Photo/Illutration The government has decided to issue construction bonds to fund its purchase of new Maritime Self-Defense Force vessels. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

According to Japan’s old lunar calendar, each month represented the regular cycle of the moon’s phases, with the new moon occurring on the first day of the month. In the ensuing days, the moon would wax, and then wane, to complete its cycle in 30 days.

The last day of the month was called “misoka.” And since it was impossible for the moon to be seen in the sky on that day, there was this saying: “Keisei ni makoto areba misoka ni tsuki ga deru,” which translates as “The moon will be out on the last day of the month, if a courtesan could ever be honest.”

In other words, the words of a flirtatious courtesan are never genuine.

Japan replaced the old lunar calendar with the current solar calendar 150 years ago--on Jan. 1, 1873--only 23 days after the switch was officially announced by the government.

Imagine the consternation of the people when the impossibility of “the moon rising on misoka” suddenly became a reality. The transition was so abrupt that a newspaper of the time reportedly ran a sarcastic story about the discovery of a square egg.

According to historian Yoshiro Okada (1930-2014), the author of “Koyomi ni Miru Nihonjin no Chie” (Wisdom of the Japanese people as seen in their calendars), the government’s haste to switch to the solar calendar was fiscally motivated.

Had the nation stayed with the lunar calendar, a leap month was coming up that year, which meant the government would have to pay an extra month of wages to civil servants. But the government was financially strapped, and getting rid of the old calendar was the only way to cut expenditures, Okada pointed out.

That was quite a drastic move, to be sure. To suit its own fiscal needs, the government forcibly turned what was impossible into a new reality.

But now, I am getting glimpses of a similar maneuver in the present government’s initial budget plans for the new fiscal year. Specifically, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is endorsing the issuance of construction bonds in order to build destroyers--a decision that was strictly verboten to generations of his predecessors.

Having learned bitter lessons from its wartime mistakes, Japan refrained for decades from funding its defense budget with construction bonds.

When Takeo Fukuda (1905-1995) was finance minister before becoming prime minister, he told the Diet it was “not appropriate” to break that taboo.

I fear Kishida could be allowing things to go out of control.

In the last few years, there have been far too many instances of the government simply going back on its long-established positions.

To wish politicians could ever be honest may perhaps be tantamount to waiting for the moon to appear on the 30th day of the month.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 3

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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