FIRST CH TOOLS LOCAL PROCESSING — NOTHING IS UPLOADED 日本語

FIRST CH TOOLS / Misc / 65 WAREKI CONVERTER

Japanese Era ⇄ Western Calendar Converter

Paste 令和8年10月1日 or 2026/10/1 as it is and get both the Japanese era date and the Western date, with the weekday and zodiac. It also works out age from a date of birth and the school entry and graduation years that Japanese résumés ask for, and comes with an era list and a year chart. Covers Meiji onwards.

1 — ENTER A DATE

A year alone (Reiwa 8, 1989) or a year and month (2019-05) also works. Kanji numerals (令和八年十月一日), short forms (H31.4.30), full-width digits and a weekday in brackets ((木)) are all read as they are.
Examples

2 — RESULT

Dates you type into this page never leave your browser (everything is calculated on this page). URL parameters work too (a value passed in the URL reaches the server as part of the page request, so type a date of birth into the page instead): /en/wareki/?d=Reiwa 8.10.1 / /en/wareki/?mode=age&birth=1985-04-02&ref=2026-10-01 (what you type is never written back into the URL).

3 — ERA LIST

EraAbbr.PeriodYearsWestern = era year +

Add the offset to the era year to get the Western year: Reiwa 8 → 8 + 2018 = 2026, Showa 60 → 60 + 1925 = 1985, Heisei 31 → 31 + 1988 = 2019.

4 — YEAR CHART (ERA, ZODIAC, AGE)

YearJapanese eraZodiacAgeBefore birthday

"Age" is the age this year of someone born in that year once their birthday has passed; "Before birthday" is the age until then. Years in which the era changed (1912, 1926, 1989, 2019) list both eras.

How to Use

  1. Paste a dateCopy the date straight from a contract, invoice or official form. Western and Japanese era dates are told apart automatically: 令和8年10月1日, R8.10.1, 2026/10/1, 令和八年十月一日 and Reiwa 8 all work, and a year or a year and month alone can be converted too.
  2. Pick a format and copy itYou get the era date (with the weekday, in kanji numerals), the short forms (R8.10.1 / R08.10.01), the Western date, ISO 8601 and English. Each row has its own Copy button. Dates outside an era (such as Heisei 32) and a wrong weekday are flagged underneath.
  3. Work out an ageSwitch to "Age" and enter a date of birth to get the exact age, the traditional kazoe age, the next birthday and the entry and graduation years from elementary school to university in both calendars — what a Japanese résumé asks for. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.

About This Tool

The era switches on the day it changed. Taisho began on July 30, 1912, Showa on December 25, 1926, Heisei on January 8, 1989 and Reiwa on May 1, 2019. So January 7, 1989 is Showa 64 and January 8 is Heisei 1 (gannen), April 30, 2019 is Heisei 31 and May 1 is Reiwa 1. When a year or month you enter spans a change, both eras are shown with a note that the full date settles it.

Era dates that never existed are read and corrected. Forms and systems built before an era change often still print dates such as "Heisei 32" or "Heisei 31, May 1" — after the era had ended. The tool converts them to the Western date (2020, 2019-05-01) and tells you the correct era date (Reiwa 2, Reiwa 1 May 1). It also flags a weekday written next to the date that does not match, which makes it useful for checking the dates in a document.

Before 1873 only the year is converted. Japan switched to the Gregorian calendar on January 1 of Meiji 6 (1873); months and days before that are in the old lunisolar calendar. Meiji 5, December 3 became Meiji 6, January 1, so December 3–31 of Meiji 5 never existed. Converting lunisolar dates properly needs a table of lunar months, so for this period the tool gives the year correspondence only (Meiji 3 = 1870) and says so. Meiji 1 was applied retroactively from Keiō 4, January 1 (January 25, 1868), so 1868 counts as Meiji 1.

Age goes up on the birthday. Under Japanese law a person becomes a year older at the end of the day before their birthday, so someone born on February 29 turns a year older on March 1 in common years, and the tool follows that. For the same reason people born on April 1 join the school year above. School years assume that everyone born between April 2 and April 1 of the next year is in the same year and that the 6-3-3-4 system is followed without gaps; they are not shown for people who started school before that system began in 1947. The kazoe age counts the year of birth as 1 and adds one every New Year's Day.

The zodiac follows the calendar year. Like the "animal of the year" on New Year cards it changes on January 1 (in the strict almanac it changes at Risshun, early February). 1984 was 甲子 (kinoe-ne) and the cycle repeats every 60 years. Dates are held internally as the number of days since January 1, 1970, so your device's time zone can never shift the answer by a day.

Related tools. For business days between two dates or a payment date, use the Date & Business Day Calculator; to put an event in a calendar, the ICS Generator; to read epoch seconds from a log, the Unix Time Converter.

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