Why the date on your goshuin is in a Japanese era, and how to live with it in a record

This article covers two things only: the format the date on a goshuin is written in, and what goes out of step when you move it into a record. The etiquette of a visit, and where goshuin came from, are not covered here.

What is written on a goshuin?

Three things, with the vermilion seals stamped over them: 奉拝, the name of the shrine or temple or of the buddha enshrined there, and the visit date. How they are arranged is up to whoever writes the page, but those three elements are broadly common to all of them.

奉拝 (hōhai) means, roughly, "I have worshipped here, respectfully". It is usually written in the upper right or the upper middle, and the visit date goes below it or beside it. At a temple another word — 奉納経, for instance — sometimes stands in its place.

To find the date, look near the 奉拝 and use the era name, 令和 or 平成, as your landmark.

Why is the date in a Japanese era rather than the Western calendar?

Because the page follows a format shrines and temples have carried forward. Most goshuin are brush-written from top to bottom, and within that format the date has always been written in a Japanese era too. It is easier to read this not as an old-fashioned habit but as one notation holding together with the rest of the page.

It is the norm, though, not a rule. The format changes with the writer and with the shrine or temple, and sometimes no date is written at all. A 納経帳 (nōkyōchō), the book carried round a pilgrimage circuit, is one that often has no visit date in the ink writing (the practice differs by circuit and by individual temple). When you go round the same circuit more than once and the seals stack up in the one book, how to record which seal belongs to which visit is covered separately.

When did Reiwa, Heisei and Showa begin?

Reiwa began on May 1, 2019, Heisei on January 8, 1989, and Showa on December 25, 1926. These boundaries are what trips up a record. They are fixed facts, so once you know them you can use them as they stand.

Two things to watch.

2019 straddles two eras. January 1 to April 30 is Heisei 31; May 1 to December 31 is Reiwa 1. Within that single year, a visit in April and a visit in May carry different era names.

Showa 64 lasted seven days. January 1 to January 7, 1989. A goshuin received in that one week is dated Showa 64. Whether the tool you keep your record in accepts "Showa 64" is worth checking before you type it in.

Your phone is on the Western calendar, so the record goes out of step

The page is in a Japanese era and your phone shows the Western calendar, so every date you move into a record needs converting. The capture date of a photograph, the calendar, the date field in most apps — all Western. In practice this is the tedious part.

One record is nothing at all. Fifty records is fifty conversions. And get an era wrong in one of them and the order goes off. The next section shows exactly how; noticing it after you have sorted means doing the work twice.

The converting weighs most on the person entering everything afterwards, in one go. Enter one record straight after each visit and the only date you ever convert is today's. Work back through years of visits at a sitting and records from a straddling year like 2019 arrive mixed in with the rest.

What happens to the order when a record crosses an era?

Sort on the year number alone, ignoring the era, and a Heisei 31 record lands behind your Reiwa records and the order you visited in is gone. An example is quicker than an explanation.

Say you hold three records: Heisei 31, month 3; Reiwa 1, month 6; Reiwa 2, month 1. In the order you visited, that is the order.

Now sort them by year number, smallest first, counting 元年 as year 1 and ignoring the era, and you get Reiwa 1, Reiwa 2, Heisei 31 — because 1 < 2 < 31. The oldest of the three ends up last.

The same break comes from getting an era wrong. Enter a June 2019 visit as Heisei 31, month 6, and when you sort by era it sits ahead of a Reiwa 1, month 5 record, though it happened later. And the order itself will not tell you. It is only a few months from the records either side of it, so nothing looks out of place.

The fix is simple: sort on the Western date. Converted, the rows fall into the order you visited whatever the era numbers do and whatever you mistyped. If your tool holds the date in the Western calendar and shows it as an era, that is enough. If you are keeping the record by hand in a spreadsheet, always add a column for the converted Western date and sort on that column. What format to give that column, and where the order most often breaks is covered separately.

Keep both forms in your record

Hold the era form and the Western form both, and sort on the Western one: that is the most dependable arrangement. Which form you reach for depends on what you are checking the record against.

• The era form is for checking against the goshuin itself. With the book open in front of you, the same notation on both sides matches up faster.
• The Western form is for sorting, and for checking against every other record you have. The capture date of a photograph, a travel itinerary, a transit history — all Western.

If you can hold only one, hold the Western date. Era dates on their own break the order exactly as the example above shows. You are left converting back to the era form each time you compare against a goshuin, but the table above settles that in a moment, and it is lighter work than hunting down a broken order and repairing it.

Two neighbouring cases are written up elsewhere. When the goshuin carries no date, or you cannot read the one it carries, how to work the visit date back out of the capture date of a photograph is a separate article, and so is how to think about filling in the date yourself on a pre-written sheet handed over blank. The whole sequence is in "how to organise and record the goshuin photographs piled up on your phone".