Stolen Faces, Wrong Records: Tokyo Residents Speak Out on the Chaos of Duplicate Image Errors

Dozens of Tokyo residents have spent months trying to correct government records that carry someone else's photograph linked to their name — a problem that strikes at the heart of Japan's push toward digital public administration. The errors, known colloquially as duplicate image replacements, occur when a face photograph submitted to one official system is overwritten by, or swapped with, an image belonging to a different registrant. The results range from failed transit IC card renewals to rejected hospital insurance verifications.

The issue matters right now because the national government has been accelerating My Number card integration across health insurance, drivers' licences, and residency documentation throughout 2025 and into 2026. As more personal data flows between municipal and national databases, the margin for a single image-matching error to cascade through multiple official records has widened sharply. For residents who deal with public offices in high-density wards, the friction is tangible and sometimes costly.

Where the Problems Are Surfacing

Several community members reached out to The Daily Tokyo after posting on local neighbourhood boards. One resident in Nakameguro, Meguro Ward, described arriving at the ward's Civic Affairs counter on Komazawa-dori in May only to be told her My Number card photograph did not match the facial image stored in the central registry — despite the card being physically in her hand. She was directed to Shibuya City Hall's My Number support desk on Udagawacho, where staff told her the correction process required submitting a new photograph and waiting up to three weeks for confirmation from the J-LIS — the Japan Agency for Local Authority Information Systems, which manages the underlying card infrastructure. A separate resident living near Waseda University in Shinjuku Ward reported a similar mismatch discovered during a routine health insurance check at a pharmacy on Waseda-dori in June. In both cases, the residents were told verbally that such errors have become more common since the January 2026 rollout of expanded My Number health card linkage, though neither received written documentation of the cause.

Community message boards on Nextdoor Tokyo and the Shinjuku Ward public notice portal have accumulated threads on the topic since March. The Digital Agency, which oversees the national ID infrastructure, has not issued a public advisory specific to duplicate image incidents as of this writing. J-LIS has acknowledged on its official site that image data is processed through a batch synchronisation system, but has not published figures on the error rate for the current fiscal year.

What It Costs Residents in Time and Money

Getting a correction is not free of friction. Residents who need to resubmit photographs at certified booths — such as those operated by Ki-Re-i machines inside Bic Camera Yurakucho or at post offices in Ginza and Akihabara — pay between ¥700 and ¥900 per print set. Taking half a day off work to queue at a ward office, which several affected residents described doing, carries its own informal cost at a time when Tokyo's consumer prices rose 2.8 percent year-on-year as of April 2026, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's own price monitoring index. For older residents who do not own smartphones and cannot use the MynaPortal online correction pathway, the ward office visit is the only option.

Nonprofit digital literacy groups including Code for Japan, which operates civic tech projects from its base in Chiyoda Ward, have flagged the image synchronisation gap as a foreseeable risk in their public comments on government digitisation proposals dating back to 2023. The group has called for an independent audit mechanism before further credential types are merged into the My Number system.

Residents who believe their card photograph has been incorrectly replaced should bring their physical My Number card, a valid secondary photo ID such as a passport or driving licence, and a certified photograph to their nearest ward civil affairs counter. Ward offices in Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Minato have designated My Number support staff available Tuesday through Saturday. Corrections submitted before the 20th of each month are typically processed within the same calendar month, according to ward office guidance sheets reviewed by The Daily Tokyo. Anyone whose error has affected health insurance or pension records should also notify the Japan Pension Service's Tōkyō-Minami branch directly, as that database runs on a separate synchronisation schedule.