The Sōshi-kaimei has been deemed by historians as one of the many aspects of cultural genocide that the Japanese attempted to impose on their non-Japanese territories.

These ordinances, issued by Governor-General Jirō Minami, effectively reversed an earlier government order which forbade Koreans to take up Japanese names.

In 1909, the Korean Empire established a civil registration law, starting the creation of a modern family registry system.

With regard to the recording of details about women such as the father's surname, age, and connection to the registry holder, due to attention that needed to be given to avoiding conflict with Korean customs, the drafting of the law was not completed until April 1910, just before the annexation of Korea.

On the other hand, in Taiwan, which was also under Japanese rule in the same period, but did not have an analogous custom, the policy was not described as the "creation of a shi", but was simply "change of sei and na (family and given names)" (改姓名).

Additionally, at the same time, the mukoyōshi system, i.e. an adoption of a daughter's husband (婿養子制度), which up until then had been forbidden under Korean law, was also introduced.

Declaration of individually selected shi and changes of given name initially (in February 1940) were conducted on the basis of voluntary notification.

However, at the April prefectural governors' meeting, because of instructions such as "Special consideration should be taken so that the shi registration of all households can be completed by the coming July 20"[6] the administration began to seriously promote the policy, and as a result, starting from April, the number of households registering individually selected shi began to rise sharply.

Others argue that Koreans seeking to avoid discrimination by the Japanese voluntarily created Japanese-style family names.

Physicians, nurses, and other medical staff were required to obey the sōshi-kaimei edict as applicable to patients; hospitals and clinics that refused to do so were closed.