The Day My Husband Met FATCA at a Japanese Bank Counter
The character limit on the online application form was 14.
My husband’s full legal name — first, middle, last — has 27 characters. Maybe 26 if you skip a space.
He stared at the screen. He retyped. He tried abbreviating the middle name. He tried just first and last. The form rejected him every time, because, apparently, the registered name has to match the residence card exactly — middle name included.
He looked at me. “How does anyone with a middle name function in this country?”
I had no answer. We closed the laptop.
The short version
- Online banks: best of luck if your name has more than two parts. Most won’t fit.
- Megabank, in person: yes, more annoying. Also: the only path that actually worked for us.
- FATCA: an American thing. Adds extra paperwork. Roughly doubles the time. Your spouse may have feelings about it.
- Forms: bring a 訂正印 (correction stamp). You will use it. Several times.
Why online banks didn’t work
This is the most boring sentence in this article, and also the most important:
Japanese online bank application forms have character limits that do not account for full Western legal names.
That’s it. That’s the whole problem. There’s no malice, no anti-foreigner policy. There’s just a software engineer somewhere in 2008 who decided “氏名 max 14 characters” was fine, shipped it, and moved on with his life.
Net banks usually also need a Japanese phone number for SMS verification — easy enough — but the bigger blocker is the name field. We tried one. We got rejected before we even reached the FATCA section.
(Note: Japanese online banking is evolving fast — character limits and foreign applicant policies may have improved since our experience. Always check the latest requirements with each bank directly before giving up.)
Going in person
So we did it the old-fashioned way: walked into a megabank branch.
Two things about timing:
Don’t go right after starting a new job. They will ask for income proof, and a brand-new pay stub doesn’t always cut it. We went during my husband’s transition between jobs — the gap month. On paper that sounds bad, but it actually worked because his last pay stubs from the previous job counted as recent income.
Block out two hours. Not because the bank is slow — the staff were lovely. Because of FATCA.
FATCA: the moment we both aged
I had heard the word “FATCA” before, vaguely, the way you’ve heard the word “amortization.” You know it exists. You don’t really know what it does.
The clerk slid a small stack of forms across the counter.
“For US citizens, we need to confirm your reporting status under FATCA,” she said, in beautiful customer-service Japanese.
My husband: “FATCA? What’s FATCA?”
She explained it patiently. His expression cycled through the standard stages: confusion → recognition → resignation → focused anger directed at a fixed point somewhere over the horizon.
Eventually he muttered, in English, to me:
“Did the US government specifically design this to follow me to Japan?”
(In a way: yes. FATCA, 2010. The HIRE Act.)
He spent the next several minutes processing the fact that his own government had made his already-complicated banking life measurably worse, while a Japanese bank clerk in a perfectly pressed uniform handed him bilingual forms with both hands.
This may be the most American-immigrant experience he has ever had.
The forms
You will fill out forms. The forms are mostly in Japanese, with some English explanation tucked into footnotes. You will make a mistake.
When you make the mistake, you do not simply scratch it out. You draw two clean parallel lines through the error, then press your 訂正印 (correction stamp) next to it. If you don’t have a stamp, you use your hanko. If you don’t have a hanko, the clerk demonstrates a very specific Japanese way to sign, with a small sigh you are not supposed to notice.
My husband made roughly seven of these corrections. By the third, his ears were red. By the fifth, he had stopped trying to read the form and was just signing things while making intense eye contact with the clerk, like a man trying to escape a hostage situation through politeness alone.
What actually got the account open
Three things, in this order:
- Residence card (在留カード). Non-negotiable. Bring it.
- Proof of income. Recent pay stubs worked. If employed: 源泉徴収票 or the last 1–2 pay stubs.
- FATCA self-certification form, with the full US Social Security Number written more legibly than my husband would normally consider acceptable.
Total: roughly 2 hours 15 minutes. Some of that was waiting. Most of it was paperwork.
The moment it worked
The clerk handed us the account number and said, softly, “おめでとうございます.”
My husband looked at the paper. He looked at me. He looked at the paper again.
Then, in the voice of someone who had just summited Everest, he said:
“I have a bank account.”
We left. We ate ramen. We did not speak of FATCA for the rest of the day.
What I’d tell another international couple
- Skip the net banks if your spouse’s name doesn’t fit. Save the headache.
- Go to a megabank in person. They’re organized, professional, and they have, in fact, met Americans before.
- Block out the time. Treat it as “bank day,” not “quick errand.”
- Buy a 訂正印. A few hundred yen. You will be glad you have it.
- Do not let your spouse Google FATCA at the bank counter. The rage spiral helps no one.
P.S. We later found out FATCA is only the surface of a much deeper iceberg of US-citizen-abroad tax obligations. That story is for another post. (One I’m writing while trembling slightly.)
This is our personal experience, not financial or tax advice. Always consult a qualified professional for your situation.