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Author

Jun Kurozumi

International Contact Partner / USCPA (Washington)

Using Non-Japanese and Non-Latin Alphabet Characters in Trade Names in Japan

July 31, 2019

Question:

Is it possible to use non-Japanese and non-Latin alphabet characters during registration?

Answer:

There is a part of registration where one can use Chinese or Korean characters that are not used in Japanese. Other than that, however, using other characters from other languages is not allowed.

Explanation:

Kanji characters in Chinese or Korean

As mentioned in Q19, as long as a character is included in the Ministry of Justice’s Touki Touitsu Moji character set, it can be used during registration. Included in that character set are some characters that are used in the Chinese or Korean languages.

＜Examples of Chinese characters and Hanja (Chinese characters used in the Korean language) Included in the Touki Touitsu Moji Character Set＞
瑔 (Hanja)
旻 (Hanja)
华 (Simplified Chinese character)
郑 (Simplified Chinese character)
hanja-charactersAs shown above, even if there are non-Japanese Chinese characters that are not included in the Family Register Unified Characters set (Koseki Touitsu Moji), as long as they are included in the Touki Touitsu Moji character set, they can be used during registration.

Non-Japanese or non-Latin alphabet foreign characters that are not included in the Touki Touitsu Moji character set

As mentioned in Q18 and Q19, the Ministry of Justice has specified what characters are allowed when registering. The only non-Japanese characters permitted for use in registration are as follows:

＜Foreign Characters Permitted for Registration＞
① Latin alphabet (A to Z, both uppercase and lowercase)
② Arabic numerals (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9)
③ Chinese characters, Hanji, and other characters included in the Touki Touitsu Moji character set
Other characters and scripts not included above are not permitted for use in registration.

＜Example Characters Not Permitted for Registration＞
① Roman numerals (I II III IV V, and so forth)
② Characters such as “ñ” and “Á” which are not included in the modern English alphabet