I’m writing a brief paper on spirit possession in Japan, focusing particularly on women.
I understand that in Japan, the last name comes before the first. However, in scholarly writing/articles, sometimes the names are reversed for the benefit Western audiences, i.e. when someone translates an article written by a Japanese scholar. So it can get a little bit confusing.
I want to be sure I cite their names properly (last name before first, so like Smith, John), but honestly I am not an expert in Japanese (far from it), and so I can’t really tell the difference between a first and last name… I’ll look up each name individually, but they both come up as surnames. As well, when I look up the authors, there’s not much info about which is which. It’s sort of embarrassing, but I figured I’d ask here for help.
Here are the names I’m working with… maybe someone will know?
1. Kokan Sasaki
2. Takefusa Sasamori
3. Kunimitsu Kawamura
Thanks for the help.
4 comments
All three of those names are First name – Last name order.
I guess you just learn to recognise them after a while. Characters like Kawa, Mura, and Mori are commonly used in last names.
Mori, Mura, Kawa/Gawa, Fuji, Kuchi/Guchi, Hara/Bara/Wara, Moto, I, Da, Zono, Matsu, Hashi/Bashi, etc.
Commonly appear in last names. They can be suffixes or prefixes. You can deduce the order in which names have been written based on the above reference.
Of course, this list is not exhaustive. For any names you cannot recognize, just google one of the two names and you will learn whether it is the first or last name.
EDIT: Sasaki and Suzuki are some of the most common last names in Japan.
Here is a [list of common Japanese Last Names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_Japanese_surnames).
Neither Sasamori or Kawamura were there, but mori and mura terminations were common.
None of the first names came up, so I agree it’s First Name Last Name order.
Names are regulated, see [here for more info](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#Regulations). Something to add would be the[Jinmeiyō kanji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinmeiy%C5%8D_kanji)(name kanji) and [Jōyō kanji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji)(common used kanji) can be used for names. If we had the kanji of those names, we could look them up there.
Academic research format follows American/British order. Therefore if the name is written in Roman letters it will be first-last.