Ben Bullock wrote:
> "Martin Beutler" <martin.beutler@ulmslabo.de> wrote in message
> > Here in Tokyo I have seen first names in Hiragana of men,
> > which are on posters of candidates for election  but those
> > are not their real names.
>
> Not just first names. Our representative in Ibaraki is にわ ゆうや. But they
> are the real names, just written in hiragana. I'm not sure what the kanjis
> for "Niwa Yuuya" are, I think it is 丹羽 perhaps? I don't know the kanjis
> for "Yuuya" at all.

But, isn't the reason for that because when you vote you have to write
in the candidate's full name, so if there's difficult kanji (mind you,
I've even seen simple kanji spelt out), to avoid spoilt papers or
whatever they use the hiragana name. It's pretty common to see surnames
that are one easy kanji plus hiragana for the hard one.

BTW, I think I heard that they are allowing people voting for
堀江社長 to write ホリエモン too, or is he in fact adopting
ホリエモン as his nom de guerre?

A second BTW, does Japan allow spoiler candidate names? In the UK
sometimes you'd get "Literal Democrats" or "Tory Bliar"s standing just
to confuse the voters.

Ken