In Japan from 1984 to 1992, the release date year printed on the back of album could be represented as a single letter. It was an alternate way to display the year. Albums from the timeframe could show the numeric version of the year, or even have both formats together. The sequence of letters is loosely based on
Nihon Rekōdo Kyōkai which is the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).
If you do a lot of ripping, you might want to print this table out to have available for quick lookup.
1984 = N
1985 = I
1986 = H
1987 = O
1988 = R
1989 = E
1990 = C
1991 = D
1992 = K
2 examples of the release dates represented as letters
- japan_letter_to_year letter c.jpg (122.62 KiB) Viewed 11 times
- japan_letter_to_year letter r.jpg (126.75 KiB) Viewed 11 times
