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Short short with English summary　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

新年号
５月１日から、新元号にかわる。新元号は4月１日まで発表しないということなので、日本中の会社・企業は、印刷物からデータまで書き換えに忙しくなる。気の利いた企業は年号を西暦一本に切り替えているので煩わされないで済むわけだ。しかし、官公庁は、元号を正式年号としているので、膨大な書式全てを新調することになる。
日本は、天災に屡々見舞われる。現在、元号は天皇の在位一世一元とされているが、昔のように天災の度に元号を変えていたら大変なことになる訳だ。大正天皇の崩御は、１９２６年１２月２６日であった。昭和元年は数日のみで、１９２７年は、昭和２年となった。昭和２年の年賀状は、大混乱だったという。昭和天皇は１月７日崩御、平成が始まったが、巷では、先例の混乱から学び、７日まで伏せられたとういう噂が囁かれた。
どうも法律的には、我国で西暦のみの使用を禁じてはいないようだが、社会としても、商業的にも、勿論官公庁の窓口でも昭和は昭和、平成は平成として、生きている。しかし、平成は天災の多い時代だったなどと言うのは、無意味で非科学的な話だ。天皇の在位と日本の歴史とは不可分ではない。本質的には無関係・独立事象である。新元号騒ぎに現をぬかすことよりも、世界を、日本を、現代を見つめよう。固定した視座を変え、視覚、距離を新たに、正確な知識を持つ努力が大事だろう。

A new era!?
We consider Japan a modern country. However, concerning to the calendar system, still people commonly use the era name instead of AD. This era refers directly to the reigning emperor: AD 2019 is Heisei 31. This 30th of April the emperor will resign. A new era begins from the 1st of May. The name of the new era is not known yet. The government will announce it on the 1st of April. Then many Japanese companies would be very busy to rewrite, reprint all of their forms and to renew data programs. There are some smart companies have altered their calendar systems to AD. They are not with this era change drama. However, most of Japanese official forms and papers use the era calendar. They must renew their enormous papers.
Japan often suffers heavy natural catastrophe. In old days, we replaced the name of the era to a new lucky name after the severe catastrophe. Today, the era name is bound to the reigning emperor. If we would change the name of era after each natural catastrophe, it would have caused the chaos. The Demise of “Taisho era” to “Showa era” was the 26th Dec. 1926; the first of Showa had only few days. AD 1927 was Showa 2. It was a real confusion for most of Japanese who had sent their new year’s cards. The demise from Showa to Heisei took place on the 7th January. There were rumours that the demise of Emperor Showa was kept silent for some days to avoid a chaos. I.e. the Japanese government learned from the Taisho Showa demise.
In Japan, actually no law forbids using only AD system. We may write or print AD years without the era name. However, in our daily life, in Japanese society, we use “Heisei”, we feel communicate better. For Japanese officials, the era name is inevitable. We must scribe the era counting. However, it has no meaning to say the Heisei era had many natural catastrophes, no science in it. The history of Japan and the emperor’s reign period are divisible. They are two independent matters. There are more important things than the new era and its name. We have to look at the world, at Japan and at our life. We have to try to alter our viewpoint for a new angle and distance to get real picture of the today’s world.
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