The whole situation is 'transitional' and therefore messed up at the moment.

I'd previously obtained a 'certificate of registered matters' from the ward office with both current and previous address on (for the purpose of changing a car registration). This is now impossible. Your current ward has the data they took from you, but all the previous data that was held at other ward offices has been shipped back to central government and local copies destroyed.

The ward offices won't trust what's written on the card itself without cross-checking it and so won't write a certificate without being able to verify with the previous ward office (which now can't do that).

So now if you want to reregister a car at a new address in a different ward, instead of preparing a seal certificate and certificate of registered matters, you need to go to your embassy to get a signature certificate. The British embassy (for example) will issue a signature certificate with your previous and current addresses. Of course, this is just done by looking at your alien registration card...

Of course, the relevant certificates from the ward office cost about 500 JPY in total; whereas the British embassy charges more like 6,000 JPY.