Reiwa

is the current and 232nd era of the official calendar of Japan. It began on 1 May 2019, the day on which Emperor Akihito's eldest son, Naruhito, ascended the throne as the 126th Emperor of Japan. The day before, Emperor Akihito abdicated the Chrysanthemum Throne, marking the end of the Heisei era. The year 2019 corresponds with Heisei 31 from 1 January to 30 April, and with from 1 May. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 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 traditionally revealed the kanji calligraphy on a board. Prime Minister Shinzō Abe 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
* – former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Japan
* – Nobel Prize-winning stem-cell scientist, professor at Kyoto University
* – screenwriter and novelist
* – former chairman of the Japan Business Federation
* – trustee and president of Waseda University
* – president of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association
* – president of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation
* – 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'' 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.

Origin and meaning

The kanji characters for ''Reiwa'' are derived from the ''Man'yōshū'', an eighth-century (Nara period) anthology of '' waka'' 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, reads as follows:

The Japanese Foreign Ministry 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 in English as ''wonderful month'' in his 2011 commentary and translation of Book 5, or by Susumu Nakanishi in Japanese as in his commentary and translation into modern Japanese that was published in 1978.

Susumu Nakanishi, a scholar of Japanese literature, particularly of the ''Man'yōshū'', is widely believed to have conceived the name ''Reiwa''. Following the announcement of ''Reiwa'' in 2019, 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 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, 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 in Tokyo, provided an official televised interpretation to NHK, 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 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'' 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, all coins with the new era name have been released since 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 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 reserved a code point () in September 2018 for a new glyph 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, 12.1.0, was released on 7 May 2019.

The Microsoft Windows update KB4469068 included support for the new era.

Events

On 19 November 2019, Shinzo Abe became the longest-serving prime minister of Japan and surpassed the previous 2,883-day record of Katsura Tarō. Abe also beat Eisaku Satō's record of 2,798 consecutive days on 23 August 2020. He resigned for health reasons in September 2020 and was succeeded by Yoshihide Suga.

In early 2020, Japan began to suffer from the COVID-19 pandemic 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 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.

A year later than originally scheduled, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were held in the summer of 2021.

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.

The first general election under the Reiwa era took place on 31 October 2021. The LDP retained its majority despite losing seats.

In March 2022, Russian invasion of Ukraine caused Japan to join sanctions against Russia. Japan was the first Asian country to exert pressure on Russia.

In July 2022, the former prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated by Tetsuya Yamagami in Nara. By comparison, Japan had only 10 gun related deaths from 2017 to 2021 and 1 gun fatality in 2021.

On 16 December 2022, Second Kishida Cabinet announced a departure from Japan's defense-oriented policy by acquiring counterstrike capabilities and a defense budget increase to 2% of GDP by 2027. This comes amidst growing security concerns over China, North Korea and Russia. This will make Japan the 3rd largest defense-spender (¥43 trillion ($315 billion) after the United States and China.

On 1 January 2024, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Ishikawa Prefecture in the Noto Peninsula, which killed 213 people and caused many more injuries.

Following the 2024 Japanese slush fund scandal, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that three factions of Liberal Democratic Party ( Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyūkai, Kōchikai, and Shisuikai) all announced their intention to dissolve to form a war cabinet. However, several LDP lawmakers were indicted, including incumbent lawmakers Yasutada Ōno and Yaichi Tanigawa, who both resigned from the party following their indictments. Kishida became a controversial figure in Japanese politics, and due to his negative approval ratings, stepped down in September 2024 to be replaced as Prime Minister by Shigeru Ishiba.

On 19 January 2024, Japan becomes the fifth country to successfully land on the surface of the Moon with the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) lunar lander mission.

The Nobel Prize

*2019 - Akira Yoshino, Chemistry
*2021 - Syukuro Manabe, Physics
*2024 - Nihon Hidankyo, Peace

Conversion table

To convert any Gregorian calendar year since 2019 to Japanese calendar year in Reiwa era, subtract 2018 from the year in question.

See also

* 2019 in Japan
*2020 in Japan
*2021 in Japan
* 2022 in Japan
* 2023 in Japan
* 2024 in Japan
* 2025 in Japan

References

Externals links

Reiwa

{{Japanese era names, selected=from 1264

2019 establishments in Japan

Japanese eras
2019 neologisms
2019 in Japan
2020s in Japan
2019 introductions