I've been pushing ahead with the provisional Japanese names; I've knocked off all the low-hanging fruit so I'm down to 152 names, but now they're taking a bit longer for each name. One common pattern is that there are transcription errors from the awful scans of the 1941 directory; when that looks likely, I have to go back to the original images and cross-check between the person and street indexes to sort it out. At the current rate, it'll take me about three weeks to get through them. In the absence of any decision about the Jisho site, I've used it in the following way:

• If the site lists a particular name as a surname or forename, it provides kanji for it;
• I check that each of the kanji used in the name appears in O'Neill, in a similar type of name, in a similar position;
• If so, I add it to the list of known Japanese forenames or surnames.

This seems pretty rigorous to me.

Meanwhile, we still have the issue of provisional other-east-asian assignments. I don't remember having any involvement in the decisions on how to deal with those; we don't really have a rigorous protocol for them as we do for the Japanese names, but:

• there are only 73 of them;
• a handful are Japanese or likely Japanese (I've dealt with a couple already);
• some are obviously European;
• most are unambiguously east Asian, in my inexpert view.

Waiting for JSR's response on whether I should go ahead with these.