Japan Business Day Calculator

This calculator counts eigyobi as Monday through Friday, excluding the kokumin no shukujitsu listed in article 2 of the Act on National Holidays. Two further rules in article 3 add days to that 16-holiday list. Article 3(2) adds a substitute holiday, furikae kyujitsu, when a holiday falls on a Sunday: the substitute is the nearest following day that is not itself a national holiday, which is why it can land several days later during Golden Week. Article 3(3) adds a Citizens' Holiday when a day is not a holiday itself but the day before and the day after both are. Four of the sixteen sit on a fixed Monday rather than a fixed date, so they move within their month each year.

Article 5 of the Order for Enforcement of the Banking Act closes banks on three sets of days: the holidays under the Act on National Holidays, every Saturday, and every day from 31 December to 3 January. That last set is a bank holiday in its own right and not a national holiday, so this calculator does not count it. If your scenario depends on banks being shut during oshogatsu, add 31 December, 2 January, and 3 January under Advanced options.

The 16 kokumin no shukujitsu:

• Ganjitsu (1 January, New Year's Day)
• Seijin no Hi (2nd Monday of January, Coming of Age Day)
• Kenkoku Kinen no Hi (11 February, National Foundation Day)
• Tenno Tanjobi (23 February, Emperor's Birthday)
• Shunbun no Hi (around 20 March, Vernal Equinox Day)
• Showa no Hi (29 April, Showa Day)
• Kenpo Kinenbi (3 May, Constitution Memorial Day)
• Midori no Hi (4 May, Greenery Day)
• Kodomo no Hi (5 May, Children's Day)
• Umi no Hi (3rd Monday of July, Marine Day)
• Yama no Hi (11 August, Mountain Day)
• Keiro no Hi (3rd Monday of September, Respect for the Aged Day)
• Shubun no Hi (around 23 September, Autumnal Equinox Day)
• Sports no Hi (2nd Monday of October, Sports Day)
• Bunka no Hi (3 November, Culture Day)
• Kinrokansha no Hi (23 November, Labor Thanksgiving Day)

Vernal Equinox Day and Autumnal Equinox Day are not anchored to a specific calendar date. The Act on National Holidays names only the equinox itself, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan publishes the following year's two dates in the Official Gazette each February. That is why a Japanese calendar for a year more than about fourteen months out cannot state them. How we determine holidays →

Most Japanese listed companies close books on 31 March, which puts their statutory reporting on dates the calendar does not make obvious. Article 24-5(1) of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act requires a half-year report once six months of the business year have elapsed, and gives a listed company 45 days from that point, so a 31 March year-end reports by 14 November. The quarterly securities report that used to sit beside it was abolished and survives only in the amending Act's transitional provisions. Corporate tax follows a different clock again: two months from the day after year-end under article 74 of the Corporation Tax Act, and two months from the six-month mark for the interim return under article 71.

Internal close cycles run on eigyobi, so the holiday clusters matter more than the statutory dates. The more days a period closes, the further out any count starting inside it is pushed, and Japan front-loads its closures: Golden Week in early May, the Silver Week stretch from Respect for the Aged Day to the Autumnal Equinox, and the year-end bank closure from 31 December to 3 January. Obon in mid-August is the one people misjudge, because it is not a national holiday and appears in no statute: banks and exchanges stay open through it even where private employers do not. Suppliers selling into Japan should layer their own collection terms over this calendar rather than assume a foreign-law definition of a business day lines up with it.