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Entering Japanese Emperor Year dates

You can enter Japanese Emperor Year (Wareki) dates in date fields. FileMaker Pro converts the Emperor Year to a Western Gregorian (Seireki) year and saves it internally in the format specified by the file. The display format of the date—Western or Japanese—depends on the date field format. There are two ways to enter Japanese Emperor Year dates:

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Era abbreviation: Enter the date in the format era letterY/M/D, where era letter designates the era (see the table below for a list of valid era letters), followed by the year, month, and day. For example,“M1/12/30” is converted to “1868/12/30” (M1 = the 1st year of Meiji, or 1868). Similarly, “T1/12/30” becomes “1912/12/30”, “S1/12/30” becomes “1926/12/30”, and “H1/12/30” becomes “1989/12/30”

 

Era letter	Era name	Era formats	Reign
	A.D. (anno domini)	, , A.D.	prior to 1868/09/08
m, M	Meiji	, , M	1868/09/08 - 1912/07/29 (M1 - M45)
t, T	Taisho	. , T	1912/07/30 - 1926/12/24 (T1 - T15)
s, S	Showa	, , S	1926/12/25 - 1989/01/07 (S1 - S64)
h, H	Heisei	, , H	1989/01/08 -  (H1 -  )

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Using a “+” as the date separator: Enter the date in the format Y+M+D. When you use the “+” separator, FileMaker interprets the year according to the Year Input table below. Only 1- and 2-digit years are interpreted as Emperor years; 3- and 4-digit years are treated as Western years. For example, “2+1+2” is converted to and saved internally as “1990/01/02” (2nd year of Heisei, January 2nd).

 

Year input	Seireki (Western) year	Wareki era name and era year
0	1988	S63
1	1989	S64 through Jan. 7, H1 from Jan. 8
2 - 25	1990 - 2013	H2 - H25
26 - 63	1951 - 1988	S26 - S63
64	1989	S64 through Jan. 7, H1 from Jan. 8
65 - 99	1965 - 1999 (70/30 rule)	S40 - S64 (1965 - 1989), H1 - H11 (1989 - 1999)
100 - 999 (3-digit year)	0100 - 0999	A.D. 100 - 999
0001 - 4000 (4-digit year)	0001 - 4000	A.D. 1 - A.D. 1868 (0001 - 1868)

Notes

•	You can enter era abbreviations in lower- or upper-case, and as full width or half width characters. Full width numbers (but not the date separators) are converted to half width when you exit the field in Browse or Find modes.

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An era abbreviation letter followed by a “0” is interpreted as the year prior to the first year of that era. For example, “M0” = 1867, “T0” = 1911, and so on. A “0” year entered without an era abbreviation but with the “+” date separator is converted to 1988, the year prior to the first year of the current era, Heisei.