1. What Japan's School Guidelines Say a Graduation Ceremony Is For
In some English-speaking countries, "graduation" is especially associated with finishing high school or college. In Japan, the word covers more: ceremonies are also held when students leave elementary school and middle school, and the school holds them.
Japan's Ministry of Education publishes a national guideline for what schools teach and do, called the Course of Study. In its section on special activities, graduation ceremonies fall under "ceremonial events" (a category that also includes entrance ceremonies). The goal it lists is to put a meaningful change and a clear marker into school life, to let students feel a solemn, fresh mood, and to motivate them toward a new stage of life [1]. The page I read is an older edition, and the exact wording has been revised since, so treat this as the general idea rather than the current text.
That is the official answer in a sentence: a ceremony marks a boundary and points forward. The rest of this article asks whether it was always that way. It was not.
2. The Oldest Known Ceremony: A Military School's Public Showcase in 1876
Historian Maki Arimoto of Rikkyo University, who wrote a book on the history of graduation ceremonies, says the oldest ceremony on record in Japan was held in 1876 at the Army Toyama School, alongside a military parade. A year later, in 1877, the first graduation ceremony of the University of Tokyo took place, and other government and public schools followed [2].
Those early ceremonies were mostly about showing results. According to Arimoto, graduates gave speeches, a bit like presenting a thesis today, and there were gymnastics displays and military band performances. Some schools even handed out tickets so the general public could come and watch [2]. Think less of a quiet farewell and more of an open house. "Oldest on record" only means the oldest we can document, not necessarily the first ceremony ever held.
3. Why Graduating Used to Mean Passing a Test, and Not Always in March
A show of skills makes sense when graduating means passing an exam. Japan's first modern school law, issued in 1872, set up elementary school in eight grade levels. Pupils entered at the lowest and took an exam every six months to move up; passing the exam for the top level meant graduating. In 1885, public elementary schools switched to moving up once a year [3].
Dates were looser then, too. The Fukuoka City Museum, which put together an exhibit on the history of schools, notes that entrance times were once all over the place and that the school year began in April only in the 1880s and 1890s (in Fukuoka Prefecture, 1888). The government's budget year starting on April 1 is named as one influence. The museum says the ministry put the April start in writing when the Elementary School Order was revised in 1900. As a result, the museum says, diplomas from the 1800s do not always carry a March date [3]. So "graduation means March" is not an ancient rule. It settled in once the school year settled.
4. How Graduation Ceremonies Became a Shared Ritual in Elementary Schools
If graduating meant passing a test, why would a whole class of young children sit through a ceremony? Arimoto explains that, in elementary schools, the order of the program became standardized in the late 1890s and early 1900s (the Meiji 30s in the Japanese calendar), and the ceremony came to be treated as the high point, the "summing up," of school life. As schools shaped it into a proper ritual, the idea grew that it should carry feeling, not only form. She says the early shape of today's emotional ceremony took form toward the end of the Meiji era, which closed in 1912 [2].
Songs were part of this. Until the 1950s and early 1960s, ceremonies were dominated by two songs: "Hotaru no Hikari" (Japan's version of "Auld Lang Syne," the Scottish tune known in English-speaking countries for New Year) and "Aogeba Tōtoshi" ("Respect for Teachers," a song that thanks teachers). Of the two, "Hotaru no Hikari" was by far the more common [2]. Singing the same song together is a simple way to feel like one group at a turning point, which is my reading, not a claim from the sources.
5. How Rehearsed Calls and Graduation Songs Made the Ceremony More Emotional
Arimoto adds a twist: the push toward more moving ceremonies grew stronger after World War II, not weaker. According to her, after the war, ceremonies with nationalist meaning were dropped and the number of school ceremonies fell sharply. Graduation was left as the biggest marker of school life, and it gained weight as the place where emotion was gathered together [2].
She also describes the familiar parts: rehearsed entrances and exits, practice for how to receive a diploma, and "calls," in which each student reads a line, such as a memory of a school event, and the group answers together, with a song mixed in. Today's wide choice of graduation songs is surprisingly recent. Arimoto points to a very popular TV drama about a middle school teacher: the song "Okuru Kotoba" began to be sung at farewell parties and was later brought into ceremonies themselves. Also, "Tabidachi no Hi ni," written by a middle school teacher, spread across Japan in the 1990s. Yearly rankings of graduation songs began in 2004 [2]. Arimoto says the link between tears and graduation was strengthened partly by fiction, which is her view as a researcher.
6. Do Other Countries Have Graduation Ceremonies Too?
Arimoto asked international students about this. She says none described a ceremony like Japan's, and that many countries have no special ceremony at all when compulsory schooling ends [2]. That is one researcher's observation, not a count of every country, and it does not mean other countries have no graduations. The English word "commencement" is a clue to a different tradition. At the University of Delaware's history page, the medieval ceremony at the first universities in Paris and Bologna was called "inception," and was a public event that began with an oral exam, followed by a procession and the handing over of a license to practice [4]. Both "inception" and "commencement" sound like words for a beginning, which would fit a ceremony about starting a career, but that is my own reading of the words, and the page does not spell it out.
So the two traditions answer the same question differently. A commencement-style ceremony says, "Now you begin." A Japanese ceremony adds a layer of group feeling: singing, saying goodbyes aloud, and sharing a moment. Neither is the "real" graduation. They grew from different histories.
Putting the pieces together: the ceremony began as a showcase of what had been learned, became a shared ritual with set songs and programs in elementary schools, and later became an event built to move people. The guideline's description of "marking a turning point" fits the later stages, though that reading is mine and not stated by the sources.
7. How to Compare Graduation Ceremonies Across Generations
Ask someone you know about their graduation, such as a family member, a neighbor, or a teacher. Which song did the group sing? Was there a speech from each student, or a group "call"? Was there a rehearsal? If they kept a diploma, what date is on it? Then compare it with a ceremony you know. Does yours include a performance, a song everyone sings, or a moment of thanks? Each difference is a small clue about how a ritual changes over time.
If you want to dig further, the University of Delaware page above describes the medieval roots of commencement in detail, and Arimoto's book on the history of graduation ceremonies is the main source for Japan (it is in Japanese).