Personal seal

One of the first things we owned in Japan:
a family seal.

Did you know that we rarely sign things in Japan? In fact I usually have to practise my signature a couple of times when returning to Australia because I'm quite rusty. Part of the reason I don't use my signature much here is that I pay cash for pretty much everything on a day-to-day basis. I almost never pull out a card to pay for something unless I'm buying it online. The other reason is that signatures are a relatively new phenomenon in Japan. Most often official things are "signed" using a personal seal.

It says: Marshall (literally maasharu)

Last week our eldest son had to open a Japanese bank account for taxation purposes. He needed a personal seal to open the account. At first we thought that he needed his own, but it turns out that it was okay for him to use our family seal or inkan. It actually turns out that he probably didn't need a seal at all, a friend told me her Australian husband has never had one and he's employed in a firm here in Tokyo. He does it all, as he would in Australia, with a signature.

Come to think of it, now, when we take delivery of postal items, they usually ask for a signature, not a stamp. Ha, there's always things to learn when you're living in another country. It feels like you're forever playing catch-up.

We were pondering this "seal" culture when I was with my language exchange friends last week. It turns out that Japan isn't the only country that still uses them. To me it seems to be a throw-back to ancient times when important people sealed things with wax, but China, Taiwan, Korea, and Vietnam also still use seals to one degree or another (see here).

Anyway, I'd asked one of my language exchange friends about having an inkan made for our son as she owns a stationary store and customers can order inkans through them. She brought a catalogue to show us that you can see here. I had no idea there were so many choices, nor that most people own more than one. There are choices in size, style, and even the material they're made from (from cheap resin and box tree to expensive ivory). 

In the close-up picture below you can see differences in size and style (not sure why the abbreviation for millimetre is rendered m/m). The one on the right is for formal documents for something like a company and there is no up or down (which is important in the ones on the left).

There is a more informative article about this topic here.