A native speaker of Japanese has asked if ゴールデンウィーク is wasei eigo.

The Wikipedia article on [Golden Week in
Japan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Week_%28Japan%29) claims that the
term was created in 1951.

However, a [google
ngram](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Golden%20Week,%20golden%20week&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=)
search for English indicates that the combination "golden week" (and possibly
"Golden Week") gets some hits before 1951.

I was also confused by the fact that China also has a [Golden
Week](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Week_%28China%29), but that seems to
have been created fairly recently.

Is the term ゴールデンウィーク wasei eigo?
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question
etymology wasei-eigo
Is ゴールデンウィーク wasei-eigo?
Do you think it reasonable that it was a fixed English expression, referring
to consecutive public holidays, which has fallen out of use after the Japanese
picked up the term from English?

I think "golden week" is perfectly good English and makes some sense when one
understands "golden" to be a synonym for "happy, prosperous, peaceful" (e.g.
[The Free Dictionary](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/golden)), like in
"golden days" or "golden age".

The association with consecutive public holidays (and the capitalisation of
"golden week") may be 和製 (Since 1951), but in my opinion that does not mean
the phrase "Golden Week" should be considered 和製英語. (The Ngram you link to
would support this interpretation.)
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