Japanese Days of the Week and Holidays

When you learn the Japanese days of the week, you get this charming sense of nature and that stirs your imagination makes you think of simpler times.  Things seem so far and distant from they hyper-efficient and technologically sophisticated culture you would find in a place like Tokyo today.

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Below is a list of the Japanese Days of the week:

The Kanji characters “曜日” can be translated to mean “days of the week” with “曜” meaning “sunlight” and “日” meaning day.

Much of the meaning in the Japanese days of the week comes from Chinese culture, from which much of Japanese culture was influenced by.

The Japanese days of the week for Sunday and Monday (日曜日 and 月曜日) can be tied back to the ancient Chinese notions of yin and yang.  Opposing forces that made up the entire univese (male/female, day/night, warm/cold, etc.).  The other five Japanese days of the week relate to the five elements of nature in Chinese culture: fire, water, wood, earth, and metal (gold in this case).

But, when you think about it, this really isn’t so much different than our own English days of the week.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all come from European religions and traditions.  When you examine the root of these words, you can see that they actually refer to “Moon Day,” “Tiw’s Day” (Norse god), “Odin’s Day” (another Norse god), “Thor’s Day” (yet another Norse god), “Freyr’s Day” (one last Norse god), “Saturn Day” (Roman god), and “Sun Day.”

Additionally, here are the nationally recognized holidays in Japan:

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