In Japan the winter solstice is called toji, and in 2026 it falls on December 22. It is not a public holiday, and there is no single big ceremony. Instead there are two small customs that most households still keep in some form: a hot bath with yuzu floating in it, and a bowl of pumpkin.
Why the solstice matters
Toji is one of the twenty-four seasons of the old Japanese calendar, the one on which the day is shortest. It was treated as a turning point. The phrase ichiyo raifuku, the return of the light, was used for it: after the shortest day the sun comes back, and bad times give way to good. The solstice was a day to look after the body before the coldest part of winter.
The yuzu bath
Yuzu is a small, fragrant Japanese citrus, knobbly and yellow, with a scent somewhere between lemon and grapefruit. On the solstice, whole yuzu are floated in the evening bath, sometimes pricked or halved to release their oil. The bath is called yuzuyu.
The reasons given are partly practical and partly wordplay. The warm citrus oils are said to ward off colds and ease dry winter skin. And toji, the solstice, sounds like toji, a cure taken at a hot spring, while yuzu echoes yuzu, the word for flexibility, so the bath is a small wish to stay healthy and adaptable through winter.
Public bathhouses often fill their baths with yuzu for the day. At home, three or four fruit in an ordinary bath are enough. Lemons will do if yuzu cannot be found; the idea travels.
Pumpkin on the shortest day
The other custom is kabocha, Japanese pumpkin, usually simmered in dashi, soy and a little sugar, or cooked with sweet red beans. Pumpkin is a summer vegetable that keeps through the winter, so it was one of the few sources of colour and vitamins left in December, and eating it on the solstice was thought to keep colds away.
Foods with two n’s
There is a further tradition, more playful: eat foods whose names contain the sound n, because n is un, luck. Pumpkin qualifies under its older name, nankin. The full list, sometimes called the seven foods of the solstice, includes nankin (pumpkin), ninjin (carrot), renkon (lotus root), ginnan (ginkgo nuts), kinkan (kumquats), kanten (agar jelly) and undon, an old form of udon noodles. Each has two n sounds, so twice the luck.
Keeping it at home
The solstice is an easy custom to borrow, because it asks for so little. A bath with citrus in it. A bowl of something orange. A few minutes on the longest night to notice that, from tomorrow, the days start getting longer again.
In a year marked by the seventy-two micro-seasons, the solstice also begins one of the gentlest: self-heal sprouts, the first of three short seasons that carry the year into January.
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This article is part of a series exploring Japanese philosophy and intentional living: