Becoming Japanese

Permanent Residency can go rotten if unused. One of naturalization's benefits is that it truly is permanent, in that no matter how long you are outside of Japan, it never expires. Contrary to its name, there is nothing that is truly "permanent" about the Status of Residence ( 在留資格 { zairyū shikaku } ; SoR ) known as "PERMANENT RESIDENT" ( 永住者 { eijūsha } ; PR ) or even "SPECIAL PERMANENT RESIDENT" ( 特別永住者 { tokubetu eijūsha } ; SPR ). You do not have to promise, state, or even intend to live in Japan permanently to receive it. On the other hand, if you leave Japan for more than a year without a re-entry permit or you are outside of Japan for a long enough time that your re-entry permit expires, the PR SoR will become invalid. Thus, if a family or work emergency requires you to leave Japan for a long time (years), and it is not possible to occasionally return to Japan to renew the re-entry permit, it is possible to lose one's permanen...

A lot of news has been made recently about the United States' decision to not only massively increase the price for its renunciation (by a whopping 422%), but to also charge the same amount of money for either renouncing or relinquishing American nationality — a process that used to be free . {This graph, depending on your browsing device, may be interactive and may take some time to completely load (the United States should be last). Hover your pointer and select certain countries for more info. Green circles are the cheapest countries. Yellow circles are moderately expensive countries. Red circles are the most expensive countries. Initial $ conversion based on average 2015 dollar rates. Further interactive USD ⇒ JPY conversion is done in real time} <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <...

(image licensed from CartoonStock ) I sometimes get correspondence and communication from internet-based entrepreneurs who live in Japan, often with a Japanese spouse, who make an income from sources that have no brick-and-mortar or human presence within Japan. They are either internet-based businesses or they work for a company whose headquarters is overseas. Sometimes they describe business is described as a "start-up" or they are self-employed or a "serial entrepreneur"; they are sometimes the proprietors of their business and if they do have partners or employees, these relationships are not well-defined in terms of contracts, payroll, or legally recognized shares of a company. The fourth of the six requirements for naturalization is: 自己又は生計を jiko mata wa seikei o 一にする配偶者その他の家族の ichi ni suru haigūsha sono ta no kazoku no ​ 資産又は技能によって shisan mata wa ginō ni yotte 生計を営むことができること。 seikei o itonamu koto ga dekiru koto. which roughly translates to: Being a...

(image licensed from CartoonStock ) Every blue moon an acquaintance points me to an article about a naturalized person (or somebody related to one) in Japan who has made the news… and often not in a good way (trouble with the law, extreme / bizarre behavior, family / finance trouble, etc). The caption included with the news clipping is often something like: I'm gonna tell all my friends that if I ever mutter the word "naturalization" to smack some sense into me, because apparently that's the sign that one's mental state is about to crumble. However, I believe these people have the cause-correlation backwards. Naturalizing doesn't make somebody nuts or causes them to screw up their lives. Rather, people who are already nuts (or are a little dodgy/unethical) tend to be attracted to naturalization (and especially the corresponding losing / renouncing / relinquishing / adding-to one's previous nationality) because in their minds, they view the act of ...

(image used per cc 3.0 license; see title for attribution) "Weeaboo", for those that don't know, is a term used to describe a non-Japanese person (usually non-racially Asian) who is obsessed with all things Japanese. It is usually used pejoratively, for the young and sheltered who can't differentiate between reality and fantasy and whose knowledge of Japan is often superficial and therefore flawed. However, like the older term "otaku" (which can be applied to either Japanese or non-Japanese), recently some Japanophiles have come to "own" the word on their own terms, commodizing the term and lessening the sting of stigma associated with it. I was interviewed once on YouTube about my naturalization and asked about what motivates people to come to Japan. I joked: Those from the '50s and '60s came for their country (the military). Those from the '70s came for their god (missionaries). Those from the '80s came for the mon...

The Amendments and Endorsements page of an American passport is in the back. In a Japanese passport, it is in the front. In a previous post, our contributors documented how to add your pre-naturalized name to a Japanese passport after it has been issued . This is still possible, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has changed its policy so that if somebody changes critical information on the first page of their passport, they now issue an entirely new passport rather than note the change on this special page as our previous post illustrated. The new protocol became effective March 20th, 2014 . Changing the following things on the first page will now require the issuing of a new passport : Your Japanese family and given names, transliterated into alphabet Your alternate alphabet names in parentheses, if any Your Japanese registered domicile Your sex Your birth date Note that in some changes, changes to your Japanese Register may not necessitate needing a new passport:...

Vital Records are birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates. Graduation certificates are not Vital. In order to become a national of Japan, Japan will need to create a family unit register ( 戸籍 { koseki } ) — even if you have no known family inside or outside Japan — with information regarding: your marriage(s) and possibly divorce(s) your dependents (children, including adoptions etc) your legal spouse your date of birth your parents their full names, converted to Japanese: probably カタカナ { katakana } (Japanese syllabet) but possibly 漢字 { kanji } (sinograms) depending on their nationality records their birth certificates proving their names and existence their death certificate, if applicable their marriage and or divorce certificates, if applicable their dependents (all known children) Because the Ministry of Justice needs this very official domestic proof of Japanese nationality to be as accurate as possible, they will want to see official documentatio...

A better analogy would be the airport immigration lines for citizens versus non-citizens. Frequent readers may have looked at the countries , famous people , our authors & contributors, and the statistics and noticed that they see some (former) nationalities than others when it comes to acquiring Japanese nationality. This naturally leads to the question, "Do we see more of people from one area or country naturalizing to Japanese than another because it's easier?" The answer is: probably. However, the more general answer is that you see more of people of certain countries and locales naturalizing to Japanese due to deep connections made with that country due to geography (distance to Japan) and due to history: in Asian countries' cases, the connection to Japan during its Empire years. In the case of non-Asian cases (such as America), the connections America forged with Japan due to the Meiji Restoration and War and the post-economic revival that connect...