This paper discusses the collision between government guidelines on "kanji" use in public documents and Japanese naming practice that places significance on written forms. The tension between the state's need to control the legibility of its texts through allowable "kanji" character lists collides with people's rights and desires to name their own children. Using popular baby names and controversial court cases, the paper also analyses the political and ideological nature of the conflict over Japanese names and script. It also reviews the development of the character list for personal names, including the radical expansion of the list in 2004. (Contains 1 table, 3 figures and 11 notes.)