“Going to bōnenkai”! – among Japanese people, in an izakaya, amid unwritten rules and rituals

Company "bōnenkai" (忘年会) isn’t an “ordinary party,” but a ritual of closing the year: the "izakaya", the “kampai,” the table hierarchy, and a controlled looseness (無礼講). Vignettes from life, kanji, and the psychology of relationships in Japanese working life.

“Meeting to forget the year”

Do you want to experience what it’s like to go to a year-end company dinner in Japan? How do Japanese people really behave when they step off the office stage and into an izakaya? Then let’s go! Today we’ll be watching everything up close: from the first question tossed shyly and under one’s breath in an open-space office, through the nervous logistics of reservations, all the way to the moment when warm steam hits your face and suddenly the entire invisible mechanism of relationships begins to work—beneath glances, beneath politeness, beneath “it’s just a casual outing.”

Because Bōnenkai (忘年会) is not simply a “year-end party.” The word is like a small cultural code: 忘 (“to forget,” but with a shade of meaning: “to set the weight down from the heart”), 年 (“year” as a cycle that must be closed), 会 (“a meeting”—so something that happens in a group, not alone). It is a secular ritual that stands alongside "Shōgatsu"—not a part of New Year’s rites, but a separate clasp that lets people enter January more lightly, without a quiet emotional debt toward their coworkers.

What is most interesting in Bōnenkai is not at all how much or what people drink, but what may be said then, where and how to sit, how to laugh—yes, so that you can still calmly look your work friends in the eye on Monday morning. It is an evening in which Japanese politeness softens for a moment, hierarchy pretends to loosen its grip, and tensions from the whole year receive a legal “valve”—but without wreckage and without anything-goes chaos. In an izakaya you will see not so much a party as a precisely regulated social ritual: a bit of relief, a bit of gratitude, a bit of laughter, and underneath it all an attentive reading of the atmosphere, of boundaries, and of who can allow themselves what.

SCENE I

The proposal

Our open-space office in the center of Hakodate has the same smell all year long: a delicate note of air conditioning, the scent of a printer that runs rarely, and coffee from the vending machine—decidedly too sweet. But at the end of November something changes that you won’t see in Google Calendar. People begin to speak more quietly (though it is always quiet anyway). In the windows, the blackness of night threaded with countless neon lights appears sooner. In the corridor, sheets of paper show up with notices about the “fiscal year,” about reception closing, about shifts in cleaning hours, deadlines for sending approvals. December is approaching—and with it a thing that formally is not an obligation, but in practice can be something very close to a social duty: 忘年会 – Bōnenkai.

In Japan there are matters that begin with a question, but the question is only packaging. The essence lies underneath, like a current beneath thin ice. And in exactly that way—seemingly by accident—someone says a word that immediately stretches a net of invisible connections between desks.

Someone murmurs: “when are we doing it this year?” They do not look at anyone directly, because directly would mean pressure. They do not add an exclamation point, because enthusiasm can be suspicious. It is meant to sound like an innocent question, at most a loose suggestion, like an idea tossed into the air—something you can take up or ignore. But in this open space no one ignores such matters. Even if at first they pretend they didn’t hear.

For a moment there is silence. Not awkward—rather, worklike. In that silence everyone performs the same operation in their head at lightning speed: who should answer first, whether the boss already supports it, whether this year’s financial results allow for a Bōnenkai, or whether it’s better to do it “more modestly,” in a smaller group. This is not a cynical calculation. It is the everyday art of maintaining harmony: no one wants to push themselves into the role of decision leader, because decision means responsibility, and responsibility means the risk that someone will feel omitted or pressured.

In a Polish company, simplicity would often win: “we’re doing it—who’s in?” Here a different logic works. Before any “yes” is spoken, you must make sure that “yes” will not be violence to anyone. Before a “no” is spoken, you must remember that “no” can sound like a refusal to be part of the team (although in my experience I have never yet encountered a refusal, foreigners excluded). In Japan, very many things play out in half-tones. Bōnenkai is one of those phenomena where half-tones matter more than words.

At last someone—most often a person with longer tenure, but not necessarily the highest in the hierarchy—says calmly that “it’s a good idea.” The sentence sounds like a small approval, yet it works like a signal to everyone else: “we’re doing a Bōnenkai; everything has to be prepared.” And suddenly, in a single second, the topic jumps from “are we doing it?” to “how do we organize it?”, which is a typically Japanese transition: discussion of feelings and desires is very quiet, but once it gives way to discussion of logistics—it erupts into a hubbub, because logistics are neutral, safe, socially acceptable.

So the season’s practical realism appears. December in Hakodate (as, in fact, in Tokyo or Warsaw) is a month of reservations, a month of full izakaya, a month in which Fridays and Saturdays are like gold—you have to grab them in advance or take what’s left. And at this moment Bōnenkai stops being an abstract “custom” and becomes something concrete: a date, a place, a budget, a number of people. Japanese propriety always has this second side: there is something ceremonial in it, but also something ruthlessly practical.

Someone casually mentions the standard amount per person—not too high, so as not to scare off the younger ones, and not too low, so there won’t be shame. Above all, the amount must reflect this year’s financial results. Not because the company can’t afford a party, because it can. Only because it isn’t proper to have too good a time when results are weak, or too modest a time when results are good. Everything must match; otherwise it would look as though employees don’t care about the company’s well-being.

Someone reminds everyone about "nomihōdai", because with a package it’s easier to control the bill and avoid a situation in which one person drank more and another less and suddenly it has to be settled too precisely. The Japanese community does not love precision where precision can cause shame. It prefers a flat rate that smooths differences.

At this point in the conversation, almost always, one more word appears, spoken with a smile as if it were a joke: 無礼講. “Today, no formalities.” This slogan is the essence of Bōnenkai and at the same time its greatest paradox. Because “no formalities” in Japan almost never means “no rules.” Rather it means: “for a moment we pretend hierarchy is not the most important thing, so we can breathe.” That breath has its shape and its limits, countless unwritten rules in which a foreigner has no chance of finding their way, even if they have spent many years here and know the language fairly well.

I know that at a Bōnenkai one should relax, but one should not make someone feel embarrassed (through excessive relaxation). It is proper to speak more freely, but it is not proper to break the atmosphere (that is, freely, but with consideration of who is speaking to whom and who they are). It is proper to laugh louder (loudness is governed by separate rules), but it is not proper to become a problem. This "bureikō" (無礼講 – literally “a gathering without ceremony”) is like a ceasefire—everyone knows it only lasts until tomorrow, but precisely for that reason it works.

Yet the most interesting thing happens not in the words, but in what is not said: who will be 幹事, "kanji", the “organizer.” In the Polish understanding, an organizer is simply “the one who handles it.” In the Japanese understanding, it is a social role that contains a subtle responsibility for the harmony of the entire group. "Kanji" does not only reserve a table. "Kanji" anticipates whether someone will feel excluded; whether the place will be sufficiently “neutral” so that a senior won’t feel a drop in prestige and a junior won’t feel the thresholds are too high; whether the team will fit into a private room (個室), where it’s easier to talk freely, or whether it’s better in the noisy main hall, where awkwardness disappears into the hum. "Kanji" remembers the last train (終電), how to end the gathering in a way that won’t leave anyone alone with the feeling that they “overdid it” (yes, yes—whether someone will not get too drunk is also a problem of the whole group, and it has to be handled in advance). And that is exactly why people do not rush for this role.

And yet someone must. And at this moment the most realistic, least cinematic truth about offices in Japan activates: responsibility often flows downward. Not brutally, not by command—rather as a soft suggestion dressed up as concern for development. The youngest employee hears that “it’s a good lesson.” And that sentence, spoken gently, is like a seal. Everyone smiles with relief, because the system has found a victim. No one had to force anyone. No one lost face. And yet the decision has been made.

Only then, in the open space, can you feel that a Bōnenkai “will happen.” Not as a party, but as a ritual of closing the year. And here is the mental difference that is easiest to miss: Bōnenkai is not born from a need to “go wild.” It is born from a need to order relationships, from a need to let off steam in a socially safe way. Japan likes valves, but it also likes the valve to have been installed by an engineer.

At the end of this short scene—which from the outside might look like “setting a date to go out”—the office returns to its rhythm. Keyboards click again. New threads appear in Slack and on LINE. Someone stands up for tea. But in the head of the newly appointed "kanji" another clock begins to tick: a list of reservations, maps, budgets, numbers, questions about allergies, about preferences, about whether someone “doesn’t drink” and how to play it so as not to turn it into a subject.

And at the very bottom of all this there is something very Japanese: an awareness that even the most “casual” evening must be buttoned up to the last button. And that harmony is not born from grand declarations, but from sentences tossed under one’s breath that pretend to be chance, and in reality bind the team together at the very last stretch of the year.

Bōnenkai – let’s read the kanji

When a Japanese person says Bōnenkai, they are not speaking only about a party. The word itself is a small summary of the end-of-year mindset: 忘年会 is most often read in the Sino-Japanese reading as ぼうねんかい ("bō-nen-kai"), and literally it consists of three simple ideas: “to forget” + “year” + “meeting, gathering.”

The first character, 忘, is often translated mechanically as “to forget,” but its image is more interesting: in the classical view it is 亡 (“to disappear, to lose”) above 心 (“heart/mind”). Inside the character there is therefore a suggestion that forgetting is not merely an operation of memory, but a momentary “disappearance” of a weight from the heart. In the end-of-year context it sounds almost like a psychological program: not so much to erase facts as to set aside the tensions that have latched onto everyday life. The second character, 年, is simply “year.” The third, 会, is “meeting, assembly, gathering.”

And here the most important nuance appears: “to forget the year” in Japan is not a naive “pretending nothing happened.” Linguistic sources even show that “忘年” had a different semantic background in Chinese culture—it could be used in the sense of “forgetting the difference in age,” that is, not making age a barrier in a relationship. Only Japanese practice gave this phrase the popular meaning “to forget the hardships of the past year”—and this is a beautiful example of how language betrays local sensitivity: Japan took a ready-made formula and “redirected” it from the axis of age to the axis of the psychological weight of daily life.

That is why Bōnenkai is not simply an “escape into alcohol.” Yes, alcohol is a tool—because it loosens, smooths, unties the tongue—but it is a tool inscribed into a social ritual. The essence is that there exists a publicly permitted moment of release: one may laugh louder, one may complain a little (but still very carefully with that), one may show gratitude, one may slow the distance of hierarchy, and at the same time the entire process takes place within clear rules (who organizes, where one goes, what the budget is, when it ends). In many Western cultures “getting it out of your system” is an individual or intimate matter; in Japan, individually it is most often unattainable—you first have to enable it—organize it as a group. And it must have a very specific form, because form protects relationships and harmony.

In that sense Bōnenkai functions like a symbolic period. A period does not change the content of the sentence, but it closes it and allows you to move on. A year of work, small frustrations, unspoken emotions, micro-tensions in the team—all of that receives its “safe” finale in a meeting that is officially unofficial.

It is also important to distinguish: Bōnenkai is not part of "Shōgatsu", that is, the official New Year celebrations that last until January 3. It is not an “element of New Year celebration,” but a separate clasp that closes the year before entering the new one. That is why Bōnenkai usually takes place in December, often before the truly New Year time—family and ritual—begins.

The Japanese language likes such condensed “meaning capsules”: one word, and within it an entire user manual for the end of the year. And sometimes that manual is even “disenchanted” with a joke: you may encounter the spelling 「望年会」—“a meeting to await/long for the year” instead of to “forget” it. It is a play on a single character: 忘 (to forget) changes into 望 (to desire, to look out, to hope). That tiny change shows how Japanese people feel the weight of writing: changing a kanji can change the tone of an entire custom—from “I leave it behind” to “I look forward.”

Bōnenkai is not amnesia, but emotional hygiene in a collective edition. “To forget” here means: to set the weight aside for a moment, in order to enter the new year without clenched jaws and without a quiet emotional debt toward the people with whom one spends most days. And because Japan is a culture in which relational harmony can often matter more than the expression of the individual, that period at the end of the year carries a meaning greater than a simple translation of three characters suggests.

SCENE II

Izakaya

Outside, the frost in Hakodate is sharp as glass. The wind presses under your collar and carries the smell of exhaust, wet asphalt, and roasted chestnuts from a street stall. But it takes only opening the door of an izakaya for the world to change temperature by thirty degrees. Warmth hits, steam, and a thick murmur—that characteristic Japanese one: it’s supposedly fairly quiet, and yet everywhere there is murmur and conversation. Inside it smells of soy sauce, dashi, grilled chicken, and alcohol that is not only in the glasses, but already in the air.

At the entrance, a narrow passage. A shelf for shoes and a rack for coats. Here there is no tatami throughout the place, but deeper in there are private booths, slightly cut off from the hall, with low partitions and curtains. Our "kanji"—young Tanaka-kun, today in the organizer role—stops half a step in front of the rest, like shield and compass in one. It is he who speaks the name on the reservation, and in his voice you can hear a certain dose of stress: already now he is responsible for whether the evening “falls into place.”

The "ten’in" (a woman from the venue staff) in a black apron nods, quickly checks the list, and leads them deeper in. “This way, please” is not only politeness—it is the moment when the group begins to behave like a group, and not like a collection of separate individuals. Passing through a tight corridor turns people into an organism: the pace is set by the person in front, the rest adjust their step, no one overtakes. Even if a moment ago in the open space each person was a separate island, now—in this narrow throat of the place—one stream forms.

The booth is waiting. The table is already set: a pitcher of water, small plates, chopsticks in paper sleeves, laminated menus, and a button to call staff. In the middle lies a metal bowl for yakitori bones. On a stool in the corner someone immediately arranges bags in the tightest possible way—this is a Japanese reflex that says: “I’m not taking up much space at all!”

And before anything is said about food, the first, most important thing happens: sitting down.

In a culture where so much is unspoken, “taking possession of space” (that is, who sits where next to whom) is incredibly important. Everyone knows it; it is like breathing, self-evident.

The farthest place from the entrance is the “safe center”—"kamiza" (上座, literally “upper seat”). There, where there is the least draft from the corridor, where you don’t have to get up every moment when the waitress brings more plates, where it is a bit quieter. A place that does not have to be physically more comfortable, but is more comfortable symbolically. Whoever sits there will be “the most important”—the guest, the boss, the person highest in the hierarchy.

Closest to the entrance is "shimoza" (下座, literally “lower seat”)—the “lower” side of the table, a position of readiness. There sits someone younger, someone who, if needed, is to stand up, call staff, hand things, shift a chair, make sure nothing spills. "Shimoza" is not a punishment. It is a role: on-call duty for reality. Of course it falls to juniors.

In this scene no one gives commands. There is no: “sir here, ma’am there.” There is a microscopic choreography of glances and half-steps. The "buchō" (部長, literally “department head”)—Nakamura—has not arrived yet. And as long as the "buchō" is absent, the arrangement hangs suspended like an unfinished sentence.

Someone stands by the "kamiza", then reflexively takes a step back, as if they had touched a hot surface and burned themselves. Someone else pretends to adjust their coat. Tanaka-kun, the "kanji", does something typically Japanese: instead of saying “please sit here,” he stands in the place of "shimoza", as if it were obvious. He shows with his own body: “I’m taking this side.” And suddenly the rest arrange themselves around that decision like iron filings around a magnet.

They bring "oshibori"—hot, damp towels. Everyone takes theirs and for a second wipes their hands, but also as if “washing off” the road, the cold, the city. In Japan these small things matter: ostensibly hygiene, but more a ritual of passage. Breathing slows, shoulders drop. Someone in the corner takes off their jacket and hangs it on the rack so it doesn’t touch anything foreign. Another small gesture: “I care about order.”

The first tiny bowls begin to flow onto the table—"otoshi", the “entry appetizer,” something like a mandatory little thing you receive before you order anything at all. For a European it can be surprising, but here it stirs no emotions: the system is meant to run smoothly. Movement is meant to happen without words.

And only then, when everyone is physically “inside,” does the second ritual appear: ordering a drink, but not drinking yet.

In Japan, you don’t drink “simply when you want.” First there is collective synchronization. A shared start. It’s like pressing “enter” for the whole group.

Tanaka-kun presses the button, the staff woman comes over, and he says one phrase that millions of tables have heard in December:

— 「とりあえず、生で。」
(For now… draft beer.)

Not because everyone loves beer. Because it is the simplest way to set everyone on the same line. Beer is neutral. Beer is shared. Beer is equal—at least for the first ten minutes. This is still preparation, alignment.

Someone who doesn’t drink chooses "ūron", but does it in a way that doesn’t “break” the rhythm. In Japan even refusing alcohol can take the form of a polite bow toward the group: “I don’t want to disturb you.” And the group answers with a similar code: no one probes, no one makes it a topic. “Doesn’t drink” does not become a manifesto. It becomes one of the options.

The beer arrives instantly (believe me—instantly. I don’t know how they pour it so fast). The mugs land on the table at the same moment. And now a thing happens that a foreigner often misses because it seems like “nothing”: everyone waits.

They wait for the "buchō".

Because if it starts without him… I don’t know what. There is no such possibility, ever.

When Nakamura-"buchō" finally pulls the curtain aside and steps into the booth, the whole group makes an almost invisible movement—as if someone had plugged in the current. The "buchō" apologizes with a short bow, someone indicates his seat, and he, naturally, lands in the "kamiza". No one had to discuss it.

And then the word is spoken that in Bōnenkai is like a strike of a bell, the start signal:

— 「乾杯。」
("Kampai"!)

Glass meets glass. No one raises a toast to freedom or grand dreams. Here the toast is more technical: “we begin.” And even in this "kampai" there is hidden discipline—juniors lift their mugs a little lower than the boss, checking out of the corner of their eye that their glass is not higher. This is not fear. It is the language of order. They drink too while turning slightly to the side. Women drink holding the glass with both hands and, as far as possible, covering their mouths with a hand.

Only after the first sip does it become “looser.” But looser in Japan does not mean chaotic. Within a few minutes Tanaka-kun begins to work like a dispatcher: he opens the menu, chooses things that are “safe for everyone”—edamame, karaage, a mixed set of yakitori, maybe a daikon salad, something easy to share. In an izakaya, food is rarely “mine.” It is “ours.” Shared plates are material proof of community. Long before the party, "kanji" wrote down in Excel every participant’s allergies, their liked and disliked foods, and selected each dish so that it would fit best.

The young man, sitting in the "shimoza", stands up at every entrance of staff, says a quiet "sumimasen", shifts plates, makes space, makes sure nothing stands crosswise. No one praises him. And no one says it is his duty. It’s simply how the role works—the less you talk about it, the better.

From the side you can see how the "buchō" scans faces, as if calculating the atmosphere. This is typical: a leader does not have to dominate with words, but is usually the one who “holds the temperature.” If the conversation becomes too heavy, he will toss in a joke. If someone overdoes it, he will redirect attention. If someone falls silent, he will find a neutral topic. This, too, is Bōnenkai: not only eating and drinking, but managing emotions softly, indirectly.

In the next room someone laughs louder. Here laughter is more punctuated; it appears and disappears. In Japan laughter is often a tool for smoothing, not an explosion. After two mugs, short confessions begin: not dramas, but things that in the office would not pass one’s throat—“this year was hard,” “thanks for the help,” “sorry about that matter.” And that is exactly the essence: Bōnenkai does not so much “overturn hierarchy” as allow, for a moment, a touch of the person beneath their role.

“Japanese reset”

The "buchō" says it with a smile, as if shrugging off his jacket together with the weight of the whole year: 「今日は無礼講で」—today "bureikō", no formalities. In the izakaya booth there rises that specific collective giggle of relief, a little like air released from a balloon: half joke, half permission, half “you can.” Someone immediately loosens a tie, someone else leans back, and for a moment the conversation flows faster, as if the mere slogan “without etiquette” had the power to change the chemistry of the blood. But even in that wave of relief there is something very Japanese: no one lunges at freedom. Freedom in Japan has soft edges.

A junior—the same Tanaka-kun, our "kanji", who arranged the reservation and spent the first hour watching the plates—hears in the word "bureikō" something far more complex than “let loose.” He knows that this slogan is like a door left ajar: you may say more, but you may not burst inside with your shoes on. In his head there is not the thought “finally I’ll say what I think,” but rather: “maybe now I’ll mention that situation…”. Instead of declarations, half-sentences are born, suspended laughter, linguistic softeners: “well, it was hard,” “sometimes I worried,” “thank you for the support.” This is what sincerity looks like in a culture that does not value brutal directness, but such an unveiling after which one can still work tomorrow. It is not easy for a European to find their place here. But believe me, it is even harder for a Japanese person with us.

At a certain moment the "buchō" says something that would not pass his throat in the office: that in this quarter “he himself felt pressure” and that he “apologizes for harsh emails.” The table falls quiet for a second, as if everyone suddenly saw the human being beneath his role. And this is precisely the valve: for a moment hierarchy softens, but does not vanish; its sharp edges are wrapped in alcohol, laughter, and ritual so that no one gets cut by sincerity. Everyone receives a piece of breathing space—and that is enough, because in Japanese relational psychology it is often not about winning a conversation, but about restoring balance.

And yet "bureikō" is not amnesia. In the background, memory operates: who behaved how, who overdid it, who was tactful, who missed the boundary. The culture does not erase; it sometimes politely pretends not to see. That is why when someone accelerates too much, someone else—usually with longer tenure, sometimes the "buchō" himself—gently changes the subject, pours water, tosses a joke, as if dispersing smoke. This is Japanese “ease within limits”: you can speak truth, but in a form that doesn’t leave a stain.

When two hours pass, someone reminds everyone of the time, because the reservation is “for four hours” and soon there will be ラストオーダー—“last order,” the final order. Even relaxation here has frames that protect against dragging the evening into chaos.

And when they go out, the cold will hit their faces again, and the city will become loud and alien again, and the formula will be said—a phrase that sounds like politeness, and is the closing of the ritual: “otsukaresama deshita”. Thank you for the effort.

(Some employees do not end the evening there and head further on, into somewhat wilder regions, but about that another time—二次会 – “nijikai,” “the second meeting.”)

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