Shogatsu (Japanese New Year)

Until the end of 1872 Japan followed a lunisolar calendar, and the New Year fell between late January and mid-February, as the Lunar New Year still does in China, Korea and Vietnam. The Meiji government adopted the Gregorian calendar with effect from what would have been 3 December of the old year, which became 1 January 1873. Shogatsu moved with it, and today it is celebrated on the solar date almost everywhere in Japan.

The festival's religious core is older than either calendar. The toshigami, a deity associated with the year's harvest and with the ancestors, is believed to visit each household at the New Year. Many of the decorations – the pine at the gate, the rope over the door, the round rice cakes – are signs of welcome and places for this deity to dwell during its stay.

The weeks before the New Year are for settling accounts. Companies and friends hold bonenkai, 'forget-the-year' parties, and households carry out osoji, a thorough year-end cleaning that has its roots in the old susuharai, the sweeping of soot from temples and homes. New Year cards are written and posted before a cut-off date so that the post office can deliver them all on 1 January.

On Omisoka, 31 December, many families eat toshikoshi soba, buckwheat noodles whose length is read as a wish for a long life and whose ease of cutting as a clean break with the past year's troubles. Television has its own ritual, the long-running year-end song contest on public broadcaster NHK. Around midnight Buddhist temples ring their great bells 108 times in the joya no kane, one stroke for each of the worldly desires that Buddhist teaching counts.

From late December, entrances are decorated with symbols of welcome and renewal. They are traditionally put up by 28 December or on the 30th; putting them up on the 29th is avoided because the number nine can be read as 'suffering', and on the 31st because a one-night decoration is thought discourteous to the deity. They are taken down after the matsu no uchi, the 'time of the pines', which ends on 7 January in much of eastern Japan and on 15 January in parts of the west. Many shrines then burn the decorations in the dondo-yaki bonfires of mid-January.

Hatsumode is the first visit of the year to a shrine or temple, made between midnight on 31 December and the first days of January. People pray for health and success, buy new amulets, return the old ones to be burnt, and draw omikuji, paper fortunes. The largest sites, among them Meiji Jingu in Tokyo, Naritasan Shinshoji near Narita, Kawasaki Daishi and Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, receive millions of visitors over the first three days, with police-managed queues that can take hours.

That Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples are visited interchangeably reflects the long coexistence of the two traditions. On 2 January the Imperial Palace in Tokyo opens its inner grounds for the New Year greeting, when members of the Imperial family appear on a balcony several times during the morning.

Osechi ryori is the New Year's cuisine, a set of dishes prepared in advance and packed into lacquered, stacked boxes called jubako. Originally the food was cooked before the holiday so that the hearth could rest and the household would not need to cook during the first days. Each dish carries a wish, often through a pun: black soybeans (mame) for working diligently (mame ni), herring roe for many descendants, dried sardines for a good harvest, rolled omelette in the shape of a scroll for learning. Many households now buy their osechi from department stores or restaurants rather than cooking it.

Ozoni, a soup with mochi rice cakes, is eaten on the morning of 1 January and is the most regional of all Japanese dishes. Eastern Japan tends to use a clear dashi broth and square, grilled mochi; Kyoto a white miso soup with round, boiled mochi; and variations include red bean soup in parts of Shimane and Tottori and a richly garnished broth in Hakata. Otoso, spiced ceremonial sake, is drunk in the morning, from the youngest to the oldest.

The standard greeting from 1 January is 'akemashite omedeto gozaimasu', followed by 'kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu', a request for continued goodwill in the coming year. Nengajo, New Year postcards, are sent to relatives, friends and business contacts; a household in mourning sends a notice in November or December instead, and receives no cards. Children receive otoshidama, gifts of money in small decorated envelopes, from parents and relatives.

A series of 'firsts' mark the opening days. Hatsuhinode, the first sunrise, is watched from coasts and mountaintops; hatsuyume, the first dream of the year, is proverbially lucky if it features Mount Fuji, a hawk or an aubergine; kakizome, the first calligraphy, is written on 2 January; and department stores open with fukubukuro, sealed 'lucky bags' of goods. The period closes with Seijin no Hi, Coming of Age Day, on the second Monday of January.