>Why on earth would anyone want to encourage their behaviour

Sony is now effectively a financial services (insurance) company, so it doesn't matter what happens with hardware. It's kind of a loss leader for them, like the Macintosh hardware at Apple.

Practically speaking, this will only have a significant effect on those unfortunate children whose parents dig up one of these obscure characters for use in a personal name, as there is an increased chance that other people will not be able to read the person's name, or will read it improperly.

Imagine the irritation at having the FEDEX guy always misread your name when he hands you a parcel.

That is, if you wanted to name your child using one of these characters yesterday, your application would have been rejected at city hall. Today, as a result of this decision, the clerks will probably have to accept the name, no matter how obscure.

In summary, this is good for parents and bad for children.

 

The government tip-toes around in slippers regarding issues like this, instead of putting on the jackboots the way the Americans or British do.

Jukinet has been up and running for years, but the central government has been unable to force take-up, just as they cannot enforce take-up of the so-called compulsory social security or health care systems, or just as NHK cannot force people to pay the compulsory subscription. If Japan were the USA they would just put a gun to people's heads, so-to-speak, and enforce participation.

The way it has worked up to now is that individuals elect to sign up for the Jukinet smart card, and less than two percent of the population has done this. There's no actual requirement anywhere to get one, and it seems to be regarded as a slight potential convenience.

My theory is that there are are at least a couple reasons why the Japaneese government seems so ineffective in putting teeth into enforcement of compliance with such systems.

1) There is a lingering sense of respect for "rights of the individual" that remains since the various reforms after the War, and it's tied in with left wing politics. This is why it's taken 30 years to build the second runway at Narita airport.

2) Second reason is bureacratic turf wars. Jukinet is the pet project of one not-particularly-powerful ministry, and they do not have the power to enforce take-up, although they certainly did manage to get to the Supreme Court in this case (which has handed down a judgment that is rather short-sighted about privacy, given the history of privacy problems that we have seen in Japan in recent years).

In short, Japan has all the privacy problems of other developed countries (and perhaps even more so, given the ubiquitous video surveillance), but has soft spots in its central adminstration in unexpected places.

Incidentally, if it were my job to increase Jukinet card takeup, I would offer people the option of getting them in a design theme of Hello Kitty, or Snoopy, or Audrey Hepburn or something such, and then add electronic money and/or train pass functionality, slightly discounted. WHOOOOOSH, massive take-up overnight.