Hatsumode: New Year at Japan's temples and shrines, 2026-27

Hatsumode means the first visit of the year to a shrine or temple, especially on 1 January. You pray at the hall as on any other visit; the steps are in Shrine and temple etiquette.

Temples ring bells at midnight, per the secondary guide. Some sites open through the night: Yasaka Shrine’s grounds are open 24 hours for worship over New Year, and Okunoin’s Torodo at Koyasan runs extended hours from midnight to 14:00 on 1 January, per the Koyasan visitor site (see Koyasan temple stay).

Four sites each draw more than 1 million people in the first days of January, per the secondary guide:

• Meiji Jingu in Tokyo.
• Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto.
• Sumiyoshi Taisha in Osaka, which lists about 2 million hatsumode visitors.
• Tsurugaoka Hachimangu in Kamakura.

The guide puts queues at an hour or more at the biggest shrines. It gives no crowd figure for other temples and shrines or for later days in the window.

Fushimi Inari’s visitor rules matter more in a crowd: no photos or filming on narrow paths if they block worshippers, no shouting or sitting on the ground, no eating outside rest areas, no drones and no litter.

Plan around the crowd and the closures:

• Allow an hour or more in the queue at the four biggest sites.
• Go early. The guide says Fushimi Inari is quieter at early hours.
• Check the site’s own page for its 2026-27 hours before you commit to a time.
• Carry coins for offerings and stamps.
• Reserve long-distance trains for 25 December 2026 to 5 January 2027.

Plan for a closure window from 29 December to 4 January. Many attractions, shops and restaurants close on some days in it, and 1 January is the hardest day. Museums, gardens and castles often close for several days in a row, while temples and shrines generally stay open. No national rule sets the dates, so each venue decides. A secondary guide says banks and ATMs close too, 1 January most of all.

Offerings and stamps are paid in coins. Kyoto’s tourism association says many purchases and temple admission fees there can only be paid in cash. For the stamp desk, see Goshuin.

Before you go Get cash and coins before the window opens on 29 December, because a secondary guide says banks and ATMs close, 1 January most of all.

Two sets of services are all-reserved over New Year, so you need a reservation to ride:

• The Hida, Shinano and Nanki limited expresses, from 25 December 2026 to 5 January 2027.
• The Sanyo Shinkansen Nozomi, which has an all-reserved period that includes those dates.

Other services follow their own rules, so check the operator’s page for your train.

Several 2026-27 details are still open:

• Meiji Jingu: New Year hours are not yet announced.
• Sumiyoshi Taisha: 2026-27 hatsumode hours.
• Fushimi Inari Taisha: 2027 hatsumode details.
• Yasaka Shrine: 2027 specifics. An older notice, two to three years back, closed the grounds from 23:00 to 00:00 on 31 December and may not repeat. The shrine office is on 075-561-6155 (+81 75 561 6155 from abroad).
• Ginkaku-ji: the dates of its New Year kakioki schedule.
• Kyoto closures: the 2026-27 list. The last known edition is the Kyoto City Tourism Association’s PDF created on 17 December 2025, which likely covers 2025-26. Its text could not be read, so no Kyoto site’s dates here come from it.
• JR: operations on 31 December and 1 January, including the Hokuriku Shinkansen.

To verify Check each shrine or temple page in December: the queue times and 1 million figures come from one secondary guide, and no official hatsumode schedule page is found.

• Japan New Year closures 2026-27: what shuts, which trains are reserved.
• Shrine and temple etiquette and Goshuin.
• Kyoto temples and shrines: Fushimi Inari, Kiyomizu-dera and Ginkaku-ji.
• Nara, Osaka, Koyasan and Ise: Sumiyoshi Taisha, Kasuga Taisha and Koyasan.
• The temples and shrines guide: every site in one table.
• The Culture hub.