By the Western calendar that much of the world uses, this year is the year of our lord two thousand and twenty-four. Despite the fact that many places using this calendar don't believe in that our lord part, this is the calendar that we a mostly stuck with. Blame what you will: colonization, divine influence, manifest destiny, whatever. Point is, this is pretty much the world system at this point, whether we like it or not. At least until the East rises and we all are forced to switch to the Chinese calendar in the future.

In Japan, while they do use the Western calendar the same as everyone else, they also use a more traditional calendar based on the reigns of emperors. Under that system, this year is Reiwa 6 (令和6年).

What the what? Let's explain.

Japanese Era Names

The Japanese era system (年号 nengō or 元号 gengō) is a system where they give certain names to periods of years. In the past it was a bit different, but in modern times these groups of time are always equal to the reign of the emperor. It's this modern version of the Japanese Era system that I want to look at.

It started in 1868 for Emperor Mutsuhito. The era name was changed to Meiji (明治). It remained the Meiji Era for all of his life, with every year taking on a number. So 1868 was Meiji 1, 1869 was Meiji 2, and so on. Then when his son became emperor in 1912, the era was changed to Taishō (大正) and the entire thing started over, with 1912 being Taishō 1, 1913 being Taishō 2, and so on.

There have been five emperors since this new style of the Japanese era system started.

1. Emperor Mutsuhito (Meiji) 1868-1912
2. Emperor Yoshihito (Taishō) 1912-1926
3. Emperor Hirohito (Shōwa) 1926-1989
4. Emperor Akihito (Heisei) 1989–2019
5. Emperor Naruhito (Reiwa) 2019–

So looking at that list you can see that Reiwa is the era name for the current emperor. Naruhito is 64 now, so we might expect the Reiwa era to be at least 25 years or so, depending on if he abdicates like his father or if he keeps going until he dies like most emperors have done in the past.

So this year is Reiwa 6 and next year will be Reiwa 7.

Name Meaning

You might think a perk of being emperor is you get to choose your era name, but no. Being emperor in Japan really is something of a double edged sword. You get really nice things, including really nice health care, but you have almost no power to do anything and instead have pretty much everything decided for you, including the daily schedule.

Instead, the era name is usually chosen by a group of scholars who pour through ancient literature looking for names that have auspicious meanings. Actually they usually pick several name candidates. So far so good. But then things become political. A group of politicians review the list of name candidates, narrowing it down, then the Prime Minister and his Cabinet make the final selection.

The names are usually pretty idealistic. For example, the current era name, Reiwa, means "beautiful harmony". So far the Reiwa era has included the COVID pandemic, the assassination of Abe, the attempted assassination of Kishida, and the Noto earthquake. So far, harmony seems elusive—but perhaps it’s on the horizon!

Death Names

There is one more interesting wrinkle to the system. The current practice is that when an emperor dies, he is renamed to his era name. As a result, when you look in history books for 1868–1912, you are much more likely to see references to an Emperor Meiji than to Emperor Mutsuhito. That's because according to Japanese custom, his name changed to Meiji when he died and now most history books, Japanese and Western alike, use his death name when referring to him.

This trend is even starting to happen with Hirohito, with some of the newest Western history books starting to adopt his death name and calling him Emperor Shōwa—though often with a note mentioning that in life he was known as Hirohito, since the events of the second world war make that name much more well-known world wide.

There are a few Western historians who have been trying to bridge his potential confusing name gap by starting to use both names when referring to past emperors. For example, they might say The Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito. We shall see if this usage catches on or not.

Historic Era names

Prior to being standardized in the Meiji Era, Japanese Era names were much more random. Typically an emperor would declare a new one within his first few years, then anytime there was a big disaster or other event they would change the era name yet again, hoping for an improvement in luck. As a result prior to the Meiji era, eras would usually only last a few years, sometimes even less than one.

For example:

• 1239–1240 - En'ō
• 1240–1243 - Ninji
• 1243–1247 - Kangen
• 1247–1249 - Hōji

Just within a 10 year period, four different era names! This does make Japanese history a challenge sometimes, but you get used to it.

Modern Japan

I think most of Japan uses the Western year simply out of convenience. But the government still offically uses the Japanese era system, so any official thing will be using that system, and as a result people are well familiar with both. Usually people have a few key dates memorized that help them easily convert between each system, but for those less familiar, there are plenty of websites that will help. This one for instance.

【Also published on my website】

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.