What's in a name? Quite a lot if you're a Japanese citizen just learning Monday that the soon-to-be-installed new emperor's next era will be called Reiwa.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga unveils the name of new era"Reiwa" at the prime minister's office in Tokyo, Monday, April 1, 2019. Japan says next emperor Naruhito's era name is Reiwa, effective May 1 when he takes the throne from his father.Quite a lot if you're a Japanese citizen just learning Monday that the soon-to-be-installed new emperor's next era will be called Reiwa.
As such, the closing days of the current Heisei era, which is what retiring Emperor Akihito's 30-year reign has been called, have inspired a collective bout of nostalgia, soul-searching and occasional goofiness, as many Japanese reflect on both Heisei and this new block of years linked to Reiwa that will loom over a huge part of their lives.
What they settled on, however -- Reiwa -- will affect everything from calendars to train tickets to computer software to government documents, creating a windfall for printers and programmers, even as they give a name to Japan's foreseeable future. In much of the West the decades are often used to capture the spirit of a period -- the Swinging '60s, the Roaring '20s. Japan's era system is a bit more like a formalized version of the way British monarchs once lent their names to an entire sweep of years -- the Victorian Age, for instance.
The current wave of excitement for the new name and nostalgia for the disappearing era is in large part because these changes of the guard are so rare.
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