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Shinto · Buddhism

Shōgatsu

When is Shōgatsu, the Japanese New Year: the first shrine visit of the year, the decorations of pine and straw, the special foods of osechi and the 108 temple bells of New Year’s Eve.

Next date

1–3 January 2027

In brief

  1. I.Shōgatsu is the Japanese New Year, the most important holiday of the Japanese year.
  2. II.Homes are cleaned and decorated with pine, bamboo and sacred straw ropes to welcome the god of the new year.
  3. III.At midnight Buddhist temples ring their bells 108 times.
  4. IV.The first shrine visit of the year, hatsumōde, draws millions to shrines and temples.

Chapter I

What it celebrates

In Japanese tradition each new year brings a visit from Toshigami, the deity of the year, who brings blessings and the spirits of the ancestors. The house must be made pure to receive the god, and the first acts of the year are believed to shape what follows.

Chapter II

How it is kept

At the end of December, homes and offices are given a great cleaning. Pine and bamboo arrangements, kadomatsu, are set by the door and a decorated shimenawa hung above it. On New Year’s Eve people eat long buckwheat noodles for a long life and listen to the temple bells. In the first days of January families eat osechi, boxed dishes each with a meaning, and mochi rice cakes, children receive money, otoshidama, and almost everyone makes hatsumōde, the first visit of the year to a shrine or temple, to pray and buy new charms.

Chapter III

Around the world

Meiji Shrine in Tokyo receives around three million visitors in the first three days of the year. The emperor appears on the palace balcony on 2 January to greet the public.

Questions people ask

Why 108 bell strokes?

In Buddhism 108 is the number of worldly desires or defilements; each stroke dispels one, so that the new year begins clean.

Has Japan always kept New Year on 1 January?

No. Until 1873 it followed the lunar calendar, like China. Japan then adopted the Gregorian calendar.

Sources and further reading

  1. John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, A New History of Shinto (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
  2. John K. Nelson, A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine (University of Washington Press, 1996)

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