The transport ministry is planning to revise an ordinance as soon as this summer to abolish a rule requiring bus and taxi drivers to display their names inside the vehicles.

The move comes amid growing concerns over drivers becoming victims of so-called customer harassment, in which customers disclose the names of drivers online without permission or make unreasonable demands.

Many people working in other sectors of the service industry are also facing similar problems along with the growing use of social media, leading to a gradual spread of measures to change rules on name badges so as to prevent such harassment.

Kiyomi Amano, 76, president of Nagoya-based taxi company Tsubame Taxi, expressed understanding of the government’s decision. “We have a certain number of young drivers and female drivers," he explained. "By not disclosing personal information unnecessarily, I believe they can feel safe working.”

The rule requiring drivers’ names to be displayed is intended to make it easier for passengers to identify the vehicles they are riding and as part of ensuring drivers fulfill their responsibility to drive safely.

In taxis, a driver’s certificate showing a photo of their face is required to be displayed somewhere near the dashboard.

According to Amano, there have been some incidents in recent years in which customers have persistently asked drivers for discounted taxi fares or used abusive language intended to degrade a driver’s dignity.

Tsubame Taxi currently sets a card on the back of each driver’s headrest detailing the driver’s name together with a profile photo and skills they may have besides driving, such as being a certified care worker, for example.

“We have been promoting what our drivers can do to differentiate ourselves from other companies,” Amano said. “We will consider the extent of changes we should make in response to the change in (the government’s name display) format.”

According to a survey conducted in 2021 by the Japanese Council of Transport Workers’ Unions, made up of people working in the transport and tourism service industries, roughly 46% of some 20,900 respondents said they'd experienced harassment by customers including violence and online defamation within the last two years.

The ordinance is expected to be revised to change the format of the taxi driver’s certificate so that only the name of the company and the registration number will remain.

For buses, Nagoya’s transportation bureau and Nagoya-based bus company Meitetsu Bus said they were discussing whether to stop displaying drivers’ names.

Meanwhile, the health ministry last year allowed pharmacists and drug store workers, who had been required to wear name badges showing their full names, to show only their last names on the badges.

In response, a major drug store chain that operates mainly in the three prefectures of the Tokai region — Aichi, Gifu and Mie — changed the name badges for its employees to show their names only in hiragana.

A spokesperson for the company explained that the move was made to reduce the psychological burden on its employees.

Another drug store chain with stores mainly in Gifu Prefecture decided to have its pharmacists continue to wear name badges with their full names while letting other workers wear badges showing only their last names.

JR Nagoya Takashimaya department store used to print the full names of its employees on receipts given to customers but changed the system to show only the family names in 2019. The change was made “because there were rising numbers of requests from employees based on privacy considerations,” an official in charge said.

The Toyoake Municipal Government in Aichi Prefecture changed the full names on its name tags, which are worn by employees on lanyards, to show the family name and the name of the division they belong to instead.

The names are now written in hiragana using the universal design font so that they are easier to read for foreign people and the elderly. Those changes were also prompted by calls from employees.

An official who heads the municipal government’s credit management division, which is in charge of collecting delinquent taxes, sought input from staff at the division on measures to improve the workplace environment, and received responses expressing concern that name tags showing full names can lead to people identifying workers' personal information on social media. Staff in the division suggested that showing only last names should be enough.

The Toyoake government’s public relations division then conducted a survey more widely among the employees and proposed the introduction of the new name tag. As a result, all the employees’ name tags were changed.

The change did not lead to any specific problems nor complaints from citizens. The Toyoake government has been receiving inquiries from a number of municipalities outside the prefecture that are thinking about adopting similar measures.

An official overseeing the shift said the new name tag “offers an easy-to-understand display for residents while protecting the privacy of the employees, which means the change was beneficial for both.”

This section features topics and issues from the Chubu region covered by the Chunichi Shimbun. The original article was published June 25.