Talk:Araiwa Kamenosuke

Impossible date of birth?

1871 was not a leap year, so there is something strange about a birth date of February 29, 1871. Haaninjo (talk) 16:28, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Japan did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1873; maybe there was a different system for leap days before then.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 19:10, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

I just removed the invalid non leap year date (before I saw this talk page). The original author is no longer active so if someone knows a definitive reason for it to say 29 February 1871, please revert my removal. Periglio (talk) 19:30, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

It appears to be a mistake carried over from a number of Japanese sources. I suspect someone who wrote the Japan sources extrapolated the original Japanese date, likely to be Meiji Era year 4, January 11th by the calendar of the time, and incorrectly adjusted it to the Gregorian calendar as February 29th instead of March 1st. I am going to change it to March 1st (certainly better than February 0th as it is now). I hope this is acceptable.FourTildes (talk) 08:56, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

I take it back. It turns out the Tenpō_calendar used from 1844 to 1872 had months with either 29 or 30 days. This is another very likely reason. So in 1871 (or Meiji 4 at that time), there indeed was a date of 2/29. It is still a question of whether this date (and many others taken from Japanese sources) have been taken before or after they were adjusted to the Gregorian calendar (and every date was pushed ahead about 50 days to match with the Gregorian calendar when they changed it over).FourTildes (talk) 10:32, 2 March 2014 (UTC)