Japan last changed the format of its license plates back in 1998. These days, however, you’re likely to see a slight change to newer plates: Latin alphabetic letters. The country introduced them a few years back because it’s running close to exhausting the current number supply.
Japanese license plates have multiple components, including the name of the licensing office where it was registered and a number indicating the type of car – its use (passenger vehicle, truck, etc.), size, and other information.
Originally, the car type was a single-digit number. Japan changed that to two digits, then, in 1998, to the current location + three-digit format we see today.
Below the location and type are two more elements: a hiragana character indicating the usage category (commercial, personal, military, etc.), and a four-digit number. All of these elements combine to create a unique identifier for a single vehicle. (Plate color is also significant; e.g., green plates are reserved for licensed taxis and other regular commercial vehicles, while regular cars have a white plate. Yellow and black plates are reserved for trucks.)
However, in 1998, Japan introduced the ability to select your own four-digit license number, which appears below the location/type designation. This system has proven popular, as people use it to order “meaningful” numbers.
For example, the number 5963 can be pronounced “go ku ro san,” or ご苦労さん (go-kurou-san), “good job.” The patriotic might use 1192 – i i ku ni, いい国, “good country.” Others use it to display their birthdays or marriage dates, which…doesn’t sound like the most secure choice in the world to me. But, hey – you do you.
Unfortunately, as a result of this newfound freedom, license plate numbers are drying up. That forced Japan to introduce new randomness into the three-digit type designation by introducing a Latin letter in the third position.
Newer plates may now have one of ten Latin alphabet letters – A, C, F, H, K, L, M, P, X, or Y – in the final column. Why those letters? Japan’s Ministry of Transportation says it excluded letters that could be confused with other letters or numbers – e.g., “B” could easily be confused with “8.”
The Ministry has started dby using the letters A and C in the last position of the plate. When it runs through all ten letters in the last position, it’ll move to issuing plates with a Roman alphabet letter in the middle position and then to using letters in both positions (AA, CC, etc.).
Sadly, car owners in Japan can’t choose what letter they want. You’ll have to confine your vanity to the four numbers at the bottom.
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