This is headline news in JT, Mainichi, and Yomiuri. Nice to see Japan finally making bold moves on the diplomatic stage, and calling the world's attention to the issues that matter. If it succeeds, it deserves the Peace Prize Nobel, for sure.

I see that you believe that other countries are under obligation to follow the cultural mores and traditions of the countries they have diplomatic ties to. That's great! Now Japan will stop whaling. :)

Sorry, I think the Foreign Minister's logic is the opposite: just as other countries should respect our Japanese traditional name order, they should respect our Japanese way of murdering intelligent creatures in the name of tradition followed in the election districts of our PM and ruling-party secretary-general. We can't allow other countries to disrespect our leaders, after all.

Korea might agree to this if Japan adopts the term 'Sex Slaves' for comfort women and starts to call the Japanese Sea 'Eastern Sea'.

And the nobel price for literature too, no?

Ohhh the Irony "Taro Kono"

I live & work almost 30 years in Japan. No one ask permission to call me by my first name, they just do it. They do it in the same sentence where they use Japanese names with the honorific -san. That's ignorance, racism, and hypocrisy.

In other news, health minister Hakuo Yanagisawa demands the foreign press stop using the term "women" and begin to use the approved Japanese term "baby-making machines", and
Mio Sugita, a lower house member of the Liberal Democratic party (LDP), demands other countries stop paying LGBT as much money as their straight counterparts, because they are "not productive" and do not deserve it.

This ends your daily "Japan rules the world" press release.

Asian countries like Japan and Korea are very similar in terms of perception of language.

Eg 'Japanese sea' vs 'Eastern Sea', 'Comfort Women' vs 'Sex slaves', 'Regrettable Past' vs 'War crimes'.

They place a lot of value in naming differences in terms of saving face and projecting a positive image.

Sensitivity towards language nuances is a typical Asian trait. Ironically, it is what connects countries such as Japan, China and Korea: The same focus on difference of terms, which simultaneously leads to a lot of friction between those countries.

It's a little disappointing to read some of the ignorant comments left by people on this article. In Japanese, the family name always comes first, and it makes sense to carry the practice over when translating/transcribing to other languages. People need to get over themselves, and stop pretending that this is somehow going to spell disaster. It's a relatively minor change; it's not even a novel idea, given that it is already standard practice in China and Korea. Nobody is pretending this is earth-shattering policy, but a welcome change, I believe.

If you ever want to waste a day of your life, look at the pages of arguments on this topic in the behind-the-scenes sections of Wikipedia.

After all the bloodshed, they seemed to have come to a compromise where people born pre-Meiji are family-name first, while people born afterwards are given-name first, but there are exceptions.

Clearly this is the most important thing on earth for the japanese government right now. Because The western media gets it right for Chinese and korean leaders but not japan. They must be outraged.

What a stupid thing to be concerned about. If you switch the order in countries that do it in a different order it will only be confusing. And why the hell worry about it in the first place? Stupid.

Well, like they said in the article, we already do it for Koreans and Chinese. While it's trivial and not something to be too concerned about, I don't think it would be that confusing, just something to get used to.

While they're at it, maybe the Japanese should stop calling Xi Jinping as Shu Kinpei. And why does the Japanese media write Yoko Ono's name in the Japanese order, but in katakana? We could go on and on.

In Japanese he is Abe Shinzo, and in English he is Shinzo Abe, that’s not disrespectful! That is just making sense in a different language. A friend of a client traveled to New Zealand recently and almost could not get on the plane and she had mistakenly put her family name & 1st name in reverse and if they cannot find your family name in their reservation system then you do NOT have a reservation! It’s called “Go ni itte wa Go ni shitegau” or “When in Rome ...”

It's difficult to separate the language from the culture in this regard. Family-name-first is a function of the Japanese _language_, just as family-name-last is a function of the English _language_. It's incorrect English to put the family name first, just as it's incorrect Japanese to put the family name last.

These truths hold true no mater where in the world you're holding the conversation.

Except that the rule you mentioned is not applied to foreign names in the Japanese language. For example, "Jonnii Deppu" is a very popular actor in Japan, but nobody has heard of "Deppu Jonnii".

The language rule is applied to foreign names, but there's this cultural thing that often sees famous people's names as atomic units, presented in Japanese in the same way as the context they're presented where the person is famous. We do this same thing in English with some historical names.

If Johnny Depp weren't famous, he'd be introduced as Deppu Jonnii, at least in my experience of having been here for 30 years. Some people or publications may have explicitly-contradictory policies, but as a general rule, one expects to hear the family name first when speaking Japanese.

Well, your experience is very different from mine.

Similar to woodrackets comment above, in my previous workplace there was just one person (out of hundreds) who called me by surname, while most did not even have the courtesy of adding "san" when they called me Peter.

Even in official government publications connected with my profession, my given name is listed before my surname.
When I tried to list my family name first during the application process, the Ministry of Justice official returned the form to me and instructed me to correct it.

Ugh, don't get me started on the government forms. I used to have a Japanese (kanji/katakana) name in addition to my birth romaji name listed on my gaijin card, but they refused to list the former on the new residency card, which causes all kinds of problems because I use both names legally here, and now don't have an easy way to prove the former is mine.

I get what you say about different name standards... I probably help perpetuate that. When speaking in English about a Japanese older than me, I put "san" after their name (sometimes after given name, but usually family name). It's the confluence of culture and language. I'm less consistent in doing this for foreigners.

Personally, I like being addressed in Japanese by my given name, but I totally get how it'd be upsetting if you didn't have that preference. Can you simply refuse to recognize the speaker if they don't use give your form of address parity?

Making your own rules in other culture's languages is ignorance, racism, and hypocrisy.

Nobody in the West is going to realise that the family name is first. It will just make a confusing situation even more confusing.

I'm currently proofing an English-language work, double-checking to make sure that all the Japanese family names come last for the sake of uniformity. A Japanese-language edition can happily swop them all back again.

When in Rome, etc.

Incidentally, all my Ayumi Hamasaki CDs (and I have quite a few) say 'Ayumi Hamasaki' on them, not 'Hamasaki Ayumi'.

It's swop for me, but may well be swap for you.
Bombay has been officially renamed, but some of the old colonial-era names in India are retained by locals as they are used to them and like them.

People in the West are quite clever in terms of recognizing that Mao and Xi are the family names of China‘s leaders. How come you say are unable to realize it‘s the same in Japan?

I'm not saying they can't. Some Japanese, Korean and Chinese names are difficult to order for Westerners, most of whom would assume that the given name comes first as that is the Western default. Japanese people may deal with these issues better than Westerners, for all I know.

I may be wrong, but I believe that Utada Hikaru insists that her family name appears first in English-language material.
A pointless tangent from the topic, but your mention of Hamasaki reminded me of it.

Personal choice over government diktat is preferable. In general, artists usually have some say in their own image, although their management sometimes decides these things. Pop music stars are more likely to have their names in Romaji on CD covers, whilst enka stars are more likely to run with Japanese only (and probably Japanese word order). Those with a more internationalist perspective might choose a Western style (or even a Western nickname). Artists tend to care about their image.

I doubt any politician in the West would care tuppence if the Japanese press switched the order of their names around. It never bothers me when it happens. I'm used to seeing surnames first as they are used in bibliography, but it does feel more like a filing system than a conversational style and damages the readability in a book aimed at Westerners. Most works that have to deal with this usually include a publisher's note on what they have done. I guess they are just keeping the nationalists occupied so they don't wander off topic and trash relations with the neighbours.

If we switch the order, people will call him "Mr. Kono".

Trivial as usual.

I agree with this. You should respect the ordering of the culture.