The Great Rokuyo Scandal of Japan!

A human rights group protested over the inclusion of Rokuyo notation in employee personal planning notebooks issued by the Otsu City Employees' Mutual Aid Association. About 3,800 of the notebooks were recalled.

The city had previously produced notebooks with Rokuyo notation until 1990 when it stopped on the grounds that it was an "unscientific superstition and would discriminate against human rights".

But in 2005, Makoto Mekata, the Mayor of Ostu for 8 years January 2004 and former LDP House of Representatives member, suggested Rokuyo be reinstated. He said that Diet Members' notebooks had Rokuyo written on the date, so let's include it in the staff notebooks as well.

Apparently one objection to Rokuyo was the effect Taian had on moving house. That's a very popular day and the demand pushes up prices levied by removal companies. Also funeral halls tend to close on Tomobiki days, which causes inconvenience to the bereaved.

Counter argument

As you know, Tomobiki occurs more or less every six days, so that's a lot of bereaved relatives who are inconvenienced. However, there's no doubt that funeral staff do welcome a day off at least once a week.

Saturdays and Sundays (Jewish and Christian sabbaths) are non-working days in the West and the same non-working days are copied into the Japan's 7-day-week calendars. Public institutions tend to close at weekends, especially hospitals, which causes inconvenience to an awful lot of sick people.

The date for moving house is whatever the customer prefers, and if they prefer Taian when companies charge more, they are exercising their human rights to decide. Their choice causes no problem to anybody else.

Taian remains a popular day for weddings, but so is Valentine's Day. Should Valentine's Day be abolished too? Weddings on 22 November are also popular. Abolishing 22 November sounds awkward.

However, there actually is an underlying human rights issue with Rokuyo, which we'll show further down this page.

Oita Prefecture stopped distributing 2016 calendars and recalled those already distributed following concerns raise by some people that including Rokuyo in the calendars could lead to "human rights issues such as prejudice and discrimination".

The action resulted in other counter-complaints, asking "Rokuyo has no scientific basis, but what's wrong with including it?"

The distributions were organised by Saiki City, Kitsuki City, Usuki City Farmers' Pension Council, and the Global Agricultural Heritage Promotion Council Oita. Saiki City spent 25 million yen to produce 50,000 copies of their calendar commemorating the city's 10th anniversary after a merger.

For the World Agricultural Heritage Promotion Council, this was the first time to create a calendar and the intention was to promote the Council along with winning photos from a competition.

Counter argument

Rokuyo doesn't focus on agriculture, but is certainly an intangible cultural heritage.

If there is any scandal at all, it's the 25 million yen of taxpayers' money which was wasted.

But none of the above explains why Rokuyo is a "human rights issue".