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In a much-awaited moment that heralded the approach of a new chapter in Japan’s history, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced Monday that the new Imperial era will be named Reiwa, in one of the final steps toward initiating the nation’s first Imperial succession in three decades.

Holding up a placard that displayed the kanji characters for the new era, Suga said the name was formulated based on the introduction to a set of poems from “Manyoshu,” the oldest existing compilation of Japanese poetry.

The first character represents “good fortune,” while the second can be translated as “peace” or “harmony.”

The new era will be the 248th in the history of Japan, which has used the Chinese-style system for indicating the year since 645. In modern times, each era has run the length of an emperor’s reign.

This is said to be the first time that the characters chosen have drawn from Japanese classical literature, with prior era names, or gengō, having used kanji from Chinese literature.

The poem from which they are taken describes an ume Japanese apricot flower in full bloom in early spring after surviving a cold winter.

The new era will start on May 1, when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends to the Chrysanthemum Throne following the abdication of his father, Emperor Akihito, a day earlier.

The arrival of the Reiwa Era will in turn end the 30-year run of the Heisei (“achieving peace”) Era, which began in Jan. 8, 1989.

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
Mr. SK and I stayed up late last night to watch the announcement live. And I’ll probably be spending a lot of time in class today talking about this with my students, it’s an interesting point in contemporary japan. We’ll be talking about whether this is merely a patriotic choice, or more authoritarian and nationalistic, among other topics!

I’m curious what Ax and others who read Chinese think about the choice, the first kanji, 令 (Rei) could mean “fortunate” according to Classical Japanese, but it can also mean commanding or order, and I believe that’s the core Chinese meaning, and that’s the more general usage in modern Japan as well.

Add the wa part, 和 which gernally translates as peace, but can also mean Japan itself, and this could be see as a very authoritarian and nationalistic message. So I think there are two possible options, the hippie peace freak interpertation (shining peace, harmonious peace) or the nationalistic one (in which the meassage is behave! don’t step out of line and disturb the group harmony)

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Seems like there's a third option - intentional ambiguity?