![Japanese office workers taking a break to watch the new era name being announced on TV](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Japanese_office_workers_taking_a_break_to_watch_the_new_era_name_being_announced_on_TV.jpg)
is the current
era of Japan's official calendar. It began on 1 May 2019, the day on which Emperor
Akihito
is a member of the Imperial House of Japan who reigned as the 125th emperor of Japan from 7 January 1989 until his abdication on 30 April 2019. He presided over the Heisei era, ''Heisei'' being an expression of achieving peace worldwide.
B ...
's elder son,
Naruhito
is the current Emperor of Japan. He acceded to the Chrysanthemum Throne on 1 May 2019, beginning the Reiwa era, following the abdication of his father, Akihito. He is the 126th monarch according to Japan's traditional order of succession ...
,
ascended the throne as the 126th
Emperor of Japan
The Emperor of Japan is the monarch and the head of the Imperial House of Japan, Imperial Family of Japan. Under the Constitution of Japan, he is defined as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, and his positio ...
. The day before, Emperor Akihito
abdicated
Abdication is the act of formally relinquishing monarchical authority. Abdications have played various roles in the succession procedures of monarchies. While some cultures have viewed abdication as an extreme abandonment of duty, in other societ ...
the
Chrysanthemum Throne
The is the throne of the Emperor of Japan. The term also can refer to very specific seating, such as the throne in the Shishin-den at Kyoto Imperial Palace.
Various other thrones or seats that are used by the Emperor during official functions ...
, marking the end of the
Heisei
The is the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Emeritus Akihito from 8 January 1989 until his abdication on 30 April 2019. The Heisei era started on 8 January 1989, the day after the death of the Emperor Hirohito, ...
era. The year 2019 corresponds with Heisei 31 from 1 January through 30 April, and with from 1 May. The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
The is an executive department of the Government of Japan, and is responsible for the country's foreign policy and international relations.
The ministry was established by the second term of the third article of the National Government Organi ...
explained the meaning of ''Reiwa'' to be "beautiful harmony".
[
]
Background
Announcement
The Japanese government on 1 April 2019 announced the name during a live televised press conference, as Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga
is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2020 to 2021. He had served as Chief Cabinet Secretary during the second administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe fro ...
traditionally revealed the kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
calligraphy on a board. The Prime Minister Shinzō Abe
Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍 晋三, Hepburn: , ; 21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 20 ...
said that ''Reiwa'' represents "a culture being born and nurtured by people coming together beautifully".
Name selection
A shortlist of names for the new era was drawn up by a nine-member expert panel comprising seven men and two women with the cabinet selecting the final name from the shortlist. The nine experts were:
* – professor at Chiba University of Commerce
is a private university in Ichikawa, Chiba
240px, Ichikawa City Hall
is a city in western Chiba Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 491,716 in 251,142 households and a population density of 8559 persons per km2. The t ...
* – former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Japan
The , located in Hayabusachō, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda, Tokyo, is the Supreme court, highest court in Japan. It has ultimate judicial authority to interpret the Constitution of Japan, Japanese constitution and decide questions of national law. It ...
* – Nobel prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
-winning stem-cell scientist, professor at Kyoto University
, mottoeng = Freedom of academic culture
, established =
, type = National university, Public (National)
, endowment = ¥ 316 billion (2.4 1000000000 (number), billion USD)
, faculty = 3,480 (Teaching Staff)
, administrative_staff ...
* – screenwriter and novelist
* – former chairman of the Japan Business Federation
The is an economic organization founded in May 2002 by amalgamation of Keidanren (, Japan Federation of Economic Organizations, established 1946; name sometimes used alone as abbreviation for whole organization) and Nikkeiren (, Japan Federatio ...
* – trustee and president of Waseda University
, mottoeng = Independence of scholarship
, established = 21 October 1882
, type = Private
, endowment =
, president = Aiji Tanaka
, city = Shinjuku
, state = Tokyo
, country = Japan
, students = 47,959
, undergrad = 39,382
, postgrad ...
* – president of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association The is an entirely independent and voluntary organization funded and operated by the mass media of Japan. The NSK was established on July 23, 1946. Its express purpose is to elevate ethical standards in reporting and protect and promote the media's ...
* – president of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation
, also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee.
NHK operates two terrestri ...
* – president of Nippon Television Holdings
The day after the announcement, the government revealed that the other candidate names under consideration had been , , , , and , three of which were sourced from two Japanese works, the ''Kojiki
The , also sometimes read as or , is an early Japanese chronicle of myths, legends, hymns, genealogies, oral traditions, and semi-historical accounts down to 641 concerning the origin of the Japanese archipelago, the , and the Japanese imperia ...
'' and the '' Nihon Shoki''. Official pronunciations and meanings of these names were not released, although the reading of Eikō was leaked; the other readings are speculative. Predicted guess names included and .
Origin and meaning
The kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
characters for ''Reiwa'' are derived from the '' Man'yōshū'', an eighth-century (Nara period
The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the cap ...
) anthology of ''waka
Waka may refer to:
Culture and language
* Waka (canoe), a Polynesian word for canoe; especially, canoes of the Māori of New Zealand
** Waka ama, a Polynesian outrigger canoe
** Waka hourua, a Polynesian ocean-going canoe
** Waka taua, a Māori w ...
'' poetry. The ''kotobagaki'' (headnote) attached to a group of 32 poems (815–846) in Volume 5 of the collection, composed on the occasion of a poetic gathering to view the plum blossoms
''Prunus mume'' is an East Asian and Southeast Asian tree species classified in the ''Armeniaca'' section of the genus ''Prunus'' subgenus ''Prunus''. Its common names include Chinese plum, Japanese plum, and Japanese apricot. The flower, lon ...
, reads as follows:
The Japanese Foreign Ministry
The is an executive department of the Government of Japan, and is responsible for the country's foreign policy and international relations.
The ministry was established by the second term of the third article of the National Government Orga ...
provided an English-language interpretation of ''Reiwa'' as "beautiful harmony", to dispel reports that here is translated as "command" or "order" – which are the significantly more common meanings of the character, especially so in both modern Japanese and Chinese. The Foreign Ministry also noted that "beautiful harmony" is rather an explanation than an official translation or a legally binding interpretation.
Prior to and naturally irrespective of the era announcement, within the context of the Chinese essay in the ''Man'yōshū'' from which the excerpt is cited, the expression (which characters constitute the word ''reigetsu'' in modern Japanese) has generally been academically translated or interpreted as "wonderful" or "good (Japanese: ''yoi'') month" in published scholarly works, such as by Alexander Vovin
Alexander (Sasha) Vladimirovich Vovin (russian: Александр Владимирович Вовин; 27 January 1961 – 8 April 2022) was a Soviet-born Russian-American linguist and philologist, and director of studies at the School for Ad ...
in English as ''wonderful month'' in his 2011 commentary and translation of Book 5, or by Susumu Nakanishi
is a scholar of Japanese literature, particularly of the ''Man'yōshū''.
Overview
He is the honorary president of the Nara Prefecture Complex of Manyo Culture, president of the Koshinokuni Museum of Literature, and has been a guest lecture ...
in Japanese as in his commentary and translation into modern Japanese that was published in 1978. In addition, following the announcement of ''Reiwa'' in 2019, Susumu Nakanishi advocated for understanding the character of the era name through the help of the Japanese word , stressing that in the traditional dictionaries (such as '' Erya'' or the ''Kangxi Dictionary
The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' ( (Compendium of standard characters from the Kangxi period), published in 1716, was the most authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters from the 18th century through the early 20th. The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing ...
''), the word is explained with the word . Nakanishi criticized the understanding of the
in ''Reiwa'' as Japanese , which was propagated by then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍 晋三, Hepburn: , ; 21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 20 ...
, pointing out that neither the etymology nor the exact sense are appropriate.
Novelty
"Reiwa" marks the first Japanese era name with characters that were taken from Japanese literature instead of classic Chinese literature.
Robert Campbell, director-general of National Institute of Japanese Literature The , or NIJL, was established in May 1972. Its primary purpose is to preserve manuscripts and books relating to the study of Japanese literature. Original texts and microfilms
Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically ei ...
in Tokyo, provided an official televised interpretation to NHK
, also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee.
NHK operates two terrestr ...
, regarding the characters based on the poem, noting that "Rei" is an auspicious wave of energy of the plum blossoms carried by the wind, and "Wa", the general character of peace and tranquility.
Accordingly, the name marks the 248th era name designated in Japanese history. While the "wa" character has been used in 19 previous era names, the "rei" character has never appeared before. The character appeared in a proposed era name in 1864—''Reitoku'' ()—that the ruling Tokugawa shogunate
The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...
rejected, as it could be interpreted as the emperor commanding (''rei'') the ''Toku''gawa.
On the other hand, according to , professor of Japanese literature, and , professor of Chinese philosophy, interviewed by the ''Asahi Shimbun
is one of the four largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition a ...
'' shortly after the announcement was made, the phrase has an earlier source in ancient Chinese literature dating back to the second century AD, on which the ''Man'yōshū'' usage is allegedly based:
Implementation
Currency
According to the Japan Mint
The is an Independent Administrative Institution of the Japanese government, responsible for producing and circulating the coins of Japan. The agency has its head office in Osaka with branches in Saitama and Hiroshima. The Japan Mint does not ...
, all coins with the new era name will be released by October 2019. It takes three months to make preparations such as creating molds in order to input text or pictures. The Mint will prioritize creating 100- and 500-yen
The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar (US$) and the euro. It is also widely used as a third reserve currency after the US dollar and the e ...
coins due to their high mintage and circulation, with an anticipated release by the end of July 2019.
Technology
Anticipating the coming of the new era, the Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intenti ...
reserved a code point
In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...
() in September 2018 for a new glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
which will combine half-width versions of ''Reiwa'' kanji, and , into a single character; similar code points exist for earlier era names, including Shōwa () and Heisei () periods. The resulting new version of Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
, 12.1.0, was released on 7 May 2019.
The Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
update KB4469068 included support for the new era.
Events
On 19 November 2019, Shinzo Abe
Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍 晋三, Hepburn: , ; 21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 20 ...
became the longest-serving prime minister of Japan
The prime minister of Japan (Japanese: 内閣総理大臣, Hepburn: ''Naikaku Sōri-Daijin'') is the head of government of Japan. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Japan and has the ability to select and dismiss its Ministers of Sta ...
and surpassed the previous 2,883-day record of Katsura Tarō
Prince was a Japanese politician and general of the Imperial Japanese Army who served as the Prime Minister of Japan from 1901 to 1906, from 1908 to 1911, and from 1912 to 1913.
Katsura was a distinguished general of the First Sino-Japanese W ...
. Abe also beat Eisaku Satō
was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister from 1964 to 1972. He is the third-longest serving Prime Minister, and ranks second in longest uninterrupted service as Prime Minister.
Satō entered the National Diet in 1949 as a membe ...
's 2,798 consecutive days record on 23 August 2020. He resigned for health reasons in September 2020 and was succeeded by Yoshihide Suga
is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2020 to 2021. He had served as Chief Cabinet Secretary during the second administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe fro ...
.
In early 2020, Japan began to suffer from the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
as several countries reported a significant increase in cases by March 2020. Japan and other countries donated masks, medical equipment, and money to China.
In June 2020, Fugaku was declared the most powerful supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
in the world with a performance of 415.53 PFLOPS. Fugaku also ranked first place in computational methods performance for industrial use, artificial intelligence applications, and big data analytics. It was co-developed by the RIKEN research institute and Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
.
Despite COVID, the Tokyo Olympics went ahead in the summer of 2021, a year later than originally scheduled.
In September 2021, Suga announced he would not stand in the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election, effectively ending his term as prime minister. He was succeeded by Fumio Kishida who took office as prime minister on 4 October 2021. Kishida was elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a week prior. He was officially confirmed as the country's 100th prime minister following a parliamentary vote.
In March 2022, a strong offshore earthquake near Fukushima killed 4, injured hundreds, and damaged the Shinkansen
The , colloquially known in English as the bullet train, is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. Initially, it was built to connect distant Japanese regions with Tokyo, the capital, to aid economic growth and development. Beyond l ...
line in Tohoku.
In July 2022, the former prime minister Shinzo Abe
Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍 晋三, Hepburn: , ; 21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 20 ...
was assassinated by Tetsuya Yamagami in Nara
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...
. By comparison, Japan had only 10 gun related deaths from 2017 to 2021 and 1 gun fatality in 2021.
Conversion table
To convert any Gregorian calendar
The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It was introduced in October 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years dif ...
year since 2019 to Japanese calendar
Japanese calendar types have included a range of official and unofficial systems. At present, Japan uses the Gregorian calendar together with year designations stating the year of the reign of the current Emperor. The written form starts with t ...
year in Reiwa era, you simply subtract 2018 from the year in question.
See also
*2019 in Japan
Events in the year 2019 in Japan.
Incumbents
*Emperor: Akihito (until 30 April), Naruhito (since 1 May)
*Prime Minister: Shinzō Abe
Governors
* Aichi Prefecture: Hideaki Omura
*Akita Prefecture: Norihisa Satake
*Aomori Prefecture: Shingo Mimura ...
* 2020 in Japan
* 2021 in Japan
* 2022 in Japan
References
Externals links
Reiwa
Reiwa flag
{{Japanese era names, selected=from 1264
2019 establishments in Japan
Japanese eras
2010s neologisms
2019 neologisms
2019 in Japan
2020s in Japan
2019 introductions