We introduce the notion of a log smooth degeneration, which is a logarithmic
analogue of the central fiber of some kind of degenerations of complex manifolds
over polydiscs. Under suitable conditions, we construct a natural cohomological
mixed Hodge complex on the reduction of a compact log smooth degeneration. In
particular, we obtain mixed Hodge structures on the log de Rham cohomologies and
$E_1$-degeneration of the log Hodge to de Rham spectral sequence for a certain
kind of compact reduced log smooth degenerations.