---
node: reiwa
type: period
slug: reiwa_era
title: "Reiwa era"
lead: "The Reiwa era began on May 1, 2019, with Emperor Naruhito. Its name comes from the Man'yoshu poetry anthology — the first era name drawn from a Japanese classic rather than a Chinese one."
published: 2026-07-09
updated: 2026-08-27
change: "Rewrote the opening body section so that it no longer restates the page's own lead."
previous_hash: "b3c5cca534c34e5a01fb10afbbc84c996cfce3025d9b139781b6b7195a379c46"
requester: internal
reason: "The section repeated the lead, so the first thing under the first heading was text the reader had already read in the search result."
image_file: reiwa_era.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yoshihide_Suga_announcing_new_imperial_era_Reiwa_2_(cropped).jpg"
image_author: "内閣官房内閣広報室"
image_license: "CC BY 4.0"
---

## Overview

It began with an abdication rather than a death — the first in about two hundred years, arranged by a one-off law passed in 2017 for Emperor Akihito alone. The two characters come from the preface to a set of plum-blossom poems in the fifth book of the Man'yoshu, and the government issued its own English gloss, beautiful harmony, because the first character more usually means command. The era opened with the enthronement rites of 2019 and then with the pandemic, which pushed the Tokyo Olympics to 2021 and emptied their stadiums.

## Key developments

Early Reiwa was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, postponed from 2020, were held in 2021 largely without spectators.

## End and transition

The Reiwa era is ongoing and has no end date.

**This page was corrected.** Rewrote the opening body section so that it no longer restates the page's own lead.

**Why.** The section repeated the lead, so the first thing under the first heading was text the reader had already read in the search result.

**Who asked.** The Media Division itself.