Japanese New Year 2026
January 1, 2026 in Japan
Japanese New Year takes place on January 01, 2026. The Japanese New Year is an annual festival with its own customs. The preceding days are quite busy, particularly the day before, known as Omisoka. Since 1873, the Japanese New Year has been celebrated according to the Gregorian calendar, on January 1 of each year, New Year's Day. However, the original celebration of the Japanese New Year is still marked, in Okinawa for instance, on the same day as the contemporary Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese New Years. Japanese people eat a special selection of dishes during the New Year celebration called osechi-ryori, typically shortened to osechi. This consists of boiled seaweed, fish cakes, mashed sweet potato with chestnut, simmered burdock root, and sweetened black soybeans. Another custom is creating rice cakes. Boiled sticky rice is put into a wooden shallow bucket-like container and patted with water by one person while another person hits it with a large wooden mallet. Mashing the rice, it forms a sticky white dumpling. This is made before New Year's Day and eaten during the beginning of January. (With material from: Wikipedia)
More dates:
- Japanese New Year on Jan 01, 2027 in Japan
- Japanese New Year on Jan 01, 2028
- Japanese New Year on Jan 01, 2029