Using Chinese Characters Not Included in Japanese Kanji in Trade Names in Japan

July 29, 2019

Question:

There is a kanji character used in the Chinese language that we want to use, but it does not seem to be part of Japanese kanji. Would it still be possible to use that character as part of our registered trade name?

Answer:

Kanji characters on the Ministry of Justice’s registration system (known as Touki Touitsu Moji, unified characters for registration) can be used in a trade name. Characters not included in the system (that is, those not included Touki Touitsu Moji) cannot be used. Companies with such characters not included in the system need to substitute the excluded character/s with existing, registered unified characters.

Explanation:

The Touki Touitsu Moji is a character set that extends the Koseki Touitsu Moji character set that the Ministry Justice uses in the Family Registry System. This character set includes character variants (such as misprint and nonstandard variants), kanji from other countries, signs and symbols. With the inclusion of this set, the total number of characters that can be used for trade names is 68,067 characters (Koseki Touitsu Moji consists of 56,040 characters, plus 12,027 characters from the Touki Koyuu Moji character set).

(Examples of Characters in the Touki Touitsu Moji character set)

臺
擧
(Examples of Characters Not Included in the Touki Touitsu Moji character set)

“东” ⇒ registered as “東”
“际” ⇒ registered as “際”
It is important to note that names and addresses that use other foreign characters (aside from the Romanized characters) cannot be registered. In such cases, the company is given the choice to register again the name/address in either registered kanji or katakana.

For Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean nationals and the like who use kanji in their writing system, in principle, can register using their kanji names, provided that the characters are recognized by the Ministry of Justice’s system.