Golden Week is not a single holiday but four national holidays that happen to sit close together: Showa Day on 29 April, then Constitution Memorial Day on 3 May, Greenery Day on 4 May and Children's Day on 5 May. Depending on where the weekends fall, the break is anything from a few separate days to a run of nine or ten days. Many companies fill the gap between 29 April and 3 May with company holidays or encourage employees to use annual leave, and some manufacturers close for the whole period.
It is one of the three peak travel periods in Japan, with Obon in August and the year-end and New Year break. Flights, trains and hotels are full and expensive, and international travel spikes.
Golden Week also falls a month after the start of the Japanese fiscal and school year in April. New graduate hires have just joined, budgets have just been set, and many companies use the weeks after the holiday to start delivering the year's plan. The informal term "May sickness" describes the loss of motivation some new joiners feel after the break.
What it means for a foreign employer
- Plan the hiring calendar around it. Interview loops and offer decisions that straddle Golden Week lose a week or more. Get final interviews done before it, or start fresh after it.
- Do not set an offer deadline inside it. Candidates are travelling or with family, and a deadline in the middle of the break reads as pressure.
- Start dates around it are awkward. A candidate resigning in March with a one- to three-month notice period may be able to start in May, but a start on 1 May may be followed by days off. Many prefer the middle of May or 1 June.
- Regional teams will notice the silence. Tell headquarters in advance that Japan will be largely offline.
Sources
- Act on National Holidays (Act No. 178 of 1948), Article 2, as amended in 2005 (Showa Day and Greenery Day from 2007).