The Himeji Municipal Government building, to whom an administrative procedures legal specialist misrepresented their intentions to order a company employee's personal data including his residence certificate and a transcript of his family register, is seen in June 2021 in Hyogo Prefecture. (Mainichi/Nao Goto)

       KOBE -- Huge amounts of personal data such as one's family register, date of birth, marital history and family information are, unbeknownst to their owners, being obtained by third parties in Japan. And while systems are in place to prevent this, they are hardly used.

       A senior police official said one case "brought to light by chance" found a total of some 3,500 residency certificates and family registers had been obtained illegitimately. The Mainichi Shimbun looked into what happened.

       "You're being investigated." It was April 2020 when a company employee in his 40s who went to speak to Hyogo Prefectural Police's Himeji Police Station learned from his ex-wife that his personal information had been sought out by someone. She told him a private investigator had been interviewing people around where she lived. Worried, the man inquired with his local city government to reportedly find that someone had obtained his personal data.

       At the time, he was in a relationship with a doctor. But her mother didn't accept their relationship, and hired a private investigator from west Japan's Kansai region to look into the man's life and surroundings. A prefectural police investigation found that a 51-year-old certified administrative procedures legal specialist in the city of Utsunomiya in east Japan's Tochigi Prefecture hired by the private investigator had about two months prior ordered a transcript of the man's family registry and other documents from the city of Himeji.

       In August this year, the prefectural police arrested the specialist twice on suspicion of contravening the Family Register Act, among other allegations. Police suspect they had lied about their aims to obtain transcripts of family registers and other documents belonging to nine people including the man, from municipal governments in the cities of Himeji, Osaka and elsewhere. The accused said they had handed the obtained family register transcripts and other documents to a private investigator who requested them. Himeji Summary Court ordered they pay a fine of 1 million yen (about $8,800).

       In a linked investigation, it emerged that over around five years, the administrative procedures legal specialist had taken jobs from 55 private investigation firms to illegally obtain a total of some 3,500 family register transcripts and other documents. Handling fees for each document came to between 20,000 and 40,000 yen (about $177 to $350), and the prefectural police believe they received total remuneration of approximately 70 million yen (some $618,000).

       For anyone other than the person named, obtaining a transcript of a family register and other official documents requires a letter of authorization. But if lawyers, legal scriveners, administrative procedures legal specialists and other professionals use a "written request in the course of duty" without carrying a letter of authorization, they do not need the named individual's agreement. In the case of administrative procedures legal specialists, they generally make use of the requests for reasons including automobile transfer of ownership and investigations into heirs in cases of inheritance, in accordance with a framework based on the Family Register Act.

       But circulating the information on to a private investigator is illegal. The Utsunomiya-based administrative procedures legal specialist created and sent to municipal governments written requests under a fabricated reason to "make a will for the succession of assets."

       The legal specialist was quoted as telling police, "I had no other work coming in, so I did it to make money." From October to November, the Mainichi Shimbun attempted to get in touch with the legal specialist in question, but their office's phone was already out of use. The Tochigi Prefectural Government is looking into issuing an administrative penalty to them.

       (Japanese original by Kenji Tatsumi and Ai Murata, Kobe Bureau)

       Font Size S M L Print Timeline 0