Talk:Reiwa era

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Congratulations!

Congratulations for the new era name. Nice pick from a nice peace of short preface of Plum related poems. Bear in mind that some of the English media misinterpreted the word 令 as "order" while it means "auspicious", "good" or "nice".----Sunzhai (talk) 15:25, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Opinions about the different meanings of "令"?

I wonder about the relevance of Monash University Research Fellow Jim Breen wrote that major dictionaries translate 令 mainly as "law, order, command", without the "auspicious" sense. I mean, if "major dictionaries" refers to Kangorin and the like, it's objectively false; likely Breen (whom I might as well ping) was referring to bilingual kanji dictionaries for English-speaking learners of Japanese (his dataset actually supports this conclusion), which means he is not wrong, but the opinion should be classified as such, if it is included at all.

Also, he cites Wikipedia for definitions of "Manyōshū" and "Kanbun"; I actually have been in the process, over the last 18 months or so, of making English Wikipedia a much better resource than it currently is regarding all aspects of the Man'yōshū, but I'm not quite "there" yet, and it's quite misleading to call it the "oldest collection of Japanese poetry", and "The poem in question is Kanbun style" is total nonsense in context (to be fair, that's not Breen himself but rather Bret Mayer -- both men are eminently qualified to discuss this point, and I'm confident that the errors were just careless slips rather than indicators of a sincere misunderstanding of what kind of poetry is included in the Man'yōshū and of the fact that "the poem" is actually a headnote and not an actual poem, but these do bring the usability/citability of the article in question into question).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:48, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

@NMaia: Sorry; didn't notice until just now that you added the text in question. This page has seen a lot of activity, and I wasn't sure it was worth the effort of figuring out who, in the clump of edits by various people I was examining all at once, added the text I was discussing. I noticed that it was you basically by accident. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:25, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I looked into newest edition of 新字源 by Kadokawa. It defines the character 令, along with the usual senses, simply as よい, synonymous with 霊 (also defined as よい). 令 as よい contains a reference to the 同訓意義 index (霊 does not and is absent from it). In this index, 令（れい） under よい is defined thus: 物事のつやがあるように美しい, and a quotation from the Analects of Confucius is given: 巧言令色、鮮矣仁. In the Man'yoshu example, 令 is generally either kundoku'd to よい or the whole 令月 thing is left untranslated as れいげつ. Susumu Nakanishi, the scholar credited with the proposal of 令和, himself translates 令月 as (hazy memory on the kana) 好（よ）い月, actually replacing 令 with 好 for the translation. I've decided to approximate that with English "fair" in the context of 令月 = fair month. Draco argenteus (talk) 09:27, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Adding: the same dictionary does not define 令月 (れいげつ) as a lucky or auspicious month or anything of the sort, and only says よい月, along with the sense of 2nd month of the lunar calendar. Draco argenteus (talk) 09:34, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

@Draco argenteus: I wouldn't be surprised if sources were already showing up to point out that the plum blossoms in Fukuoka nowadays (with global warming) bloom in mid-February to mid-March, so it could well just be interpreted as "2nd month of the lunar calendar". :P

On a more serious note, yeah, most dictionaries do seem to give "good" as a meaning. This is why I think we need to either not cite Breen, or characterize the citation inline as appropriate.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:52, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think Breen needs to be cited, especially now that "auspicious" itself is gone. I've found this noteworthy as well: as can be seen from the current article on Return to the Field, Liu Wu-chi in 1990 translates the Chinese 令月 as "a fine month" and 初春 as "young spring". I had actually not read the translation when I added mine. Draco argenteus (talk) 10:00, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

The official translation of the Government of Japan is "In this auspicious month of early spring, the weather is fine and the wind gentle. The plum blossoms open like powder before a mirror while the orchids give off the sweet scent of a sachet.” ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 10:24, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, In Classical Chinese, 令 means auspicious. The Japanese government is right. According to Kangxi Dictionary(The official Classical Chinese dictionary compiled during Qing dynasty), 令，善也。（令 means good,　令、善なり). Modern Chinese also has some words that use 令 to express positive qualities of something. The text from which the era name was taken is obviously using this character in the sense of "good" "nice" or "auspicious".[1]----Sunzhai (talk) 11:49, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not a native speaker, but as I have understood it, native speakers do not feel that English "auspicious" can generally be equated to English "good". So when you say 善 = good (新字源 gives 善 under "類" too) and therefore auspicious, that basically doesn't work. Draco argenteus (talk) 12:05, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Oh well it is not me who is using the word auspicious. In Classical Chinese it means something positive, it can be translated as "good", but when we are talking about a month, it can also be translated to "auspicious". That basically works. Here we are actually looking at two completely different words. One is the verb 令 which means to order. Another is the adjective 令. They are not the same word but has the same shape. It happens very often in among Chinese characters. For example: 的 can be used as the mark of an adjective in both Chinese and Japanese, but it also means "Target".----Sunzhai (talk) 12:15, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

@Draco argenteus: Most native English speakers either (a) don't know what "auspicious" means or (b) hardly ever use it. The former will of course not recognize it as a near-synonym of "good", and the latter will, unless given further context, admit that it is semantically similar but not equivalent because it's much rarer and more "literary". The further context here is that in modern colloquial Japanese 令 hardly ever (if at all) means "good"/"auspicious", and in this case the only reason it does is because it was lifted from a very ancient literary work; hence "auspicious" works just fine. Also, 令月 means "an good month for doing whatever", in which case "auspicious". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:30, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hijiri88 and 損齋: I see. Regarding the translation I added then, if you or anyone else wants to change or replace it, I do not object. Draco argenteus (talk) 12:41, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hijiri88:. Some clarification: the page originally translated 令月 as definite-article-"the month of good fortune", with "good fortune" emphasized as the equivalence to 令. I'm seeing the same a few other editions of wikipedia in different languages, 令 translated unambiguously as "lucky" or "of luck" in that language. But all the dictionaries have 令 at most as "good", and the shift to "fortunate" etc. is merely a consequence of Chinese semantics, which seemingly happens to anything(?) meaning "good", even to 善. The problem then is that this article was introducing 令 in a misleading way. Most interestingly, while I don't have access to a lot of dictionaries right now, the recent one I had at hand pointedly avoids defining 令月 as "fortunate/auspicious month" (めでたい) or "month that is good for doing whatever", and only says "good month". It is possible that older dictionaries, such as Daijirin etc., can be faulted for misdefining the word 令月 (understandable, as it is obscure). Jim Breen, a native speaker of English, discovers that "good" is in fact contained in some dictionaries, but what he does next is he uses that as proof to state that there is "nary anything like 'auspicious' in sight", and additionally explicitly rejects "good" as equivalent to "auspicious". This "auspicious" = "rei", therefore, continues to be misleading, because "auspicious" is semantically quite limited compared to "good" etc., especially so because this sense of the character is very obscure and people can easily believe that 令 means literally "lucky" or "marked by success" whereas it only broadly means that the month or whatever is good/nice, which may obviously mean that it is also fortunate/auspicious, but not exclusively. Based on all of this (including what I wrote earlier and will not repeat here), I sought to translate 令月 only as a month that is more broadly "good", to avoid the semantic pigeonhole of "month of good fortune" that many will take if you only give them the chance. Draco argenteus (talk) 14:25, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

AFAIAC, any of them are good; it's kinda suspicious that the BBC article was apparently partly amended after I wrote this, and now contradicts itself. As long as we don't say it means "order" or "command", unless talking about the misinformation and the initial "controversy" over the meaning (and obviously we need reliable secondary sources for that, not us Wikipedians pointing to times stamps and internal inconsistencies). "month of good fortune" is not great, but it's definitely better than some of the stuff that's been published in so-called "reliable sources" over the last two days. (Note that I'm not "attacking" any sources with those scare-quotes; I'm criticizing the popular line among some Wikipedians that popular news media that have a "reputation for fact-checking" are always reliable for everything, even though they are clearly wrong sometimes.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:58, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Truncating specific sections of this page

This page is for describing various events that will happen in Japan during the Reiwa period, but the current page deviates heavily regarding the naming of Reiwa. Here I specifically name the following sections: the full list of names and and backgrounds of experts in the selection committee, illustrative details on how Reiwa was revealed by Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga, the entire Novelty section (for example, describing which platform Robert Campbell gave his view on (NHK, to be exact) is too informative). Although at the moment, these trivial descriptions may be of interest to people in Japan, these information will likely be redundant in the long term, and also may not meet WP:NOTNEWSPAPER. Additionally, WP:HTRIVIA should be implemented. This page is about the Reiwa period itself, not about how Reiwa was chosen. Kind regards, Hms1103 (talk) 19:23, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

This page is for describing various events that will happen in Japan during the Reiwa period WP:CRYSTAL. This page is for encyclopedic information on this topic, and just because our other 元号 articles are currently garbage and don't explain the etymologies or selection processes doesn't mean this one should follow suit. Similarly, just because newspapers happen to give encyclopedic information doesn't mean it doesn't belong here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:37, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Hijiri88. Actually, I'd rather get rid of the list of various events that will happen in Japan during the Reiwa period than any of the other information. The era is tied to the emperor, while most all of the events likely will have nothing whatsoever to do with the emperor. Seems a bit like combining random things to me. To me it does make sense for ja-wikipedia in the same way as do articles like 1984, here but I can't imagine many English speakers checking for events that happened during the Reiwa period. bamse (talk) 17:11, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: You seem to have misunderstood my above suggestion, so I will describe it further. My view is that the current page is un-encyclopedialike, as it contains excess information typical of some magazine news; it feels resembling tabloid articles on ヤフー! ジャパン I was reading the other day. The difference between a newspaper and an encyclopedia is that the former includes information that readers want to know at the moment, while the latter only has information that is needed in a long time frame. For Wikipedia that will be be information that meets WP:NOTE. Much of what is currently written can't be deemed notable. Pretty sure people living outside Japan reading this page a year from now wouldn't be that interested in what positions the selection committee members had at the time. This article needs to be cleaned up.

If you really think the other nengō pages are garbage, why not fix it? I'm always glad to help. Here's a quick reference on the source of the past era names.[2] (I will note though that the selection process of each nengō is kept mostly confidential, including for Heisei. "Reiwa" is so far the only case for the selection process to be relatively transparent to the public.) Kind regards, Hms1103 (talk) 20:34, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

@Bamse: To clarify my view, I don't expect this page to become a list of random events that happen during the era, but history that happened in Japan after 2019 (e.g. pivotal events such as the Olympics?, natural disasters, political trends, etc). About the demands of an average reader, I would expect most people would prefer to read about the history. For instance, in the Shōwa period page would you expect yourself to read about the interpretation of what Shōwa means and which document it comes from, or read what happened in Japan during the 20th century? Kind regards, Hms1103 (talk) 20:35, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

It can and should include both. Eventually all of the meaning and implementation sections will be outnumbered by actual history, but that doesn't mean the process of choosing an era name isn't worth including. B. Baker (talk) 21:34, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hms1103: I don't know how familiar you are with the MYS, but our article is actually correct where almost all of the English-language news magazines contain an atrocious error (translating Abe's "日本最古の歌集" as "Japan's oldest poetry anthology"). I consider this to be a key difference between an encyclopedia article and a popular news article -- we have people here who know about Japanese literary history who can make sure it doesn't contain errors like that, but rather reads like a detailed encyclopedia article on the topic. (I'm not saying what we've got here is perfect, mind you.)

And please, please, don't say to me "why don't you fix it?" I've done more work on the MYS and most other Japanese classical literature than pretty much everyone else on en.wiki combined for the last 18 months, and before that I was actually involved in Japanese history articles long enough to know why the other 元号 articles are crap (they rely on on an unreliable source and were all written by a single user who didn't realize the source was unreliable). I was just recently handed another massive project (fix 75% of the redlinks in List of Man'yōshū poets by creating all the articles rather than simply unlinking them -- not actually an FL criterion but nevertheless something that needs to be done to win TRM over), so I really don't have the time at the moment to fix all 250-odd era articles.

If you are going to use the other articles as an example of how to write this one, then the burden is on you to go and rewrite them and convince me that they are not garbage.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:53, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hms1103: I don't feel strongly about having or not having such lists here. It is just that personally it feels a bit artificial to connect the reign of an emperor to say natural disasters, etc. We don't have an article Events during the reign of Elizabeth II either, do we? Neither would we have an article Events in China during the Reiwa period. Anyway, to me the selection process including the members of the panel (including their professions) is extremely interesting and should stay. bamse (talk) 15:10, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: Kudos for you, for the time spent improving articles on Japanese koten here. My sincere hope is that the following generation can learn from what you have wrote. As my view on this page seems to have been conveyed, I will start changing specific sections of this page that I feel can be improved. I'll also begin experimentally adding an etymology section in the Taishō period page when I have some time. Regards, Hms1103 (talk) 14:59, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

@Bamse: I would also say that the important parts from the selection process should stay in the article. For making comparisons, a better parallel will be the Victorian era, which mentions close to nothing about Queen Victoria. We already have an article for his highness the Crown Prince of Japan, so I feel the content of this page should have something else. Writing history may feel awkward today (the era hasn't even started!) but looking back from say, the year Reiwa 3, I'm sure most people would associate the era name with what happened at the time. It's like how in the present, we link Churchill with history of that time: the Second World War.

By the way, linking the era name with the then-Emperor is rather sketchy (please note the following is not a universal view). The current 1947 Imperial Household Law had the clause covering gengō deleted (article 12 of the previous 1889 Imperial Household Law). Therefore, in legal terms the Japanese era names do not belong to His Imperial Majesty. Instead the 1989 Era name act functions as the legal basis of gengō, including its implementation. There it states that the gengō is decided by government ordinance (clause 1), thus the era names belongs to the Japanese government, which accordingly is chosen by the people of Japan. Inside Japan, to treat the era name as if it's some personal belonging of the Emperor is a narrative from political fringe groups (I'm in no way saying that your views are similar to theirs, but that in Japan they are the only kinds of people yelling such rhetoric). Sorry for getting off-topic. My aim here is not to engage in debates with editors, but to improve what is written in Wikipedia articles. Kind regards, Hms1103 (talk) 14:59, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hms1103: I am not too familiar with British history, but apparently the eras named after kings/queens end with Edward VII, correct? Presumably that is because other events (the world wars, etc) were more relevant to history than the ruling king's era. And here we are talking about en-wikipedia and British history. IMO, until reliable English language sources regularly speak about events in the "Reiwa (period)", we should just point out what "Reiwa" is in the article. Perhaps one day in the future (towards the end of Reiwa or after), historians will associate Reiwa with certain notable events and then it does make sense to me to mention them in the article. Still there is the chance that historians will prefer a different timeline (like in UK history) and will call it something else.... Just my 2c. bamse (talk) 20:38, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 14 April 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. There is broad consensus which supports the moves as proposed, no prejudice against individual renomination for Meiji with regards to the question of parenthetical disambiguation. (closed by non-admin page mover) SITH (talk) 11:16, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

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• Reiwa period → Reiwa
• Heisei period → Heisei
• Shōwa period → Shōwa (era, 1926–1989) Shōwa (1926–1989)
• Taishō period → Taishō
• Meiji period → Meiji (era)
• Shōwa (Kamakura period) → Shōwa (era, 1312–1317) Shōwa (1312–1317)

– See Use of "period" for modern 元号? -- for three of these, the disambiguation is redundant because the base title redirects to the era name. Per some GBooks searches, "period" is actually rarer than "era" for several of these anyway, but it actually doesn't matter since they're quite close; more important is consistency with the pre-Meiji era names, all of which are disambiguated with "(era)" when such disambiguation is necessary. Having an unparenthesized "period" appears to contribute to the misconception that these eras are named for their emperors and not vice versa, and also seems to imply that these are less "official" government designations than the work of scholars as part of the periodization of Japanese history like Heian period and Edo period, but historians seem to prefer to talk about either the "modern period" (from 1854 or 1868 to now) or kindai (1868 to 1945) and gendai (1945 to now). (We definitely should not be speculating that historians will put the "Reiwa period" on a level with the "Kamakura period".)
I would like to ask commenters to please !vote on these proposals individually, or treat Reiwa/Heisei/Taishō as one group that doesn't need its redundant disambiguation and the rest as another. Please don't uniformly "oppose" the whole group because you don't like one or two of them Shōwa (era, 1926–1989) -- I'm not even particularly hot on that one myself, and would be happy to discuss it further at Talk:Shōwa period or Talk:Shōwa (Kamakura period) if my interim proposal turns out to be unpopular.
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:07, 14 April 2019 (UTC) (Modified Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:01, 15 April 2019 (UTC))

Okay, in accordance with the popular demand of the two users who've chimed in so far, I've removed "era" from the disambiguators of the two Shōwas. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:01, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

• Pinging User:Curly Turkey. Not sure if Nihonjoe wants to be pinged, but his last comment there implies not. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:10, 14 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support, though I'd like something more elegant for the Shōwas. Maybe Shōwa (1312–1317) and Shōwa (1926–1989)? According to the Shōwa DAB page, Jōwa (Heian period) can also be read Shōwa, so perhaps a Shōwa (834–848) redirect as well? My support is based on consistency—whatever outside sources use, Wikipedia has settled on era for nengō and period otherwise. Should courtesy ping Nihonjoe regardless—he can choose to ignore it. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 09:31, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: That works, although that also goes into the territory of the otherwise unrelated problem of Jōwa (Muromachi period), and perhaps a few others that, if we're going for consistency, would need their disambiguators changed as well. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:46, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

No, because Shōwa (834–848) would only be a redirect, and Jōwa (Muromachi period) wouldn't actually be problematic–though a date range for all of them would be more helpful overall, I think (Japanese periods are far from universal knowledge). Low-priority issue. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:06, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support, though prefer the parentheticals only include the dates. I also support changing any other period/era that needs disambiguation to include the dates rather than the period in which it occurred. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:18, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

I'd be in favour of that too, but it's not really related to this problem. I'll take a look to see how many of them this would apply to later this week. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:01, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support B. Baker (talk) 06:08, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support all as currently proposed (no "era", only dates in the two proposed Shōwa target titles). Bakazaka (talk) 22:44, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support, as per above, only dates in the parentheses, should disambiguation be required. TheInfernoX (talk) 05:18, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

@TheInfernoX: Just to clarify, you mean only dates in the parentheses, should disambiguation be required [between two or more eras, right? The above back-and-forth relates specifically to Japanese imperial eras that have names with identical pronunciations, but the whole point of this RM is to bring these articles in line with our other ones that use "(era)" when disambiguating from articles on topics other than eras. It would be theoretically possible to change the others use years instead of "(era)", but that would actually be (arguably) less useful since it would make them look like people. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:15, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: Yes, that was what I meant: only for dates in the parentheses between two or more similarly pronounced eras. I'll agree to maintain the status quo for disambiguation between eras and non-era topics, since it's (preferably) clearer when disambiguating between those articles. TheInfernoX (talk) 14:32, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support per proposal. JaykeBird (talk) 05:57, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support Meiji era instead of Meiji (era), though. {{u|waddie96}} {talk} 17:01, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Waddie96: That's the opposite of what everyone else is requesting, though; not parenthesizing gives the impression that "era" is an integral part of the name, which is wrong. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:03, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Oh, I understand now, I still support all changes; my previous comment redacted. {{u|waddie96}} {talk} 15:57, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support all except Meiji (era), which should remain Meiji period or perhaps be called Meiji era. While Meiji can be used to refer to the period, it is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and in such a case, WP:NATURAL is preferred. Meiji period and Meiji era are both very commonly used in English-language sources. In general, "X Y" should certainly be used over "X (Y)" or "Y (X)" when "X Y" is a common term on par with the single word. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:36, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

@King of Hearts: It’s not "natural", though: as the title of an encyclopedia article for a general readership, it creates the false impression that "period" (or "era") is an integral part of the name like with Edo period and so on, and seems to contribute to the (apparently quite common) misunderstanding that the "Meiji era" was named after "Emperor Meiji" (when in fact "the Meiji Emperor" was named after his era, "Meiji"). Even if you are right on the "general" policy, and everything I've said here is wrong so that we don't have a reason to allow an exception to the general rule, the inconsistency with, say, Genji (era) would still need to be addressed.

Anyway, what would you say to moving the page to Meiji? It's probably to late to decide that here, but I'm curious why you consider the era not to be the PRIMARYTOPIC. I did a quick GBooks search for "Meiji", and on the first page four books were in Japanese, five had "Meiji Japan" (i.e., "Japan in the Meiji era") in their titles, and one had "Meiji renovation" (apparently referring to the clearly-subordinate but arguably more "famous" Meiji Restoration). I ask because, should this RM fail, that'll probably be the next target since lacking further evidence I really doubt maintaining the status quo on Meiji and moving Shōtoku (era) et al. to match it would be a good idea.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:17, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Oh I was just taking that as a given, as a basis for my natural disambiguation argument. But now that I look at it, I actually wouldn't be opposed to that as a WP:CONCEPTDAB; I just don't like the unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation when many acceptable alternatives are widely available. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:30, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Reiwa era to begin in 20 minutes

At 00:00 JST (15:00 UTC) the Reiwa era will begin. J4lambert (talk) 14:39, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Panel selection misleading?

The description of the selection process seems slightly misleading. As the list was reported afterwards, "reiwa" wasn't the last name on the list, but, more importantly, I'm pretty sure their comments and reactions on the candidates were short of a binding selection process. Unless the news on NHK was misleading, I think the final decision was made after their discussion. Shanen (talk) 10:56, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

There is much to be corrected and clarified. The shortlist itself was actually already drawn up by the government, and the nine people were invited only to provide their opinions on it (most supported Reiwa according to Abe Shinzo). Some more discussion was had by the Cabinet before they issued the legislation. It is all mostly in the Japanese Wikipedia as of now, especially in the sources cited there--I recommend going right there to the cited source if you see an interesting passage. I think these three sources are juicy: 元号案、首相指示で追加　「令和」３月下旬に中西氏提出 from Asahi (confirms Nakanishi Susumu as the man behind the proposal), 新元号の考案者か 中西進さんが語った「令和」への思い from NHK, 令和に流れる「十七条の憲法」精神…中西進氏 from Yomiuri. The latter two sources are currently not mentioned or used on the Japanese page whatsoever, but they have essentially "Word of God" information on what kind of meaning "Reiwa" was intended to have because Nakanishi Susumu talks about it himself--in short, it is "beautiful harmony" (麗しき和 -- directly mentioned!). Why don't I add this myself -- as selfish as it may sound, I just have no time to actually work on editing, though I can at least raise awareness about what can be improved. Draco argenteus (talk) 17:47, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

On what date was the name of the new era announced?

On what date was the name of the new era announced? The article does not say.

That was on April 1, 2019. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 11:58, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

English meaning in lead

Nukleon: It is usual to put English meaning in a WP:LEAD, as it's summary information and it's what readers quickly want to know. So, the recent revert makes no sense, what's in a LEAD is always in the body. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:37, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

I do not think it is relevant enough to be in the head, but if you think it is, then please write it gramatically correct and cite a source. Nukleon (talk) 14:50, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Nukleon, Cite? Really? See, WP:LEADCITE, it hardly seems a matter that's not perfunctory, but if you insist on a cite, sure. Also, if you want to edit sentences because you wish to improve grammar, see WP:SOFIXIT , removing does not address that. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:06, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Brexiteer soapboxing

Someone has been adding to the "Events" section a loaded description of the trade deal signed between the UK and Japan. It is not really clear what should go in the "Events" section: the major events in Japanese history during a particular imperial reign, but I notice no mention of the rather obviously more significant deal with the EU; I do not suggest that this should be added, but rather question the value of the whole section. Please comment here before readding the "Brexit Triumph" stuff. Imaginatorium (talk) 03:58, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Heisei which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 09:15, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Removed sentence

I removed this:

Predicted guess names included An'ei (安永) and Heiwa (平和).

No idea quite what "predicted guess names" means; this seems to be a couple of sites of no particular authority just listing things. Imaginatorium (talk) 04:10, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Improvements?

Under Implementation | Currency is "According to the Japan Mint, all coins with the new era name will be released by October 2019." This is now 4½ years ago ... can it be updated? Was new coinage issued in Oct. 2019?

Under Events is "On 19 January 2024, Japan becomes the fifth country ... "; would "On 19 January 2024, Japan became the fifth country ... " be better? Prisoner of Zenda (talk) 06:19, 20 April 2024 (UTC)