Becoming Japanese

Some people seem to believe that you receive a passport upon naturalizing as your proof of citizenship. You don't. The proof of your citizenship that you possess lies in both the } 帰化者の身分証明書 { kikasha no shōmeisho (proof of identity of naturalized citizen), which you receive from the } 法務局 { hōmukyoku ) (Bureau of Legal Affairs) after being informed that you've received permission to naturalize. You use that document at your local } 区役所 { kuyakusho (ward office) or } 市役所 { shiyakusho (city hall) as a breeder document to create your } 住民票 { jūminhyō (Japanese local resident registration), delete your } 外国人登録 { gaikokujin tōroku (alien registration) records, and create your } 戸籍 { koseki (family register), which is stored at your } 本籍 { honseki (registered domicile) and you can request authenticated copies of or make changes from, even remotely, from your } 区役所 { kuyakusho (ward office) or } 市役所 { shiyakusho (city hall). Once all of this Japanese paperwor...

The 官報 { kampō } ( Official Gazette ) is an official government newsletter which is published by the National Printing Bureau. It has been in existence in various forms since 1883. As all citizens have a right to read the Official Gazette to know what their government is doing, the Japanese government put the Gazette online starting in 1999. The electronic versions of the Official Gazette is at the following address: kanpou.npb.go.jp . The government publishes all decisions and actions relating to the Japanese Constitution, Imperial edicts, laws, cabinet orders, treaties, ministerial ordinances, and notices in it. Naturalized citizens aren't the only individuals that get singled out in the Gazette; any person, foreign or not, that does business with the government in an official capacity gets mentioned. Also, Japanese who die overseas while travelling are also mentioned (!). So are people who renounce their Japanese nationality. Naturalization permission is given from a v...

Note: the forms that family registers are printed have been digitized. You may have seen the old style forms, which are on large B4 (257mm × 364mm) pieces of paper , have hard borders and boxes for things like 母 (mother) and 父 (father), and are printed vertically, top-down right-to-left. Japan has been modernizing and computerizing them so the new ones are printed on standard A4 paper which has copy-protection technology in it, horizontally left-to-right top-to-bottom, and have no fixed boxes with the exception of being two columns: the left for the type of information and the right for the contents. We will be talking about the new forms, because frankly, that's all I know: my family register never existed during the "old form" era. As of 2011, over 70% of the family registers in Japan have been digitized. Furthermore, we will be talking about the 全部事項証明 { zenbu jikō shōmei } (unabridged version) of the family register that you can request. Finally, as there a...

The online magazine Slate published an article (which actually originally appeared in the Financial Times ) on Donald Keene and why he became Japanese last week. Most of the article reads more like a French restaurant review than an interview (I do want to try that restaurant though. It sounds delicious!), but one small excerpt caught my attention: Immigration officials required documentation proving his parents were married, something he is still struggling to locate. Then they needed proof that he was American. A US passport did not suffice. Finally, they requested evidence that Keene, the most famous foreign scholar in Japan, had graduated. “I said, ‘Well, I have various honorary doctorates, including from very important Japanese universities.’ ‘Oh, that doesn’t count,’ they said, ‘because honorary doctorates are given to people even without education.’” Keene confesses to being irritated. I have to wonder how accurate this is, as graduating is preferred, but not technica...