Japanese Era Ligature Abbreviations

Since I've been doing so much investigation around the Japanese Era, I noticed that our abbreviation isn't really the best.  We keep the era names in the registry with the era start date so that we can adapt when a new era happens:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Calendars\Japanese\Eras]
"1868 01 01"="明治_明_Meiji_M"
"1912 07 30"="大正_大_Taisho_T"
"1926 12 25"="昭和_昭_Showa_S"
"1989 01 08"="平成_平_Heisei_H"

These entries are in the form "Japanese Era name, Japanese abbreviation, English name, English abbreviation."  As you can see, the Japanese abbreviation in the registry is merely the first Kanji of the full name - which isn't really an era abbreviation used in Japan.  In Japanese you use either the two-Kanji string:  平成, or a Kanji ligature, ㍻, or the English abbreviation H.  A partial Kanji name isn't really an option.

Fortunately this information is in the registry, so if you want to improve the Kanji abbreviations for your Japanese Era names, all you need to do is tweak the registry values a little.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Calendars\Japanese\Eras]
"1868 01 01"="明治_㍾_Meiji_M"
"1912 07 30"="大正_㍽_Taisho_T"
"1926 12 25"="昭和_㍼_Showa_S"
"1989 01 08"="平成_㍻_Heisei_H"

Adding those values will update the abbreviated eras for your machine's Japanese Calendar.  There's a .reg file below to do this for you (you'll need to be an administrator to change these values.)

Updated-Japanese-Era-Abbreviations