Between FY2001 and FY2021, 5,806 people passed Japan's National Unified Examination for Sign Language Interpreters. Here they are, set out prefecture by prefecture.
4th Kyoto 264 / 5th Hiroshima 262
Not Tokyo — Hyogo.
And Hyogo only started using the unified exam in FY2007, so it has held it in 15 of the 21 years. Per year of operation that is 22.6 passes, also the highest figure in the country.
There is a second twist. Measured per 100,000 residents, the ranking almost completely inverts.
Kochi comes first; Tokyo is second from the bottom.
(Kochi)
(Gifu)
→ Jump to the full table / → Jump to the per-capita chart
This is a companion to An 8.31% Pass Rate — the Lowest in 25 Years. That article covers the national figures; this one goes prefecture by prefecture. Both come from the same source: the annual reports of Japan's national sign language training centre.
A note for readers outside Japan. The unified exam is written centrally but administered locally — by a deaf-related organisation in each of the 47 prefectures, plus separately in five government-designated cities. Passing it makes you a 手話通訳者 (shuwa tsūyakusha), registered as a working interpreter with your prefecture — called a prefecturally registered interpreter throughout this article. That is a different credential from the Ministry-recognised national certification exam (手話通訳技能認定試験), whose holders are 手話通訳士 (shuwa tsūyakushi) and are called nationally certified interpreters here. The two Japanese words differ by a single character — 者 (sha, “person who does”) and 士 (shi, “licensed professional”) — and this article keeps them apart in English.
Where the data comes from
Because each prefecture and designated city administers the exam itself, people assume there is no prefecture-level dataset. There is: the appendices to the training centre's annual report.
• “Passes by region” — passes by prefecture and designated city from 2001 onward, with cumulative totals. The FY2021 report carries the most recent version, covering all 21 years from 2001 to 2021.
• “Administration summary” — applicants, no-shows, candidates and passes per body for that year. I took three years, from the FY2019, FY2020 and FY2021 reports. Those are the only three years for which a prefecture-level pass rate can be calculated.
• The PDFs published from FY2022 onward carry no appendices, so FY2021 is the last year of prefecture-level data.
For all 21 years the prefecture columns sum to the published national pass count, and each body's annual figures sum to its published cumulative total. The three administration summaries also sum to the published national candidate counts (1,881, 1,348 and 1,444).
The full table: 51 bodies, 21 years
Sorted by cumulative passes. Government-designated cities are separate administering bodies from their prefectures, and are indented here.
| Administering body | Cumulative passes | First year | Years held | Per year | 2019–21 sat | 2019–21 passed | 3-yr rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyogo | 339 | 2007 | 15 | 22.6 | 305 | 57 | 18.69% |
| Aichi | 289 | 2002 | 20 | 14.4 | 212 | 31 | 14.62% |
| Tokyo | 267 | 2005 | 16 | 16.7 | 279 | 77 | 27.60% |
| Kyoto | 264 | 2001 | 21 | 12.6 | 178 | 32 | 17.98% |
| Hiroshima | 262 | 2002 | 20 | 13.1 | 204 | 50 | 24.51% |
| Chiba | 227 | 2007 | 15 | 15.1 | 131 | 34 | 25.95% |
| Shizuoka | 226 | 2001 | 20 | 11.3 | 123 | 30 | 24.39% |
| Hokkaido | 225 | 2006 | 16 | 14.1 | 194 | 41 | 21.13% |
| Saitama | 217 | 2009 | 13 | 16.7 | 298 | 77 | 25.84% |
| Kanagawa | 200 | 2004 | 18 | 11.1 | 109 | 28 | 25.69% |
| Yokohama City | 198 | 2004 | 18 | 11.0 | 80 | 12 | 15.00% |
| Fukuoka City | 141 | 2001 | 21 | 6.7 | 41 | 9 | 21.95% |
| Fukuoka | 140 | 2004 | 18 | 7.8 | 93 | 13 | 13.98% |
| Nara | 138 | 2002 | 20 | 6.9 | 50 | 14 | 28.00% |
| Nagasaki | 131 | 2002 | 20 | 6.5 | 113 | 11 | 9.73% |
| Miyazaki | 119 | 2001 | 21 | 5.7 | 85 | 19 | 22.35% |
| Ehime | 110 | 2001 | 21 | 5.2 | 78 | 10 | 12.82% |
| Okayama | 109 | 2003 | 19 | 5.7 | 98 | 15 | 15.31% |
| Shiga | 105 | 2002 | 20 | 5.2 | 83 | 13 | 15.66% |
| Kagoshima | 104 | 2002 | 20 | 5.2 | 144 | 7 | 4.86% |
| Okinawa | 100 | 2007 | 15 | 6.7 | 127 | 17 | 13.39% |
| Yamaguchi | 97 | 2001 | 21 | 4.6 | 55 | 14 | 25.45% |
| Mie | 86 | 2003 | 19 | 4.5 | 79 | 16 | 20.25% |
| Niigata | 83 | 2010 | 12 | 6.9 | 102 | 29 | 28.43% |
| Ibaraki | 82 | 2006 | 16 | 5.1 | 40 | 8 | 20.00% |
| Iwate | 81 | 2001 | 21 | 3.9 | 23 | 9 | 39.13% |
| Miyagi | 81 | 2002 | 20 | 4.0 | 68 | 20 | 29.41% |
| Kochi | 81 | 2004 | 17 | 4.8 | 57 | 14 | 24.56% |
| Fukushima | 79 | 2009 | 13 | 6.1 | 124 | 25 | 20.16% |
| Kawasaki City | 78 | 2004 | 18 | 4.3 | 26 | 6 | 23.08% |
| Shimane | 78 | 2001 | 19 | 4.1 | 37 | 8 | 21.62% |
| Nagano | 75 | 2005 | 17 | 4.4 | 41 | 10 | 24.39% |
| Sapporo City | 74 | 2004 | 18 | 4.1 | 74 | 15 | 20.27% |
| Aomori | 72 | 2002 | 20 | 3.6 | 81 | 15 | 18.52% |
| Tochigi | 72 | 2007 | 15 | 4.8 | 53 | 22 | 41.51% |
| Fukui | 68 | 2002 | 20 | 3.4 | 64 | 12 | 18.75% |
| Gunma | 66 | 2003 | 19 | 3.5 | 99 | 9 | 9.09% |
| Kagawa | 56 | 2002 | 20 | 2.8 | 43 | 6 | 13.95% |
| Oita | 56 | 2002 | 20 | 2.8 | 35 | 13 | 37.14% |
| Toyama | 55 | 2001 | 21 | 2.6 | 28 | 8 | 28.57% |
| Tokushima | 55 | 2003 | 19 | 2.9 | 50 | 6 | 12.00% |
| Saga | 54 | 2003 | 19 | 2.8 | 35 | 13 | 37.14% |
| Yamagata | 52 | 2002 | 20 | 2.6 | 39 | 7 | 17.95% |
| Wakayama | 52 | 2007 | 15 | 3.5 | 43 | 11 | 25.58% |
| Ishikawa | 50 | 2010 | 12 | 4.2 | 47 | 11 | 23.40% |
| Kumamoto | 49 | 2001 | 21 | 2.3 | 28 | 5 | 17.86% |
| Tottori | 47 | 2007 | 15 | 3.1 | 37 | 9 | 24.32% |
| Akita | 41 | 2002 | 20 | 2.0 | 46 | 8 | 17.39% |
| Yamanashi | 35 | 2005 | 17 | 2.1 | 20 | 4 | 20.00% |
| Gifu | 34 | 2012 | 10 | 3.4 | 136 | 18 | 13.24% |
| Sakai City | 6 | 2020 | 2 | 3.0 | 38 | 6 | 15.79% |
| Osaka (did not use the unified exam) | 0 | — | 0 | — | — | — | — |
| National total | 5,806 | 2001 | 21 | — | 4,673 | 954 | 20.42% |
“First year” is the year that body began using the unified exam. The three-year rate is FY2019–FY2021 combined. Tokyo and Shizuoka cover two years (they cancelled FY2020), as does Sakai City (it joined in FY2020).
By cumulative passes
Hyogo 339, Aichi 289, Tokyo 267, Kyoto 264, Hiroshima 262.
Three of the top five are in western Japan.
Of the 5,806 passes nationwide, the top 13 bodies account for half (2,995). New interpreters are not appearing evenly across the country.
Yokohama City's 198 would place it high among the prefectures on its own. Because the designated cities are counted separately, Kanagawa's figure of 200 does not represent the prefecture as a whole.
They did not all start at the same time
One precondition: the bodies adopted the unified exam in very different years.
Only ten have run it since the beginning in FY2001. Here is when all 51 bodies joined.
| Joined in | Bodies | Administering bodies |
|---|---|---|
| FY2001 | 10 | Iwate, Toyama, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Shimane, Yamaguchi, Ehime, Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Fukuoka City |
| FY2002 | 13 | Aomori, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukui, Aichi, Shiga, Nara, Hiroshima, Kagawa, Nagasaki, Oita, Kagoshima |
| FY2003 | 5 | Gunma, Mie, Okayama, Tokushima, Saga |
| FY2004 | 6 | Kanagawa, Kochi, Fukuoka, Sapporo City, Kawasaki City, Yokohama City |
| FY2005 | 3 | Tokyo, Yamanashi, Nagano |
| FY2006 | 2 | Hokkaido, Ibaraki |
| FY2007 | 6 | Tochigi, Chiba, Hyogo, Wakayama, Tottori, Okinawa |
| FY2009 | 2 | Fukushima, Saitama |
| FY2010 | 2 | Niigata, Ishikawa |
| FY2012 | 1 | Gifu |
| FY2020 | 1 | Sakai City |
Tokyo came in on year five, Hyogo on year seven. The six that joined from FY2009 onward — Saitama, Fukushima, Niigata, Ishikawa, Gifu and Sakai City — are being read over a window nearly a decade shorter than everyone else’s.
Normalised per year of operation, the order changes:
| Administering body | Passes per year | Cumulative | Years held |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hyogo | 22.6 | 339 | 15 |
| Saitama | 16.7 | 217 | 13 |
| Tokyo | 16.7 | 267 | 16 |
| Chiba | 15.1 | 227 | 15 |
| Aichi | 14.5 | 289 | 20 |
| Hokkaido | 14.1 | 225 | 16 |
Saitama produced 217 passes in 13 years — a late start, yet second nationally per year. Kyoto, which has run the exam all 21 years, has 264 at 12.6 a year. Some bodies have accumulated steadily; others have produced numbers quickly.
Per 100,000 residents, the order flips
How many people pass depends on how many people live there. So here the totals are divided by population, with the designated cities folded back into their prefectures (Sapporo into Hokkaido; Kawasaki and Yokohama into Kanagawa; Fukuoka City into Fukuoka). Population is from the 2020 census.
Kochi leads at 11.71, followed by Shimane 11.62, Miyazaki 11.13, Nara 10.42 and Kyoto 10.24.
Almost none of the names from the cumulative top five. The national average is 4.60.
Hyogo, first on the raw count, sits at 6.20; Aichi at 3.83; Tokyo at 1.90. Dense urban prefectures land low once you divide by population.
This is not evidence that cities fail to train interpreters. A large denominator pushes the ratio down — and, as the next section shows, Tokyo has depth in a different credential entirely. The per-capita figure is better read as showing how much weight a single new interpreter carries in a small prefecture.
Pass rates for the last three years
Prefecture-level pass rates can only be calculated for FY2019, FY2020 and FY2021, the three years with a published administration summary. Single years swing wildly where only a dozen people sit the exam, so I combined all three.
Across the 46 bodies with at least 30 candidates in those three years, the range runs from 4.86% to 41.51%. Tochigi is highest (53 candidates, 22 passes, 41.51%); Kagoshima is lowest (144 candidates, 7 passes, 4.86%).
That spread cannot yet be read as a difference in local competence. Kagoshima had 144 candidates over the three years — the seventh-largest field in the country. A wide field includes many people fresh out of a training course, which pushes the rate down. A body that puts forward fewer, more experienced candidates posts a higher rate. Pass rate and candidate count have to be read together.
The largest three-year fields were Hyogo 305, Saitama 298, Tokyo 279, Aichi 212, Hiroshima 204 and Hokkaido 194. The table above shows candidates and rate side by side for every body.
Years when nobody passed
Something that stands out in 21 years of rows: cells with zero passes. The exam was held, and not one new interpreter qualified there that year.
| Administering body | Years with zero passes | Years held | Which years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yamagata | 5 | 20 | 2007, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 |
| Akita | 4 | 20 | 2002, 2012, 2015, 2016 |
| Toyama | 3 | 21 | 2002, 2014, 2015 |
| Ehime | 3 | 21 | 2004, 2012, 2014 |
| Kagawa | 3 | 20 | 2007, 2009, 2019 |
| Kochi | 3 | 17 | 2007, 2015, 2018 |
| Saga | 2 | 19 | 2007, 2013 |
| Oita | 2 | 20 | 2004, 2007 |
| Yamaguchi | 2 | 21 | 2009, 2013 |
| Yamanashi | 2 | 17 | 2013, 2016 |
Yamagata had five such years out of 20; Akita four out of 20. Most are bodies whose candidate numbers are in the low teens. At a pass rate around 15%, ten candidates producing zero passes is an ordinary statistical outcome.
What it means on the ground is less ordinary. No new prefecturally registered interpreter that year means the existing interpreters carry the same load into the next one — including the load of guaranteeing access to information in an emergency.
Overlaid on the certified-interpreter map
Alongside the unified exam, Japan has the Ministry-recognised national certification examination for sign language interpreters (手話通訳技能認定試験). Those who pass it enter a register, and the number of registrants in each prefecture is published — 4,259 nationwide as of 30 January 2026. (The most recent national figure published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is 4,375, as of March 2026; the prefecture-level breakdown is only available in the 30 January dataset, so the calculations here use that one.) I have written about that exam separately.
Plotting unified-exam passes per 100,000 on the horizontal axis against nationally certified interpreters per 100,000 on the vertical gives this:
The chart scrolls sideways on a narrow screen. “View larger” opens it full-size.
Both per 100,000 residents. Osaka excluded; dashed lines are national averages.
How to read this chart (no statistics needed)
Each dot is one prefecture. The further right, the more unified-exam passes it has produced for its population. The further up, the more nationally certified interpreters live there for its population. The two gold dashed lines are the national averages, and they cut the chart into four quarters.
If “more unified-exam passes” went with “more certified interpreters”, the dots would line up from bottom-left to top-right. They do not. How close a cloud of dots comes to a straight line is summed up by a single number, the correlation: 1 is a perfect line, 0 is no relationship at all. Here it is 0.11 — effectively no relationship.
| Quarter | Meaning | Count | Prefectures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top right | Above average on both | 8 | Nara, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Tottori, Ehime, Hyogo, Wakayama, Kanagawa |
| Bottom right | Unified exam only | 22 | Kochi, Shimane, Miyazaki, Nagasaki, Fukui and others |
| Top left | Certified interpreters only | 5 | Tokyo, Saitama, Gunma, Akita, Ishikawa |
| Bottom left | Below average on both | 11 | Aichi, Chiba, Miyagi, Niigata, Gifu and others |
The largest group by far is the 22 in the bottom right: more unified-exam passes per head than average, fewer nationally certified interpreters than average. Most of rural Japan sits there. The top left, by contrast, is Tokyo and its neighbours. The unified exam runs deep outside the big cities; the certification runs deep inside them. That, in one line, is what this chart shows.
The places where unified-exam passes have accumulated and the places where certified interpreters are registered are two different maps.
Tokyo is the extreme case. It holds 949 nationally certified interpreters — 22.3% of the national total, against an 11.1% share of the population — and leads the country at 6.76 per 100,000. Yet its cumulative unified-exam figure is 1.90 per 100,000, second from the bottom. It sits alone in the upper left.
In the lower right are Kochi, Shimane and Miyazaki: among the highest in the country for unified-exam passes per capita, below average for nationally certified interpreters.
The two axes are not the same unit. The unified-exam figure is a 21-year cumulative flow of qualifications; the registration figure is a current stock of people by residence. People move, and some pass the unified exam and later take the certification exam. Treat this as evidence that the two credentials are distributed differently, not as a strict comparison.
Even so, the pattern is worth sitting with. The certification exam is held at four sites only: Saitama, Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka. Whether you can travel to sit it may be showing up directly on the map.
How to read these numbers
Designated cities are counted separately
Sapporo, Kawasaki, Yokohama, Sakai and Fukuoka City are administering bodies in their own right. So “Kanagawa 200” excludes Kawasaki's 78 and Yokohama's 198; the prefecture as a whole is 476 across three bodies. The per-capita calculation folds them back in.
Osaka did not use the unified exam
Osaka Prefecture long ran its own registration exam instead. The only Osaka figure in the table is Sakai City's six passes since FY2020. Read this as “qualified interpreters through a different system”, not “few interpreters”. Osaka is excluded from the per-capita comparison.
In FY2025 the exam was held by 52 bodies covering every prefecture — but the prefecture-level breakdown for that year has not been published.
Cumulative totals depend on years of operation
Cumulative totals alone cannot compare bodies whose start dates differ by more than a decade. Read the per-year column alongside.
Small candidate counts make rates swing
Some bodies had fewer than 30 candidates across three years. A pass rate pulled out of that on its own misleads, which is why candidate counts sit next to it in the table.
FY2021 is the last year of prefecture data
Annual reports published from FY2022 onward have no appendices. National figures are still published every year; the most recent are in the companion article.
What interpreters are actually paid
Passing this exam lets you register as an interpreter with your prefecture, and each assignment carries a fee set by the local government. The same two-hour assignment pays differently depending on where you are. I have mapped the real per-municipality amounts, sourced from each government's own regulations.
See the interpreter fee map →Sources
- National sign language training centre (全国手話研修センター), FY2021 Annual Report, appendices 2 and 2-2
FY2021 annual report (PDF, Japanese) - Same, FY2020 Annual Report, appendix 4-1
FY2020 annual report (PDF, Japanese) - Same, FY2019 Annual Report, appendix 4-1
FY2019 annual report (PDF, Japanese) - Centre disclosure page
https://www.com-sagano.com/center/ - Jyoubun Center (聴力障害者情報文化センター), 36th national certification examination: applicants, passes and registrants by prefecture of residence
Examination results data - Statistics Bureau of Japan, 2020 Population Census, Summary of Results, Table I-2-1 (population by prefecture)
Summary of results (PDF, Japanese)
Note: the FY2019 administration summary is a scanned PDF, so the table was read visually and transcribed. The transcribed totals match the published figures (2,014 applicants, 133 no-shows, 1,881 candidates, 377 passes). If you spot an error, please get in touch.
If you are sitting it where you live
As this article shows, you take the unified exam through the body that covers where you live, and candidate numbers and pass rates differ by region. The written paper, however, is the same nationwide — and because its scope is published, it is the part where preparation shows most clearly.
Shunsoku Master: Sign-Language Interpreter Exam (on Google Play)
A study app focused on the written exam (basic knowledge and Japanese language). I spent 12 years teaching at a special-needs school for the Deaf, and wrote the practice questions to follow the scope the exam publishes.
717 multiple-choice questions (361 on terminology, 356 on Japanese), a 532-term glossary, 55 study stages and 10 full mock papers. You can narrow practice to a single field and re-drill only what you got wrong.
Free access covers term stages 1–3, Japanese stages 1–3, set 1 of every field, mock exam 1, and the full 532-term glossary. A premium plan unlocks all stages and sets, all 10 mock exams, and random practice, and removes the ads. The questions are not past papers — they are written to match the published scope. The app is in Japanese only.
Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google LLC.
Conclusion
Over 21 years, Hyogo leads with 339 passes, with Tokyo third. Per 100,000 residents, though, Kochi leads at 11.71 and the order almost entirely inverts.
Laid over the map of nationally certified interpreters, the two barely correlate at all.
Two credentials for the same work, growing in different places.
This is one reading, not the reading. How the designated cities are counted, when each body joined, how large its candidate pool is, and the fact that a prefecture like Osaka certified interpreters through an entirely different system — there is local history behind every number.
If you know the story behind the figures where you live, I would be glad to hear it through the contact form, and I will fold it into the article.