Japanese cancels are not dated using the western Gregorian years. Instead the years are numbered according to the number of years in the reign of the Emperor. As far as ice hockey cancels are concerned we need only concern ourselves with the last three reigns: the Shōwa (from 25-Dec-1926 until 7-Jan-1989), the Heisi (from 8-Jan-1989 until 30-April-2019) and the Reiwa (1-May-2019 until the present day). The date of the cancel will be in the form of YY-MM-DD where YY would be the year of the reign. A minor problem might be in determining which reign we should be considering and we might need to use secondary information about the cancel or the cover to determine that. To help with converting Japanese era numbers to western Gregorian years we have the table below.
Shōwa 1 1926 |
Shōwa 2 1927 |
Shōwa 3 1928 |
Shōwa 4 1929 |
Shōwa 5 1930 |
Shōwa 6 1931 |
Shōwa 7 1932 |
Shōwa 8 1933 |
Shōwa 9 1934 |
Shōwa 10 1935 |
Shōwa 11 1936 |
Shōwa 12 1937 |
Shōwa 13 1938 |
Shōwa 14 1939 |
Shōwa 15 1940 |
Shōwa 16 1941 |
Shōwa 17 1942 |
Shōwa 18 1943 |
Shōwa 19 1944 |
Shōwa 20 1945 |
Shōwa 21 1946 |
Shōwa 22 1947 |
Shōwa 23 1948 |
Shōwa 24 1949 |
Shōwa 25 1950 |
Shōwa 26 1951 |
Shōwa 27 1952 |
Shōwa 28 1953 |
Shōwa 29 1954 |
Shōwa 30 1955 |
Shōwa 31 1956 |
Shōwa 32 1957 |
Shōwa 33 1958 |
Shōwa 34 1959 |
Shōwa 35 1960 |
Shōwa 36 1961 |
Shōwa 37 1962 |
Shōwa 38 1963 |
Shōwa 39 1964 |
Shōwa 40 1965 |
Shōwa 41 1966 |
Shōwa 42 1967 |
Shōwa 43 1968 |
Shōwa 44 1969 |
Shōwa 45 1970 |
Shōwa 46 1971 |
Shōwa 47 1972 |
Shōwa 48 1973 |
Shōwa 49 1974 |
Shōwa 50 1975 |
Shōwa 51 1976 |
Shōwa 52 1977 |
Shōwa 53 1978 |
Shōwa 54 1979 |
Shōwa 55 1980 |
Shōwa 56 1981 |
Shōwa 57 1982 |
Shōwa 58 1983 |
Shōwa 59 1984 |
Shōwa 60 1985 |
Shōwa 61 1986 |
Shōwa 62 1987 |
Shōwa 63 1988 |
Shōwa 64 1989 |
Heisi 1 1989 |
Heisi 2 1990 |
Heisi 3 1991 |
Heisi 4 1992 |
Heisi 5 1993 |
Heisi 6 1994 |
Heisi 7 1995 |
Heisi 8 1996 |
Heisi 9 1997 |
Heisi 10 1998 |
Heisi 11 1999 |
Heisi 12 2000 |
Heisi 13 2001 |
Heisi 14 2002 |
Heisi 15 2003 |
Heisi 16 2004 |
Heisi 17 2005 |
Heisi 18 2006 |
Heisi 19 2007 |
Heisi 20 2008 |
Heisi 21 2009 |
Heisi 22 2010 |
Heisi 23 2011 |
Heisi 24 2012 |
Heisi 25 2013 |
Heisi 26 2014 |
Heisi 27 2015 |
Heisi 28 2016 |
Heisi 29 2017 |
Heisi 30 2018 |
Heisi 31 2019 |
Reiwa 1 2019 |
Reiwa 2 2020 |
Reiwa 3 2021 |
Reiwa 4 2022 |
Reiwa 5 2023 |
Reiwa 6 2024 |