13 ms·

The Japanese Calendar’s Y2K Moment

107 points by beefhash 8y ago

treve 8y ago
Did they mess up character encoding, or are there really a bunch of question marks in the registry.
- andremat 8y ago
  From the article: > The last value "2019 05 01" contains the temporary information "？？_？_??????_?"
  - IvyMike 8y ago
    Now I'm not sure if the thing contains a bunch of question marks (in two different fonts, no less) or if somewhere (the original poster, the blog, your OS, hacker news, my browser, my OS) the character encoding got dorked up. For reference, here's what I see: https://imgur.com/a/VdcaQ0r https://imgur.com/a/VdcaQ0r The fact that there are unicode "Fullwidth Question Mark"s as well as what appear to be normal question marks make me thing there still is an encoding issue.
    - JdeBP 8y ago
      As possibly should the fact that the Klingon in the title is greeked in the header. (-:
- IvyMike 8y ago
  I didn't realize the article is old and the changes are already available in an updated Win10 installation. It is indeed as it shows in the article. For reference: https://imgur.com/a/2tiYJ1w https://imgur.com/a/2tiYJ1w
testplzignore 8y ago
So what happens if an emperor dies unexpectedly? Does all Japanese calendar aware software break?
- titanix2 8y ago
  From centuries ago emperors could decrete new eras, and in the last centuries it was rationalized as one emperor reign = one era. So when the new emperor will be enthroned, he will take its emperor name that also will become the era new era name. How the previous emperor exit the throne (death or abdication) is irrelevant.
  - jrockway 8y ago
    He's talking about the software patching issue. If the emperor dies today, how do you update all software to understand the name of the new year? The succession itself is pretty straightforward; people will see it on the news and memorize the new name immediately. Software is more difficult, though. This is not really a new issue. Daylight savings time rules change, leap seconds are added and removed. Most software doesn't care because someone will notice and change the clock, or NTP notices that your clock is a second slow because you forgot the leap second and it moves it forward. But being a second or an hour off is a slightly different problem than not knowing what the current year is called, or how to add/subtract years. Software that wants to be resilient to any of these changes simply uses a timebase that doesn't have leap seconds, daylight savings time, or the year changing... but users want to see "Heisei 30" and not something that is 37 seconds ahead of what their wall clock says the time is. Formatting the time is still an issue no matter what timebase you use.
    - titanix2 8y ago
      > If the emperor dies today, how do you update all software to understand the name of the new year? I understood the question but it is pointless: how can you expect software to be magically patched if no update mecanism is in place? Some will, others won’t.
      - occams_chainsaw 8y ago
        You understood the literal question, but not the motivation and thus not the real question.
ezoe 8y ago
There is no law that requires to use 元号 in official documents in Japan. I refuse to use 元号 when dealing with government. Those who will be affected by this issue are idiots.
euske 8y ago
As a taxpayer in Japan, I want the government to stop worrying about this inefficient calendar system and fully adopt the Western calendar everywhere. That said, I read the people's justifications are similar to those who favor the Fahrenheit system in the US. They say the scale is close to their everyday feel (under the current system, each era is roughly equivalent to one's lifespan) than 4-digit numbers, and therefore more "human". Their emotional attachment defies rationality.
- tjpnz 8y ago
  You can fight back by cramming two extra digits into any paper form demanding you express years in this manner.
  - contingencies 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 is elegant because it solves the US/UK date ordering conflict and simultaneously renormalizes for most-to-least significant (which has been standard in the Far East for thousands of years). Depoliticizing time is a good thing(TM). See also: use of BCE suffix in dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era and the total mess that is attempting to express to a human the actual meaning of an entry in the TZ database. http://tz.iana.narkive.com/QuK9m7tT/tz-proposal-for-a-modern-collapsed-namespace http://tz.iana.narkive.com/QuK9m7tT/tz-proposal-for-a-modern...
- neaanopri 8y ago
  Defies rationality? It's perfectly rational to prefer a system of measurement that is more meaningful to you.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  We definitely need to fix the issue of human lifespans being mostly limited to two digits.
nandemo 8y ago
Two things that are missing from the article: 1) because of this problem, the government is considering keeping Heisei for a while after the emperor steps down https://minhan.jp/4599 https://minhan.jp/4599 (in Japanese) 2) the Japanese calendar (specifically the year) is used in some official documents and formalities, but in daily life people mostly use the Gregorian calendar. If you ask a bunch of Japanese people what Heisei year is now, I bet a significant percentage of them won't remember. I've worked as a software engineer in Japan for over 10 years and I've never had to deal with Japanese calendar years.
- rtpg 8y ago
  If you have to deal with larger systems that interface with finance or government orgs, you'll end up needing to work with these numbers though. I've heard that there's not a legal framework for using Common Era dates in certain contexts, which...apparently matters? I've also heard that the gov't even has regulations for enforcing usage, but can't find a reference on that. One could think that it's merely an interface problem but if the database asks for Heisei the easiest thing is to outsource the CE -> Heisei transition to the person filling out the form.
- glandium 8y ago
  The Japanese driving license expose people to the Japanese calendar years, and they are renewed every 3 or 5 years. Mine expires in 平31. So technically, it might even expire in year 1 of the new era (it expires in July).
Iv 8y ago
Honestly at this point if you are not storing dates in UTC form and transforming it in order to get to the Japanese calendar format, you are doing things wrong. The emperor is not eternal (yeah, I know, blasphemy) and the end of the era is totally expected.
- KMag 8y ago
  What does it mean to store a date in a time zone (such as UTC) form? Do you mean store dates as timestamps of UTC midnight on that date? Even this isn't a storage format: do you mean a big-endian Java epoch milliseconds timestamp, ISO 8601 text, or some other format? I think you mean they should be using some representation of a Gregorian calendar date, be it text or binary. In any case, it sounds like they should probably have something analogous to the timezone database for converting between various calendars where the mapping can't be determined in advance. That brings up a good question: in the Islamic calendar, the new year doesn't start until reception of a reliable lunar observation by a Muslim. How do they get around this in strict Muslim countries? Do they have a second concept for "year" that's identical to the year except in the observational requirement and therefore can be treated the same, but because of name doesn't break the religious law? I presume they don't go through the trouble of creating a low-latency network to distribute the start-of-year signal and make timestamp-to-string routines block near the year rollover until they've seen the signal.
  - Iv 8y ago
    Well look at how DST regulation changes (about one worldwide every six months) are handled: tzdata is the most underrated project around. I would not be surprised if islami calendars relied on something similar. In their case it is easier as there are (to my knowledge) not several islamic zones observing different rules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database
    - KMag 8y ago
      Yes, that's the Wikipedia link to the timezone database I mentioned. But, latency is the issue. The year doesn't officially change until a Muslim makes the necessary lunar observation on the first evening of the new year. You can't pre-calculate a human observation, so to be in strict compliance, you'd need an efficient way to rapidly distribute the observation. I'm sure that in practice, pre-calculation is almost always used. My question is how this is rationalized in more strict conservative Islamic countries, (or less likely, how they avoid using pre-calculated start of the new year).
rosege 8y ago
ok selfish question but I fly into Tokyo on 28 April - Does anyone expect any disruptions around the 30th?
CoreDumpling 8y ago
Taiwan had a similar problem just a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y1C_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y1C_Problem

107 points by beefhash 8y ago

treve 8y ago

Did they mess up character encoding, or are there really a bunch of question marks in the registry.

andremat 8y ago
From the article: > The last value "2019 05 01" contains the temporary information "？？_？_??????_?"
- IvyMike 8y ago
  Now I'm not sure if the thing contains a bunch of question marks (in two different fonts, no less) or if somewhere (the original poster, the blog, your OS, hacker news, my browser, my OS) the character encoding got dorked up. For reference, here's what I see: https://imgur.com/a/VdcaQ0r https://imgur.com/a/VdcaQ0r The fact that there are unicode "Fullwidth Question Mark"s as well as what appear to be normal question marks make me thing there still is an encoding issue.
  - JdeBP 8y ago
    As possibly should the fact that the Klingon in the title is greeked in the header. (-:
IvyMike 8y ago
I didn't realize the article is old and the changes are already available in an updated Win10 installation. It is indeed as it shows in the article. For reference: https://imgur.com/a/2tiYJ1w https://imgur.com/a/2tiYJ1w

testplzignore 8y ago

So what happens if an emperor dies unexpectedly? Does all Japanese calendar aware software break?

titanix2 8y ago
From centuries ago emperors could decrete new eras, and in the last centuries it was rationalized as one emperor reign = one era. So when the new emperor will be enthroned, he will take its emperor name that also will become the era new era name. How the previous emperor exit the throne (death or abdication) is irrelevant.
- jrockway 8y ago
  He's talking about the software patching issue. If the emperor dies today, how do you update all software to understand the name of the new year? The succession itself is pretty straightforward; people will see it on the news and memorize the new name immediately. Software is more difficult, though. This is not really a new issue. Daylight savings time rules change, leap seconds are added and removed. Most software doesn't care because someone will notice and change the clock, or NTP notices that your clock is a second slow because you forgot the leap second and it moves it forward. But being a second or an hour off is a slightly different problem than not knowing what the current year is called, or how to add/subtract years. Software that wants to be resilient to any of these changes simply uses a timebase that doesn't have leap seconds, daylight savings time, or the year changing... but users want to see "Heisei 30" and not something that is 37 seconds ahead of what their wall clock says the time is. Formatting the time is still an issue no matter what timebase you use.
  - titanix2 8y ago
    > If the emperor dies today, how do you update all software to understand the name of the new year? I understood the question but it is pointless: how can you expect software to be magically patched if no update mecanism is in place? Some will, others won’t.
    - occams_chainsaw 8y ago
      You understood the literal question, but not the motivation and thus not the real question.

ezoe 8y ago

There is no law that requires to use 元号 in official documents in Japan. I refuse to use 元号 when dealing with government. Those who will be affected by this issue are idiots.

euske 8y ago

As a taxpayer in Japan, I want the government to stop worrying about this inefficient calendar system and fully adopt the Western calendar everywhere. That said, I read the people's justifications are similar to those who favor the Fahrenheit system in the US. They say the scale is close to their everyday feel (under the current system, each era is roughly equivalent to one's lifespan) than 4-digit numbers, and therefore more "human". Their emotional attachment defies rationality.

tjpnz 8y ago
You can fight back by cramming two extra digits into any paper form demanding you express years in this manner.
- contingencies 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 is elegant because it solves the US/UK date ordering conflict and simultaneously renormalizes for most-to-least significant (which has been standard in the Far East for thousands of years). Depoliticizing time is a good thing(TM). See also: use of BCE suffix in dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era and the total mess that is attempting to express to a human the actual meaning of an entry in the TZ database. http://tz.iana.narkive.com/QuK9m7tT/tz-proposal-for-a-modern-collapsed-namespace http://tz.iana.narkive.com/QuK9m7tT/tz-proposal-for-a-modern...
neaanopri 8y ago
Defies rationality? It's perfectly rational to prefer a system of measurement that is more meaningful to you.
rbanffy 8y ago
We definitely need to fix the issue of human lifespans being mostly limited to two digits.

nandemo 8y ago

Two things that are missing from the article: 1) because of this problem, the government is considering keeping Heisei for a while after the emperor steps down https://minhan.jp/4599 https://minhan.jp/4599 (in Japanese) 2) the Japanese calendar (specifically the year) is used in some official documents and formalities, but in daily life people mostly use the Gregorian calendar. If you ask a bunch of Japanese people what Heisei year is now, I bet a significant percentage of them won't remember. I've worked as a software engineer in Japan for over 10 years and I've never had to deal with Japanese calendar years.

rtpg 8y ago
If you have to deal with larger systems that interface with finance or government orgs, you'll end up needing to work with these numbers though. I've heard that there's not a legal framework for using Common Era dates in certain contexts, which...apparently matters? I've also heard that the gov't even has regulations for enforcing usage, but can't find a reference on that. One could think that it's merely an interface problem but if the database asks for Heisei the easiest thing is to outsource the CE -> Heisei transition to the person filling out the form.
glandium 8y ago
The Japanese driving license expose people to the Japanese calendar years, and they are renewed every 3 or 5 years. Mine expires in 平31. So technically, it might even expire in year 1 of the new era (it expires in July).

Iv 8y ago

Honestly at this point if you are not storing dates in UTC form and transforming it in order to get to the Japanese calendar format, you are doing things wrong. The emperor is not eternal (yeah, I know, blasphemy) and the end of the era is totally expected.

KMag 8y ago
What does it mean to store a date in a time zone (such as UTC) form? Do you mean store dates as timestamps of UTC midnight on that date? Even this isn't a storage format: do you mean a big-endian Java epoch milliseconds timestamp, ISO 8601 text, or some other format? I think you mean they should be using some representation of a Gregorian calendar date, be it text or binary. In any case, it sounds like they should probably have something analogous to the timezone database for converting between various calendars where the mapping can't be determined in advance. That brings up a good question: in the Islamic calendar, the new year doesn't start until reception of a reliable lunar observation by a Muslim. How do they get around this in strict Muslim countries? Do they have a second concept for "year" that's identical to the year except in the observational requirement and therefore can be treated the same, but because of name doesn't break the religious law? I presume they don't go through the trouble of creating a low-latency network to distribute the start-of-year signal and make timestamp-to-string routines block near the year rollover until they've seen the signal.
- Iv 8y ago
  Well look at how DST regulation changes (about one worldwide every six months) are handled: tzdata is the most underrated project around. I would not be surprised if islami calendars relied on something similar. In their case it is easier as there are (to my knowledge) not several islamic zones observing different rules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database
  - KMag 8y ago
    Yes, that's the Wikipedia link to the timezone database I mentioned. But, latency is the issue. The year doesn't officially change until a Muslim makes the necessary lunar observation on the first evening of the new year. You can't pre-calculate a human observation, so to be in strict compliance, you'd need an efficient way to rapidly distribute the observation. I'm sure that in practice, pre-calculation is almost always used. My question is how this is rationalized in more strict conservative Islamic countries, (or less likely, how they avoid using pre-calculated start of the new year).

rosege 8y ago

ok selfish question but I fly into Tokyo on 28 April - Does anyone expect any disruptions around the 30th?

CoreDumpling 8y ago

Taiwan had a similar problem just a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y1C_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y1C_Problem