Japanese people are exceptionally free to change their names.

 Japanese names are written in kanji characters, but since there is no law in Japan regarding the reading of names, Japanese people are actually free to change the reading of their names without permission from the court. In fact, I changed the reading of my name without changing the kanji of my name. As a result, the Latin alphabetic notation of my name was changed, so internationally I succeeded in changing my real name without permission.

As you know, the Japanese language uses multiple character systems.

Japanese names are available in Japanese kanji, which are derived from Chinese characters, and in hiragana and katakana, which are phonetic characters.

The English alphabet is of course commonly used in Japan, but it cannot be used for Japanese names.

There are actually a huge number of kanji characters, but about 3,000 of them are permitted to be used in people's names.

In Japan, there is a family register system in which people with Japanese citizenship have their family relationships recorded in a ledger called a family register.

The only information recorded in the Japanese family register is the letters of the real name, not how to read it.

Therefore, no matter how a Japanese name is written in kanji, someone can actually call themselves or their family whatever they want.

So is there actually no confusion?

As mentioned above, under Japanese law, there is no official reading system for Japanese names. On the other hand, it is a fact that the reading of names is essential in actual administrative practice.

In addition to the family register, there is the Juminhyo (resident card / resident registration) for the registration of Japanese citizens.

Family registration and Juminhyo (resident registration) are two independent registration systems.

You can designate any location in Japan as the place of registration, regardless of where you yourself live, and the family register information will be stored at the local government office in that area.

On the other hand, the Juminhyo (resident registration / card) is a system for registering one's address with the municipal office of one's place of residence, and anyone living in Japan, whether Japanese or foreign, will be registered in the Juminhyo of their place of residence.

And in the registration details of this Juminhyo (resident registration), there is a field to enter the reading of the name.

When a Japanese baby is born, when submitting the birth notification to the place of residence, the reading of the name as well as the kanji of the name are to be reported.

As a matter of fact, identity verification information for all administrative procedures in Japan is managed based on this database of Juminhyo (resident registration), so in actual administrative procedures, you are required to write your name and the reading of your name on all documents.

When Japanese people obtain passports, they are required to write their names in the alphabet, and even in this case, the English name is represented by the name transcribed into the alphabet from the reading registered in the resident data.

Since kanji is an ideograph, it can be read in multiple ways. So when you see someone's formal name in kanji, often you cannot imagine how the name should be read.

As you can see, the reading of a name has a very important meaning for Japanese people. It is common for people to know the reading of their friends' names, but not the kanji.

However, official Japanese ID cards do not have a section for the reading of your name. Even if the reading of your name is officially registered with the government office, it is not written on your driver's license or any other type of Japanese ID card.

The reason why Japanese official ID cards do not contain the reading of names is precisely because the official reading of names is not registered in the Japanese family register, and because Japanese people do not have an official reading of names, and the idea is that a certificate cannot prove something that does not exist.

Is there any way to prove how to read the name?

In Japan, the reading of a name is called "furigana," and it is usually written in hiragana or katakana, the phonetic alphabet of the Japanese language. It is usually only on credit cards that the reading of the name is written in romaji.

One of the documents issued by a public institution is a health insurance card, although it is not strictly an official ID since it does not have a photograph on it. Some health insurance cards are issued by government offices, while others are issued by private health insurance associations that your company is a member of.

Some health insurance cards come with furigana, which indicates how to read your name, and some do not. It is up to the issuing institution to decide whether or not to attach furigana, so we cannot choose one or the other at will.

By the way, my health insurance card was issued by the city hall, i.e., by a public institution, and it does not include frigana, which is the reading of my name. I have asked why, but was told that "legally, there is no way to read names, so we don't include it."

Even though the city hall itself, which issues the health insurance cards, maintains a computer database of all citizens' information and uses their first names' furigana for searching and sorting! How can this be ridiculous?

As you can see, Japan is a strange country with many strange laws and inconsistent inconveniences between systems. One of the reasons for the delay in the digitization of Japan's administrative system was the difficulty in confirming the reading of names.

In Japan, there was once an incident in which the pension records of many people disappeared. Because their pension records were not properly recorded in the computer database, many people did not receive the pension they were supposed to receive. One of the factors in this was due to the reading of their names. If the reading of the name was not registered correctly in the computer database, the record could have belonged to a different person, or one person's record could have been registered as more than one person.

There are official identification cards that prove the alphabetization of names.

As far as I have been able to ascertain, there are only three official ID cards in Japan as of 2021 that show the alphabet as the reading of an individual's name.

One is a passport. The passport contains the alphabet of the name, but not the kanji, the real name of the Japanese. It is possible to write your name in kanji in the signature section, but this does not prove the kanji in your name since you can write anything you want in the signature section. And a few years ago, the Japanese passport format was changed and the address field was removed from the passport. Therefore, the current Japanese passport cannot prove the kanji of your real name or your address.

Another official identification card with the alphabet of your name is ”radio operator license". A radio operator license is an official identification card that has a printed photo and is likely to be used as a certificate of alphabetical reading of your name, since it contains both Kanji characters and alphabetical notation of your name.

However, the radio operator license also has a drawback. That is, it does not have an address. An ID card that cannot prove your address is not as effective as a other certificate, so you may need to use it in conjunction with another ID card such as a driver's license. A radio operator license does not have an expiration date, so a license with a photo taken as a child is still valid even if you are an old man. It is possible to get a new photo by periodically paying a fee to have it reissued.

I had a radio operator license before I changed my name, so when I changed the reading of my name, I reissued this radio operator license with the new Roman alphabet on it. I usually use this radio operator license to prove how I read my name.

There are two types of radio operator licenses: those that are valid only in Japan and those that are valid internationally. There is no English notation on the radio operator license that is valid only in Japan. Note that if you want to prove the reading of your name in the alphabet, you will need to obtain an international radio operator license.

Of the radio operator licenses, the license for amateur radio is the easiest to pass, and it is also a convenient form of identification because it can be used when opening a bank account overseas, for example, if you are required to have another official identification card with your name in the alphabet other than your passport. I've also heard rumors that it can be used as an ID to enter American bars, since it is written in English as well.

The last official ID card with your name in the alphabet is ”Permit of Boat's Operator” (small vessel pilot license.)  In Japan, it is very rare for people to obtain a boating license as a hobby, but this license can be obtained for about 150,000 yen, which is about half the price of obtaining a Japanese car driving license.

The good thing about the Permit of Boat’s Operator is that it is as valid a certificate as a car driver's license. Like this license, it has a photo and your name as well as your address. It is also written in English, so you can prove how to read your name in the alphabet.

The disadvantage of the Permit of Boat's Operator is that it has an expiration date. It is valid for five years, so you will need to go through the process of renewing your license periodically. In Japan, a car license is valid for 3 or 5 years, but unlike a car license, which is used frequently, it may be troublesome to repeatedly renew a boat license, which is used infrequently.

Last but not least, how did I officially change the reading of my name here in Japan, where the reading of my name is registered with the municipal office of my place of residence?

All I had to do was fill out and submit the new name reading on the resident change form at the resident affairs section of the municipal office.

In just three minutes, the name change process was complete!

Japan is an interesting country!
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