Is there a way for minors to naturalize?

The age of majority is 20, not 18, in Japan
Every once and a while I get a question from a very enthusiastic person who is really interested in all things Japanese and really wants to live in Japan. Forever.

While I can certainly appreciate their enthusiasm on one level — after all, I and others did make a lifelong commitment to living in Japan in the form of a family, a career, and a lifestyle encapsulated legally with naturalization, there's another part of me that knows that it took many years for me to pull myself up from my bootstraps and get to the point where naturalizing would not be a scary or risky thing due to financial instability.

The minimum age to naturalize is twenty (20) years old. Why twenty and not eighteen (18)? Because twenty is the age you are considered to be an "adult" in Japan. It is the age you can drive. It is the age you can smoke. It is the age you can drink. It is the age you participate in the special national public holiday, 成人の日 {seijin no hi} (Coming of Age Day).

And just because you turned twenty does not necessarily mean you are eligible. You still need to satisfy the continuous residence requirement — for regular naturalization (普通帰化 {futsū kika}) — that's five (5) straight years, and prove that you're capable of living on your own in Japan without becoming a welfare recipient — demonstrated by a combination of a not bad job, a not bad education, and not bad Japanese language skills.

There are three ways for someone who is under twenty years of age to naturalize and become legally Japanese however. Listed in order from common, to very uncommon, to never happened, they are:

  1. If your parents / legal guardians are either legally Japanese (either natural-born or naturalized) or in the process of becoming Japanese (currently applying for naturalization), you can become legally Japanese with your parents. Your qualifications for naturalization are primarily based on your parents. If your parents are succeed in naturalizing, you will be naturalized. If they don't, you won't either. This is to prevent the problematic scenario of a parent non-qualifying but their children qualifying, which would be undesirable from the point of being able to guarantee that a family can stay together. If for some reason the child should be disqualified (for example, if they have committed crimes), then the parents will not qualify for naturalization either.
  2. You are allowed to naturalize as a minor if you are married to a Japanese and you are considered to be an adult in the country you got married in. In Japan, boys can legally marry at eighteen (18) and girls can marry at sixteen (16). If you were a fourteen (14) year old teenage non-Japanese boy and you got married in the United States to a sixteen (16) year old Japanese girl (which is possible in some states with all parents' approval and the family court's approval), then moved to Japan, fulfilling the continuous residency requirement (which is five (5) years, but may be bumped down to three (3) or one (1) year if the length of marriage qualifies you for simplified naturalization (簡易帰化 {kan'i kika}), you could in theory naturalize at eighteen (18) years of age, because you are considered an adult in the U.S. where you married at eighteen.
  3. You can qualify for extraordinary naturalization (大帰化 {tai-kika})due to meritorious service to the nation. This is Article #9 of the Japanese Naturalization Law. In the history of the modern state of Japan, nobody, adult or minor, has even qualified for this. But if you do, if means you become Japanese, no matter what rules you do or do not qualify for.
Almost 100% of most minors get naturalized because their parents/legal guardians were either already Japanese or naturalized with them.

There are a few special cases applicable to minors that naturalize. For example, those under fifteen (15) do not have to write the Motivation Essay (動機書 {dōkisho}) and they can skip completing the Personal History Forms (履歴書 {rirekisho}), they do not sign the paperwork themselves, and the photo affixed to the application (帰化許可申請書 {kika kyoka shinseisho}) has their parents / legal guardians in the photograph, with the applicant in the center.

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