Japanese Era Date Converter
Japan runs two calendars side by side. The Gregorian year (西暦, seireki) is what you already know; the era year (和暦, wareki) counts from the accession of the current emperor, so 2026 is also 令和8年 — Reiwa 8. Passports, driving licences, tax filings, land registries, bank forms and almost every Japanese government document use the era year, and converting it is not simply subtracting 2018. Era changes happen on a specific day, which means 1989 belongs to two eras, 2019 belongs to two eras, and the naive arithmetic is wrong for part of each of them. This converter is exact to the day in both directions.
Every conversion is arithmetic done in your browser against the five published era start dates. Nothing is uploaded, and the tool works offline once the page has loaded.
Gregorian · 西暦
1 May 2019 · Wednesday
Japanese era · 和暦
令和 (Reiwa, R) ran from 2019-05-01 and is the current era.
令和元年5月1日 · 水曜日
The same date, written every way a Japanese form asks for
令和 Reiwa- 和暦 with 元年 (令和元年5月1日)
- 令和元年5月1日
- 和暦 (令和6年4月1日)
- 令和1年5月1日
- Abbreviated (R6.04.01)
- R1.05.01
- 西暦 (2024年4月1日)
- 2019年5月1日
- ISO 8601 (2024-04-01)
- 2019-05-01
- Slash (2024/04/01)
- 2019/05/01
- English long (1 April 2024)
- 1 May 2019
- Weekday · 曜日
- 水曜日 / Wednesday
The five eras this covers, to the day
Era changes are not New Year's Day events. Four of these five began mid-year, which is why 1989, 2019, 1912 and 1926 each belong to two eras at once.
| Era | Letter | Ligature | First day | Last day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 明治 Meiji | M | ㍾ | 1868-01-25 | 1912-07-29 |
| 大正 Taishō | T | ㍽ | 1912-07-30 | 1926-12-24 |
| 昭和 Shōwa | S | ㍼ | 1926-12-25 | 1989-01-07 |
| 平成 Heisei | H | ㍻ | 1989-01-08 | 2019-04-30 |
| 令和 Reiwa | R | ㋿ | 2019-05-01 | current |
Heisei is the odd one out. Emperor Shōwa died on 7 January 1989, but under the 元号法 (Era Name Act) the new era began the following day, so 昭和64年 has seven days and 平成元年 starts on the 8th. Every other transition here took effect the same day.
The bit every quick converter gets wrong
“Reiwa year + 2018 = Western year” is a rule you will see everywhere, and it is right for most of the calendar and wrong at the seam. Reiwa began on 1 May 2019, not 1 January. A date of 1 March 2019 is not 令和元年 — it is 平成31年, because Heisei was still running. Get this backwards on a form and you have written a date that does not exist.
The same trap appears in 1989. Emperor Shōwa died on 7 January 1989, so 昭和64年 lasted exactly seven days. Anyone born on 5 January 1989 has 昭和64年1月5日 on their documents, and a converter that maps all of 1989 to Heisei will silently produce the wrong era for them. Heisei is also the one transition that is not same-day: under the 元号法 the new era started the day after the death, on 8 January. The 1912 and 1926 transitions have the same structure — 明治45年 ends on 29 July 1912, and 大正15年 ends on 24 December 1926.
This tool holds all five eras as day-exact ranges. Ask it for 昭和64年1月8日 and it does not quietly hand back 8 January 1989; it tells you Shōwa ended on the 7th and that the date you mean is 平成元年1月8日.
元年 instead of 1年
The first year of an era is written 元年 (gannen, “origin year”), never 1年. So 1 May 2019 is 令和元年5月1日. This matters when you are filling in a form by hand or matching text in a database, so the converter shows both the 元年 form and the plain numeric form.
Preguntas frecuentes
What is the Japanese era calendar (wareki), and why does Japan still use it?
The wareki counts years from the accession of the reigning emperor rather than from a fixed epoch. Each reign has a name - currently Reiwa (令和), before that Heisei (平成), Shōwa (昭和), Taishō (大正) and Meiji (明治) - and the year restarts at 1 when a new emperor takes the throne. It has never been replaced because it is embedded in law and administration: it is the standard form on official documents, so government systems, contracts, court records and land registries all express dates in it. In everyday life the two systems coexist - a Japanese person will often know their birth year in both.
How do I convert Reiwa to a Western year?
Reiwa year + 2018 gives the Western year for any date from 1 May onward - Reiwa 8 is 2026. But before 1 May 2019 that arithmetic is wrong, because Reiwa did not exist yet: Reiwa began on 1 May 2019, and January to April of 2019 is still Heisei 31. That is the whole reason to use a converter rather than the mental shortcut. The same applies to the other eras: Heisei year + 1988, Shōwa year + 1925, Taishō year + 1911, Meiji year + 1867 - each correct except across its own transition.
When did each Japanese era begin and end, exactly?
Meiji ran from 25 January 1868 to 29 July 1912. Taishō from 30 July 1912 to 24 December 1926. Shōwa from 25 December 1926 to 7 January 1989 - the longest reign in Japanese history at 62 years. Heisei from 8 January 1989 to 30 April 2019. Reiwa began on 1 May 2019 and is current. Four of those five transitions took effect on the day the previous emperor died; Heisei is the exception, beginning the day after Emperor Shōwa's death under the Era Name Act. Reiwa is different again: Emperor Akihito abdicated rather than died, so the date was known years in advance.
Can I convert a whole column of dates at once?
Yes - switch to the bulk tab and paste a column straight out of a spreadsheet, one date per line. The formats can be mixed in any combination, which is the usual state of a real dataset: 令和6年4月1日, 令和六年四月一日 in kanji numerals, R6.4.1, ㋿6/4/1 using the single-character era ligature, 平成31年3月1日, 2019/5/1, ２０１９年５月１日 in full-width digits, and 2019-05-01 are all understood. A trailing weekday marker like （月）is ignored. Everything converts to whichever output format you pick and exports as a CSV you can paste back into the sheet, with impossible dates flagged in a status column rather than silently corrected.
What does R6, H31, S45 or T7 mean on a Japanese form?
It is the era abbreviated to its initial letter, which is how dates are printed in narrow form fields and on things like driving licences. R is Reiwa, H is Heisei, S is Shōwa, T is Taishō and M is Meiji, followed by the era year and then month and day - so R6.04.01 is 1 April 2024 and S45.12.03 is 3 December 1970. Japanese forms often print all five letters with a circle to draw around the right one. You will also see the single Unicode characters ㋿ ㍻ ㍼ ㍽ ㍾, which are the whole era name compressed into one square; this converter accepts all of these.
Does this work for dates before 1873?
Only with an important caveat, which the tool shows you when you cross that line. Japan used a lunisolar calendar until 明治5年12月3日, which was redesignated 明治6年1月1日 - 1 January 1873. The days in between simply never happened. For any earlier date the era and year still line up, but the month and day do not correspond to Gregorian months and days at all, because they were counted on a different kind of calendar with occasional intercalary months. So 明治3年5月10日 in an old family register is not 10 May 1870. If you are doing genealogy or archival research before 1873, you need a proper lunisolar conversion table, and the tool says so rather than quietly producing a plausible-looking wrong answer.
Is this converter free, and does anything leave my browser?
Free, unlimited, no signup, and nothing is transmitted. The five era boundaries are a handful of dates held in the page itself, so the conversion is arithmetic done on your own device - which also means the tool keeps working if you lose your connection after the page has loaded, and that a bulk list of thousands of dates converts instantly rather than being rate-limited by an API.