How to write dates in Japanese

When talking about days of the month in Japanese some numbers have special forms, and a mixture of native Japanese and Sino-Japanese numbers are used.

Dates are written year, month, day, possibly followed by the day of the week. For example, today’s date in Japanese is 2024年12月24日 (24/12/2024). Japanese or Western numerals can be used. Days of the week are often abbreviated to the first character, e.g. 水 = 水曜日 (Wednesday).

For years you can use the Gregorian calendar, e.g. 2023, 2022, etc. The Japanese era names (元号, gengō) are also used, such as 明治 (Meiji) = 1868-1912, 大正 (Taishō) = 1912-1926, 昭和 (Shōwa) = 1926-1989, 平成 (Heisei) = 1989-2019, 令和 (Reiwa) = 2019-present. For example, 2023 = 令和05年.

More details
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_era_name
https://webconversiononline.com/date-conversion.aspx
https://www.sljfaq.org/cgi/date.cgi

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Hear how to talk about dates in Japanese:

Information about days of the month in Japanese
https://www.kanpai-japan.com/learn-japanese/how-to-write-the-date-in-japanese
https://www.nihongomaster.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-writing-dates-in-japanese
https://thetruejapan.com/days-of-the-month-in-japanese/
https://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/month-days.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar

If you would like to make any corrections or additions to this page, or if you can provide recordings, please contact me.

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