Yesterday, I became Japanese

Not really, but I do have a kanji last name now

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Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

Japan has a name problem in more than one way

After my wife and I got married in April, we contemplated what to do about our last names. Though there are talks about changing it, Japanese married couples are required to have the same last name. This outdated law has been met with much backlash as of late.

However, international couples do not have to meet this requirement, allowing both the husband and wife to keep their own names. For my wife and I, however, sharing a name was important.

Traditionally, most Japanese women took their husband’s name. Even now, this practice is most common. But just adopting my name wasn’t a realistic option. My wife’s family is the honke and has lived on the same piece of land for 700 years. She only has one younger sister, so if she took my name, the chance that their family name wouldn’t continue was high.

Her mom, not so jokingly, said she’d have to adopt another child if both she and her sister took on a different last name.

To avoid ruining a 700 year legacy, I scoured the internet and Reddit, originally thinking that a double-barreled last name might be the solution. While in my home country of America, Smith-Johnson might be normal, in Japan it’s almost unheard of. There were a few Reddit posts of people talking about them becoming 田中スミス (Tanaka-Smith), but many other commenters detailed how that would make their child’s lives a living hell.

My wife and I do want children in the future, and having one singular family name is important to us. However, Japan has different naming conventions than the west, and that can cause a lot of annoyances and problems with things like getting a credit card or doing anything at city hall.

While this may not seem like something that happens often, I have been to city hall in Japan over ten times in three years. In America, I don’t remember going a single time in twenty-six.

At the risk of oversimplifying, most Japanese people have names that consist of four or five kanji. Two or three kanji for the last name, and two or three for the first.

Usually it looks something like this:

楽天 花子 Rakuten Hanako

Where “Rakuten” is the last name and “Hanako” is the first name.

Therefore, most forms in Japan, even online forms, prescribe to this naming convention. Middle names don’t exist in Japan, and having one creates more issues than not.

I couldn’t apply for a credit card for the longest time because my middle name wouldn’t fit on the form. I eventually had to mail in documents showing my full name.

And don’t get me started on spaces. There are no spaces in Japanese, so you can imagine the issue this causes when having to put a space between your first and middle names.

You might ask, why don’t you just leave out your middle name?

The problem is, for a process like a credit card application, the names usually have to match your foreign residence card. The residence card follows the naming convention of your passport. So, even though I use a katakana name in Japan, my legal name is my English one. Most official documents must match this — middle name, spaces, and all.

The Solution

While I learned it is possible to get a double-barreled name through courthouse approval, if my wife and I did so, we would have a six-character long last name.

I could only imagine the city hall worker shuddering at the sight of that name on a form.

After some more conversation, we decided against it. I felt a twinge of guilt, thinking that I would let the annoyance of Japan’s bureaucracy dictate how my wife and I would name our family and our children.

Should you sacrifice convenience for something that you really want to do?

After more thought and research, I came across another solution. In Japan, foreigners can adopt a legal alias, also known as a tsūshou 通称. Foreigners can adopt this name in order to match Japanese naming conventions and make things easier for them in Japan. If you can prove that you use this alias in your daily life, then often, it’s not too difficult to register at city hall.

According to GaijinPot, registering an alias usually requires documents such as:

• Passport

• Residence Card

• My Number Card

• Hanko (Japanese seal or stamp)

• Employee Insurance Card (健康保険, kenko hoken)

• Certificate of Employment (在職証明書, zaishoku shomeisho) with alias

• A “reason” written in Japanese (I.e., why do you want a legal alias?)

• Business Card with alias

• Bill payments with alias

• Credit Cards with alias

• Anything official that uses your alias

However, in my case, it was even easier.

I only showed them my Residence Card and My Number Card. Having gotten married this past year, I could adopt my wife’s last name almost no questions asked. And because it was an alias, I could also drop my middle name. So now, my entire name is only five characters, much more in line with Japanese standards.

My passport and residence card need to have my full legal name on them, so they do not reflect this change. However, my My Number Card, my health insurance card, credit card, and bank account information can all be registered under this alias. Essentially, I can use this name in everyday life in Japan, while still retaining my legal name in America.

As I said before, one question my wife and I had when considering names was about naming our future children. An alias doesn’t legally change my name, so my last name wouldn’t continue on to them. If they were born in Japan, our future kids would still have her last name. So, I would be the odd one out.

Yet, the United States’ naming conventions are extremely flexible. If we had a child in Japan, it is required to submit something called a Consular Report of Birth Abroad.

This signals to the American government that a child was born to an American citizen. Within the flexibility of the United States’ system, you can petition for the child to have a different name than the one listed on their Japanese birth certificate.

In short, they could use their Japanese name in Japan and their American name in America, or wherever English was the primary language. In some cases, their passports would even reflect this, having the other name in parentheses.

While this can pose its own set of problems for international travel or identification between countries, it seemed like the best option for us. Figuring out that this was a route any future children could take to retain both their parents’ names gave us a bit of relief, and made my decision to adopt an alias easier.

So, while I didn’t quite become Japanese, I can tell you that I never expected to have a kanji last name. Life is full of surprises.