Reporting your Relinquishment/Renunciation/Loss of Nationality to your City Hall or Ward Office

Canadians, like Americans, renounce after
obtaining Japanese nationality

Depending on your nationality, you may have been required to Relinquish, Renounce, Abandon, or Lose — the exact legalese word that applies depends on your country and your situation — your foreign nationality after you receive your Japanese nationality. The reason why this is done before for some countries, after for others, or not at all for some countries is due to the legal procedures of your other citizenships or nationalities.

You will know whether you are required to renounce afterwards or not based on the oath to promise to renounce they give you along with additional written instructions regarding the final steps for naturalization that they give you.

Officials inspecting paperwork generally know if you need to get rid of your other nationalities by the field in the 帰化kika (naturalization) 身分事項mibun jikō (personal event) in your 戸籍koseki (family register): the 『帰化の際の国籍』"kika no sai no kokuseki" (nationality/nationalities at time of naturalization). If you renounced your nationality prior to receiving Japanese nationality like U.K. citizens, this field will read 『無国籍』"mukokuseki" ("stateless").

Not always a substitute for nationality loss.

Note that submitting to the Choice of Nationality form (国籍選択届 {kokuseki sentaku todoke}) is not the same thing as renouncing or abandoning your foreign nationalities and may not be an acceptable substitute or alternative to doing then reporting the loss of foreign nationality. Just because your city hall / ward office (市役所／区役所 {shiyakusho/kuyakusho}) allows you to do the Choice of Nationality procedure does not mean that the 法務省 {hōmushō} (Ministry of Justice) considers it to be or allows it to be a substitute. You will know which one you are supposed to do based on what your case officer tells you to do, and he/she will base that decision on your nationality and possibly individual circumstances.

They know if you were supposed to report (and have the event recorded in your family register) either a Choice of Nationality (国籍選択 {kokuseki sentaku}) or the Loss of Foreign Nationality (外国国籍喪失 {gaikoku kokuseki sōshitsu}) based on this field too.

However, similar to the Choice of Nationality Declaration, you will be given two (2) years from the time you become a Japanese adult (for naturalization, this is the same date that you are naturalized) to complete the procedures, although the Oath to Renounce says 「日本に帰化したときは、直ちに［外国］国籍を放棄・離脱します。」 which means "After naturalizing to Japanese, I will immediately abandon/renounce my [foreign] nationality."

To file your completion of loss of nationality, you do not go back to the 法務局国籍課 {hōmushō kokusekika} (Bureau of Legal Affairs Nationality Section) where you applied for your Japanese citizenship; you go to the same place where you do your updating of your new 戸籍 {koseki} (family register) — which may not be where your 本籍 {honseki} (registered domicile) is. You can also have a proxy (such as your spouse) file this paperwork on your behalf.

You or your representative will need to prepare the following paperwork:

外国官公署の発行する国籍離脱証明書（１通）

A certificate of loss/relinquishment/abandonment/renunciation of nationality issued by an authorized foreign state department (one copy)

お持ちしていただくもの国籍を喪失した旨の記載のある外国の戸籍謄本（１通）

A copy of the family register etc. from the foreign nation from which nationality was lost [if applicable] (one copy)

外国の国籍を喪失したことを証する書面（１通）

Additional documentation indicating the loss of nationality [if applicable]

外国国籍喪失届

A completed "Loss of Foreign Nationality Form" — available at your city hall / ward office (市役所／区役所 {shiyakusho/kuyakusho}) — one copy. This form is also available for download from our site's "Docs" page.

外国語によって作成されている場合は、訳文も必要

All documents that are not written in Japanese will have to have an accompanying translation

After this is done, your family register will be updated with a new entry in 身分事項 {mibun jikō} (personal events) section, probably right after the 帰化 {kika} (naturalization) event, titled 外国国籍喪失 {gaikoku kokuseki sōshitsu} (loss of foreign nationality):

This is the first page of my own two page family register filed in Ōsaka.

In the Loss of Foreign Nationality personal event section, there will be the following fields:

外国国籍喪失日 {gaikoku kokuseki sōshitsu hi}

This is the date, according to your submitted proof and certificates, that the foreign country recognized the loss of nationality as being valid.

喪失した外国籍 {sōshitsu shita gaikokuseki}

The nationality that was lost (as you can have more than one nationality listed in the 帰化身分事項 {kika mibun jikō} (nationality personal event) section.

届出日 {todokede hi}

This is the date the form / application / notification was submitted to the city hall / ward office (市役所／区役所 {shiyakusho/kuyakusho}).

送付を受けた日 {sōfu o uketa hi}

If your registered domicile (本籍 {honseki}) is different from where you filed, this is the date your actual registered domicile received the forwarded paperwork.

受理者 {jurisha}

This is the city hall / ward office (市役所／区役所 {shiyakusho/kuyakusho}) that processed your form initially.

For some nationalities such as the United States, you may find that the date of recognized relinquishment of nationality to be very surprising: it will be the same date as the date of naturalization in that you were technically never a dual national. However, from both the U.S. tax office (IRS) and the MoJ's perspective, the gap between the date you receive your certificate of Proof of Naturalized Person Identity (帰化者の身分証明書 {kikasha no mibun shōmeisho}) and your CLN is real and the backdating is not factored in.

Should You Try to Conceal and Keep Your Former Nationalities?

Full digitization of the family registers is near completion, thanks to it being expedited due to the mummies that have been receiving pensions over the past couple years. Digitization was originally started in early nineties, but put on hiatus in 1993 when the economic bubble burst. They restarted the process to complete the digitization of the family registers in Japan for at least three reasons:

1. 

   Norman Bates never committed pension fraud.

   Inspection of family registers is being made easier (via computerization) and more frequent due to the scandals regarding pension fraud; in the past, some dependents would not file the death of an elder, and continue to try to receive benefits based on the non-updated family register. Some of these fraudsters were caught when officials came to the homes of these elders to recognize their age record breaking centenarian status, only to discover they had passed away years ago and had mummified in their apartments! The public was in an uproar as to why officials weren't able to discover this sort of fraud earlier. When the officials explained that inspecting hundreds of millions of paper-based — B4 vertically printed 縦書 {tategaki} (top-down RTL script) — decentralized family registers was arduous, time consuming, and naturally prone to misses, the effort to complete the project for a nationally searchable and instantly query-able digital database was expedited within the government.

2. 

   ALL YOUR IDENTITIES ARE BELONG TO US

   In addition to cutting down on pension and other forms of fraud, the centralization and modernization of the Japan family register system is also necessary for the Japanese national ID system, which is scheduled for initial trial launch in 2015. This ID system is very similar to the 住基カード {jūki kādo} (Basic Resident Registration Card), except unlike those cards which is localized and slightly different in look & feel and functionality based on the local municipality (地方自治体 {chihō jichitai}), these cards will be administered and issued on a national basis. In order to deploy and manage these new cards, the government needs the family register data to be digital and unified.
   
   Note that like 住民票 {jūminhyō} (Resident Registration) and the 住基カード {jūki kādo} (Basic Resident Registration Card), non-Japanese will also be eligible to apply for the new national ID. Possession of the new national ID, like the 住基カード {jūki kādo} (Basic Resident Registration Card), will not be mandatory for either Japanese or non-Japanese.

3. 

   Everybody under the same system.

   The Japanese government is motivated to do the above because of the success the new Resident Card (在留カード {zairyū kādo}) for foreigners. In the past, it was easier for fraud to occur (avoiding enrolling in mandatory health insurance and pension programs) with the ARC system (外国人登録証明書 {gaikokujin tōroku shōmeisho}). Once it was nationalized and unified and merged to the 住民票 {jūminhyō} (Resident Registration), it became much easier for the government to enforce and track compliance with the law.

Additionally, recent pressure from the United States regarding FATCA to crack down on tax evasion and pressure from the United Nations to crack down on money laundering means that nation-states, especially Japan, are paying more attention to people's nationalities than ever before.

In the past, when most or all of the digital family registers were analog, an official had to shuffle partially or completely through papers that were cross referenced and spread all over the country to detect family register fraud. Once digitization is 100% complete, however, getting a report list of family registers that "don't add up" will be a simple matter of one SQL database SELECT query.

I have started to see evidence of test cases regarding the enforcement of the "give up foreign nationality" requirement appear recently. I do not know for sure if these incidents are the beginning of a trend for enforcement, an anomaly, or false alarms. I do know, however, that the advancement of technology is not on the side of those who try to loophole their way into unauthorized multiple nationalities, nor are their numbers or life situations significant enough to garner sympathy from either the government or the public regarding their desire to be exempt from proper requirements.

It is unlikely, due to the very small minority that non-compliant naturalizers are, that they will receive sympathy from either the naturally-born Japanese or the majority of the naturalized Japanese (Korean & Chinese), who have no choice but to obey the law as they come from countries where renouncing their other nationalities after naturalizing is not a possibility.

If you truly value your Right of Abode, which in my opinion, is one of the most important rights a naturalized Japanese national earns, it makes sense to fully obey the Japanese nationality law than to leave a life of semi-secrecy hoping that the current status quo regarding lax enforcement due to inadequate motivation (a lack of knowledge of the loophole by the general public and press combined with the small numbers of non-compliant combined with the lack of technology to efficiently enforce) will never change or that you'll be able to keep it due to a novel, creative interpretation of compliance.

If you only have one single (Japanese) nationality, they can't take it away from you, as the "right to a [single] nationality" is a Human Right according to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 15.