Registering a Japanese Common Name (通称) for Privacy and Convenience

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In Japan, foreign residents can register a common name (通称, tsūshō)¹ for use in certain situations in place of their legal name. I have been using one for quite some time, and I wanted to share lessons learned as far as privacy goes, and how it can be registered.

A common name does not change the name on your passport and is not a substitute for your legal name outside Japan.

The below article is a personal account of my experience, not legal advice. Procedures and acceptance vary by municipality and service.

Why I Wanted One
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If you’re a foreigner living in Japan, unless you are fortunate enough to have a very (very) short full name, without middle name(s) and written using only the 26 standard letters of the Latin alphabet, you’re probably familiar with how painful administrative processes can be.

For example, when you open a bank account, the name on your application must strictly match your identification documents. That can be difficult when a form has limited space or does not handle middle names and other characters well.

After a long back-and-forth with customer support, you may find a workaround (for example, combining your first and middle names in one field), but problems can surface later. For instance, one of my banks and one of my brokers recorded my name differently, making it impossible to set up a direct debit.

This is what led me to look into options to simplify my life in the first place, but privacy benefits (i.e. the ability to reduce the amount of personal information you share) also motivated me to register one.

The Application Process
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To register a common name, you need to go to your municipal office, fill out a short form with the name you wish to use and your reason for needing it, and provide identification. So far, pretty simple. There is a catch: you also need to provide documents showing that you already use the name you want to register.

Note that Japanese citizens cannot register a common name², and that each municipality has its own rules (you can find examples in the references), so the process may be simple or more troublesome depending on where you live, which name you want to register, and how much time the clerk handling your application has.

Examples of documents that some municipalities may accept include:

Postal correspondence (most places don’t seem to accept it, sadly)
Employment certificate
Insurance card
Utility bills (simple enough, until the name must match the one registered with your payment method)
Bank statement
Hospital patient registration card (easy to get if you pay without insurance)

For example, if you are married to a Japanese citizen, using your spouse’s name may be relatively easy. If the pronunciation of your name is not obvious, you may be able to ask your employer or bank to register a different transcription in katakana³ (a Japanese phonetic script).

In my experience, banks always record your real legal name but are more permissive about the katakana transcription. That is the one that actually matters, because it is what third-party systems check against. For example, if you set up a direct debit for your phone subscription, the provider’s system will check that the name you registered with them matches the name on the bank account.

After You Finish the Process
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Once you finish the process, you can have your common name written into your My Number card⁴, resident record⁵ (住民票, Jūminhyō), seal certificate and potentially driving license (I did not try that last one, so I cannot confirm).

After the name is registered, you can request to have it deleted, but registering another one later may be difficult or impossible. Similarly, changing it later may not be allowed, except in circumstances such as marriage or divorce.

Then comes the question that interests us: how widely is it accepted? Well, it depends…

On the (Japanese) public administration side, you can use it pretty much everywhere (except at the immigration office), and your municipality will default to using it when sending you mail.

Some things can still be a hassle. For example, I spent more than two hours explaining to municipal staff that their own rules allowed me to register a 実印 (jitsuin, a registered seal used to sign important documents such as real estate or company establishment paperwork) under my common name, which I eventually managed to do after escalating the matter in different places.

On the private side, I found it harder to use it fully:

I have quite a few bank accounts with a variety of banks. So far, I have not managed to register an account using only my common name. Banks may accept it as the katakana transcription (which is still a win, because that is what people outside the bank see when I use the account), but they all kept a record of my legal name.
Some financial services outside traditional banks have been more flexible. I have managed to register only my common name with credit card companies, services such as PayPay and brokers.
I have also managed to open phone lines using the common name only.
When you travel, it can also be written on hotels check-in forms. Hotels generally cannot verify the ID of residents, so you could technically write anything, but writing false information on that form may be illegal.

Final Thoughts and Limitations
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Overall, the common name is a good quality of life improvement, but the privacy benefits will vary.

If a service requires KYC verification, using a common name does not shield your identity from that company. Official documents (such as a My Number card) that show the common name also show your legal name, so even if you can register using only your common name, you cannot know whether the company keeps your legal name elsewhere in its internal systems.

It is, however, still useful as a privacy layer: it can obscure your legal name from some people and services you interact with and in some public documents, such as company records (which I would argue is a great benefit).

I have also seen hospitals with questionable privacy practices: I encountered a flaw in a reservation website and found that some data I had provided to a specific hospital had been leaked. Being able to use a different name there is another benefit.

Companies are not required to let you use a common name, and some may be unfamiliar with it, considering that only foreign residents can register one (about 3% of residents in Japan), and that only some of them do.

All things considered, I still think registering a common name is a worthwhile investment.