Topic: Founders and National Leaders
How does Japan mark Founders and National Leaders?
昭和の日
- Local date
- April 29, 2027
None of Japan's sixteen national holidays is named after an individual. For 29 April, the Act on National Holidays gives the purpose as looking back on the Shōwa era, which passed through turbulent days and achieved reconstruction, and thinking about the country's future — an era, not a person. The name has changed twice. When the act was passed in 1948, 29 April was the Emperor's Birthday, because the reigning emperor was Hirohito. A 1989 amendment renamed it Greenery Day, with a rationale about Japan being a country of abundant nature — a name that deliberately says nothing about anyone. A 2005 amendment made it Shōwa Day from 2007 and moved Greenery Day to 4 May. The Cabinet Office explanation is that 29 April was long familiar to the public as the Emperor's Birthday during the Shōwa era and symbolises that era. The current Emperor's Birthday, 23 February, names the office rather than a person: when the occupant changes, so does the date — most recently by the special abdication act, Act No. 63 of 2017.
What is this topic?
In federal law the third Monday in February is still called Washington's Birthday.
It is written that way in 5 U.S.C. §6103(a), the section that lists all eleven legal public holidays, and the Office of Personnel Management footnotes every annual holiday table to say that although states and businesses may use other names, its policy is to use the name in the statute.
"Presidents' Day" is a state and retail habit that federal law never adopted.
Taiwan went the other way and gave one man two dates: Article 3 of its Commemorative Days and Holidays Act lists both the birthday of the founding father (12 November) and the anniversary of his death (12 March), and Article 4 grants a day off for neither.
Japan stripped every personal name out of its holiday law in 1948; none of today's sixteen national holidays carries an individual's name, and 29 April commemorates the Shōwa era rather than the emperor who reigned through it.
Brazil's first republican decree in 1890 named Tiradentes outright, while the statute in force today says only "21 April".
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.