When I was first married almost 30 years ago, I remember feeling quite put out when I found that I was not listed in the juminhyo which seemed to be a comprehensive listing of who currently lived where. At that time I was anxious to feel like I belonged and to be treated like everyone else around me. I could also see the advantage for the police of knowing where everyone was supposed to be when hunting down criminals. However, since then I have found that the juminhyo system is not quite what I had imagined. Although it may help some in knowing the location of the main residence of someone, if one owns or rents more than one residence, one is only registered at the one designated as the main one or the one of your choice. Our daughter keeps her juminhyo registration in with my husband's in Yokohama even though she rents an apartment separately from us. As a woman living alone, we feel it is safer for her to thus conceal where she is actually living since the juminhyo registration information is open to the public.

Although I have heard the complaint that because foreigners are generally not included in the juminhyo, should an earthquake or other disaster occur, the identification of the foreign members of a family together with the Japanese family members will be made difficult. However, the police also keep a separate file of each household in their area of authority, whether it is your main or secondary residence, and their list includes ALL members of the household living there, whether foreign or Japanese. My koban policeman comes around fairly regularly to make note of any changes. My house's file in our neighborhood police file has more information in quantity and usefulness than the juminhyo ever will. It lists such things as my husband's company and contact number so that he could be reached quickly if, for example, our house caught fire. I'm not sure where the police file is kept, but if it is at the koban near us, then it probably has a better chance of surviving an earthquake and being useful than the juminhyo file at the Ward Office where the huge building will probably crush everything.

Personally I have never experienced any difficulty or problems with my not being listed on the juminhyo. When my children applied to a school, we simply always turned in a copy of both the juminhyo certificate and my alien registration certificate. Since the school application listed my name as the child's mother and the ARC matched it with my name and the same address as the juminhyo of my husband and children, there was never any question about our situation. If there were, the questioner only need be directed to ask at the relevant ward office or city office to verify the separate registration system for non-Japanese. Considering the tens of thousands of international marriages these days, awareness of this situation on the part of Japanese must surely be growing gradually. However, on the part of the non-Japanese, the ever-growing numbers which arrive need to find a means of educating themselves about the administrative and legal system here so as not to become frustrated and angry through ignorance of how to carry out certain tasks necessary from time to time in daily life.

All of the above is not to say that I would be against any change in the juminhyo system. I think it would be of general convenience to be able to be listed in the remarks column of the juminhyo as a means of acknowledging my presence at that address. Especially, if I were the main breadwinner in the family or if I were a single parent, I can imagine it would be of greater value and convenience to be able to more easily show my name with the other family members when applying for a job, for example. For appearance sake in order to give a good impression of the family as a single unit might also be valuable at times.

At the same time, I should think that for the Japanese government bureaucracy, the allowing of foreigners to be noted in the juminhyo could be of some administrative convenience. The danger, however, for non-Japanese would then be that, government being government, there might develop more rules and constraints on the necessity of being listed and when and how which could undermine what started out to be a relatively simple convenience.

In order to assess the juminhyo system in its relation to non-Japanese, I think it would be helpful to know more about the history of its development, what is the intended and considered purpose of it in the larger system of administrative government, what are the possible changes to consider which would be of benefit to non-Japanese as well as Japanese, and finally, what strategy should be considered to achieve such changes and what follow-up would be needed to educate non-Japanese and Japanese about carrying out the changes. All such information needs to be developed in both Japanese and English in order to carry it out effectively. As non-native Japanese speakers, we need to collect the relevant Japanese language vocabulary, useful phrases in speaking about the various aspects and the specific documents and relevant laws involved in changing the juminhyo so that we can make the necessary contacts and persuade them. It is ambitious but not impossible.