Lifestyle

Japan's top 100 most common family names

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.

  1. Sato
  2. Suzuki
  3. Takahashi
  4. Tanaka
  5. Watanabe
  6. Ito
  7. Yamamoto
  8. Nakamura
  9. Kobayashi
  10. Kato
  11. Yoshida
  12. Yamada
  13. Sasaki
  14. Yamaguchi
  15. Saito
  16. Matsumoto
  17. Inoue
  18. Kimura
  19. Hayashi
  20. Shimizu
  21. Yamazaki
  22. Mori
  23. Abe
  24. Ikeda
  25. Hashimoto
  26. Yamashita
  27. Ishikawa
  28. Nakajima
  29. Maeda
  30. Fujita
  31. Ogawa
  32. Goto
  33. Okada
  34. Hasegawa
  35. Murakami
  36. Kondo
  37. Ishii
  38. Saito (different kanji)
  39. Sakamoto
  40. Endo
  41. Aoki
  42. Fujii
  43. Nishimura
  44. Fukuda
  45. Ota
  46. Miura
  47. Fujiwara
  48. Okamoto
  49. Matsuda
  50. Nakagawa
  51. Nakano
  52. Harada
  53. Ono
  54. Tamura
  55. Takeuchi
  56. Kaneko
  57. Wada
  58. Nakayama
  59. Ishida
  60. Ueda
  61. Morita
  62. Hara
  63. Shibata
  64. Sakai
  65. Kudo
  66. Yokoyama
  67. Miyazaki
  68. Miyamoto
  69. Uchida
  70. Takagi
  71. Ando
  72. Taniguchi
  73. Ohno
  74. Maruyama
  75. Imai
  76. Takada
  77. Fujimoto
  78. Takeda
  79. Murata
  80. Ueno
  81. Sugiyama
  82. Masuda
  83. Sugawara
  84. Hirano
  85. Kojima
  86. Otsuka
  87. Chiba
  88. Kubo
  89. Matsui
  90. Iwasaki
  91. Sakurai
  92. Kinoshita
  93. Noguchi
  94. Matsuo
  95. Nomura
  96. Kikuchi
  97. Sano
  98. Onishi
  99. Sugimoto
  100. Arai

Related links

RELATED STORIES

GET THE BEST OF THE JAPAN TIMES IN FIVE EASY PIECES WITH TAKE 5

LATEST LIFESTYLE STORIES

School children enjoy the Promenade, which displays trains from different eras at the Kyoto Railway Museum.
All aboard the Kyoto Railway Museum
For most city residents, trains and subways are an integral part of daily life, and few countries have embraced rail travel like Japan. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that one of ...
All the pretty little ponies: One can almost hear the whinnying from the herd of wild horses depicted in gold dust and colored pigment on this beautifully preserved pair of early to mid-Edo Period six-panel screens. Pleasure is to be found in the power of the overall composition when viewed from a distance, as well as in the fineness of the detail from up close. From any vantage point, the passion of the artist is palpable. The technique of sprinkling powdered gold leaf over the paint adds a three-dimensional sparkle to the dynamic movements of the horses. The screens are believed to have once belonged to a samurai family.
Artistry unfolds: Byōbu are a versatile element of interior design
Nearly all of the designs on traditional byōbu folding screens take nature as their theme. By contrast, according to Yoshihiro Takishita, the majority of Western paintings focus on the ...
Literati: In the library stands a two-panel screen that features contemplative ink-wash paintings of the sort favored by scholarly samurai.
Artistry unfolds: Glimpsing the souls of nature-loving byōbu artists
The folding screen was once an indispensable item of furniture in Japan. Screens were set up for special occasions such as weddings; unfolding a single byōbu folding screen transformed an ...