REGISTERING YOUR OFFICIAL SEAL (“Inkan”印鑑”/” Hanko”判子)
An official personal seal is necessary when opening a bank account, establishing a company, taking out a loan, purchasing expensive items such as real estate property or a car, or signing official documents. In certain circumstances, you will also need to provide an official seal certificate (“inkan shomeisho”印鑑証明書) as proof of its registration.
Official seal certificates and seal registration cards are registered at the local municipal office where your address has been registered. It will be done either at the family registration department or the residence department, depending on the municipal office – but you will need to bring your proper type of seal, a passport and a residence card (“Zairyu card” 在留カード) You need to fill in the seal registration form provided by the municipal office)and hand it in together at the counter.
Most of the places will issue the registration seal card upon the procedure without any fee.
When you move, if your new address is at a different municipal office coverage area, you will be asked to return the seal registration card.
You can purchase a seal at a “hankoya” (seal shop), but you probably won’t find your name on any of the pre-made seals available for purchase. In this case, you’ll want to have a seal custom-made at the shop or online. The vast majority of these online seal shops will only have Japanese pages on their websites, so assistance may be required if you are not fluent in Japanese.
The simplified accepted forms available for preparing your custom-made seal are – your full name in English or katakana, a combination of your name and initials (English only), or a registered Japanese alias.
The diameter of official seals must be between 8 and 25 millimeters.
