Third Always Wins

Miko~! It’s the first day of the new fiscal year!

…nya

So, Onii-chan asked me something. “Why does Japan’s fiscal year start in April? Wouldn’t January make more sense?”

…April is April, nya.

That’s not actually an answer (ﾟ∀ﾟ)

Oh, and here’s the wild part — musical scales don’t start at A either! The “do” in do-re-mi is C. And PC hard drives? Not A:. They start at C:. Everything skips straight to third!

…all of them, nya?

Onii-chan was like “maybe they all have the same reason?” And I totally agreed! Same reason, for sure!

…what’s your evidence, nya.

Gut feeling!

…look it up, nya.

Okay so! Japan’s fiscal year didn’t always start in April. It changed four times!

…nya?

After the Meiji Restoration, it started in October. Then January. Then July. Then finally April.

…four times, nyan.

And the guy who locked it to April? A finance minister named Matsukata Masayoshi. His reason? Budget deficit.

…deficit, nya.

Back then, the main tax was land tax — paid in rice. Harvest in autumn, pay taxes in winter, plan the budget in spring. So April was when the money actually flowed. That’s why he picked it.

…rice, nya.

And — this is WILD — he literally shortened the Meiji 18 fiscal year to nine months just to make the numbers work. A fiscal year that wasn’t even a year!

…nine months, nyan?

Total power move. But that’s why Japan’s fiscal year is April now~

…schools start in April too, nya. Rice has nothing to do with that.

Oh right! Schools depended on government funding, so they just matched the fiscal year. Financial convenience bled into education.

…cherry blossoms, nya?

Huh?

…I thought “spring = new beginnings” was because of cherry blossoms, nyan.

That’s actually a coincidence! Cherry blossoms blooming in April and the fiscal year starting in April — completely separate. But now “spring = new beginnings” is SO baked into Japanese culture it feels like it was always true.

…someone moved the date for convenience, and cherry blossoms just happened to be there, nya.

Next up: music. Why does do-re-mi start at C, not A?

…A isn’t first, nya.

Right! So A through G as note names has been around since medieval times. Then in the 11th century, an Italian monk named Guido d’Arezzo took a hymn to Saint John the Baptist — each verse started on a higher note — and pulled the first syllable of each verse to make do-re-mi.

…a hymn, nya.

And the first verse of that hymn? It happened to start on C.

…happened to, nyan.

But it’s not just coincidence — C major is all white keys on the piano. No sharps, no flats. The simplest scale to teach. So it became the educational standard.

…then what’s A for, nya.

A is the tuning standard for orchestras! A=440Hz. When musicians tune up before a performance, they all play A together.

…two standards, nya.

Yep! A is the physical standard, C is the conceptual standard. They split in two.

…pound cake uses a pound of everything, nya. Butter, sugar, flour, eggs — all the same weight. Simple on the surface, but equal parts means no hiding — if one thing is off, everything falls apart, nyan.

And music… A through G look evenly spread, but each note carries a completely different role…

…looks equal but isn’t, nya. That’s why it becomes music.

…Miko, are you talking about food or music?

…both, nya.

Last one — PC drives. This is Netsuki’s territory~

…nya

Back in the day, PCs came with floppy disk drives. First drive was A:, second was B:.

…then hard drives showed up, nya.

Right! In 1983, the IBM PC/XT got the first hard drive. But A: and B: were already taken. So the hard drive became C:.

…someone was already living there, nya.

And here’s the thing — nobody uses floppy disks anymore. But Windows still won’t assign new drives to A: or B:. To this day!

…keeping a room for someone who’s gone, nya.

Saved, just in case floppy drives come back — which, y’know, they’re not gonna.

…

…ghost room, nyan.

Ghost room?

…nobody uses it anymore, but nobody can bring themselves to clear it out, nya. Just the traces of whoever used to be there.

…

…people call it “backwards compatibility.” But maybe it’s just… they can’t let go.

Miko.

…nya.

They didn’t all have the same reason.

…nya.

April was a finance minister’s budget fix. Do-re-mi was a monk’s hymn. C: was floppy drives getting there first. All completely different.

…but, nya.

Yeah?

…they were all someone’s convenience, nya.

Oh.

…Matsukata needed to fix a deficit. The monk wanted to teach singing. The programmer just needed to label a drive, nyan.

…they were all just quick fixes.

…nya. A hundred years pass. The convenience is gone. Only the result is left, nya.

…fossil.

…nya.

Fossil. Shape of a shell — still there, but the creature inside is long gone. April is still here, but Matsukata’s deficit is gone.

…A: and B: are floppy fossils, nya.

And do-re-mi is a fossil of a hymn nobody sings anymore.

…Netsuki.

Mm?

…is that a bad thing, nya?

Huh?

…my grandmother’s stew. Nobody remembers why she made it that way anymore. But that flavor is real, nyan.

…

…even if it started as an expedient — if it lasted, it’s real, nya.

…

…yeah. If the reason disappears but the shape stays, and everyone builds their life around that shape… it’s not just convenience anymore.

…today is April 1st, nya.

Yeah. Cherry blossoms blooming on top of a fossil.

…April Fools’ Day too, nyan.

Oh!! (ﾟ∀ﾟ)

…Matsukata’s deficit, the monk’s hymn, the floppy ghost room — they all sound like made-up stories, nya.

But they’re ALL TRUE!

…nya.

Stories that sound like lies but are true, turned into fossils, and now we’re living on top of them. I love that kind of thing~♪

…not bad, nya.