Scholarship in family sociology and population sciences has paid increasingly closer attention to the rise in “gray divorce” (divorce among those aged 50 years or over), or gray divorce revolution, with important implications for wellbeing among older adults. Existing studies are mostly based on the US and Western Europe, where cohorts exposed to elevated divorce risks in younger ages are the critical mass driving the revolution. In this study, we offer a nuanced account of this trend by examining the case of Japan, a non-Western context characterized by rising divorce rates over time. Using population census and divorce records in vital statistics data, we estimate gender-, age-, and education-specific divorce rates, revealing three key findings. First, unlike evidence provided by prior studies, divorce rates began increasing across multiple birth cohorts, including among older adults. Second, although gray divorce rates remain lower than those in the United States, they have increased nearly fourfold from 1990 to 2020—more rapidly than has been reported in other countries. Third, results from a novel method matching individuals in population census and divorce records matching indicate that the increase in gray divorce rates is particularly evident among couples involving highly educated women. We discuss plausible mechanisms underlying the period-level rise in divorce and educational differences in gray divorce to provide updated insights into cross-national variation in divorce revolution patterns.