News Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward urges residents to refrain from using Imperial Palace as legal domicile

Officials in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward struggle to manage the overwhelming paperwork from tens of thousands who maintain their family registers in the central ward despite residing elsewhere.

The ward frequently receives phone inquiries, often from newlyweds, asking for the parcel number of the Imperial Palace so they can list it as their honseki (本籍)—the official location of their family register—when creating new records. Since individuals in Japan can designate any location as their honseki, many opt for famous or symbolic places.

Approximately 3,000 people have registered "Chiyoda 1, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo," the parcel number of the Imperial Palace, as their honseki, making it the most commonly chosen legal domicile in Japan. Another popular choice is the address of Tokyo Station, "Marunouchi 1-9, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo." Ward officials believe the appeal of these locations lies in their prestige and memorability, prompting many to select them for their official records.

At the end of fiscal 2023, the family registers of 213,421 people were kept in the Chiyoda Ward, more than three times the ward's 67,911 registered residents as of 1 January 2023. The figure is up from 189,069 in fiscal 2014. A ward official said the amount of paperwork related to honseki has been snowballing. The ward handles about 13,000 cases related to family registers a year, such as notifications of marriages, births and deaths. It also processes about 30,000 cases related to supplementary family registers, which record the history of addresses where people on family registers have lived.

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Since individuals in Japan can designate any location as their honseki, many opt for famous or symbolic places.

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I wonder if this rule also applies to foreign residents.

How weird that you can register your family in any random place in Japan, despite not residing (or having any connection) to that place. The government keeps a record of your family, but you get to decide which municipality is in charge of keeping your records. Since it can be completely separated from (and unrelated to) your actual residence, it creates a bifurcated bureaucracy; one which lists you as a resident and collects money from you, and another which is just sort of a library for your family records, which collects no tax from you. Feels very inefficient and maybe time to either streamline this or do away with it altogether.

My honseki is Buckingham Palace

"Ward asks people not to..."

Calling attention to the 'feature' and perhaps making it more popular. Like the Streisand effect.