Getting a driver’s license isn’t any simple feat in Japan, so for those who’ve lastly handed all of the assessments by listening for phantom trains and answering questions on bikes and towing 2,000-kilogram masses, odds are you’re going to be overjoyed. So it’s good that Japan now legally means that you can smile on your driver’s license photograph, at the least in some elements of the nation.
In Japan, the issuing of driver’s licenses falls beneath the jurisdiction of the police division. Last fall, the National Police Agency requested native departments to assessment their driver’s license photograph rules and ease pointless restrictions. Osaka shortly determined to drop its prohibition in opposition to smiling on your photograph, and Tokyo got here to the identical resolution shortly thereafter.
Ostensibly, the no-smiling rule had been put in place in order that the license photograph would current the bearer’s facial features in a pure, undistorted approach. As a consequence, whereas Tokyo and Osaka drivers can now smile for the digicam, they’ll’t smile too large. The corners of your mouth can curve up, however it’s a must to hold your lips closed, and your eyes should stay broad open as properly.
Still, a little bit levity is now allowed, and as a reminder, Japan’s Photo-Me model of photograph cubicles, which provide driver’s license-size pictures that can be utilized in functions and renewals, are spreading the phrase with a tongue-in-cheek, smile-on-face consciousness marketing campaign starring two well-known however dour faces from Japanese historical past.
First up is Sakamoto Ryoma, nineteenth century samurai and progressive political thinker. Ryoma’s well-known portrait reveals him together with his gaze fastened far within the distance, maybe imagining a Japan not dominated by the shogunate’s feudal type of authorities, and Photo-Me’s cubicles will function a reimagining the place the man is cracking a smile.
Also a part of the marketing campaign is Oda Nobunaga, one in every of Japan’s three nice unifying samurai lords of the Sengoku interval.
▼ Incidentally, Nobunaga and Ryoma have each had their samurai swords used as inspirations for luxurious katana-style scissors.
Tokyo can be now permitting using coloured contact lenses in driver’s license pictures, though solely with colours “close to the bearer’s natural color,” which means that a lot of the nation’s inhabitants is restricted to varied shades of brown. Some areas are additionally permitting using coloured backgrounds, in cheery hues corresponding to pink or yellow, as long as your garments are of a unique shade and don’t mix into it. Exact rules fluctuate by location, although, so ensure that to double examine along with your native testing heart, simply in case they ask you to stay to smiling on the within on your photograph.
*Sources: PR Times, *Yomiuri Shimbun
Images: PR Times
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