In Japan, the school year begins in April and ends the following March.
For most Japanese people, this feels so normal that they have never really stopped to ask why the school year starts in April.
April was not chosen because of the cherry blossom season. During the Meiji period, the fiscal year for the national and local governments came to run from April to March, and schools gradually adjusted their academic calendars to match that cycle.
As a result, school enrollment, promotion to the next grade, and graduation all became organized around an April-to-March school year. The familiar pattern of graduating in March and entering a new school or starting a new job in April also developed around this calendar.
Japanese people do not usually think about the connection between the school year and the government’s fiscal year. Because they have experienced the same cycle since childhood, they simply accept it as the normal way things work.
In Japan, both January and April feel like a beginning, but in different ways.
January marks the beginning of a new calendar year. April, on the other hand, is when people’s daily lives and positions often change. Students enter school or move up a grade, new graduates start work, and many employees are transferred to new departments or locations.
Although April originally became the start of the school year for administrative reasons, it gradually became closely connected with the feeling of spring.
Students graduate and say goodbye to friends and teachers in March. Then, in April, they begin life at a new school or workplace, often during the cherry blossom season. After generations of repeating this pattern, spring has become deeply associated with farewells and new beginnings in Japan.
Many countries begin their school year around September. This difference can sometimes make studying abroad or moving between school systems inconvenient.
Even so, Japan continues to use an April school year not because April is somehow better than other months, but because schools, entrance examinations, graduation, and the recruitment of new graduates are already organized around the same cycle. Most people do not feel a strong need to change it.
What began as an administrative system has now become a natural rhythm of Japanese life: spring arrives, and with it, a new stage begins.