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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/25/big-tech-warns-japan-millennium-bug-y2k-emperor-akihito-abdication

TL/DR: Official Japanese date counting runs from the reign of each new Emperor. The current emperor is expected to abdicate next year, which brings in a new era name causing a number of problems for the country's computer systems.

It seems a rather big oversight in computer programs to not account for resets in your calendar. Especially when you use a calendar system that resets very frequently, such as the Japanese.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

It seems a rather big oversight in computer programs to not account for resets in your calendar. Especially when you use a calendar system that resets very frequently, such as the Japanese.

Seems ms strange for Japan not to relise this being so computer skilled nation.

It's one thing about realizing and another thing about doing something. Especially for old programs that could be written in lanquage not many can do these things.

Y2k was known well in advance. Was still hard thing to fix.

Likely work is being done but it isn't easy.

Also y2k was known date. This was "one day". Before japan altered laws(or was lt constitution" there was no fixed date so it was easier for companies to postpone rather than invest money. Might have affected it)

This is one of many many many reasons to record all dates in UTC and present them in whatever the locality chooses to call 'seconds since january 1 1970 GMT w/o daylight savings time'.

The article also mentions that the character for correctly writing that hasn't been issued yet, which is frankly hilarious.

I don't think new era name has yet been decided so character is logically also not possible thus.

Yes, that is part of the problem.

I had no idea about this, thanks for sharing the article! It's cool to see a uniquely Japanese tech problem like this (hopefully, they weather it as well as most of the world did Y2K).