Topic: The Christian calendar’s other days
Does Japan have The Christian calendar’s other days?
Not observed here
Japan's Act on National Holidays (Act No. 178 of 1948) lists sixteen holidays, all named after seasons, the imperial house or civic life — New Year's Day, Coming-of-Age Day, National Foundation Day, Constitution Memorial Day, Children's Day, Marine Day, Mountain Day, Respect for the Aged Day, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, Culture Day, Labour Thanksgiving Day, the Emperor's Birthday and so on. Not one of them is religious. The words for Christ, resurrection and Christmas do not appear anywhere in the text of the law. Japanese churches keep Ash Wednesday and Good Friday services, and commercial Christmas is loud, but none of these days is a holiday in law, and the movable days after Easter are barely known outside the churches.
What is this topic?
Beyond Christmas and Easter, the same Easter computus produces a whole series of days: Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi. How far a national calendar follows that series varies enormously. Indonesia, with the largest Muslim population in the world, makes both Good Friday and Ascension statutory national holidays and adds a collective leave day after Ascension. Brazil, the largest Catholic country, treats Corpus Christi at federal level as an optional working day, not a statutory holiday — it becomes a real holiday only where a city council has legislated one. The United States federal list of eleven holidays contains exactly one Christian day, Christmas. Pentecost appears nowhere: it always falls on a Sunday.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.