Japanese New Year Cards: Nengajo Phrases and Etiquette

What a nengajo is and who sends one

A nengajō is a New Year greeting card, almost always a postcard, that the postal service holds and delivers together on the morning of 1 January. Special new-year postcards are sold from around the start of November, and many of them carry a lottery number at the bottom, so the stack that arrives on the first is opened partly for the greetings and partly to check the numbers later in the month. The seasonal-greetings guide on this blog covers the wider calendar of summer and winter greetings; this post is only about the new-year card.

Who sends them varies a great deal by age and setting. Older relatives, neighbours, teachers, doctors, landlords and many companies still exchange paper cards every year. Among younger friends and colleagues, a message with a photo has largely replaced the postcard, and some people announce that they are stopping paper cards altogether. As a learner living or working in Japan, the safest pattern is paper for anyone senior to you or outside your daily contact, and a message for close friends who message you anyway.

• People commonly write to: a boss or team, a teacher, a host family, a landlord, a doctor, clients, distant relatives.
• People commonly message instead: close friends, classmates, colleagues of the same age you see every day.
• Cards are normally addressed to a household or an individual, not to a group chat.
• If someone stops sending, it is not a slight; many households wind down the custom deliberately.
• A company card is usually printed and signed, and personal handwriting on it is what people notice.

The four parts of the card

Almost every nengajō is built from the same four blocks, in the same order, and once you can see them the card stops looking like a wall of formal Japanese. First comes the greeting phrase, the gashi, printed large or written first. Second, a line of thanks for the year that has just ended. Third, a request for continued goodwill in the year beginning. Fourth, the date, usually written as the year plus gantan, meaning the morning of 1 January.

Everything else is optional. A personal line goes between the third and fourth parts, and a wish for the reader's health can be added after the request. Keep the whole thing short: a nengajō is a postcard, and four to six lines with clear spacing reads far better than a paragraph that crowds the printed design.

The date is normally written in kanji numerals on a vertical card and in ordinary figures on a horizontal one, and either the western year or the Japanese era year is fine. Gantan means the morning of the first, so writing ichi-gatsu gantan is redundant; use either gantan on its own or the full date. If you post late, write the plain date rather than gantan.

Set phrases sorted by formality

The greeting phrase is where formality is decided, and it is a genuine ranking rather than a matter of taste. Four-character compounds such as kinga shinnen are polite and suitable for anyone, including a boss or a teacher. One and two-character forms such as gashō and geishun are abbreviations, so they read as casual and are commonly avoided when writing to someone senior. Full sentences with mōshiagemasu are the most formal of all and are what business cards use.

Two habits cause most of the trouble. The first is putting a casual two-character gashi on a card to a manager because the printed design came with it; if the design has gashō on it, that card is for friends. The second is stacking greetings, as in shinnen akemashite omedetō gozaimasu, which repeats the same idea twice. Choose one greeting and move on to the thanks line.

Thanking the year that ended

The second block looks back. It is a fixed formula, and its job is to acknowledge that the reader helped you, hosted you, taught you or worked with you. Note the word for last year: in a new-year card people write kyūnen or sakunen rather than kyonen, which sounds too plain for the occasion. Keep the whole line in the past tense, because the year is finished.

How much you thank someone depends on the relationship. A colleague gets a plain osewa ni narimashita, a client or teacher gets taihen osewa ni narimashita or the fuller mōshiagemasu version, and a friend can get something as light as saying it was fun. Learners often skip this block entirely and go straight from the greeting to the request, which makes the card feel like a form rather than a message.

Asking for the year ahead

The third block looks forward, and it is almost always a form of yoroshiku onegai shimasu. The politeness is carried by the ending: shimasu is ordinary, itashimasu is more polite, and mōshiagemasu is the formal written form used to seniors and in business. Honnen, meaning this year, is the written word; kotoshi is the spoken one and fits a card to a friend.

You can add a wish for health or happiness after the request, and for a card to a family it is normal to widen it to everyone in the house. Avoid the words people traditionally keep out of new-year cards, such as those meaning to end, to break or to leave, since the card is meant to open the year cleanly.

The one personal line

The set phrases are shared by millions of cards, so the line that makes yours worth keeping is the handwritten one. It should be short, specific and about the two of you: something you did together last year, something you hope to do this year, or a word about the reader's health or work. One sentence is enough, and two is the sensible maximum on a postcard.

Write this line by hand even when the rest of the card is printed, and write it in the blank area rather than over the design. If your handwriting is still slow, kana is completely acceptable and much better than a kanji you are not sure of. The most common learner mistake here is writing something generic like ganbatte kudasai, which could go to anyone; name the thing.

A model card, line by line

For a friend the same eight lines shrink to four: akemashite omedetō, sakunen wa arigatō, kotoshi mo yoroshiku ne, and the personal line, with the date optional. Read the two versions side by side and you can hear the register change entirely in the endings, while the shape of the card never moves.

Mochu: the mourning-year exception

If someone in your household has died during the year, it is common practice not to send new-year greetings. Instead, in late November or early December, you send a mochū hagaki, a plain card that tells people you will be refraining from new-year greetings and, usually, who died and when. The card is deliberately restrained: no bright colours, no congratulation words, and no request for the coming year.

The rule works in both directions. If you receive a mochū card, do not send that person a nengajō. What you can send instead is a kanchū mimai, a mid-winter greeting posted after the new-year period, commonly from about 8 January until early February. A kanchū mimai is also the correct card when you simply reply too late for the new year, so it is worth knowing even if mourning is not involved. Practice varies between families and regions, so if you are close to the household, follow whatever they do.

Timing, posting and the address side

New-year postcards go on sale around the start of November, and the postal service announces each year the date by which cards must be posted to arrive on 1 January, commonly somewhere in the second half of December. Cards posted after that arrive during the first days of January, which is perfectly normal. Once the new-year period ends, which people describe as matsu no uchi and which falls around 7 January in eastern Japan and later in parts of the west, switch to a kanchū mimai.

On the address side, the postcode goes in the printed boxes, the address is written in full, and the recipient's name is written larger than the address with the right title after it. Sama is used for individuals, sensei for teachers and doctors, and onchū for a company or a department as a whole. If you write your card on an ordinary postcard rather than a designated new-year one, people commonly write the word nenga in red below the stamp so that the post office holds it for delivery on the first. Formats and local practice vary, so copy a card you have received if you are unsure.

• Buy new-year postcards from around early November; designated cards need no red nenga marking.
• Post in the second half of December for 1 January delivery, following that year's announced date.
• Write the recipient's family name and given name in full; abbreviations look careless on a card.
• Use sama for people, sensei for teachers and doctors, onchū for a company or a section.
• Do not use both a title and sama together, as in sensei sama.
• Write your own address and name on the card, since the recipient may want to reply.
• After about 7 January in most of eastern Japan, send a kanchū mimai instead.

Digital cards and new-year messages

Many people now send their greetings as a message, an image or a video, especially to friends and to colleagues of the same age. The phrases are the same, but the register drops: a message is a conversation, so it starts with the greeting, adds one line, and ends with kotoshi mo yoroshiku. Slang such as akeome and kotoyoro is common between friends and completely out of place to anyone senior, so keep it for people who use it with you first.

One practical point about digital greetings is timing. Messages sent in the first minutes of 1 January are normal, but many people are with family or asleep, so a reply the next morning is not rude. If you are sending to a mixed group, send individually rather than as a broadcast; a card, paper or digital, is meant to be addressed to somebody.

Saying it out loud in the first week

The card is only half of the custom. The first time you meet someone in the new year, you say the greeting aloud, and this happens with everyone: neighbours in the lift, the shop you use, colleagues on the first working day. The greeting is the same akemashite omedetō gozaimasu, followed by the same request, and after the first meeting you drop back to ordinary greetings. Before the year ends, the parting line is yoi o-toshi o, which shortens the phrase for spending a good year and is used from around the last week of December.

Mistakes learners commonly make

• Putting a casual gashō or geishun design on a card to a manager or teacher.
• Doubling the greeting, as in shinnen akemashite omedetō gozaimasu.
• Writing ichi-gatsu gantan, which repeats January twice.
• Sending a nengajō to a household that sent a mochū card in December.
• Using kyonen instead of kyūnen or sakunen in the thanks line.
• Leaving the card entirely printed, with no handwritten line at all.
• Adding sama after sensei, or shortening the recipient's name.
• Still calling it a nengajō in late January, when a kanchū mimai is the right card.