Topic: Founders and National Leaders
How does Taiwan mark Founders and National Leaders?
國父逝世紀念日
- Local date
- March 12, 2027
Article 3 of the same act sets 12 March as the anniversary of the founding father's death. One man therefore occupies two entries in a single statute — a birth date and a death date — and neither is a day off. Article 5 gives 12 March a second identity as Arbor Day, chosen because Sun Yat-sen campaigned for reforestation, so the law names the same date twice for two different reasons. Seventeen days later, 29 March is Revolutionary Martyrs Memorial Day under Article 3, and Article 7 requires a spring memorial rite for the war dead on it; Article 5 also makes that date Youth Day. Taiwan's pattern is not that it declines to commemorate individuals — it is that the individuals get the commemorations and other days get the holidays.
國父誕辰紀念日
- Local date
- November 12, 2026
Article 3 of Taiwan's Commemorative Days and Holidays Act, promulgated on 28 May 2025, sets 12 November as the birthday of the founding father — Sun Yat-sen. Article 4 then narrows the list of commemorative days that come with a day off to six: the founding of the Republic, Peace Memorial Day, Confucius's birthday, National Day, the recovery of Taiwan together with the Guningtou victory, and Constitution Day. Sun Yat-sen's birthday is not among them, so it is a day the statute names and nobody gets off. The same date carries a second identity in Article 5, which lists 12 November as Chinese Culture Renaissance Festival — also without a day off. The only person-named commemorative day in Taiwan that actually closes offices is Confucius's birthday on 28 September: a philosopher who died two and a half millennia ago, not the man who founded the state.
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.