On: Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names

[gumby]

That's not used in literature or journalism, but in most other cases (forms, etc) it is pretty standard.

[fmajid → gumby]

I can confirm. Also, in many cases, French names are last name first, e.g. in the military, but there is a comma to separate, e.g. "Lacombe, Lucien"

[madcaptenor → fmajid]

The "Last, First" convention exists in English as well. To me it reads as something you'd see in the index of a book, since indices are usually ordered by last name but they'll want to show the first names as well.