Address Guidelines for Japan

For information about Japanese addresses, see the Japan Post website: http://www.post.japanpost.jp.

A typical Japanese address looks like this:

北海道札幌市中央区大通西２８丁目３番２２号

The elements of this address are described in the following table.

Table 1. Japanese Address Elements

Address Element

Field Name

Example

Prefecture

StateProvince

北海道

City (Shi)

County

札幌市中央区

Municipality Subdivision (Oaza)

City

大通西

City District (Chome)

Locality

２８丁目

Block/lot number

AddressLine1

３番 ２２号

Block and lot numbers are the most specific address elements in Japan. Japanese addresses typically do not have street names.

For multiline addresses in Kanji, the general pattern is to enter the postal code on the first line. On the second line, enter the other address elements starting from largest (prefecture) to smallest. The name of the recipient, business, or organization is entered on the third line. For example:


100-8994
東京都中央区八重洲一丁目5番3号
東京中央郵便局

For multiline addresses using Western conventions, the order of address elements is reversed. For example:

Tokyo Central Post Office
5-3, Yaesu 1-Chome
Chuo-ku, Tokyo 100-8994

Japanese addresses can be returned in the character set in which the address was entered. This means that addresses entered in English (Latin character set) are returned in English and Japanese addresses are returned in Japanese (Kanji character set).

By convention, Kanji Japanese addresses are written with the largest administrative division first followed by the smaller area divisions, with the lot number last. English translated addresses can maintain this Japanese addressing order. However, in some business practices the English translated addresses are written with the smaller administrative units first in keeping with Westernized address conventions. Enterprise Geocoding accepts English language addresses in either addressing convention. For example, either of the following address formats are acceptable. 
Tokyo Shibuya-ku Hiroo 1-1-39
1-1-39 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo

Handling House Number Matches

In Japan given the irregular shape of street blocks and house numbers not being linear the next closest number does not necessarily mean the closest house geographically. So, instead of returning an address with the next closest house number a result without a house number is returned.

Kyoto Addresses

In the city of Kyoto, the chome (an urban ward or district, AreaName 4) is a name rather than numeric. This makes it more difficult to distinguish the chome from other numeric addreess elements. Consider the following address:

Nishikubo Keihokuakashicho Ukyo-ku Kyoto-shi Kyoto-fu 601-0273

In this address, the data for the matching address contains the address elements:

AN4 (chome): Nishikubo
AN3 (subcity): keihokuakeshichou
AN2 (city): Kyoto-shi Ukyo-ku

There are other examples in which the source data for Kyoto addreesses does not have a chome or for which a chome is present but no subcity (AreaName3) exists.

Sapporo Addresses

Addersses In the city of Sapporo have a unique format than is different than the format for other Japanese cities. Consider the following addresses:

5-26 Minami 2 Jo Nishi 6 Chome Sapporo

This address is interpreted as follows:

Minami 2 Jo -> means 2 blocks south of intersection
Nishi 6 Chome -> means 6 blocks west of intersection    
Minami 2 Jo Nishi -> these combine to form the subcity name (AN3)

The directionals used in Sapporo addresses are;

KITA – north
MINAMI – south
NISHI – west
HIGASHI – east

There are many other variations of Sapporo addresses, including variable placement of chome, reversal of chome and jo, and presence/absence and placement of block/lot. These factors can make it difficult to return Sapporo addresses with exact accuracy.

Handling Concatenated Area Names

The AreaName3 (subcity) in addresses can appear as separate words, hyphenated, or concatenated. For example:

ogi machi
ogi-machi
ogimachi

All of these variations can be recognized and the correct candidate is returned.

It is also common for addresses to be entered without spaces between the areanames. For example:

MASHIKO 2070 HAGAGUNMASHIKOMACHI TOCHIGI 3214299

This can be recognized and geocoded. The same address with a space between the AreaName3 (subcity) and AreaName2 (city) is also handled correctly:

MASHIKO 2070 HAGAGUN MASHIKOMACHI TOCHIGI 3214299