East Asian Chronology Guide

Open the app — East Asian Chronology

Have you ever stopped at a date written as Chongzhen, the byeongja year while reading an old text?
It gives you an era name and a cycle year, and what that is in Western years does not come to mind.
By the time you have opened a chronology table, found the era, counted from the accession year and matched the cycle, your reading has lost its thread.

Often you also need to know what China and Japan called that same year.
One year is Injo 14 in Joseon, Chongzhen 9 in Ming, and Kan’ei 13 in Japan.

This chronology puts all three on one screen, side by side.
Search by era name, by cycle year or by Western year — you land on the same year either way.

How to Use

Search is the fastest route

Type whatever you know into the box in the middle. The format does not matter.

Spacing does not matter. 영조 13 and 영조13 give the same result.
A trailing 년 (“year”) after a number is stripped automatically — people write dates in all sorts of ways, so the search bends to them rather than the other way around.

Enter digits alone and it looks in Western years first, then in Dangi years.
A value like 4270 does not exist as a Western year here but does as a Dangi one.

When the result spans several years

Search something like 숭정 that covers many years and the matching years are listed — and marked on the timeline at the left.
The span an era covers becomes visible at a glance.
Pick one from the list to jump there.

The ✕ in the search box clears only the search; the year you were looking at stays.
Having the screen reset itself the moment you clear a search would be a nuisance.

Browsing the timeline

The vertical strip at the left is the year timeline. Click a year to open it.

• Nearby years glide; jumps of centuries move instantly. Animating a long distance only makes you wait.
• The year you select is centred in the timeline.
• The ← button at the top folds the timeline away when you want the full width for content.
• On mobile, choosing a year closes the timeline for you.

What a year shows

Every year lays out Korea 🇰🇷, China 🇨🇳 and Japan 🇯🇵 in that fixed order.
Because the positions never move, your eye does not have to hunt as you step through years.

Each region carries that year’s state or dynasty, temple name, era name, posthumous name, personal name and regnal year.
Japanese era names appear in hanja and hiragana together — hard to look up if you cannot read them.

Above that sit the year’s Western, sexagenary and Dangi forms.

Arrows move to the previous and next year, which makes it easy to see where a dynasty turns over.

Good to Know

Coverage

140 BC through 1945, about ten thousand entries — 4,208 for Korea, 4,343 for China, 1,451 for Japan.
The range is aimed at what you need when reading pre-modern material.

The missing year zero

Converting Dangi to Western years hides one trap: there is no year zero.
1 BC is followed directly by AD 1.

So simply subtracting 2333 leaves everything BC off by one.
For Dangi 2333 and below this chronology adjusts by one more year to land on 1 BC.
If your own arithmetic differs by a year, this is the place to check.

Years dated by the Chongzhen era

After the Ming fell in 1644, Joseon writers were reluctant to use Qing era names and kept dating by Chongzhen.
So a year a full century after the Chongzhen emperor’s death may still be written 숭정 기원후3 병진.
The notation outlives the era itself — which is why searching 숭정 alone never reaches these years.

Type the notation as written and it resolves. Several forms are in use, and all of them are accepted.

Differences in how people write it are absorbed.

• 기원 (“epoch”) is optional. 숭정후갑오 and 숭정 기원후 갑오 both give 1654.
• A second turn is often written 재 (再). 숭정 기원후재 무진 and 숭정 기원후2 무진 are both 1688.
• The turn may be written in hanja. 숭정 기원후삼 을유년 is 1765.
• Era and cycle names may be in hanja. 崇禎紀元後 三 乙酉 lands on the same year.

Because the sexagenary cycle repeats every sixty years, the notation numbers the turn.
Drop that number and you are off by sixty, so enter it as the source has it.

The range covered is 1628 to 2000.

Wongi and Buddhist years

Wongi (圓紀), the Won Buddhist era, and Buddhist years (佛紀) are searchable too.
원기 30 and 불기 2489 are both 1945.
Wongi is paired from 1916, Buddhist years from 544 BC.

The Chongzhen reckoning and these two serve search only and never appear on screen.
They belong to particular kinds of source, so printing them on every year would bury what you actually read most.
Leaving a way in seemed the better trade.

Since the chronology itself ends at 1945, a year beyond it only tells you the Western year rather than navigating there.

Archaic cycle names work too

Old texts sometimes write the sexagenary year as 알봉곤돈 (閼逢困敦) rather than 갑자.
Those forms are searchable, paired with the standard sixty.
Colour-and-animal forms such as 청서 (靑鼠) are included as well.

Linking straight to a year

Selecting a year updates the address bar — chronology.hanhub.click/?year=1622.
Keep that link and it opens on that year next time, which also makes it easy to send to someone.

When you need more authority

This is a tool for checking quickly.
For something you will cite, consult the printed East Asian Chronology or the Korean Classics DB alongside it.

Found an error? Use [오류신고] at the bottom of the page to report it.

Goes well with

• To look up characters from your source, there is the Korean Studies Web Dictionary.
• To type a character whose reading you don’t know, use the Unicode Hanja IME.
• When palace building names come up, the Joseon Palace Maps will place them.
• To dock all three beside your browser, there is the Korean Studies Toolkit Chrome extension — select a word and look it up in place.

Open the app — East Asian Chronology