Topic: Days of the Jewish calendar
Does Japan have Days of the Jewish calendar?
Not observed here
Japan's Act on National Holidays (Act No. 178 of 1948) lists sixteen holidays in Article 2, and not one of them is a religious festival — not merely no Jewish day, but no day of any faith. Even the two that look ceremonial are written in secular terms: the Vernal Equinox Day is defined as praising nature and cherishing living things, the Autumnal Equinox Day as honouring ancestors and remembering the dead. Article 3 makes every national holiday a day off and, when one falls on a Sunday, moves the day off to the nearest following day that is not itself a holiday. So the absence of the Jewish calendar from this statute is not a Jewish exclusion; the statute simply does not deal in religion at all. Japan puts religion on a different footing entirely: incorporation under the Religious Corporations Act (Act No. 126 of 1951). Recognising that a religion exists and giving it a day off have been separate machinery from the start.
What is this topic?
Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover and Hanukkah are national holidays nowhere — not even in the United States, home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel, where the holidays for federal employees are fixed by statute at 5 U.S.C. 6103 and contain exactly one religious festival, Christmas. What differs from country to country is what a state offers instead. New York City closes its schools for Yom Kippur; New Jersey obliges every district to excuse a student on any of fourteen Jewish days; Brazil gives every student a statutory right to sit an exam on another date. Taiwan, Japan, China, India and Indonesia carry none of these days at all, and each for a different reason.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.