Abstract: Provided is an identification system which is highly effective in identifying the authenticity of an object and extremely difficult to analyze for the purpose of forgery. The object to be identified is affixed with an identification element comprising a reflective layer including a hologram, a diffraction grating or the like, which directs incident light of a prescribed wave length into a plurality of point symmetric directions, and a polarization plane rotating layer which rotates the polarization plane of the light as it passes through the polarization rotating layer. A linearly polarized light is impinged upon the identification element, and is received by a multisegment photodiode arranged in an annular fashion.