Becoming Japanese

One of the requirements for naturalization is a statement of intent, or 動機書 { dōkisho } (motivation essay) in Japanese. For me, this was one of the most frustrating parts of the process, simply because... there are very few rules at all. The 動機書 { dōkisho } must be written by the applicant, in his or her own handwriting, in Japanese. Other than that, the case worker probably won't give you any information as to what kind of thing they're looking for, and the only examples I was able to find on the internet (after extensive searching in Japanese) were not actual 動機書 { dōkisho } (motivation essay) that had been submitted in the past, but very general samples on lawyers' websites. I understand why this is. In writing about your reasons for coming to Japan, deciding to stay, to make it your permanent home, and finally to naturalize, I imagine that some 動機書 { dōkisho } (motivation essay) can become personal, emotional documents that people may not want to share with th...

Japanese In an earlier post's comments, there was a discussion about how airline staff often try to "guess" the nationality and language of a person based on their appearance. In other words, if you look Asian and you're on a flight going to/from Japan, you'll probably get greetings from the flight attendants in Japanese and they will attempt to give you customs forms in Japanese. If you don't look Japanese, you get another language. This continues until you correct them and you have a good enough memory to remember your nationality and preference. The first image shown is the Customs Declaration Form in Japanese. What it doesn't say is that this form is actually for Japanese citizens only. Why? If you look closely at the field underneath the phone number, you'll see that there is a field for 職業 { shokugyō } (occupation), but there is no field for 国籍 { kokuseki } (nationality). In other words, Japan is assumed. Without knowing the nationalit...

Ah, the issue of names. This is probably one of the biggest challenges for any non-native Japanese, whether a naturalized citizen, permanent resident, or a visa holder. They never, ever seem to get our names right. This does not, at least in my opinion, change with naturalization, although at least the confusion is a little different than it was before. I'd also like to hear what our male bloggers have to say about this one... because as a woman with a wedding ring I possibly get a slightly different treatment in certain respects. I can think of exactly one time when someone has given me a hard time about my last name. Most Japanese and foreign residents of Japan seem to have no problem accepting me as "Ito-san." I do believe, however, that even people who do not know me or my husband are probably assuming that I'm married to a Japanese man. The one time I was literally harassed because of my name happened in my waitressing days, when a group of middle-aged men...

After becoming a Japanese citizen I thought the use of my Japanese name would be ubiquitous. But then reality set in. Although all my government documents have my Japanese name on them and all my paychecks have my Japanese name, one of my long time employers prefers to keep my foreign name in the public sphere, syllabi etc. This is not only my situation but also the situation endured by my naturalized Chinese and Korean born colleagues. Why? To keep their foreign numbers up? I can't say exactly but it doesn't feel good.

Poor Wikipedia. It gets a bad rap for being the source of crowdsourced misinformation, yet for the most part its editorial system and the amount of experts contributing usually mean that the information is just as reliable — sometimes more reliable and thorough — than traditional encyclopedias. Unfortunately, for the  article on Japanese naturalization , this is not the case. To begin with, the first two statements in the first paragraph are inaccurate: "Naturalization in Japan requires the applicant to renounce their current citizenship(s) after the naturalization takes place." This statement is only true for a minority of cases (i.e. the United States). For most countries (the most common: Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of China), and even many western countries like the United Kingdom, you give up your previous nationalities as the last part of the application process right before you are naturalized to Japanese. "Japanese government does not ...

Bobby Ologun is the stage name for naturalized Japanese citizen, 近田ボビー { KONDA Bobī } , who was born a Nigerian national in Ibadan and acquired Japanese citizenship in 2007. Bobby's pre-Japanese name is "Alaji Karim OLOGUN". He choose his nickname given name (which became his legal Japanese given name) from the singer Bobby Brown. He speaks three languages: Japanese, Yoruba, and English — and graduated from the University of Nigeria. According to his comedy-autobiography (and should thus be taken with a slight grain of salt), he came to Japan in 1998 after hearing good things about it from his father. Coming to Japan on business to purchase tubes for automobile tires, he spent his capital on pachinko instead, and then decided to stay in Japan because Japan didn't have much in way of automobile tires that used tubes. In 1999, he met his to-be wife in a 居酒屋 { izakaya } (Japanese pub), Kyoko, and got married in Nigeria. He got his first big break in 2001 when h...

This is a case by case personal experience. But, in my personal experience, no official at an airport in Japan treats a non-racially Japanese citizen with suspicion. I travel a lot; I take international business trips about once a month (or more), so I experience international customs about twice a month. I go through international customs at Haneda, Narita, and Kansai. Sometimes, when I line up at the 自動ゲート { jidō gēto } (automated gate) and there's a queue, someone will spot me in the line and run to the booth in preparation for me. They are thinking I'm a foreigner with a re-entry permit; aliens can use the gate, but they are actually "semi-automatic" in that someone still has to remove and collect the re-entry card in their passport. Once they see me scan my passport at the Japanese-only gate and the computer opens the Japanese-only doors after recognizing the Japanese passport, though, they usually quickly leave the booth and go back to the staff area. Wh...

Some sites and people have claimed that certain types of 在留資格 { zairyū shikaku } (Status of Residence) for foreigners living in Japan do not count — such as a 留学 { ryūgaku } aka "Student" SoR — towards the continuous physical presence test of five (5), three (3), or one (1) year – depending on whether you qualified for regular naturalization ( 普通帰化 { futsū kika } ) or simplified naturalization ( 簡易帰化 { kan'i kika } ) — requirement. This is not true. All time spent legally in Japan, even on a 15/90 day visa-waivered temporary landing permit (TLP aka "tourist visa" ← a misnomer), can theoretically count towards the physical residency test. However, if the bulk of your time was spent in Japan as a student, the odds of you getting successfully approved for naturalization are slim, in my opinion. Why? You must still pass the "livelihood requirement", which says: 自己又は生計を一にする { jiko matawa seikei o ichi ni suru } 配偶者その他の家族の { haigūsha sonota ...

Much like how an English name can be pronounced different ways for identical spellings depending on the person, Japanese can have absolutely completely different ways to pronounce a particular person's proper names. For example, the not uncommon woman's name 智子 can be read as: ともこ "Tomoko" ちえこ "Chieko" さとし "Satoshi" さとこ "Satoko" さとみ "Satomi" さとね "Satone" ともし "Tomoshi" ともみ "Tomomi" ともね "Tomone" and sometimes even (though the following are rare): ちこ "Chiko" ちね "Chine" ちえね "Chiene" Or it might be something completely original and none of the above; the parents could have arbitrarily created a new way to read the name at the time of birth! How do you know the way to read it? Most people will take am educated guess at the most common reading, "Tomoko", and be right for most of the cases. Japanese dictionaries will, given a certain si...

Japan, like many other countries, has a "high skilled worker" only preference (with no quotas or caps) when it comes to the immigration of single people with no pre-existing connection to Japan. Thus, most of its visas — such as Instructor, Engineer, Specialist in Humanities, etc. — have an implicit college/university four-year (not a short-term) degree requirement. Actually, most of the working visas also don't explicitly require a degree. In lieu of a degree, they normally want evidence of industry experience. This industry experience requirement can often be as high as ten years, and they often won't count any work done, even as a full-time employee, performed as a minor. The result of this policy is that if you don't have a degree from a non-associate non-trade school institution of higher learning, getting permission to legally work in Japan is difficult. Naturalization, however, has no explicit college (or even high school) graduation requirement. Li...

In the early nineties, I was a senior in college studying for a artificial intelligence exam in the Sun workstation lab in our computer science building. The exam was at 8am. It was 2am. Taking a study break, I wandered the lobby of Davis Hall when I saw a flyer on the bulletin board by the elevator: Want to see the world before you end up working at Big Software after graduation? Does a one year paid adventure overseas exchanging culture and language interest you? At the bottom of the flyer was a phone number and address for the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. Having not made up my mind where I was going to start my software engineering career, and knowing that the AI exam would signify the conclusion of my undergraduate education, I scribbled down the information then went on IRC (a real-time internet group chat protocol that had its heydays in the nineties) and asked what the flyer was all about on the #japan channel. I was told it was part of the JET Program, and it wa...

The English online publication of the 毎日新聞 { Mainichi Shimbun } (The Mainichi) ran a small Q&A story (in its "News Navigator" Perspectives section ) about naturalization to Japanese after Donald Keene became a citizen: News Navigator: How can foreigners get Japanese Citizenship? Like most one page summaries, it simplifies details that probably won't apply to many. For example, not everybody needs to be in Japan for five continuous years; most people who have been married to a Japanese will probably only need three or perhaps as little as one continuous year thanks to 簡易帰化 { kan'i kika } (simplified naturalization). It mentions the need to be able to read and speak Japanese, but you do need to be able to write it as well — for the 動機書 { dōkisho } (Motivation Essay) — and it doesn't mention that relatively speaking, your Japanese level doesn't have to be that good for someone who lives in Japan and is planning on living there forever. The ans...

On your first or second visit to the nationality section ( 国籍課 { kokusekika } ) of your local Legal Affairs Bureau ( 法務局 { hōmukyoku } ), your case worker will probably give you a check list of the items they want to see from you. Normally, they give this to your after your second visit. For your first round of paperwork, they normally ask for a few things to establish a base line to make sure you're qualified. For example, they'll want to see your Alien Registration Card ( 外国人登録証明書 { gaikokujin tōroku shōmeisho } ) and your passport to see if you meet the minimum residency requirements. They do this because they don't want to waste their or your time having you collect all the rest of the paperwork if you don't make the baseline. On that checklist, there will be the obvious items (tax statements, birth certificates, etc.) that the case worker will put a check by. At the bottom of the list, though, there is a free form section with blanks, where the case worker ...

KJj holds an Asyrian flag in Iraq Ken Joseph, Jr. has been a naturalized Japanese for decades. While American, he was born and raised in Japan. He is a protestant minister in Japan. He occasionally contributes a column to the Japan Times called "Lifelines" in addition to have written columns in other Japanese papers. He has appeared live as a commenter on Japanese television and overseas television such as BBC, CNN and Fox News. Additionally, he has lobbied with the Japanese Diet. He is a visiting professor at Chiba University. A minister, he followed in the footsteps of his missionary evangelist father, Ken Joseph Sr. , who came to Gen. MacArthur’s Japan after its defeat in World War Ⅱ to try to establish Christianity in Japan . Ken Joseph Jr.’s similar goal to his father is to establish a separate Assyrian-Christian state or sub-province within Iraq or some other form of independence , and encourage settlement of Christians in Mesopotamia to restore their homeland l...

No, you don't. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most people do not use a lawyer either. Unlike many processes related to visas in Japan, there is very little that a 司法書士 { shihōshoshi } (judicial scrivener) can do for a naturalization candidate because they are not allowed to represent the person in proxy at any of the interviews or presentation of the paperwork. The case officer wants to interactively talk to the candidate, to assess their Japanese skills among other due diligence. Additionally, it's probably unlikely the judicial scrivener will be able to help you with the hardest task: collecting all the paperwork, as most of the paperwork will be personal and private and will require your direct permission, identification, and/or communication with overseas family members that only the applicant would have familiarity with. Now, they may be able to help you complete the forms, but to be honest, the paperwork is not a U.S. 1040 tax form; most of the paperwork is sim...

It's not because they can't Be Japanese. It's because they don't want to be. You may come across an article or two on the internet that draws conclusions from the Korean and Chinese population who were born in Japan, speak nothing but Japanese, have lived in Japan all their life, and may have never visited China or Korea, yet they do not have Japanese nationality. These articles sometimes mistakenly conclude that this is evidence that the naturalization procedure in Japan is either extraordinarily difficult, non-existent, or is prejudiced against certain races or nationalities. The real explanation has nothing to do with naturalization difficulty but rather choice; for a combination of historical reasons, cultural identity reasons, and political reasons, the class of Korean and Chinese (there are other nationalities as well, but the CK demographic is greater than 90%) who have the unique SoR ( 在留資格 { zairyū shikaku } ) of " S pecial P ermanent R esident ( ...

Yes, my name really is now "Inoue". Until very recently, I’ve had an unusual family name that very few people could spell or pronounce. I’m quite used to English speakers misspelling my name when I tell it to them, and mispronouncing my name when they see it written on a business card. It’s very frustrating, but I understand why they make mistakes. Like some names written in kanji, the irregular and custom rules for names means that without being told how a name is spelled or pronounced, it is often impossible for even a native English speaker to accurately pronounce or write a name without being told in advance. The reason there are no rules for all but the common names (like “Michael Smith”) is because America is a land of immigrants where many of the names came from non-English languages and sometimes even non-Latin alphabets. When they immigrate to America, they must adapt their foreign name, changing letters and sounds that don’t exist in English to English forms. Of...