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I am wondering about the history about the beginning of the week. Although
some recent calendars start their week on Monday, "traditionally", the
Japanese start their week on Sunday (so that 今週の日曜日 will always be in the
past). But this is a fairly new tradition.

Why was Sunday made the beginning of the week when Japan adopted the Gregorian
calendar?

There is a lunar calendar (睦月, 如月, 弥生, etc.) and a solar calendar (七十二候).
Furthermore, there is the concept of auspicious days, in which a week has 6
days and a bunch more of calendar-type conventions.

Do any of these contain a "Sunday" as beginning of their respective concepts
of a week?
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2012-08-30T05:39:46.040
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2020-02-02T11:29:51.437
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history
"Sunday this week" or "Sunday next week"
<http://no-sword.jp/blog/2010/09/dawn_of_the_week.html>

> It seems that the first people in Japan to adopt "the week" (as something
> other than a divinatory tool) did so because they had no choice: they were
> dealing with European or American traders in Yokohama, or they were working
> alongside "hired foreigners" in government, education, or the military. It
> made no sense for them to turn up to work when your trading partners or co-
> workers were taking the day off, or vice versa.
>
> Okada doesn't mention why the Meiji government didn't just write "must work
> on Sundays" into their contracts for hired help, but the religious component
> was probably a factor. Back then more Christians took the Sabbath seriously.
> In any case, if all of your external consultants say "a seven-day week with
> 1.5 days off is the only way to run a government/army/school," eventually
> you're going to start to believe it.
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2012-08-31T00:46:39.083
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I asked colleagues on the 2012/08/30 - so previous and next sundays are the
26th and the 3rd - about this because I did not have issue so far and I got
curious.

> 14:56 (oldergod)
> 今週の日曜日ってゆうたら、３日の事になりますか？それか２６日のことですか？週は日曜日から始まるからこうゆうたらどっちに当たるんでしょう？  
>  14:59 (tanaka) 普通は26日だと思います。少なくとも、私はそう思っています。  
>  15:00 (Yoshida) 本来は週の初めは日曜日なんですが、感覚的に月曜日が週の初めという人も多いので  
>  15:01 (Yoshida) 日曜日に関しては、今週の～とか使わないのが良いなと思っています。  
>  15:01 (tanaka) まあ、「この前の日曜」「次の日曜」と言った方が安全ですよね。
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2012-08-31T01:50:00.530
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2012-08-31T06:19:17.370
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A lot of users on here simply assume a Eurocentric worldview to everything
without doing even basic research on anything. The answers a lot of the time
are as ridiculous as reading Afrocentrist people and their clear self bias.

If you are interested in actual history and the reality of the world, instead
of wanting to stroke your insecure ego, then the below is the actual history
of Japanese days and their calendar.

  1. The original 7 days originates in ancient Mesopotamia and is based on the 7 lights in the sky (sun, moon, Venus, Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter). Yes I am sorry it isn't a European invention and Europeans only adopted it from Mesopotamia after spreading to Greece and then Rome and then the rest of Europe. 
  2. This system didn't spread to just Europe, it spread to India, and then from India into China. As you know China had a lot of influence on early Japanese culture, and this is where Japan in turn got the 7 day week from. The writings of the Chinese Scholar Fan Ning in the 300's prove that this system had made it to China by this date. The Chinese used element names in place of the planet names. 
  3. A Japanese monk brought this system back from mainland Buddhists in the year 806. Soon after Japanese astronomers learned of this and worked these 7 days into the Japanese calendar. There is still a surviving diary of a Japanese statesman from the year 1007 who uses this system of dating. It was commonly used in Japan by this time. 

The "west" or "Europeans" did not invent this system, nor did they introduce
it to Japan. Again I am sorry if real history doesn't stroke your ego, but
those are the facts.

So what did Japan adopt during interactions with western countries? Well Japan
already had months, years and naming of the 7 days in a cycle (as did China,
where Japan got it from originally).

So what actually was introduced via western contact primarily in the west's
heyday in the 19th century was the Gregorian calendar.

All Japanese know the Gregorian calendar today, they still use the original
Japanese calendar as well for official duties, yet the Gregorian calendar is
actually more common in everyday Japanese life today than the traditional
Japanese calendar. It was during the Meiji era that the co-adoption of the
Gregorian system was chosen.

The Gregorian calendar itself was a model Europeans made after they themselves
adopted the Mesopotamian/Babylonian system. This particular Gregorian calendar
was formulated in 1582 by a pope in Italy. Europeans of course long knew of
the months and weeks and years because they had known of this
Mesopotamian/Babylonian system ever since around the 1st century AD when Rome
first adopted it via Greece. The Gregorian calendar is based 99% on this,
except it lists dates in relation to Christ as BC and AD.

Yet modern people call these common era and before common era to remove the
religious connotations. The Gregorian calendar's months and years did not
align to the same times in the Chinese and Japanese calendar. Meaning the
original Japanese lunar based system had it's month prior to the Gregorian
calendar and thus the years started and ended at different times as well,
despite both operating on a 12 month and 7 day system.

Upon adopting the Gregorian calendar, the Japanese used their own traditional
7 day week names in the Gregorian calendar system. And used their traditional
month names as well.

Japan and China had always considered Sunday the start of the week, as this is
from the ancient Mesopotamian system which they based their own off in ancient
times.

The concept of Monday being the first day is a newer concept and Monday is
technically considered the first day of the week by international standards.
This means that most modern European countries consider Monday the first day
of the week.

In Japan the first day of the week is Sunday, like it always has been since
the 9th century and also has been in China since the 4th century. And this has
nothing to do with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar or Europeans I
am afraid.
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