and follow any observance’s link to read what it actually involves before you try to keep it. If you want a fixed date in your own calendar, the Google Calendar button opens a prefilled yearly event, and the .ics download works with Apple Calendar, Outlook and anything else that reads standard calendar files.
If you are building a year of small practices rather than large festivals, the concept explorer and the word of the day are better starting points than a festival calendar.
The largest are Shogatsu, the New Year period beginning January 1, and Obon in mid-August. Between them sit setsubun on February 3, hinamatsuri on March 3, hanami in late March and April, kodomo no hi on May 5, tanabata on July 7, tsukimi in the early autumn, shichi-go-san on November 15, and omisoka on December 31.
Setsubun (February 3, with occasional shifts to February 2), hinamatsuri (March 3), kodomo no hi (May 5), tanabata (July 7), shichi-go-san (November 15), Christmas Eve (December 24) and omisoka (December 31) are fixed. Kakizome is traditionally brushed on January 2, and hatsumode begins on January 1.
Each follows something other than the Gregorian calendar. Hanami tracks the cherry blossom forecast, which moves north from Okinawa in late January to Hokkaido in mid-May. Tsukimi tracks the fifteenth night of the eighth month of the old lunisolar calendar, landing between mid-September and early October. Obon is kept on August 13 to 16 in most of Japan but on July 13 to 16 in parts of Tokyo, because different regions handled the 1873 calendar switch differently.
Only some. Kodomo no hi on May 5 and Seijin no Hi, the second Monday of January, are national public holidays. Setsubun, tanabata, shichi-go-san, tsukimi and omisoka are not holidays at all, despite being widely observed. Obon is not an official holiday either, though most companies close for several days around it.
Yes, for the fixed-date observances. Each of those entries has a Google Calendar button that opens a prefilled event set to repeat yearly, and a download button that produces a standard .ics file you can import into Apple Calendar, Outlook, or any other calendar app. The moving and window observances deliberately have no button, since a repeating yearly entry would slowly drift away from the real date.