Portal:Japan/Anniversaries/April/April 16

1205 - The New Collection of Ancient and Modern Waka is completed. (Traditional Japanese Date: Twenty-sixth Day of the Third Month, 1205)
1882 - Ōkuma Shigenobu forms the Progressive Party.
1906 - Japan initiates express train service with an express train from Shimbashi to Kobe. The trip took thirteen hours and 40 minutes.
1949 - Japan's first off-track betting facility opens in Kōrakuen, Tokyo.
1955 - The Mount Bota mine in Sasebo, Nagasaki collapses, killing 68.
1972 - Nobel Prize winning author Kawabata Yasunari commits suicide at his office in Zushi.
1978 - Japan holds its first women's marathon at Lake Tama Field. Forty-nine women participated and 100,000 spectators turned out to watch.
1991 - Mikhail Gorbachev makes his first visit to Japan as the leader of the Soviet Union.