How Japan Chooses Its Era Names: The Secret Committee

Japan's imperial era names — Meiji, Taishō, Shōwa, Heisei, Reiwa — are not chosen arbitrarily or by public contest. Behind each name lies a confidential, carefully structured process involving classical scholars, senior government officials, constitutional lawyers, and the strictest secrecy protocols in Japanese public administration. The selection of a new gengo (元号, era name) is one of the most symbolically significant acts in modern Japanese governance, and the procedure that produces it reflects a fascinating interplay of classical learning, political strategy, and national identity — all conducted under conditions designed to prevent leaks until the moment of public announcement.

Japanese Era

The Legal Foundation: The Era Name Law of 1979

The modern era name system is governed by the Gengō-hō (元号法, Era Name Law) enacted on June 12, 1979. This two-clause statute is among the shortest significant laws in Japan's books. It states simply that Japan's era name system shall be maintained and that era names shall be established by Cabinet Order (seirei, 政令). Before 1979, era names had been established by imperial decree. The 1979 law transferred formal authority to the democratically accountable Cabinet — a change that, as some constitutional scholars note, subtly shifted the era name from an imperial prerogative to a democratic governmental function, while maintaining the Emperor's central symbolic role in the system.

The law was passed in response to anxieties in the 1970s that the era system might lapse without legal foundation — a possibility that would have created significant administrative chaos given how thoroughly wareki was embedded in Japanese law, record-keeping, and bureaucratic culture.

The Six Selection Criteria

The Cabinet Secretariat (内閣官房, Naikaku Kanbō) has established criteria for evaluating gengo candidates. These criteria are followed strictly, and proposed names that fail any criterion are eliminated regardless of their literary quality:

1. Auspicious meaning (意味が良い): The name must express a positive, hopeful sentiment appropriate as a wish for the era ahead.
2. Two-character composition (二字): It must consist of exactly two kanji. Historical Japanese eras have used names of one to four characters; the modern preference since Meiji has been for two.
3. Easy to read and write (読み書きしやすい): The characters must be familiar to ordinary Japanese citizens, not obscure classical compounds requiring specialist knowledge.
4. Not an existing family surname (苗字でない): The name must not be in current use as a Japanese family name, to avoid confusing people whose surname matches the era name.
5. Not a duplicate of past era names (過去に使用されていない): It must not replicate or closely resemble any era name used previously in Japan or historically in China.
6. Classical literary source (古典からの出典): Candidates have traditionally been drawn from classical Chinese texts or (as with Reiwa) classical Japanese texts.

The Secrecy Protocol

The selection process is conducted under extraordinary secrecy — comparable in operational security to military or intelligence matters. The process for Reiwa in 2019 (the most thoroughly documented, given the planned nature of the abdication) proceeded broadly as follows:

Preparation phase (months before the transition): The Cabinet Secretariat quietly commissions a small number of eminent classical scholars — specialists in kokugaku (国学, classical Japanese literature) and kanbun (漢文, classical Chinese) — to independently propose candidates. Each scholar works in complete isolation from the others and submits a proposal directly to the Cabinet Secretariat without knowing what other scholars have proposed.

Candidate review: The Chief Cabinet Secretary (Kanbōchōkan, 官房長官) reviews the submitted proposals and assembles a shortlist — typically five to seven names — that meet all six criteria. For the 2019 Reiwa selection, it was later reported that the shortlist included: Eikō (英弘), Kyūka (久化), Kōshi (広至), Banwa (万和), Bankō (万保), and Reiwa (令和).

Morning-of advisory consultation: On the day of the public announcement — and only that morning — the shortlist is shared with a panel of senior advisors including the presidents of both houses of the Diet, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and leaders of major academic and business organisations. These advisors give brief opinions; they have no veto. Participants are required to leave their mobile phones outside the meeting room to prevent leaks in the hours before the public announcement.

Cabinet decision: The full Cabinet meets and formally adopts the name by Cabinet Order. The Chief Cabinet Secretary then reads the chosen name at a public press conference, traditionally displaying the two characters written in calligraphy on a white card.

Why Reiwa Broke Tradition

All four previous modern era names drew their source characters from classical Chinese texts — the Confucian canon and the Chinese historical classics. The sourcing from Chinese literature gave the names a continental literary authority and placed Japan within the broader Sinographic cultural sphere it had engaged with for over a millennium.

When the advisory committee for the Reiwa selection sourced the name from the Man'yōshū (万葉集) — Japan's oldest poetry anthology, compiled in the 8th century entirely in Japanese — it was widely understood as a deliberate cultural-political statement. The Man'yōshū source emphasised Japan's own indigenous literary heritage as an equal or superior source of auspicious language, rather than defaulting to Chinese classics. Prime Minister Abe's government, with its explicit cultural-nationalist positioning, was comfortable with this symbolism.

The specific Man'yōshū passage describes a gathering of courtiers composing poetry about plum blossoms (ume, 梅) in a spring garden — an image of nature, cultured leisure, and seasonal renewal that the government presented as an aspiration for the new era: people gathering harmoniously, like plum blossoms blooming in concert.

Keeping the Secret in the Social Media Age

The practical challenge of the era selection process is maintaining complete secrecy in an era of instant global communication. Despite the extraordinary precautions taken in 2019, fragmentary reports began circulating in Japanese media within hours of the advisory consultation suggesting the new name began with Rei (令). The full name and kanji were not definitively confirmed until the Chief Cabinet Secretary's announcement at 11:41 AM on April 1, 2019 — an announcement date that, coinciding with April Fools' Day, prompted considerable wry commentary on Japanese social media about the surreal quality of receiving a historic national announcement on the world's principal day of deliberate misinformation.

Debated Proposals and Vetoed Names

While the official shortlist for each era name selection is kept secret — and the government typically declines to confirm specific rejected candidates — researchers and journalists have pieced together unofficial accounts of names that were reportedly proposed but not selected for various era transitions.

For the Heisei selection in 1989, media reports suggested that Seika (政化) and Shūbun (修文) were among the considered alternatives before Heisei (平成) was chosen. For Reiwa, NHK and other outlets reported on the six-name shortlist in detail, with Eikō (英弘, "brilliant promotion") noted as a strong early contender before the committee settled on Reiwa.

The criteria that eliminate candidates include — beyond the formal six rules — practical political considerations that are never officially acknowledged. Names that evoke unfortunate historical associations, sound similar to embarrassing phrases in Japanese or in major foreign languages, or carry connotations that could be used critically in political discourse tend to be quietly set aside. The committee's work is thus both scholarly (finding the most auspicious classical source) and communicative (anticipating how the public and global media will receive the name at announcement).

The Era Name as Living Constitutional Practice

Scholars of Japanese constitutional law have noted the ongoing tension inherent in the era name system. The 1979 law places formal authority with the Cabinet but maintains the Emperor's symbolic centrality through the connection between the gengo and the reign. Critics from the political left occasionally argue that the compulsory use of wareki on government documents effectively enforces a form of imperial identity on all citizens, including those who do not personally identify with the imperial system. Defenders respond that wareki is cultural practice rather than political coercion, and that the practical freedom to use Western years alongside wareki preserves individual choice. The debate continues, ensuring that each new era-name selection is as much a constitutional conversation as a scholarly literary exercise.