Becoming Japanese

One motivation for naturalizing to Japanese that I hear from well-to-do foreign residents of Japan who travel a lot is the practicality of a Japanese passport over their native country's passport. In particular, businessmen and engineers who travel internationally often find a PRC passport, an Indian passport, or a Russian passport (especially given recent events in Crimea and the Ukraine and how the international communities responded by restricting visa-free travel for Russian passport holders) to be too restrictive for frequent international travel. If you tally up the number of countries (depending how you define a "country", there were anywhere from 189 to 219 "destinations" in the world in 2013), and rank passports by the total number of places one can enter without pre-arranging for a visa, the world's top five passports of 2013 rank as follows: (G7 countries are in  red on a lime background ) 173 territories Finland Sweden United Kingdo...

♪ Bad girls, bad girls Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do When they come for you ♪ Hopefully, very few people plan to get into trouble with the law, either in Japan or overseas, after they naturalize. After all, in order to naturalize in the first place, your record (even for driving offenses), including immigration record, needs to be almost flawless . Both inside Japan and outside of Japan . However, the real meaning of becoming legally Japanese isn't about speaking or acting Japanese or even living in Japan forever (it's perfectly possibly to gain Japanese nationality then live as a Japanese expat elsewhere in the world). Naturalizing and becoming Japanese is about establishing a legal permanent link between you and the sovereign state of Japan. When the Constitution of Japan says "sovereign power resides with the people" ( 『主権が国民に存すること』 { "shuken ga kokumin ni son suru koto" } ) in the preamble, by "people" — a constitutional law term ...

Japanese & American love was very taboo around WW2 March 14th is a recognized in Japan for many reasons, the top two of which are: It is "White Day" ( ホワイトデー { howaito dē } ), a day where boys & men reciprocate for the gifts they receive from women on Valentine's Day exactly one month before. White Day was invented by Japan in 1978, and now the "tradition" has spread and some men in close Asian countries (South Korea, Taiwan, China) also follow the commercially invented custom. It is much lesser known as "International Marriage Day in Japan" ( 国際結婚の日 { kokusai kekkon no hi } ), recognizing the day that Japanese nationals were permitted by law to marry non-Japanese nationals for the very first time. This law was enacted during the Meiji Era ( 明治時代 { Meiji jidai } ): 1873 When the first marriage attempt between a national and a non-national occurred, neither the "Meiji Constitution" ( 『明治憲法』 { "Meiji Kempō" } ) no...

Donald Keene was an honorary citizen of Tokyo before he naturalized and became a legal Japanese citizen Throughout the world, there are all sorts of "honorary" statuses that cities give to living (and dead) people, animals, fictional characters, and even abstract concepts: Honorary degrees (i.e. Harvard & Princeton ) Freedom of the City (also: Key to the City) Honorary citizenship (nations and municipalities) Honorary/special residency registrations (Japan) Japan and its cities and prefectures are no exception. In Japan, an "honorary citizenship" has no basis in law as it is issued by the public relations department of a particular city. Because of this, there are often no defined legal steps one has to do to earn it. Foreigners are capable of achieving and earning "honorary citizenship" and "special residency registration" as well as Japanese nationals (naturalized or natural-born); for the particular case of special residenc...