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About this tool
Build nengajo New Year greetings in keigo, polite or casual Japanese, with romaji, English and matsunouchi timing.
Japanese New Year Wishes assembles a complete nengajo message from the four parts a real card uses: the opening greeting (賀詞), thanks for the year that has ended, the request for continued goodwill, and a closing wish. You choose keigo, polite or casual, and whether you are writing before or after 1 January, and every line comes back with Hepburn romaji and an English gloss. It also checks the calendar rules — matsunouchi, risshun and the era year — that decide which card is actually correct on the day you send it.
Open Japanese New Year Wishes on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Provide your input — an image, text, or data.
Let the tool analyze or generate the result.
Review, refine, and reuse the output wherever you need it.
Keigo, polite and casual lines are written out separately, not produced by swapping verb endings.
Every line ships with Hepburn romaji and a plain English meaning so you can check what you are sending.
Matsunouchi, risshun and the Heisei/Reiwa era year are computed from the date you give.
From 1 January it is あけましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetō gozaimasu), shortened to あけましておめでとう among friends. Before the year turns you say 良いお年を (yoi otoshi o) instead, meaning roughly 'have a good year ahead'.
Until the end of matsunouchi — 7 January in the Kanto region and much of Japan, 15 January in much of Kansai. After that the correct card is a kanchu-mimai (寒中見舞い), which runs until risshun around 4 February; later than that it becomes a yokan-mimai until the end of February.
It is considered too casual. 賀正 and 迎春 are two-character abbreviations of a longer greeting, and sending an abbreviation upward reads as curt. For a boss, a teacher or a client use a four-character form such as 謹賀新年, or a full sentence like 謹んで新年のお慶びを申し上げます.
Avoid 去年 for 'last year' — write 昨年 or 旧年, because 去 carries a sense of parting. Words about ending, falling or illness (終わる, 落ちる, 病む) are avoided too, and traditional nengajo omit full stops and commas, since punctuation suggests an ending.