Every year in Japan, on the morning of January 1, the post arrives in bundles. Hundreds of millions of postcards, sorted and held by the post office for weeks so that they can all be delivered on the same day. These are nengajo, New Year cards, and the practice says something useful about how to close one year and open the next.
What a nengajo is
A nengajo is a postcard, not a letter. On the front, a greeting: akemashite omedetou gozaimasu, congratulations on the opening of the year, and usually the animal of the coming year in the Chinese zodiac. On the back, the address, and often a line or two of handwriting, a family photograph, or a small drawing.
The rule that makes them unusual is timing. Cards posted by around December 25 with the word nenga marked on them are held back and delivered together on New Year’s morning. People sit down after breakfast on January 1 and read them, one by one, as a kind of census of the people in their life.
Who gets one
Family, friends, colleagues, teachers, neighbours, the people you did business with this year. Lists of a hundred names are not unusual. Many households keep a card list from year to year, ticking who sent and who received, and adding new names as the year brought new people.
That list is the interesting part. It is a written record, once a year, of who you are connected to. Names drift off it. Names arrive. Reading it in December is one of the clearest pictures available of how the year actually went.
Mourning cards
There is one exception to the custom. A household that has lost someone during the year does not send New Year greetings. Instead, in November or early December, it sends a mochu hagaki, a mourning postcard, telling friends that it will not be celebrating and asking them not to send a nengajo. The friends send a gentle card in January instead, often after the season, called a kanchu mimai, a midwinter note.
It is a quiet, practical system for a hard situation: everyone knows, nobody has to ask, and nobody sends a cheerful card to a grieving house.
Also on Etsy: the same planners and singles, in the Ikigai Daily Studio shop.
Why it is worth borrowing
Western holiday cards have been in decline for years, replaced by group messages and social posts. The nengajo has declined too, but it has held on more firmly, and the reasons are worth noticing.
It is short. One postcard, one line in your own hand. Nobody expects a letter.
It is timed. The cards all arrive on one day, which turns reading them into an occasion rather than a trickle.
It is a list. The card list is kept, reviewed and updated every year, which makes it a small annual reflection on relationships, without anyone calling it that.
A nengajo practice, anywhere
You do not need the Japanese post office to borrow this.
In November, write the list. Everyone you would want to hear from, and everyone who would want to hear from you. Note who is new this year and who has drifted.
In early December, write the cards: a postcard each, one handwritten line that refers to something real from the year. Not “hope you are well”, but “thank you for the walk in May”.
Post them to arrive around the New Year rather than before Christmas. Being slightly later than everyone else makes a card stand out, and it ties it to the new year rather than the end of the old one.
In January, tick the list: sent, received. Keep it for next year.
The year, counted in people
The year-end clean, osoji, closes the year in the house. The nengajo closes it in relationships. One sweeps the rooms; the other counts the people. Both are done before January 1, and both make the first morning of the year feel like a beginning rather than a continuation. Of the two, the cards take less time, and they are the ones people remember.
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This article is part of a series exploring Japanese philosophy and intentional living: