America may have around a million surnames and Finland the most in the world in proportion to its population, but with more than 100,000 family names now in use in Japan, this country puts China’s few thousand and Korea’s mere 200 firmly in the name-game shade.
Here, in descending order, are the top 100 most common Japanese family names these days — followed by a list of the five most commonly occurring ones in each of the country’s 47 prefectures.
- Sato
- Suzuki
- Takahashi
- Tanaka
- Watanabe
- Ito
- Yamamoto
- Nakamura
- Kobayashi
- Kato
- Yoshida
- Yamada
- Sasaki
- Yamaguchi
- Saito
- Matsumoto
- Inoue
- Kimura
- Hayashi
- Shimizu
- Yamazaki
- Mori
- Abe
- Ikeda
- Hashimoto
- Yamashita
- Ishikawa
- Nakajima
- Maeda
- Fujita
- Ogawa
- Goto
- Okada
- Hasegawa
- Murakami
- Kondo
- Ishii
- Saito (different kanji)
- Sakamoto
- Endo
- Aoki
- Fujii
- Nishimura
- Fukuda
- Ota
- Miura
- Fujiwara
- Okamoto
- Matsuda
- Nakagawa
- Nakano
- Harada
- Ono
- Tamura
- Takeuchi
- Kaneko
- Wada
- Nakayama
- Ishida
- Ueda
- Morita
- Hara
- Shibata
- Sakai
- Kudo
- Yokoyama
- Miyazaki
- Miyamoto
- Uchida
- Takagi
- Ando
- Taniguchi
- Ohno
- Maruyama
- Imai
- Takada
- Fujimoto
- Takeda
- Murata
- Ueno
- Sugiyama
- Masuda
- Sugawara
- Hirano
- Kojima
- Otsuka
- Chiba
- Kubo
- Matsui
- Iwasaki
- Sakurai
- Kinoshita
- Noguchi
- Matsuo
- Nomura
- Kikuchi
- Sano
- Onishi
- Sugimoto
- Arai