お歳暮
Oseibo is a year-end gift expressing thanks to people with whom the giver has an ongoing relationship or from whom they have received help. It may be handed over or delivered through a retailer. The recipient, contents, timing and wrapping depend on the relationship and arrangements; participation is not universal.
Year-end gifts predate department stores, which later developed catalogues and delivery networks.
The words 御歳暮 identify the occasion on a gift sheet; that sheet can sit inside or outside wrapping paper.
Retail guidance and member surveys describe particular practices and samples.
Fukuoka City Museum groups year-end, New Year and Bon gifts among recurring seasonal exchanges. It discusses festival foods, religious offerings and shared meals as background. This provides a way to understand seasonal giving without assigning oseibo a single proven moment of invention.
A Tokugawa Hidetada document in the National Museum of Japanese History catalogue records receipt of an oseibo kosode, a garment, on the twenty-third day of the twelfth month. The museum dates the document to the early seventeenth century. It is concrete evidence of year-end gifts before modern department-store campaigns.
Matsuzakaya’s historical archives associate wider oseibo and ochugen giving with department-store promotions in the Meiji 30s, around the turn of the twentieth century. The store also held winter and summer sales in its earlier drapery-business period. Retail expansion built on an existing practice.
Matsuzakaya’s 1935 general gift catalogue described delivery directly from the branch nearest the recipient. Printed choices, store orders and a branch network worked together. This was a general gift catalogue, useful evidence of delivery services rather than an oseibo-only publication.
The archives preserve a 1954 oseibo poster and year-end catalogues from 1952 and 1971. Their account notes that food occupied only three pages in the 1952 catalogue, while it made up roughly half of the Nagoya year-end catalogue by 1979. These are named examples from one retailer’s history.
Mitsukoshi Isetan’s 2022 guide gives examples including parents, relatives, teachers, managers and clients. It also notes company restrictions and recipients who would find an expected return gift burdensome. A named relationship alone does not make sending a gift appropriate in every case.
The same guide includes sweets, drinks, ham, hot-pot foods and catalogues from which the recipient selects a gift. These are possibilities rather than a compulsory list. Preferences, storage and the ability to receive a delivery all affect the choice.
Odakyu’s guidance gives late November onward for Kanto and early to mid-December for Kansai. Mitsukoshi Isetan’s 2022 guide gives early December to around the twenty-fifth, while also noting late-November deliveries. These examples should not be combined into one mandatory national deadline.
The hyo-gaki is the wording that states a gift’s purpose or season on its sheet. Mitsukoshi Isetan’s 2022 table uses 御歳暮 or お歳暮 before year-end, 御年賀 for New Year, then wording such as 寒中御伺 for a winter greeting. Timing can change the label while the intention remains one of thanks.
Examples of occasion wording in Mitsukoshi Isetan’s 2022 guide.
A modern gift sheet commonly has printed noshi decoration and mizuhiki cords. A red-and-white bow is one example used for repeatable celebratory occasions. The occasion appears above the knot and the giver’s name normally below it. A narrow noshi strip is another format; printed cords need not be real string.
With uchi-noshi, the gift sheet goes around the box beneath the wrapping paper. With soto-noshi, it sits outside the wrapping. Mitsukoshi Isetan recommends the outer arrangement for direct handover, making the occasion visible. These are alternative layer arrangements, not two compulsory consecutive steps.
Matsuzakaya’s archives show Taisho-period paper advertising stores and departments, followed by cattleya motifs and changes in store colours. A design introduced in 1982 was used across its stores. Such wrapping could serve different seasons: a winter gift does not make every paper design specific to oseibo.
Mitsukoshi Isetan’s FAQ describes both a printed reduced-wrapping format and a format using a narrow strip beneath environmentally considerate paper. In the second, the strip is attached before the paper. They are separate service formats, rather than an instruction to apply both in sequence.
Fancrew surveyed 1,010 members online in December 2024 and published its findings in 2025. Twenty-four per cent reported giving oseibo personally during 2024; the question excluded corporate gifts. This describes the participating members, rather than a population-wide rate for Japan.
The same member survey includes online and mail-order shopping alongside department stores as purchase channels. In 2022, Mitsukoshi Isetan staff also described more deliveries during the pandemic and purchases for personal use. Delivery itself had a much longer history; these observations concern changing uses of retail services.
No. Oseibo is a year-end expression of thanks; otoshidama belongs to a different New Year custom.
No. It was a general gift catalogue describing delivery through the store’s branch network.
The checked retail guides give different windows. Their examples do not establish one national deadline.
No. They place the gift sheet beneath or outside the wrapping paper, respectively.
No. It comes from an online sample of 1,010 members and concerns personal giving in 2024, excluding corporate gifts.