How useful is a Japanese passport for visa-free travel compared to other countries?

map plus open passport with visa stamps and a stamp
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)
  1. 173 territories
    • Finland
    • Sweden
    • United Kingdom
  2. 172 territories
    • Denmark
    • Germany
    • Luxembourg
    • U.S.A.
  3. 171 territories
    • Belgium
    • Italy
    • Netherlands
  4. 170 territories
    • Canada
    • France
    • Ireland
    • Japan
    • Norway
    • Portugal
    • Spain
  5. 168 territories
    • Austria
    • New Zealand
    • Switzerland
Territories/destinations are defined above such that areas under the jurisdiction or following identical passport/visa policies of other countries are counted separately, such as Bermuda & Cayman Islands (U.K.), Andorra & Monaco (France), San Marino & Vatican City (Italy), Guam & Puerto Rico (America).

To compare, this is how the BRICS countries' passports rank in terms of number of countries where visa-free travel is possible:
  • Brazil: #19 (146 territories)
  • Russia: #41 (95 territories) *
  • India: #74 (52 territories)
  • China: #82 (44 territories)
  • South Africa: #42 (94 territories)
All of the G7 countries are in the top five for passports that give access to the most countries in the world visa-free (meaning that you don't need to apply in advance or upon arrival at the airport). The difference between the number five countries and the number one is three countries or less.

Additionally, ranking the desirability of one passport over another is hard because there are other variables besides visa-free:
  • How many countries allow not visa-free, but practically visa free entry (visa upon arrival, pre-travel internet registration)
  • How long one is allowed to stay in the country visa-free
  • Whether or not vaccinations are required
Most people are not interested in the total number of countries one can travel to, unless collecting passport stamps is a personal hobby or sport. Most people are interested in which countries a passport provides easy access to, considering that all the G7 passports provide easy visa-free access to most major developed democratic countries.

Japan's passport's advantages over other G7 countries:
  • provides visa-free travel to the People's Republic of China
  • provides visa-on-arrival travel to India (except for dual nationals and naturalized citizens)
European G7 passport's advantage over Japanese, Canadian, and United States passports:
  • provide visa-free travel to Brazil
You shouldn't bank on the eternal availability of visa-free access to a particular country as a benefit of one citizenship over another. History causes relationships and bilateral visa agreements between countries to change over time. In particular, the United States (and Australia and a few other countries) became a tad harder to enter for most countries after the enactment of mandatory internet visa application requirements. Obtaining these visas via the internet are much easier than the non-free-visa traditional process: visiting the embassy.

How modern or advanced a passport is also determines how easily one can enter a country and for how long; countries often have fewer restrictions for some countries' citizens if they have a modern e-Passport with biometric digital chips embedded in them.

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