For what it’s worth, Japan is not unique in using different calendars in different contexts.

There are several calendars in India, all based on the moon. In my state within India everyone uses the Gregorian calendar for most things except in certain cases. For example, no marriages happen during the month of Margazhi (December 15th - January 15th).

There’s no conspiracy in using a different calendar. It’s just a continuation of a cultural practice that hurts no one.

The difference is that in India nobody uses the traditional calendars outside religious contexts, while in Japan the nengo dates are used for everything from yogurt expiry dates to government forms.

it is a self-imposed complexity that we could opt out if we were smart

You could say that about a lot of things in a lot of countries. You have to think twice before you throw away such an old tradition that connects people to the past and the history of their culture.

Most Japanese people I know are either ambivalent or happy about it. No one is suggesting doing away with it.

You do know that plenty of other cultures around the world have their own calendars and these (like Japan's) coexist just fine with the Western calendar, right?

I'm Japanese, and while I don't exactly suggest doing away with it completely, I don't think it has a place in the vast majority of information processing going on in society today.

These Gengō updates force a massive, MASSIVE number of date entry forms (both paper and digital) -- from banks to government offices to driver's licenses to middle school soccer club application forms to just literally ANYTHING else imaginable -- to update to new versions including the new era name, resulting in so much wasted resources and taxpayer money every time it happens. Sure, standardizing all forms to the Gregorian calendar will also cause a mess, but at least that would only happen once. (A lot of those forms have already voluntarily switched to the Gregorian calendar, but a huge number still continue to use the Gengō notation, especially government-related forms.)

The Gengō era system even left us our own version of the Y2K problem: Back when legacy mainframe systems were being built, there were systems that recorded the year internally using the Showa era count (Showa 1 = 1926), and was kept that way even after the Showa era ended in 1989 and Heisei rolled around. Such systems will reach year Showa 100 on 2025, where unfixed systems could act weird much like with Y2K.

Also to note is that conservatives in power were very strongly opposed to publicizing the new era name ahead of its implementation (citing "tradition"), completely ignoring the reality of modern-day IT infrastructure requiring time to implement code updates and test their systems against all imaginable edge cases. As a compromise, they ended up giving one month advance notice (The new era goes in effect May 1), but this is way too little time.

So I'm fine with the Gengō counting system being used in casual conversation or formal imperial rituals and such, but those are about the only things I'm fine with.

Don't feel bad. Japan at least was smart enough to choose the metric system.

> These Gengō updates force a massive, MASSIVE number of date entry forms (both paper and digital) -- from banks to government offices to driver's licenses to middle school soccer club application forms to just literally ANYTHING else imaginable -- to update to new versions including the new era name, resulting in so much wasted resources and taxpayer money every time it happens.

The early Babylonian system was to give each year its own name. This has really helped us, thousands of years later, to develop an accurate chronology of the period.

If Japan used that system today, do you think the per-switch cost of switching would be higher or lower? How about the per-emperor cost?

At least 80% of the forms I fill out in Japan will ask for era year. It’s easier for me to say aloud, too: “showa yon jū hachi” versus “sen kyū hyaku nana jū san nen”.

Is it really such a big deal? It's not like they're _introducing_ regnal eras, it's just a new era name for the system they were already using.

BTW, both this comment and the article hint at a connection with right-wing nationalism. I won't claim to understand Japanese politics, but AFAIK Abe's government is increasing immigration to Japan to far higher levels than ever before. Surely that's going to have a far bigger impact on Americanizing Japan than retiring era names ever could, isn't it?

The article refers to Abe's government as "ultra-conservative", not as "right-wing nationalist". I would not say that Abe is nationalist in the normal definition of the word. Japanese politics tends towards right wing, though it tends to be more of an old school conservatism: old money, but with a sense of responsibility towards the people. So, for example, there aren't a lot of services performed by the government and it is expected that businesses somehow voluntarily pay to have these things done. In my rural town the government does not mow the sides road, or trim branches on trees, or maintain the parks. That's pretty much all done on a volunteer basis by local businesses, or residents. There is a big rota and you have to go out once a month and do some work.

Financially, things are conservative as well. Abenomics is literally Reganomics with "Regan" replaced by "Abe" -- trickle down theory and all. And it works just as well as Reganomics didn't too ;-) Abe has also been quite busy trying to rewrite the constitution so that Japan can get into international conflicts where their allies are involved. Previously Japan was only allowed to get into conflicts where Japan itself was under threat. There is some speculation that the emperor only abdicated in order to force the government to do a bunch of constitutional work and delay the constitutional work that Abe had ordered. Abe managed to survive a general election, so if that was the goal it ended up being fruitless.

In terms of nationalism, I don't think that Japan (or its government) fits the definition. There are protectionist attitudes towards food trade, but that is understandable given that more than 1 million people starved after WWII due to the fact that Japan had imported most of its staple foods at the time and got blockaded. There are actual laws that date from the end of WWII that enforce this protectionism, so it's hard to blame the current government :-)

There are, of course, nationalist people in Japan (and even nationalist political parties), but they do not represent Japanese mainstream thinking in any way shape or form. It is very much the loony fringe.

> Is it really such a big deal?

It is! Nagoya city allocated 480 million JPY (4.3m USD) of budget for modifying their system [1]. Kobe city estimates 550 million JPY (5m USD) [2]. There are about 800 cities and 800 townships in Japan, each of them will need to pay a similar amount of cost, because every date in their system is in the era calendar. The total cost is going to be enormous. Yet, as of 2019, if you ask most laypeople they don't even know what era year is the current year. It is only used within government or municipal offices.

[1] https://hicbc.com/news/detail.asp?id=00049F45 [2] https://www.kobe-np.co.jp/news/sougou/201904/0012202757.shtm...

This is a cultural heritage of East Asia countries.