In the first days of January most of Japan visits a shrine or temple: a queue, a coin thrown into the box, two bows, two claps, a bow, a wish for the year. Old charms are returned to be burned and new ones bought; omikuji fortunes are drawn and, if bad, tied to a frame to leave the bad luck behind.
Meiji Jingū in Tokyo, Fushimi Inari in Kyoto and Naritasan in Chiba each receive several million visitors across the three days, and the approach roads are managed like a stadium evacuation in reverse.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass; the major shrines and the police publish them.
It is the single largest movement of people in the Japanese year and it is not on the partner calendar as a January entry with the others — which is reasonable for a luxury travel page and incomplete for a reference one.
PlanningFixed on 1–3 January. The three largest shrines take millions each; 1 January after midnight is the peak.
Dates
computed from the rule
Computed from the recurrence rule we record for this entry, not copied from a listing. A date marked ~ comes from a calendar conversion and the observance may fall a day or two either side.