Reiwa era facts for kids

令和

Quick facts for kids
Reiwa

1 May 2019 – present
Emperor Naruhito of the Reiwa era (2019)
Preceded by	Heisei
Including	Major events COVID-19 pandemic in Japan (2020–2023) 2020 Summer Olympics (2021) Assassination of Shinzo Abe (8 July 2022) Saikazaki bombing (15 April 2023)
Monarch	Naruhito

History of Japan

Paleolithic 35000–10000 BCE Jōmon period 10000–300 BCE Yayoi period 300 BCE–250 CE Kofun period 250–538 Asuka period 538–710 Nara period 710–794 Heian period 794–1185 Kamakura period 1185–1333 Kemmu restoration 1333–1336 Muromachi period 1333–1573 Nanboku-chō period 1336–1392 Sengoku period Azuchi-Momoyama period 1568–1603 Nanban trade Edo period 1603–1868 Late Tokugawa shogunate Meiji period 1868–1912 Meiji Restoration Taishō period 1912–1926 Japan in WWI Shōwa period 1926–1989 Japanese expansionism Occupied Japan Post-Occupation Japan Heisei period 1989-present

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga (later to become Prime Minister) announcing to Japan and the world the name of the new Imperial era at a press conference

Japanese office workers watching the announcement on a live television broadcast

Reiwa (Japanese: 令和, pronounced [ɾeːwa] or [ɾeꜜːwa]) is the current era of Japan's official calendar. It began on 1 May 2019, the day on which Emperor Akihito's elder 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 through 30 April, and with Reiwa 1 (令和元年, Reiwa gannen, 'the base year of Reiwa') 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. The 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:

• Midori Miyazaki [ja] (宮崎緑) – professor at Chiba University of Commerce
• Itsurō Terada (寺田逸郎) – former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Japan
• Shinya Yamanaka (山中伸弥) – Nobel prize-winning stem-cell scientist, professor at Kyoto University
• Mariko Hayashi (林真理子) – screenwriter and novelist
• Sadayuki Sakakibara [ja] (榊原定征) – former chairman of the Japan Business Federation
• Kaoru Kamata [ja] (鎌田薫) – trustee and president of Waseda University
• Kōjirō Shiraishi [ja] (白石興二郎) – president of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association
• Ryōichi Ueda [ja] (上田良一) – president of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation
• Yoshio Ōkubo [ja] (大久保好男) – president of Nippon Television Holdings

The day after the announcement, the government revealed that the other candidate names under consideration had been Eikō (英弘), Kyūka (久化), Kōshi or Kōji (広至), Banna or Banwa (万和), and Banpo or Banhō (万保), 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.

A crowd watching the televised announcement on a giant screen next to Shinjuku Station

Origin and meaning

Plum blossoms in Minabe, Wakayama

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:

Original Kanbun text:
于時、初春令月、氣淑風和、梅披鏡前之粉、蘭薫珮後之香。

Classical Japanese translation (kanbun kundoku):

時に、初春の令月にして、気淑く風和ぎ、梅は鏡前の粉を披き、蘭は珮後の香を薫す。
Toki ni, shoshun no reigetsu ni shite, kiyoku kaze yawaragi, ume wa kyōzen no ko o hiraki, ran wa haigo no kō o kaorasu.

English translation:
It was in new spring, in a fair (rei) month,

When the air was clear and the wind a gentle (wa) breeze.

Plum flowers blossomed a beauty's charming white

And the fragrance of the orchids was their sweet perfume.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry provided an English-language interpretation of Reiwa as "beautiful harmony", to dispel reports that "Rei" (令) 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 令月 (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 yoi tsuki (好い月) 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 rei (令) of the era name through the help of the Japanese word uruwashii (うるわしい, fair (of sight, weather), beautiful, fine (also of mood) etc.), stressing that in the traditional dictionaries (such as Erya or the Kangxi Dictionary), the word 令 is explained with the word 善. Nakanishi criticized the understanding of the rei (令) in Reiwa as Japanese utsukushii (美しい, generally meaning "beautiful"), which was propagated by then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, pointing out that neither the etymology nor the exact sense are appropriate.

Novelty

Extract of Volume 5 of the Man'yōshū from which the kanji characters for "Reiwa" are derived

"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 和 has been used in 19 previous era names, the "rei" character 令 has never appeared before. The character appeared in a proposed era name in 1864—Reitoku (令徳)—that the ruling Tokugawa shogunate rejected, as it could be interpreted as the emperor commanding (rei) the Tokugawa.

On the other hand, according to Masaaki Tatsumi (辰巳正明), professor of Japanese literature, and Masaharu Mizukami (水上雅晴), 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:

於是仲春令月，時和氣清；原隰鬱茂，百草茲榮。
Yú shì zhòng chūn lìng yuè, shí hé qì qīng; yuán xí yù mào, bǎi cǎo zī róng.

Then comes young spring, in a fine month,
When the wind is mild and the air clear.
Plains and swamps are overgrown with verdure
And the hundred grasses become rank and thick.

—translation by Liu Wu-chi, An Introduction to Chinese Literature (1990)

Implementation

Currency

According to the Japan Mint, 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 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 (Error using : Input "32ff" is not a hexadecimal value.) in September 2018 for a new glyph which will combine half-width versions of Reiwa's kanji, 令 and 和, into a single character; similar code points exist for earlier era names, including Shōwa (Error using : Input "337C" is not a hexadecimal value.) and Heisei (Error using : Input "337B" is not a hexadecimal value.) 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.

In March 2022, a strong offshore earthquake near Fukushima killed 4, injured hundreds, and damaged the Shinkansen line in Tohoku.

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.

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

On December 16, 2022, the 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.

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

In Spanish: Era Reiwa para niños

• 2019 in Japan
• 2020 in Japan
• 2021 in Japan
• 2022 in Japan
• 2023 in Japan

Externals links

• Reiwa