
Japan’s koseki system: dull, uncaring but efficient - Thevet
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/06/22/issues/japans-koseki-system-dull-uncaring-terribly-efficient/#.WAq-taOZNP0
======
StephenAmar
Isn't this system similar to the one we have in France (and other parts of
Europe: Livret de Famille.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_register](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_register)

~~~
dirtyaura
Yes, I think most of the developed world has something like a citizen
register/family register. I think it is the Anglo-American culture that is the
interesting diversion from the norm. For some historical reason, they have
aversion to id numbers and central registers.

~~~
atemerev
And yet, they can't help it, hence NSA. I doubt that anywhere in continental
Europe there is a full-scale surveillance program like administered by NSA or
GCHQ (or maybe we are unusually good at keeping secrets -- really doubt it,
though).

~~~
Muromec
>And yet, they can't help it, hence NSA. I doubt that anywhere in continental
Europe there is a full-scale surveillance program like administered by NSA or
GCHQ

Just reminder that KGB is still a thing and they have SORM:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM)

~~~
atemerev
Well, yes. As I argued elsewhere, we Russians are culturally closer to
Americans than to Europeans, for some unknown reasons.

~~~
oblio
Isolationism and exceptionalism. See UK and Japan for other examples. Though
after the beating received in WW2, Japan's is subdued.

------
kijin
Official documents are marvelous.

Once you have lived in a country where you can get official documents for
pretty much anything you care to prove, it feels like going back to the stone
age when you move to a country where you can't.

Case in point: a Korean relative of mine was recently invited to join the
board of an organization based in the UK. The UK org's bank wanted proof of
address for the new board member, in the form of a notarized translation of a
recent utility bill or credit card statement. In Korea, you can walk into any
local government office and use a 24/7 self-serve kiosk to print out an
official proof of your address. Not some random address like the Japanese
koseki, but the actual address where you pay all your taxes and are registered
to vote. You can even get it in English if you want. It comes with an official
stamp and a cryptographic signature of its contents. But no, the UK bank won't
take it. They want your fucking credit card statement.

Ditto for marriage certificates, death certificates, driving and other
licenses, public education, land ownership, car and boat ownership, tax
returns... pretty much anything a person might need to prove in the course of
their lives. Lost the original? No big deal. You can get a new one whenever
you want, wherever you want. You can even get the government to prove your
employment history for you, if you're worried that your last employer might go
bust and become unable to provide references.

And I don't think this makes us any more of a surveillance state than other
countries, because the government is supposed to retain official records of
all these things anyway. It's just a matter of letting citizens export their
own information in a convenient and reliable format.

~~~
grzm
That does sound convenient. Are there safeguards in place for personal
privacy? Can anyone look up information on anyone else?

~~~
yongjik
Yes, privacy is a problem. Of course not just anybody can look up anybody
else, but the workers in the town office (who have to issue these forms) or
police officers can look up a lot of information.

(In theory, they are prohibited from looking up information unrelated to their
duty. In practice, I'm not sure how well that is enforced.)

On the other hand, as kijin said, government is going to have that information
anyway. Better put it to some use. So it's a tradeoff, and the system has
problems, but for the most part it's a reasonable tradeoff, IMHO.

(For example, all the current debate about "voter suppression" (aka voter ID
law) in the US strikes me as completely bizarre. In Korea, if you're in the
voting age you _have_ a government-issued ID. You use that ID card to vote.
End of story.)

~~~
kijin
Even if you're under the voting/driving age, any Korean citizen over 9 years
old can ask to get an ID card for opening (non-credit) bank accounts, taking
tests, getting discounts, and accessing various government services.

I live in a low-income area where lots of kids are on their own because their
parents are alcoholic, disabled, always away, etc. The underage ID card helps
them navigate the world.

It baffles my mind that anyone in the developed world in 2016 should be unable
to prove such basic things as who they are and what country they belong to. If
we're going to have pervasive surveillance, at least we should get some
benefits out of it!

~~~
Annatar
_It baffles my mind that anyone in the developed world in 2016 should be
unable to prove such basic things as who they are and what country they belong
to._

In the U.S. the problem is not proving basic things, but preventing the
government from building up a huge profile of everything about you, from what
you ate and where you've been to the size and color of your underpants. Even
that wouldn't be such a big deal if the government wasn't ultra paranoid and
just constantly spied indiscriminately on everyone, actively trying to use
that information against you, under the auspices of "protecting" you.

Bureaucracy in the U.S. is actually pretty simple and straightforward, and it
works. For example, every time I compare how easy it is to buy, insure,
register a vehicle, and renew its registration in the States, and then compare
with a certain country in central Europe, I just want to scream and tear my
hair out. In the States, it's a straightforward, practical, uncomplicated
matter: after all, owning and driving a vehicle isn't a big deal, and
shouldn't be one. The European country in question? WOE TO YOU: prepare for a
protracted ping-pong between the local police station, the central police
authority (ministry of internal affairs), the insurance company, back to the
local police authority, then the technical inspection station, then the local
police authority, and let's not forget at least two trips to a notary public.
Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention at least one trip to the tax
authorities. Payment to authorities? Not before you've been sent several times
to a local _newspaper kiosk_ , after waiting for up to _two and a half hours_
in a line, to buy special government stamps, which then only the bureaucrat is
allowed to affix and annul with a seal on the actual documents. And the entire
time they all arrogantly stare at you wide-eyed, "but sir, what are you
getting upset over?!?" Oh yeah, and your documents, like a birth certificate,
aren't allowed to be older than six months. I mean that's "completely
logical", because we all know that the place and time of one's birth is an
ever changing variable, right? And yet, my driver's license which I've had
since well into the last century isn't up for renewal until 2069... but get
this, if you're tech savvy enough and get a login and a password(!!!) in a
special governmental database (only in person at a physical teller, of
course!), _you can print some of these documents at home_ , SHA-1 check summed
with a crypto key from the ministry of internal affairs, gratis... super
consistent and fair to all citizens, huh?

In some things, U.S. is light years ahead. And when I see how easy it is to do
things like that in the U.S. I feel I'm completely justified to question why
the process cannot be as simple and as uncomplicated as it is in some other
countries. In Singapore for example, it's enough to fill out one paper and get
a company registered in up to 15 minutes; if it works there, it can work
everywhere.

~~~
kijin
The obsession with cars is part of the reason why the U.S. doesn't bother to
come up with a better way to identify its citizens. Nearly everyone has a
driver's license, so why use any other form of photo ID?

A good American just gets a license and buys a car.

~~~
Annatar
As far as I know, all states in the United States union have a photographic
identification card which is almost identical to the driver's license, except
that it is not one.

Some examples:

[http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idget.aspx](http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idget.aspx)

[http://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/idinfo/idcard](http://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/idinfo/idcard)

[https://dmv.ny.gov/id-card/sample-photo-documents](https://dmv.ny.gov/id-
card/sample-photo-documents)

the really slick thing about the States is that a driver's license doubles as
an identity card. I can show my driver's license anywhere in the 50 states and
immediately authenticate myself, but if I show any of my other driver's
licenses in the countries of their issuance, not one will accept it for
proving my identity; they all require me to show them their respective
identity cards. Such bureaucractic nonsense!

This is what I referred to in one of my earlier posts when I wrote that if it
can be less bureaucratic and streamlined somewhere else (I used Singapore as
an example then, in this case, the States), then it can work elsewhere too.
Instead, people just come up with nonsensical excuses why it _cannot_ work,
for example _that 's just the way it is here, accept it!_ Such nonsensical
arguments infuriate me.

------
jmvbxx
This is really nothing special at all. Latin American countries based on
Spanish Civil Law have the same system (registro civil). As do countries of
French origin and even the province of Quebec.

------
adrianratnapala
From reading the article, I see three aspects:

* Koseki as a data structure: It seems to be an event-log from which you can get an official certificate (extract) relfecting the current state. This is better than a systems where you work with loose records of the events themselves. Other countries should do the same thing.

* Koseki as a rigid record of official categories: Soft cultural issues are important here. Koseki happens to force people to change their name upon marriage, but makes official gender-change easy. The Japanese shrug at both aspects.

But English-speaking polities would not shrug, because they have an
expectation that legal categories reflect these personal preferences [1]. This
is a cultural thing that no data structure will fix.

* Koseki as an alternative to the courts: As long as people will get upset about the categories, and as long as people are allowed to have their legal say, these things will end up in court.

[1] For example, in the UK a "civil partnership" was a marriage-by-another-
name arrangment for gay couples (before full marriage was extended to them in
2013). This resulted in complaints from heterosexual couples who wanted to get
civil partnerships too.

~~~
Muromec
> Other countries should do the same thing.

Where other countries means "US", where everybody is paranoid and doesn't want
government to have any kind of database on people.

In Ukraine we have this level of crazy people who refuse to obtain personal
tax number citing religious beliefs (something-something chipization, devil
numbers) that for some reason are promoted by Moscow Church, but not by local
one.

~~~
henrikschroder
> and doesn't want government to have any kind of database on people.

Yet you have to register to vote, and this registration allows you to
optionally declare which political party your affiliated with.

...which is the _complete_ _opposite_ to Sweden. We have a system similar to
the Koseki in the article, but it is expressly _illegal_ for any part of
government to make a registry of people's political opinions or sexual
orientation, or a bunch of other sensitive characteristics. I even think race
is one such category.

~~~
Senji
That last part is madness. You better believe as a citizen i‘d care about the
ethnic religious and racial makeup statistics of my country.

~~~
atemerev
Why it is madness?

The color of skin is no more relevant to anything than color of hair. You can
know the percentage of, say, red-haired people in your country, but what for?
The only thing where that could be needed is to fight e.g. some Dark Ages
prejudices against red-haired people, and this is expected to be a marginal
issue, not some all-encompassing national program.

The same goes for religion. In Europe, religion is inherently private
endeavour.

~~~
devdas
The colour of skin is relevant in the case of racially motivated crimes. Not
recording this just leads to a society which pushes racism under the rug.

~~~
atemerev
There are, of course, race-motivated crimes, as well as, say, anti-Semitism.
However, if some newspaper suddenly started publishing something along the
lines of "in northern Paris, there are now more than 4.8% Jewish residents, an
increase of 0.3% compared to the last year", the Jews would be offended, and
rightfully so (perhaps not so much in the US, but definitely in Europe).

There is no need for public knowledge for racial or "country of origin"
statistics. There is no need to specifically hide or distort this information,
of course, but it is of interest only for law enforcers. Anybody else who asks
for it usually have questionable motivations.

------
antirez
Italy has the same, called "anagrafe", you need to update the registry every
time you move to another city or even if you change street, since the registry
not only tracks the relationships between individuals but the historical
movements of single persons, and is also used in order to make you pay taxes
about producing trash. Similarly when a child is born, the first thing to do
for the parents is to go to the office and register the newborn, with the
ability to recognize it, or not, for _both_ the father and mother, as your
child. That is, the mother can pretend that the child she just gave birth is
not her, legally, if she is not ready to have a family, and this is considered
by Italians a fundamental right of women, even if it is rarely used. It's a
bit annoying to deal with this registry normally but it's an useful thing.

~~~
robryk
Interesting case: Poland has an address register that is slowly being
deprecated -- it is no longer necessary to ever update it and in increasingly
fewer situations a record from that registry is required (and it would be very
unpopular if people actually had to report to the government that they've
moved).

I wonder what are trends related to such registers in other countries.

~~~
antirez
It is unlikely that it gets deprecated here. It's used for too many things.
For instance one part of the free healthcare you get is a local doctor usually
a few blocks from where you live where you can go for basic needs. This is
also assigned based on your current address.

~~~
robryk
This also used to be the case in Poland. Now you can choose the GP you go to
and change that decision IIRC twice a year. Choosing a doctor that's far away
makes no sense, so there's no or little reason to restrict that choice to
close doctors.

~~~
antirez
Makes sense indeed. GP means generic physician? Thanks.

~~~
maxerickson
General practitioner. Same difference though.

------
grzm
Interesting. This in particular stood out to me:

    
    
      [T]he koseki ... is an integral part of Japanese family
      law that doesn’t actually care about families beyond
      ensuring that the legally significant aspects of them
      are identifiable to the Rest of the World. Thus, a
      koseki extract today will show a marriage, but not
      whether the spouses are living together. The system
      also doesn’t care (i.e., show) if the registered
      father is not the biological father. It doesn’t care
      whom the kids live with after a divorce or if a
      divorced parent is paying maintenance or how often
      (or if) he sees his children.

~~~
nether
Using the code tag for blockquoting puts mobile viewers in side scrolling
hell. This is what I see:
[http://i.imgur.com/sQhfLlR.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/sQhfLlR.jpg).

~~~
grzm
Thanks for letting me know! Too late to update the original, so here's the
text again:

> [T]he koseki ... is an integral part of Japanese family law that doesn’t
> actually care about families beyond ensuring that the legally significant
> aspects of them are identifiable to the Rest of the World. Thus, a koseki
> extract today will show a marriage, but not whether the spouses are living
> together. The system also doesn’t care (i.e., show) if the registered father
> is not the biological father. It doesn’t care whom the kids live with after
> a divorce or if a divorced parent is paying maintenance or how often (or if)
> he sees his children.

~~~
mcguire
That interested me as well. Is there another system to record biological
ancestry (potentially important for medical reasons), child custody (and who
decides which gets custody in case of a conflict), and child support?

------
Aaargh20318
Seems like another article where Americans finding out how the rest of the
world doesn't use the same retarded systems as they do. What's next, an
article about this marvelous invention called 'the metric system' that is used
in Bolivia ?

~~~
_pferreir_
Exactly my thought. Every European country I've lived in works in pretty much
the same way. Of course saying it comes from Japan makes it look more
sophisticated ;)

~~~
eloisant
Actually no, the koseki system or similar can be found in other Asian
countries like South Korea but not in Europe.

In France you can get a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, and you
have a "livret de famille" that regroups all these information but that's a
document that you own, not the administration. There is no registry that
regroups all the information about a given family.

Also note that in Japan, a women getting married will be transferred from her
parents' koseki to her husband's koseki. There is no such thing in Europe.

~~~
kalleboo
European countries don't have a family-centered system like the Koseki (or
Chinese Hukou; Wikipedia says South Korea abolished their system a decade ago)
where a document represents a family.

But several of them do have a population register (which is individual-
centered, but with references up and down in the family tree). In Sweden you
don't get birth or marriage certificates. If you want to prove your birth or
marriage, you get your population registry extract which shows that you are
registered as existing (proves birth) or married.

So they're the same in that they are based on current state rather than
collecting event documents. But they're different in that one represents
families, whereas the other represents individuals.

Japan also has a separate residency register. While the koseki shows who is in
a family (birth/parents, marriage/children), the residency register shows
where you live now/before (and is used for taxation). European countries with
a population register simply use the same registry for both purposes.

------
dschuetz
There are two ways handling registration processes. One way is to develop a
registration system as little as possible, but then hoping not to deal with
the papers later, because of the mess made in the process. Or, you develop a
system thoroughly in the first place so that you don't have to deal much with
the papers later, because the system was developed to avoid mess. Why patch
fundamentally broken systems anyway? Why develop an interdependent system for
_personal_ data? There are different questions which reflect exactly the
philosophy of eastern and western bureaucracy.

------
po
_It is still impossible for couples to register a marriage without one legally
assuming the other’s surname, an antediluvian restriction that was nonetheless
found constitutional by the Supreme Court last year._

Interestingly, a workaround for this is to marry a foreigner. Japanese who
marry non-japanese citizens don't need to switch their surnames.

As a data format, koseki are interesting because they are tied up with
citizenship in a weird way. [1] The _spouse_ variable only holds values of
type _citizen_ so people who marry foreigners have their spouse listed in the
free-form _description_ section. :-)

This has some drawbacks but in the case of having different surnames it gets
you around the restriction.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koseki#Koseki_and_citizenship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koseki#Koseki_and_citizenship)

------
JackFr
The real weirdness in the US vs the rest of the world is not that you have to
get a court to issue a divorce or that there isn't a central registry, but
rather there are literally fifty separate systems, all with slight variations,
and you're not locked into a particular one. Divorces used to easier to obtain
in Nevada, so people would go there. Certain states adopted same sex marriage
before others, so you'd go there.

------
userbinator
As a developer, the word that comes to mind for an analogy is "changelog".

------
mcguire
One question: who keeps the records?

In the US, there is a certain history of suspiciously convenient courthouse
fires destroying property records. And then there are accidental fires---my
mother late in life could not attend college classes because her high school
had burned in the '50s and she had no way of providing she graduated. (I
suppose there would be ways around the issue, but she didn't want to bother
and thought it was funny.)

Anyway, seems like a good way to completely erase someone's existence.

~~~
ghaff
I'm sure it's far less true than it used to be but historically, yes, a lot of
US records existed only in paper form in some school or courthouse or town
hall where they were subject to being lost in a fire, natural disaster, or
just carelessness. Certainly it's been a plot point in many a book or movie
where someone assumes an identity chosen because records concerning a person
had been lost in some manner.

Based on stories I've head over the years, it can actually be quite
challenging to get a passport if you can't lay your hands on your birth
certificate or if that birth certificate doesn't match up with you because of
some mistake or whatever.

------
Muromec
It's pretty much same in ex-USSR countries. Even if you get divorce papers in
court, you would still need to go with them to registry office and that's
where divorce would really happen.

The downside is, that sometimes you would need to go to that exact registry
office where your marriage was registered, name changed or your child born and
it can be thousands of kilometers away from where you live now.

------
the_mitsuhiko
Austria has the same basically. The interior ministry runs a few central
registries for these things. You have a unique number hat follows you around
and your records are linked through it. It's very convenient.

Not only does it simolify tings, it also has some other advantages. For
instance becayse your car license olate is through that system linked to your
home adress that automatically updates people with Austrian licdnse placea
typically do not get clamped.

------
ctphipps
Nice as this all seems, the process for accessing the information in one's
koseki is amazingly primitive. Most times that you need to do something
official in Japan as a Japanese citizen, a copy of your koseki is required.
Open a bank account and you'll need one. Apply for a passport and you'll need
one etc. You'll not only need an original hard copy transcript of your koseki
(tōhon/short-form or shōhon/long-form), but it will need to be dated within
the last 3 months.

How do you get one? Online? No. Got to visit your city/village/ward office.
Any local city/village/ward office? No, it's got to be within the district
where your koseki is held. OK, let's take a trip back to our hometown in the
evening - surely there's a 24 hour kiosk in the lobby where I can print one
out? No. Come during business hours, fill out a paper form requesting a
transcript, take a number, wait in line to submit the request form. Go over
what you wrote in the request form with an extremely nice and polite
bureaucrat. Take another number to wait in line to pay about US$1.50 for the
hard copy. Then a final number to pick up the hard copy. Wow.

Why's this so hard? Well, although the contents of the koseki are of course
computerized, these records are held at the ward/village/city office level and
not nationally. Sure, the police, immigration authorities and others likely
have a way to access each ward office's system, but as a citizen you have to
physically trudge down to the office in the region where your koseki is held
and request a copy. Not so bad if you're living near your family (since your
koseki is typically kept at the ancestral home of your family, not necessarily
where you live day-to-day), but if you've moved across Japan or
internationally, you're screwed. Hope you have a family member you can
deputise to go get one for you or that you have a good number of frequent
flyer points to burn.

The article seems to say it's pretty straight forward from overseas at any
Japanese consulate. Well, not so much. Strangely enough, write access from
overseas is pretty easy. Read access from overseas doesn't exist.

Case in point - my wife and I recently had a baby born in the Bay Area who is
eligible for Japanese citizenship. No problems, we head to the consulate and
fill out the paperwork, provide all the birth proof documents and pay a small
fee. The consulate sends the birth details to the city/village/ward office
where our koseki is held and that ward office adds our baby to it a week or
two later. Now, we need a passport. Can we just ask the consulate to
authenticate our baby since they just added him to our koseki? Nope. We have
to fly to Japan to visit the city/ward office where our koseki is held, or
deputize a family member in Japan to do so for us, obtain a hard-copy of the
updated koseki, have it posted to us in California and we then bring it into
the consulate to prove our baby's citizenship - citizenship that they
themselves just authenticated a few weeks ago. Wow. On top of that, there's no
way of knowing when our baby has been added, so we just need to ask our family
members to go down once a week for the next few weeks, request and pay for a
copy and when our son appears, claim success.

So yes, it's a great system, but it's so very paper and physical presence
based that it hurts.

Surprisingly enough, especially for Japan, foreigners have it easier. Since
foreign residents are not on a koseki (well, they are in the case that they're
married to a Japanese citizen but only in the "comments" section of the
koseki, not the actual core of it and that's a whole 'nother story), none of
this paperwork is required when foreigners want to deal with the Japanese
bureaucracy. Instead, foreigners are required to carry a plastic ID card
(called a "Zairyu card" in its latest permutation) and this has all the
necessary information. No 3 month expiry, no ward office visit. So, there's at
least one area that non-Japanese have it easier in Japan that citizens!

~~~
nihonde
As someone who carries a Zairyu card, I can attest to the weirdness of
Japanese bureaucracies. The silver lining is that, in my experience, most
(all?) ward offices are staffed with helpful people who generally are good
about chasing down answers and maintaining a can-do attitude about
bureaucratic matters. The waits aren't usually _too_ long either. You can
definitely get caught in some Kafkaesque loops though.

------
ardacinar
There are a lot of examples here, here's one more;

In Turkey, there has been a sort of central family-record keeping thingy for
ages. It's centrally held, you don't need to go to your hometown to get one,
but you had to go to a government office in your district of residence(you
still need to, if you want an official hard-copy) (some records are, like
place of residence, are kept locally though(. There was a project to
computerize all of the process, mernis, it started in the early 90s and
finished sometime around 2007. Since then, for most official businesses, you
don't need the official document, just your ID card will do (or for
emergencies, just the ID number printed on your ID card).

The real odd thing about this system is, for non-usual stuff, you actually
need to go to court and sue the government agency for the change. Filing for a
divorce? You need to sue NVI for that. Changing your official name? Sue them.
Sex change? Not sure about that, but probably yes.

Disadvantage to that is having all the state records kept centrally, and
knowing how Turkey works, probably under very lax security. In fact, the
entire database(at least a copy of it made for the 2009 elections) got leaked
earlier this year.

------
jacques_chester
This is analogous to the Torrens system of land registration (called a "land
registry" in the article), pioneered in South Australia in the mid 1800s. It
has almost totally replaced Common Law title everywhere that the Common Law
operates.

Prior to Torrens, land ownership was under Common Law. You owned land by
buying a title or deed from the previous owner, who had bought from someone
else, and so on.

If the chain was broken, you ran the risk that some day, someone would show up
with an unbroken chain that ran back further than yours.

Naturally this created an ocean of bitter legislation, often populated by
jaunty fleets of fraudulent documents.

The Torrens system essentially says: unless it's in the government register,
no land ownership or change of ownership is valid. You can sign anything you
like, say anything you like, join pinkies and make a pinky promise. Until you
update the register, it doesn't matter.

It's a simple and effective system. Given that enforcing the law of property
is one of the fundamental purposes of governments, it makes sense that they
would simplify enforcement for themselves and their citizens.

Of course, IANAL, TINLA.

------
ghaff
I gather that it may vary by state, but in some places in the US it's
apparently not even required to register births--which can cause problems for
the children involved later on:

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/invisible-
girl/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/invisible-girl/)

------
Aloha
Does anyone have the link to the second part?

~~~
ivank
[http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/07/10/issues/japa...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/07/10/issues/japans-
discriminatory-koseki-registry-system-looks-ever-outdated/)

via the author's RSS feed [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/author/colin-pa-
jones/feed/](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/author/colin-pa-jones/feed/)

~~~
grzm
Thanks for the link!

------
PaulRobinson
Basically then, event sourced rather than OO CRUD. Not surprisingly, it makes
things easier when distributed, just like in micro-service architectures.

I like this a lot. England's Common Law system was created as a means for the
powerful to remain powerful, not because it made any sense.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _England 's Common Law system was created as a means for the powerful to
> remain powerful, not because it made any sense._

The history of the Common Law and Equity is substantially more complex than
you are making out.

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_nalply
Swiss here. We have a small red booklet called «Familienbüchlein».

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known
Koseki is the root of Burakumin
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2009/09/farewell_to...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2009/09/farewell_to_feer.cfm)

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losteverything
Stupid question.

Do Japanese believe using the courts is a cultural nono?

In the USA there are definitely two types. Those that sue and those that feel
it is sleazy or wrong.

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cm3
I haven't been to Asia (yet), but I can say that in the "Western World" courts
are overloaded with cases that should probably not go further than your local
ombudsman which in itself is a very old concept found in millenia old
civilizations, predating the court system as we know it. This is probably why
courts in the US have quick processing of a group of independent, alleged
criminal offenders. It's unfair to those accused of breaking the law as it is
to the lawyers and maybe even the judge who has to decide in two minutes
whether the accused should go to jail/prison while the case is progressing.
I'm afraid to suggest fixing the latter, because law enforcement organizations
would likely push for legislation to make it quicker and easier to put people
in real prison without a hearing or trial.

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joshuaheard
Great idea. It is similar to the system we have in the U.S. for property
records, but for people.

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Grue3
Also very useful to discriminate against undesirable strata of society. [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin)

Isn't Big Government great?

