Chinese New Year's Eve, Dragon Boat Festival, Tanabata... As we all know, these are our traditional Chinese festivals, and because of the cultural status of ancient China in East Asia, the surrounding Korean Peninsula, Japan, Vietnam and other regions also have these festivals, since it is a traditional Chinese festival, it is natural to use the traditional Chinese calendar - the lunar calendar to set the date.
But what? After the Xinhai Revolution, in order to follow the trend of the world, China's official use of the Gregorian calendar (Gregorian calendar), so this led to the current situation in our country is two kinds of calendar, the official chronicle uses the Gregorian calendar, and some folk customs and other aspects, use the lunar calendar.
Vietnam, North Korea, South Korea is the same, the Spring Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and we are the same with the lunar calendar, of course, they also use the Gregorian calendar.
But there is another strange thing in East Asia, and that is Japan, what has Japan done? Japan now uses the Gregorian calendar, which is normal; Japan has officially abolished the lunar calendar, which is nothing. But the problem is that the Japanese still like to live some traditional festivals, such as Chinese New Year's Eve, Dragon Boat Festival, Tanabata and so on, but! They lived according to the Gregorian calendar!
What does that mean? For example, Tanabata bar, the traditional Tanabata is the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, but the Japanese are now changing to the seventh day of the Gregorian calendar, the Japanese Embassy in the previous few years did not open their eyes on the seventh day of July what "romantic Tanabata, welcome Chinese tourists to travel" propaganda, the result was scolded to the dog bloody head, in China July 7 is to commemorate the "July 7 Incident".
Japanese people use the word "Chinese New Year's Eve" to refer to December 31 in the Gregorian calendar, which always feels strange
How did the Japanese come up with such an unspeakable thing?
In fact, the root cause is the Meiji Restoration, historically, Japan has always used the Chinese calendar, and with the Chinese Central Plains Imperial Court to change the calendar, has used the Liu Song Yuan Jia calendar, the Tang Dynasty Lin De calendar (in Japan called yi feng calendar), the Great Yan calendar, the five-era calendar and the Xuanming calendar. However, after the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Japan began to use the Zhenxiang calendar, the Bao calendar, the Kuanzheng calendar, and the Tianbao calendar written in Japan.
Note: "Heaven and Earth Mingcha", a novel of the japanese writer Okikata Ding,post-film, depicts the early Edo period Go player and astronomer Shibukawa Harukai who loved mathematics and astronomy and was not willing to sit in wealth. By chance, he took on the story of the creation of Japan's first calendar.
But what? In 1872, four years after the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government abolished the Tempo calendar and used the Western Gregorian calendar instead, which is actually very normal and in line with advanced civilization, but what? The Japanese have changed the official date of each traditional festival to the Western calendar! That's weird. Maybe the Japanese are more brain-headed, do things more extremely, and want to completely abolish the lunar calendar.
But what? Even in a country like Japan, which is more analogous, it is impossible to eliminate the influence of the traditional calendar, and folk divination, fortune telling, and the spring equinox tomb are still in accordance with the Tempo calendar; at the same time, although the old calendar is no longer officially used after the Meiji Restoration, the folk customs still retain the ganzhi chronology imported from China, but the beginning of each year's ganzhi calendar is based on the Western calendar.
Oh, here is a place that may be easy for many people to get mistaken, Chinese folk customs to call the Gregorian calendar "solar calendar"; the lunar calendar is called "lunar calendar", in fact, this is not accurate, China's lunar calendar is actually "yin and yang calendar", the date is calculated according to the lunar calendar, but the solar terms are calculated according to the solar calendar, which is why each solar term date is almost the same every year.
The "solar terms" in the Chinese calendar are the solar calendar
Therefore, the solar system remains in the Japanese calendar and is not affected.
So are there any festivals in Japan that follow the old calendar? There are also some, such as the Obon Festival, which is probably the Chinese "Zhongyuan", traditionally, the Japanese in the lunar calendar on the 13th to 16th day of the seventh month, after the Meiji Restoration, some areas changed to July 13 to 16 in the Gregorian calendar, but some areas deliberately changed to August 13 to 16, close to the old calendar.
There is also the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Japanese used to call the Mid-Autumn Festival "Fifteen Nights", this is one of the few festivals in Japan that still follows the lunar calendar date after the Meiji Restoration, the reason may be that this festival is closely related to agriculture, the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival is the harvest season of various crops, in order to thank nature for its favor, so various celebrations are held. Because the seasons of the crops do not change much, it is not convenient to change the date of celebration to the Gregorian calendar.
Moreover, there are some traditional large households in Japan that are still accustomed to using the Gregorian calendar.
Note: Screenshot of the Japanese anime "Ice Cream", the heroine Chitada Aisuke family (large household) is still using the traditional calendar to celebrate some festivals.
However, in the case of Japan, do ordinary people really know the lunar calendar? Well, unlike China, most calendars in China now have two dates at the same time, but Japan has stopped remembering the old calendar in the official calendar since 1910, so it only uses the Gregorian calendar, but at present, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan will issue a "summary item" official newspaper every February there are still solar terms and synodic hopes and other information for self-calculation of the lunar calendar.
In fact, China also did something similar to Japan for a period of time, that is, in the early days of the Xinhai Revolution, the people were ready to abolish the lunar calendar, and even "strictly prohibited merchants from celebrating the old year" in guangdong, which was tightly controlled, but it led to "many resentments among the people", and the effect was not good, so yuan shikai later standardized it after he came to power.
In January 1914, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Beijing Government proposed in a submission to Yuan Shikai: "It is proposed to designate the Lunar New Year's Day as the Spring Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival as the Summer Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival as the Autumn Festival, and the Winter Solstice as the Winter Festival." All our citizens are allowed to rest, and those in public are also allowed to take a day off. Yuan Shikai approved the submission. As a result, China has two kinds of new years, "New Year's Day" and "Spring Festival", and some foreigners feel inexplicable at first, but Chinese have long been used to it.
Author: Yun Fan