Evidence status: DOCUMENTED
New Year's Eve celebrations are usually noisy.
Japan has one of the most beautiful versions of that noise.
Across the country, enormous Buddhist temple bells sound slowly through the night.
Not twelve times.
One hundred and eight.
The Short Answer
The Japanese Buddhist New Year's Eve bell ceremony is called Joya no Kane.
At many temples, the bell is struck 108 times as the old year ends and the new one begins.
The number represents the bonnō — the worldly desires, passions or mental disturbances that bind human beings to dissatisfaction and suffering in Buddhist thought.
Each strike symbolically helps release or cleanse one of these afflictions so that the New Year can begin with a clearer mind.
At some temples, 107 strokes occur before midnight and the final one after the New Year begins. At others, all 108 may occur after midnight.
The symbolism is well established.
What varies is exactly how Buddhist traditions explain the calculation of 108.
What We Know
Japan's National Tourism Organization describes the New Year's bell as a Buddhist ritual in which many temples sound their bells 108 times.
One common arrangement is:
107 during the closing minutes of the old year,
one as the New Year begins.
Major temples follow their own local procedures.
At Tōdai-ji in Nara, the great bell is rung 108 times beginning at midnight. Because the bell is enormous, groups of people pull the striking beam together.
At Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto, the temple explicitly explains that the 108 strokes correspond with the earthly desires troubling human beings and that ringing the bell represents the hope of entering the New Year purified of them.
How It Became a Habit
New Year is already a powerful psychological boundary.
Buddhist practice adds another layer.
The old year contains:
regret,
anger,
attachment,
mistakes,
desires,
and unfinished emotional business.
The bells make the act of leaving these things behind audible.
Each strike takes time to decay.
The sound spreads.
Then silence returns.
Then another strike.
It is almost the opposite of a frantic countdown.
The ritual asks people to reflect rather than rush.
The Story Everyone Tells
The usual explanation is that human beings possess exactly 108 sins.
The temple rings once for each one.
That is close to the tradition but slightly misleading.
Bonnō are not best understood as a universal numbered list resembling 108 commandments someone has broken.
They are mental afflictions, cravings, attachments and delusions that disturb the mind.
And different Buddhist traditions explain the number 108 in different ways.
What the Evidence Actually Says
One familiar calculation begins with the six senses recognised in Buddhist thought:
sight,
hearing,
smell,
taste,
touch,
and mind.
These can encounter experience as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
Additional divisions involving attachment or rejection and past, present or future can produce the symbolic total of 108.
But this is not the only explanation.
Japanese Buddhist sources themselves acknowledge more than one method of deriving the number.
So:
DOCUMENTED: Joya no Kane involves 108 bell strikes at Buddhist temples around New Year.
DOCUMENTED: The number is traditionally associated with the bonnō.
WELL SUPPORTED: The ritual symbolises purification and release from the mental burdens of the old year.
DOCUMENTED: Different temples vary in precisely when the 108 strokes occur.
DISPUTED: There is no single universally authoritative arithmetic formula generating the number 108.
Different Elsewhere
Not every Japanese person spends New Year's Eve inside a Buddhist temple.
Some watch the bells on television.
Some visit shrines at New Year instead.
Some temples allow members of the public to help ring the bell, while others restrict the ceremony to monks or ticketed participants.
The sound, however, remains one of the most recognisable markers of the Japanese New Year.
Why It Stuck
Because 108 slow bells do something a countdown cannot.
They make time feel physical.
Each strike removes another piece of the old year.
The final sound fades.
And for a moment, before ordinary life begins again, the year really does feel new.
Related Curiosities
Why Do We Make New Year’s Resolutions?
Why Do Greeks Smash a Pomegranate at New Year?
Why Do Spaniards Eat Twelve Grapes at Midnight on New Year’s Eve?
Why Are Red Envelopes Given at Lunar New Year?
Sources & Further Reading
Japan National Tourism Organization — New Year's Eve and Joya no Kane — describes 108 bells and their association with worldly desires.
Tōdai-ji Temple — Annual Events — official description of its 108 New Year's bell strikes.
Kiyomizu-dera Temple — The New Year's Eve Bells — explains the connection between the 108 strikes and renouncing earthly desires.
Asian Art Museum — Japanese New Year bell tradition — museum interpretation of the 108 bonnō and purification symbolism.
Last checked: 19 September 2026