A quiet ritual at the beginning of time
At the beginning of the year,
many people in Japan make a quiet visit to a shrine.
The First Visit of the Year
It is not a pilgrimage,
and not exactly a prayer in the strict sense.
People come to walk through a familiar gate,
to climb a set of stone steps,
and to stand, briefly, in a place where time feels thinner.
Hatsumōde
This visit is called Hatsumōde —
the first shrine visit of the year.
There is no single rule for how it should be done.
Some come with wishes.
Some come with gratitude.
Some come simply because the year has changed.
There is no single rule for how it should be done.
Some come with wishes.
Some come with gratitude.
Some come simply because the year has changed.
What matters is not belief,
but the act of marking a boundary.
Between the year that has passed
and the one that has not yet taken shape,
people pause, bow, and move on.
It is a small ritual.
Quiet, ordinary, and deeply ingrained.
Not a beginning in the sense of starting something new,
but a moment of alignment —
with place, with memory, and with the flow of time.
