Viral cat photo ID guide is a meme, not a Japanese pet license requirement
An image featuring portraits of a cat with different facial expressions has been circulating widely in recent months. It is often shared as an official Japanese government guide for photos required on a “pet license.”
For example, a Chinese-language Threads post with over 81,000 likes and 4,800 reposts claims that the Japanese Ministry of the Environment requires pet owners to submit a photo for a pet license. The post said photos showing a cat with its eyes closed, yawning, or sticking out its tongue would not be accepted.
Similar posts using the same image circulated on Instagram and X. Some users suggested that their local governments should introduce a similar policy, while others questioned the validity of the claim.
Styletc, a Taiwanese media outlet that covers internet trends and entertainment, presented the cat-photo examples as an actual Japanese government policy in its article.
The claim is false, however. And the image was created by AI tools. Annie Lab found no evidence that the Japanese government requires pet owners to provide a passport-style photograph for registration.
Under Japan’s Act on Welfare and Management of Animals, businesses that sell dogs and cats must have the animals microchipped and registered before sale.
People who purchase or acquire a microchipped dog or cat should complete the required ownership-transfer registration.
The Ministry of the Environment, which operates the microchip registration database, does not require photographs.
The ministry issues a certificate that includes information such as the microchip number, registration date, species, breed, coat color, and date of birth. The 15-digit microchip ID can be used to identify the pet owner’s information.
(Note: The pet microchip registration website is not accessible with IP addresses outside of Japan; Annie Lab linked to an archived version of the site on Wayback Machine as a reference.)
The cat image
The viral image originated from an Instagram post on July 24 by the Japanese account @kurumarerunogasuki, which documents the daily life of a kitten named Kurumi (くるみ) (archived here). Kurumi’s coat color and pattern resemble those in the purported ID photo instruction.
The original Instagram post did not mention Japanese regulations or pet ID-photo requirements. The post’s description reads “I tried that thing that’s trending” in Japanese.
Annie Lab used OpenAI’s content verification tool and found that the image contains signals associated with content generated by OpenAI tools.
The Japanese post refers to a trend in which pet owners create collages showing their animals with different facial expressions (archived here).
Following its popularity, some brands such as Duolingo also posted an image showing their animal mascots in this fashion on their Japanese Instagram (archived here).
These images typically separate photos into two categories equivalent to “meets the requirements” and “does not meet the requirements.”
The first category features a serious, forward-facing photo resembling a passport ID image. The other category includes playful expressions, such as yawning or sticking out the tongue.
Local cat cards
A local cat-identification initiative by five distinct local municipalities of Amami Oshima island (奄美大島) in Kagoshima prefecture (鹿児島県) may have contributed to confusion over the claim.
The Maninchi (archived here) reported that in April 2023, local authorities on the island of Amami-Oshima began issuing photo-bearing cat cards.
The program covers five sparsely populated municipalities on the island: the city of Amami, the towns of Setouchi and Tatsugo, and the villages of Yamato and Uken.
Meanwhile, in Kanagawa prefecture (神奈川県), digital photo pet ID cards were once issued in 2020 to promote the microchip program, but those ID cards were for social media sharing and not part of official documentation.
