This may come as a surprise, but Japan is not in the EU. 
Also, there’s more than six million customers, so it’s not like particular individual is being identified.
2 Likes
How so? There is no personal data being revealed.
I’m not an expert, but I would expect it might depend on (a) whether the customers agreed to having their personal data processed for statistical purposes and (b) whether the statistics were processed so as to avoid making individuals identifiable (e.g. not putting any names in the list that appeared fewer than 10 times, or similar). Like I say, I don’t know if the EU would allow that, it was just a gut reaction “hmm, Japan’s data protection rules seem a bit loose”.
1 Like
Well, here’s the release in question, if you want to check it over on behalf of your EU overlords. It’s literally just the top hundred surnames (so, not going down as far as the really uncommon surnames that belong to to only a single family or something), the top five names by prefecure, and the top ten single- and triple-kanji names. (Kinda interesting that for Okinawa, and Okinawa alone, not one of the five most common names is in the top 100 for all Japan. Miyazaki has four of the five, though.)
Though I notice they’ve assumed that it’s a representative sample of the Japanese population as a whole, but I really don’t think that’s a safe assumption. Oh, the sample size is plenty big, but the selection was certainly not random.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.