常用漢字・人名用漢字・平仮名・片仮名 : 法令用語釈義　その９

Article 50, paragraph 1 of the Family Register Act provides as follows: For the given name of a child characters that are plain and in common use shall be used. In the Ordinance of the Ministry of Justice the characters that are "plain and in common" are defined as Joyokanji, Jinmeiyokanji, Katakana and Hiragana.
- Kanji: Chinese character
- Joyokanji: Kanji in daily and common use listed in the Table of Kanji in common use
- Jinmeiyokanji: Kanji permissible for personal name
- Katakana: the square Japanese syllabary derived from a part or more of Kanji
- Hiragana: the cursive Japanese syllabary derived from the cursive script style of Chinese calligraphy.
Because of syllabary each Katakana and Hiragana has one reading to one character. Contrary to this, each Kanji has two way of reading: On-yomi based on the Chinese pronunciation and Kun-yomi based on the pronunciation of Japanese proper word corresponding to the Chinese Character. Thus most Kanji can pronounce variously, so it is difficult to pronunciate personal name written with Kanji.
The Legislative Council received a request for consultation from the Minister of Justice stating that the reading of kanji of given name should be entered in the family register. On November 25, 2021, the first meeting of the Family Registration Law Subcommittee of the Council was held.
In order to gain knowledge on background in the said discussion the purpose of this study is to survey the history of revising the Table of Kanji (incl. the list of reading (On-yomi and Kun-yomi), the script form of character, the list of supplementary kanji for personal name, the list of kanji by elementary school year), the Contemporary Kana Usage (Kanazukai) and the Usage of Declensional Kana Endings (Okurigana).