Gov't to permit Japanese suffix for domain names

TOKYO, Nov. 10 Kyodo - The communications ministry has begun to study the possibility of allowing the use of Kanji and other Japanese characters for Japan as a country code in Internet domain names, ministry officials said Monday.

Currently, ''.jp'' is the code assigned to Japan by the Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers which manages domain names or addresses on the
Internet.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications plans to allow the use of
Japanese characters for Japan's country code as the ICANN is considering
introducing Internet addresses in characters other than the English alphabet.
The ministry hopes to introduce the Japanese domain system in mid-2009 after
determining new codes in Japanese and selecting an entity to oversee the
registration of such domain names, the officials said.
The use of Japanese characters before ''.jp'' in domain names has been
permitted since 2001.
According to the ministry, there are some 1 million domain names that end with
''.jp'' at present. They include 140,000 names having Japanese characters, such
as company names and brand names, before the ''.jp'' suffix.