For most things in everyday life you’ll be fine with just your signature. But if you need to open a bank account, transfer money, buy a house or get married in Japan, you’ll need get your own 判子 hanko, a small stamp bearing your name in kanji. — Wait, what?

Many stationary shops carry hankos, but unless you happen to be Japanese, you’ll be hard pressed to find a stock hanko with your name on it. Truth be told, the sign on your hanko doesn’t really matter. Just as your signature doesn’t need to be legible, you can rather freely choose what you’d like to put on your hanko. It would seem a little strange though if you’d sign with 山田 Yamada when your real name is Smith.

That’s why most foreigners resort to having the first few syllables of their name or their initials written in katakana on their hanko. With a little creativity though you can come up with a much nicer looking kanji. Try typing the first two or three syllables of your name into a computer, an electronic dictionary or your mobile phone using the Japanese input method and convert them to kanji. Pick one that looks nice and double check in a dictionary, or better with a Japanese friend, that it doesn’t have any negative connotations.

That way I came up with the rather rare kanji 禰 dei, which is pronounced like the first two syllables of my first name and happens to be somewhat related to the meaning of my last name. I’m a lot happier with it than with the old hanko I just lost, which simply had the two letters ディ squished into a circle.

To have the sign of your choice engraved into a piece of wood or plastic, find a specialised hanko shop or go to your nearest department store or Tokyu Hands, which are all over Tokyo.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 13:25 and is filed under The Bark. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.