Japanese Law

Starting in October of 2015, all citizens and lawful residents were issued a number called a 個人番号 kojin bangō which is also colloquially called My Number, even by Japanese speaking people — マイナンバー. The numbers will basically be used as a “unique identifier” in a database, which is pretty much what it is.  This number is a unique identifier for civil services to tie any data and records being kept together and keeps everything associated with that number throughout the system. Americans definitely recognize this system, as we’ve been using our Social Security numbers as the defacto governmental unique identifier for over 70 years now. Hard to believe, but Japan’s tax, health, pension, justice, land, education, immigration, and other civil management bodies are very disparate when it comes to the data that is collected by them, and never shared. If you’ve ever gone to a city hall in Japan and had to pay both residential and personal property tax and wondered why you were made to fill out two of the same looking forms and hand them to two different people in the same building, there’s your answer. As far as non-citizen expats go, Japan’s Immigration Service requires you to have this…