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What we are demonstrating:
The Japanese Calendar is the official calendar of Japan today. It is a
Gregorian Calendar, but on official documents, instead of using the standard
Gregorian year, uses the year number as the year associated with
the emperor's reign.
Here is a table of the modern Japanese Emperors:
|
Emperor
|
Characters
|
Reign Began
|
|
Meiji
|
明治 |
September 8, 1868
|
|
Taishou
|
大正 |
July 30, 1912
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Showa
|
昭和 |
December 26, 1926
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Heisei
|
平成
|
January 8, 1989
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The Japanese would describe a date like May 28, 2004 as being the 16th year in the
reign of the Emperor Heisei.
The month names in the Japanese calendar are represented
as mixture of numbers and characters:
| Month |
Character |
| January |
1月 |
| February |
2月 |
| March |
3月 |
| April |
4月 |
| May |
5月 |
| June |
6月 |
| July |
7月 |
| August |
8月 |
| September |
9月 |
| October |
10月 |
| November |
11月 |
| December |
12月 |
The Japanese character for "day" is 日
The Japanese character for "year" is 年
Returning to our May 28, 2004 Example:
In Japanese characters, that date would be represented as:
5月 28日 平成-16 年
Dates in the very distant future cannot be associated with an Emperor's reign, so the custom is
to use standard Gregorian years.
For the displaying of future Japanese years associated with the emperor, Calendar Xplorer only
commits to 20 years beyond the current year.
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Web Programs - Japanese Era
