Golden Week Japan
Golden Week Japan is an interactive calendar of every Golden Week from 1948 to 2126. For each year it shows which of the spring national holidays fall on weekdays, which are lost to a weekend, and which substitute or in-between days the law adds, so you can see how many days off each year actually gets.
Every year from 1948 to 2126
The chart has one bar for each of the 179 years. The height of a bar is the number of weekday holidays that year, and its colour shows which set of holiday rules applied. Hover over a bar to see the year’s days off, and click it to open that year’s calendar below. The arrow buttons and the left and right arrow keys move one year at a time.
Shōwa Day is on a Wednesday, Greenery Day on a Monday and Children’s Day on a Tuesday. Constitution Memorial Day falls on a Sunday, and Wednesday 6 May is a substitute holiday. That makes four weekday days off, and the longest run of days off is five days.
The calendar shows 27 April to 7 May in weeks from Monday to Sunday. Holidays on weekdays are gold, holidays that fall on a Saturday or Sunday are red, and substitute holidays are purple. Above the calendar are the year’s counts: holidays, holidays lost to the weekend, weekdays off, and the longest run of consecutive days off. Below it is a short note on how that year’s dates fall.
The four holidays
Golden Week is made of four national holidays in late April and early May:
- Shōwa Day, 29 April
- Constitution Memorial Day, 3 May
- Greenery Day, 4 May
- Children’s Day, 5 May
Three of them come from the Act on National Holidays, which took effect on 20 July 1948. It made 29 April the Emperor’s Birthday, and created Constitution Memorial Day and Children’s Day. After the Shōwa Emperor died, 29 April was renamed Greenery Day in 1989. Since 2007 it has been Shōwa Day, and Greenery Day moved to 4 May.
Substitute holidays
Before 1973, a holiday that fell on a Sunday had no replacement. An amendment in April 1973 added substitute holidays: when a national holiday falls on a Sunday, the next day is a holiday. The first one was Monday 30 April 1973, because the Emperor’s Birthday fell on a Sunday that year.
From 2007 the substitute is the first day after the Sunday that is not already a holiday. Because 3, 4 and 5 May are now all holidays, a Sunday anywhere in that run moves the substitute to 6 May. This first happened on Tuesday 6 May 2008. A holiday that falls on a Saturday still has no substitute.
Days between two holidays
An amendment in December 1985 made any day that falls between two national holidays a holiday as well. This gave 4 May, between Constitution Memorial Day and Children’s Day, a day off in most years from 1988 to 2006. It did not apply when 4 May was a Sunday or was already a substitute holiday. Since 2007, 4 May has been Greenery Day.
In 2019, 1 May was made a one-off holiday for the new Emperor’s accession. That made 30 April and 2 May days between two holidays, and Golden Week ran for ten days, from Saturday 27 April to Monday 6 May. In the chart, 2019 is the purple bar.
What the numbers show
Across the 179 years, 190 Golden Week holidays fall on a Saturday or Sunday, 52 years have none on a weekend, and the average is 3.2 weekday days off a year. The years from 2027 onwards assume the current rules stay as they are.
Under the current rules, the length of the break depends on the day of the week of 3 May. When 3 May is a Sunday, Monday or Wednesday, there are five days off in a row. When it is a Thursday, Friday or Saturday, there are four. When it is a Tuesday, the holidays are split into two runs of three days by a working Monday. Of the 100 years from 2027 to 2126, 43 have five days in a row, 43 have four and 14 have three. 2027 and 2028 both have five.
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