年賀状
ねんがじょう
nengajou
= New Year’s greeting card
年賀状 (nengajou) is Japan’s New Year’s greeting card — a tradition so deeply embedded in Japanese culture that the post office delivers hundreds of millions of them on January 1st each year. Knowing how to write and send a nengajou is a fundamental piece of Japanese social etiquette.
Nengajou is a postcard (はがき, hagaki) sent to friends, family, colleagues, and business contacts to wish them a happy New Year. They are typically sent before the end of December so that they arrive exactly on January 1st — Japan Post runs a special nengajou guarantee service for cards posted before a cut-off date. Standard nengajou feature the year’s zodiac animal (干支, eto), New Year’s greetings like 明けましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu — Happy New Year), and often a personal message or photo.
Important etiquette: if someone in your household has experienced a death in the past year, you send a 喪中はがき (mochuu hagaki — mourning postcard) in November/December to notify contacts that you will not be sending nengajou that year due to bereavement. Recipients of a mochuu hagaki should not send nengajou to that person. This courtesy prevents sending celebration cards to someone in mourning — a thoughtfulness that reflects the depth of Japanese social consideration.
年 (nen/toshi) = year. 賀 (ga) = celebration/congratulation. 状 (jou) = letter/document/state. Together: a celebratory letter for the year — a written congratulation for the new year.
Everyday use
毎年12月に入ると年賀状の準備を始める。
Maitoshi juunigatsu ni hairu to nengajou no junbi wo hajimeru.
Every year as soon as December starts, I begin preparing my New Year’s cards.
Casual / Social Media
今年は年賀状LINEで済ませちゃった…来年はちゃんと書こう
Kotoshi wa nengajou LINE de sumasechatta… rainen wa chanto kakou
This year I just did my New Year’s greetings on LINE… next year I’ll write proper cards
Formal / Cultural context
年賀状の発行枚数は、電子メールやSNSの普及に伴い2003年をピークとして年々減少しており、日本郵便は事業の継続に向けてデジタル年賀状サービスの展開を進めている。
Nengajou no hakkou-maisuu wa, denshi meeru ya SNS no fukyuu ni tomonai 2003-nen wo piiku toshite nennen genshou shite ori, Nihon yuubin wa jigyou no keizoku ni mukete dejitaru nengajou saabisu no tenkai wo susumete iru.
The number of New Year’s cards issued has been declining year by year since peaking in 2003, due to the spread of email and social media, and Japan Post is advancing digital nengajou services to continue the business.
年賀状 culture in Japan reached its peak in 2003, when over 4.4 billion nengajou were exchanged. The tradition of sending handwritten or printed postcards to everyone in one’s social network — work colleagues, school friends, neighbors, teachers, clients — was a year-end ritual that could mean preparing and writing dozens or even hundreds of cards. Special nengajou printers (年賀状プリンタ) and nengajou design software (年賀状ソフト) were major seasonal industries.
The decline of nengajou since the mid-2000s mirrors global trends away from physical mail, but Japan’s nengajou tradition is declining more slowly and from a higher base than similar traditions in other countries. Many Japanese people still maintain the tradition particularly for business relationships and older relatives, even as they use LINE or Instagram for close friends. Japan Post’s 年賀はがき (nengajou hagaki — official New Year’s postcards) also serve as lottery tickets (お年玉付き年賀はがき, otoshidama-tsuki nengajou hagaki), with winning numbers announced in January — a clever feature that makes receiving nengajou even more exciting.
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