One Page IDP issued by Govt. Of India not acceptable in Japan

Question

I will be visiting Japan soon and am planning to rent a car in Tokyo from any rental agency. I have a concern that in my region/state(In India), a booklet format IDP is not issued by the government.

The government follows a A4 size page format for the IDP which includes details like Local driving license number, Address, goverment stamp, validity period, etc.

The "Geneva convention 1949" line is also mentioned on it.

The problem is that many agencies don't recognise this one page IDP and expect the old booklet format one only.

I would really appreciate if you can share any work around for this issue?

I contacted my regional AA/RTO too, but that didn't help any.

I have also attached a sample IDP from my region for reference. Please let me know what can I do. I really wanted to drive around in Japan as it has been a bucket list kinda item.

If you have been in a similar situation, request you to kindly share your experience.

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

In a quick look around the internet haven't seen any evidence that the booklet is an "old" format. The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, last amended 2006, states in Annex 7:

The permit shall be a booklet in format A 6 (148 x 105 mm). The cover shall be grey and the inside pages white.

Additionally, as others have said, certain information in the booklet must be in multiple languages, including at least English, Russian and Spanish. So unfortunately it seems to me like your state is not issuing valid IDPs.

Luckily, Wikipedia states "IDPs are issued by a national government directly, or through a network of AIT/FIA organizations or by any association duly empowered thereto by such other Contracting Party" (my emphasis). AIT/FIA has a website for finding such organizations and lists four in India:

• Automobile Association of Southern India
• India Automobile Association
• Automobile Association of Upper India
• Automobile Association of Eastern India

You could try contacting one of these.

Answer 2

IDP's purpose is to serve as a translation of your national license to the standardized classes, and to a language expected to be understood in the country of destination. In Japan (and many other countries), many may not understand English or be able to easily read English documents. A standard IDP booklet provided by AAA in the US, for example, has a Japanese version included (together with Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and several Latin-scripted languages).

That may be one reason your version may be refused by agencies in Japan.

Another is that your version doesn't have any driving classes marked (listed above, but not marked in any of the squares, which is where they'd expect it).

Answer 3

The internation treaty which governs the issuance of this kind of IDPs (the 1949 Geneva Convention) does not require the document to be in Japanese. Your IDP is potentially non-conforming with regard to that treaty if there's no other side to the document you showed here because the treaty requires, among other things, some write-up in each of Arabic, Chinese, English, Russian, Spanish and French, with French coming last; but even this is not required for the "inscriptions" on the page with your personal data where any Latin script based language (such as English) will do.

In my country, the application form asks me about the coutries I intend to visit. If I answer "Iceland" but don't mention Japan, I receive an IDP in booklet form in about 10 languages including Icelandic but excluding Japanese. And vice versa; the languages are tailored to the destination. The resulting IDP is equally valid in Iceland and Japan either way, just maybe not equally convenient.

For IDPs issued in Australia, the set of 9 languages is fixed and it always includes Japanese.

The AAA (in the USA) issues the IDP in a fixed set of 10 or 11 languages, and some sources list the languages specifically without mentioning Japanese. (So perhaps Japanese was added or removed at some point.) You can bet that there were many American tourists driving in Japan without any issue ever since the 1949 Geneva Convention about the issuance of IDP came into effect.

This latest example that doesn't include any Japanese on the IDP is, in your situation, somewhat comparable to your Indian form 4A which doesn't let you specify your country of destination and you get issued an IDP in languages that don't include Japanese, although keeping it English-only is admittedly stretching the established rules even further.

All you need to do is to find a car rental in Tokyo that understands written English and that's not going to be insurmountable. You want to reserve your car rental in advance anyway, so make sure you clarify this point with the specific agency before you pay anything.

Ultimately, the car rental agency is not required to check your drive permit to any specific degree. All they need to know is that their car will be safe in their customer's hands. Each car rental agency has slightly different paperwork prepared for you to confirm just that.

Remember that the IDP is always used together with your local (Indian) driver's license. The document that's eventually accepted (or rejected) as your permit to drive in Japan is the local license, and the IDP is just auxiliary.

As littleadv's answer already mentioned, the perhaps biggest screw-up by your issuer is that they marked the vehicle classes you are allowed to drive in a non-conforming manner, creating a yet another obstacle to understanding. However, if this is all that your local authority gave you, you do nothing wrong if you use the document for its intended purpose.

Drive safely and have fun.