How do I convert a Japanese era year to a Western year?

Type it into the box above in whatever form you have it — 令和6, R6, Heisei 31 or 平成31 — and the Western year appears. Type a Western year instead and you get the era. One box handles both directions, because what you type already says which way you mean.

Why does one year sometimes give two answers?

Because eras change mid-year. 1989 is Shōwa 64 until 7 January and Heisei 1 from the 8th; 2019 is Heisei 31 until 30 April and Reiwa 1 from 1 May. A converter that returns only one is wrong for every document dated on the other side of the boundary.

The first year of an era, written 元年 rather than 一年. 令和元年 is Reiwa 1, which is 2019.

What do M, T, S, H and R mean on Japanese forms?

They are the official one-letter abbreviations for Meiji, Taishō, Shōwa, Heisei and Reiwa. A form printed with all five and a circle to mark is asking which era your date of birth falls in. This tool accepts them as input.

Why does Shōwa 65 give an error?

Because it never existed. Shōwa ended at 64, and what would have been Shōwa 65 is Heisei 2. The tool says so rather than quietly computing a year.

How far back does this go?

To Meiji 1 (1868). Earlier dates used a lunisolar calendar, so converting them needs more than year arithmetic and is out of scope here.

Japanese Era Converter — Reiwa, Heisei, Shōwa to Western Years

The eras
Era	Code	Years
明治 Meiji	M	1868–1912
大正 Taishō	T	1912–1926
昭和 Shōwa	S	1926–1989
平成 Heisei	H	1989–2019
令和 Reiwa	R	2019–present

Type a year above in either system. A Western year gives the Japanese era; an era year gives the Western year.

Two calendars, both current

Japan uses the Western calendar day to day, but official documents date by imperial era (和暦, wareki): driving licences, residence cards, tax forms, certificates, contracts and most government paperwork. So anyone dealing with Japanese officialdom ends up converting between the two.

The current era is Reiwa (令和), which began on 1 May 2019. Before it:

Era	Kanji	Code	Western years
Reiwa	令和	R	2019–
Heisei	平成	H	1989–2019
Shōwa	昭和	S	1926–1989
Taishō	大正	T	1912–1926
Meiji	明治	M	1868–1912

The single letters are what appear on forms. A field printed M・T・S・H・R with a circle to mark is asking which era your date of birth falls in.

The part most converters get wrong

Eras change in the middle of a year, so a Western year can belong to two of them:

1989 is Shōwa 64 until 7 January, and Heisei 1 from 8 January.
2019 is Heisei 31 until 30 April, and Reiwa 1 from 1 May.

Subtracting 1988 from 1989 to get "Heisei 1" is right for most of that year and wrong for the first week of it — and the first week of 1989 is exactly when a document would be stamped Shōwa 64. This tool returns both, with the dates each covers, and leaves the choice to you because only the document knows.

元年: the first year

The first year of an era is written 元年 (gannen, "origin year"), not 一年. So 2019 is 令和元年, and you will see it written that way on anything dated in the months after the change. This tool marks year 1 accordingly.

Years that never happened

Shōwa 65 does not exist. Shōwa ended at 64, and the year that would have been 65 is Heisei 2. The same applies to Heisei 32 (which is Reiwa 2) and Taishō 16.

Arithmetic alone will happily produce those years. This tool rejects them and says which era you probably mean, because a confidently wrong date on a form is worse than an error message.

What you can type

All of these work:

2024 — a Western year
２０２４ — full-width digits, as a Japanese keyboard produces
令和6 and 令和6年
令和元年 — the first year written conventionally
R6 — the form abbreviation
Reiwa 6, Heisei 31, showa 50 — romanised, with or without macrons

Where this stops

Meiji 1 (1868) is the earliest supported year. Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873; before that, dates followed a lunisolar calendar where months and days do not line up with Western ones at all, and converting them takes conversion tables rather than arithmetic.

This tool also converts years, not full dates. For a specific date in a transition year, use the coverage dates shown with each result to see which era that date falls in.

Japanese Era Converter