Politics of Nomenclature: Japan pushes media to reverse order of names

Along with rapid industrialisation, land reform, the creation of a professional army and the introduction of free schools, people were encouraged to write their names in the Western-style when using the Roman alphabet.

In September 2019, the government of then prime minister, Shinzo Abe, announced it intended to standardise the writing of Japanese names when they appear in Latin script on official documents, and said domestic media should do the same.

National broadcaster NHK was swift to adopt the new style, but the takeup elsewhere has been less successful. A foreign journalist writing for the English-language Nikkei economic newspaper told DW that managers haven’t switched, but added, “There have been some mumblings about changing this after then defense minister Taro Kono first made comments about the matter, but there has been no firm decision to date.” Other media groups such as The Japan News, the English-language version of the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun, The Asahi, The Mainichi, The Japan Times and the news wire service Kyodo News have also yet to change their editorial policies on names, but some journalists have said the pressure is likely to grow for them to fall into line.

Once that happens, the government will step up its efforts to get foreign media to similarly comply. Correspondents say the campaign has already begun. “Kono goes on about this a lot, saying that he wants to be referred to as Kono Taro,” said a European journalist for a leading wire service. “I interviewed him a few weeks ago and, aware of his preference, I felt I had to try to explain that we went with the current form because that was the style that was used by the Western media.”

“We could change to surname first if that was how it was consistently used in Japanese government documents, in the business world or elsewhere. But that is not currently the case and any change by us, the foreign media, would just cause confusion,” he added.

DW tried to contact the Foreign Ministry, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry and the prime minister’s office about the government’s position on foreign media continuing to use the Western-style name order, but the inquiries shed little light on the issue. An official with the Cabinet Office did, however, offer an explanation.

“It was decided to change the order of names because it is Japanese culture to have the family name first,” the official told DW. Asked why it had taken a century to reintroduce this aspect of Japanese culture, she said that Japan had “adjusted” to European and US norms in the past but that Tokyo has “recently changed that policy.”

The Japanese government has called on domestic English-language media to adopt the new name order in its stories, but said it was not clear if official requests have been made to foreign media reporting from Japan. The official denied that media organisations that refused to comply with the government’s request would face punishment, or miss out on opportunities to interview ministers or leading government officials.

Other journalists have insisted the Japanese government has already managed to largely stamp out criticism in the domestic media and has now set its sights on doing the same with overseas news outlets, with this “diktat” one of the first steps to that end. “This is just another way for the Japanese government to try to control the foreign media, in exactly the same way that it controls its own news agenda,” said Jake Adelstein, the Japan correspondent for US news site The Daily Beast.

“They complain and then they discipline domestic news outlets that do not comply by limiting their access to news sources,” he said, an approach known in Japanese as using “the whip and candy,” or the “carrot and stick” approach.