On April 30, 2019, Emperor Akihito of Japan will abdicate, bringing to an end the Heisei (universal peace) era. He will be succeeded by his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, whose accession as the 126th Emperor on May 1 will restart the Japanese calendar with a new era (name to be announced on April 1).
The Japanese Emperor is a purely constitutional and symbolic monarch, rendered wholly powerless by the US-authored Japanese Constitution, and we would, therefore, ordinarily expect little effect outside Japan from such an event. However, the Japanese government, in their decades-long effort