My passport has come to the end of its lifetime. I spent most of its validity period abroad where none of my identity documents work, this passport has literally been the only official proof of myself. It feels insecure that neither this passport or its ID code will be valid.

In many countries, you are most likely to have at least one or two identification that work throughout your lifetime. In case of Japan, there is none. Even for a matter of individuals, we still prove ourselves with the family registry, which contains the record of an entire family. The registry also does not contain any identification number, and many of the records still only exist in forms of paper. For instance, my family registry, until I was married, was even handwritten.

In occasions when you are required to prove your identity, many use driver’s license. And if you do not own one, social security cards or pension booklets are used. The problem is, driver’s license numbers, social security card IDs or pension numbers, they have no link between each other. In addition, apart from driver’s license, there is no portrait photo attached. Lacking any good ideas, many facilities, including the official one, would request you to combine those documents with some proof of residence such as electricity bills or phone bills. Bills would contain the name of the payer and the home address, but without any photo of a person, it only serves as a procedure rather than the actual ID.

Will this ever change? The only chance to change the general opinion, is the fact the government confided that they lost track of 50 million pension records. Now I hope 50 million is a big enough number to make general public notice that lacking such identification number has some consequences.