Yours Sincerely

Yours Sincerely is Haruomi Hosono's 23rd studio album, released September 11, 2026 via Ghostly International, his first label home outside Japan's usual channels for this release^[1]. It is his first collection of new original songs in roughly seven years, following 2019's HOCHONO HOUSE, and was written and recorded over a two-year period.^[2]

Hosono has described the album as an attempt to express Japanese concepts that resist direct English translation, particularly omoiyari (considerate empathy toward others), jihi (mercy or compassion), and boseiai (maternal love).^[3] Unable to find a single English word that carried the same weight, he settled on "Sincerely," the closing salutation of a letter, as the framing gesture for the whole record, explaining that no other word felt quite right until he thought of the word people use to sign off a letter.^[1]

Several tracks feature female vocalists, which Hosono has called a genuinely new approach for him, a formal choice that echoes the album's maternal and caretaking themes.^[1] Critics have described the record's sound as a blend of doo-wop warmth, ambient drift, and gamelan-influenced texture, and as spanning tender, exploratory folk and bubbling avant-pop.^[4]