Article

Points and "ihanten"

The word people use and the word the law uses are not the same word.

[ 画像 ]int-kiji-tensu4:3

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The word people use and the word the law uses are not the same word.

The two tickets

Blue ticket, red ticket — the colour IS the legal category

aokippu 青切符 (blue)

hansokukin 反則金

Road Traffic Act, Art. 125 onward (the traffic-violation notification system)

An administrative track. Pay the stated amount within the deadline and no prosecution follows. It is not a criminal record.

akakippu 赤切符 (red)

bakkin 罰金

Road Traffic Act, Chapter 8 (penal provisions)

A criminal track. A court sets the amount within the statutory range. There is no fixed schedule to read it off.

A word that is not there

The most-searched term for points appears nowhere in the legislation

Japanese drivers looking up the demerit-points system overwhelmingly search for 違反点数 — ihanten, literally "violation points". It is the word used by driving schools, insurers, news coverage and virtually every popular explainer.

It does not occur in the legislation. Not in the Road Traffic Act, not in the Cabinet Order made under it, not anywhere in the statutory material this site transcribed. Zero occurrences.

That is not a subtle difference in emphasis. The single term the market uses for the entire register is absent from the instruments that create it.

What the law says instead

Base points and additional points

What the Cabinet Order actually defines are 基礎点数 — base points, the value attached to a violation itself — and 付加点数, additional points, which apply on top in accident cases.

The structure is visible once you know the vocabulary. The general table prices ordinary violations in base points. A second table prices more serious conduct. A third, differently shaped table handles accident cases, with two columns because what is added depends on whether the violator was solely at fault.

Read that way, the register is coherent and quite legible. Read looking for the word ihanten, it appears not to exist at all.

A second absence

The Act does not mention points either

There is a second gap, and it is arguably sharper. The Road Traffic Act — the primary legislation, the thing anyone would naturally read first — does not contain the word for points at all. Not the popular compound; the bare word.

Everything about points lives in the Cabinet Order made under the Act. This is ordinary delegation and there is nothing irregular about it, but it has a real consequence: reading the Act from beginning to end tells you nothing whatsoever about the points system.

It also means the points system can be amended without the Act being touched. Anyone monitoring only the primary legislation for changes would be structurally unable to see it happen.

Why it matters practically

The vocabulary gap is a findability problem in both directions

If you search official sources for ihanten, the statutory text will not match. If you search the popular internet for base points, most of what is written for ordinary readers will not match either.

That leaves a reader stranded between two vocabularies, each of which is correct in its own domain, with nothing connecting them. It is a genuine obstacle to checking anything for yourself — and checking things for yourself is exactly what someone holding a notice usually wants to do.

So this site carries both. It uses the popular word because that is how people arrive, and it names the statutory words because those are the ones that will match when you go to the source. What it never does is present the popular word as though it were the statute's.

A general habit

The word people use is often not the word that applies

This is not an isolated quirk. The same pattern appears with the money: the most common way to search for the cost of a violation uses the criminal-law word, while the sum that actually applies to most everyday violations is an administrative one under a different name.

In both cases the popular term is not a sloppy version of the correct one. It is a different term that points at a different thing, and using it as though it were interchangeable leads somewhere wrong.

A site that only used statutory vocabulary would be correct and unfindable. One that only used popular vocabulary would be findable and misleading. Carrying both, and being explicit about which is which, is the only version that is neither.

What this system does not cover

What this site does not answer, and why

These are content, not gaps. Each is a bounded statement that a NAMED instrument does not contain something — never a claim that "the law is silent".

Death and injury by driving is a different Act

The Act on Punishment of Acts Causing Death or Injury by Driving was amended by the same Act that amended the Road Traffic Act (Act No. 52 of 2026), but its offences and penalties are its own. This site has not transcribed them. A case involving death or injury is outside this calculator.

自動車運転死傷行為処罰法, in force 2026-07-21