Becoming Japanese

Statelessness is the condition where a person has no legal nationality associated with them. The Japanese Constitution, Article 22 , specifically grants Japanese nationals the right to lose Japanese nationality by choice: Freedom of all persons to move to a foreign country and to divest themselves of their nationality shall be inviolate. Despite this, however, it is currently impossible for a Japanese national to simply give up their only  nationality and become a person with no nationality. This is because Japan is a signatory to the 1961 UN Convention to reduce statelessness . The Japanese Constitution was written before this, and Article 98 of the Constitution says that Japan must obey the UN Conventions and treaties that it signs: The treaties concluded by Japan and established laws of nations shall be faithfully observed. Thus, the only way to lose Japanese nationality is if you already have another nationality to fall back on. What if it's discovered that one's naturaliza...

The system for how Japanese banks reports Americans Unfortunately, the answer to this is "sometimes." And this includes Japanese financial institutions, even though it's not Japan's fault: their hands are tied by international financial agreements. For the case of Japanese and other countries financial institutions treating naturalized citizens differently, we can blame America. People who have opened a bank or other financial account that can hold money recently (within the last half decade) in Japan may have noticed an odd question: "Do you possess U.S. citizenship or possess U.S. LPR (Lawful Permanent Resident) status?" You might ask yourself: why does Japan (or any other country)'s banks need to ask this? Japan is a sovereign nation. Its banks are subject to Japanese Law  and private and not any other countries' business, no? Well, technically yes. Practically, no. The reason is because almost every major financial institution in the world needs ...

The "No Entry" road sign in Japan is also the same in much of Europe. Legally in Japan, there is no difference in the rights between Japanese nationals who were born with the nationality (often called "natural born citizens" in American terminology) and those who changed from one nationality to another voluntarily via a qualifying process (usually referred to as "a naturalized citizen" or national). Some countries may small differentiations between natural born and naturalized citizens. For example, the United States requires U.S. Presidents to be natural born. Some countries make it easier to lose or forfeit their nationality if the nationality was acquired via naturalization (ex. Mexico). But in Japan, a naturalized person is legally capable of becoming, for example, the Prime Minister. Just like somebody who has only had Japanese nationality their entire life. A naturalized Japanese citizen "commoner" woman could even theoretically become a me...

One of the requirements for naturalizing is to show you have a reasonable chance of supporting yourself financially until the end of your days without ending up in poverty or on welfare in Japan. Being wealthy or even well off is by no means a requirement. Being stable and predictable and consistent, however, may be. Also, you do not need to be self-made or self-sufficient; you may include assets and revenue from your family and household if you can show they are a consistent and reliable source for your livelihood. To prove this, you will be required to complete a two part form known as the 生計の概要 { seikei no gaiyō } (Livelihood Overview) . The form is divided into seven sections: income expenses main debt real estate savings stocks & bonds valuable property One of the requirements for assessing livelihood in Japan is that you have a relatively  stable source of resources that is evaluated or translates to  Japanese yen . Obviously, no cryptocurrencies are denominated in...

...the Bureau of Legal Affairs is, too TL;DR: yes and no, sometimes in surprising ways.  So since I have finished the document-gathering and initial submission phase of my application, I thought I would write about how the current pandemic is affecting the process. Note that I am writing from the perspective of someone doing the process in mid-2021 . As such, my experience will definitely be different from someone doing the same in 2020, when lockdowns were stricter.  Part 1: In terms of time and money Making appointments with the Legal Affairs Bureau: Yes First, for scheduling consultations: yes, but not directly. At the time I was having consultations with my local Legal Affairs Bureau, which was April-July 2021, the average waiting time (which I mean to be the earliest future date when an appointment slot is available) was 1 month. When I went for my third consultation , I asked the case worker if the pandemic affected how busy the Legal Affairs Bureau was with naturaliz...

An (emotional) approximation of how much documents I gathered Hello everyone. This is the part 3 of my naturalization story. Part 1 and Part 2 linked. At this point, I have prepared all the documents I possibly could. There are no more documents I can prepare in advance. So we are going straight to the third and last consultation. Don't worry, I will explain the asterisk (*) in the title later. Also, I will try a different writing style this time, with mini-chapter markers throughout the text. Third Consultation One rainy afternoon in July, I made my way to the Legal Affairs Bureau. By now I am familiar with the commute. I went to the reception desk, filled up the consultation form, and went to the waiting room. This time, a different but similarly middle aged man, called me in to the consultation room. I pulled out my file folder and gave him the complete set of documents. He checked them one by one, also taking note of the remarks written on the A3-sized requirements list re...

Actually, a passport is not proof of nationality. A Japanese family registry is, however. This question was actually posted in the Reddit group "Residents in Japan" , and I answered it there, but unfortunately the moderators removed the good question (in my opinion) due to their strict rule of requiring its participants to actually reside in Japan. Thus, I will re-post my answer here: The worst case "penalty" for not properly getting rid your original nationality or re-acquiring or re-instating your old one or getting new ones is that they can unilaterally annul ("cancel") your Japanese citizenship on the grounds that you did not properly complete all the mandatory required steps to obtain it as prescribed by the nationality law . This procedure is called "administrative denaturalization": the loss of citizenship by an annulment of naturalization without the government needing to sue them in a court, also known as "adminis...

The official poster for the film What makes a Japanese person Japanese? Is it the blood that runs through their veins? A parent they were born to? The country they grew up in? Is it how they look? How they act? How they speak? Their citizenship? A few years ago I was interviewed at my home by a professional videographer who publishes popular streaming videos to the YouTube site, "Life Where I'm From". Apparently, this topic was of great interest to Greg Lam … not necessarily just because of me or the fact that he lived in Japan, but more likely also because like me, his immediate family has many people who are legally, culturally, and/or genetically Japanese in one or more ways. He has produced and directed a full length feature film (almost 2 hours) which explores the many facets of "Being Japanese": not just the "legal" aspect (which is what this site focuses...

A+! Hello again! This is the second part of my documentation of the naturalization process. If you haven't already, please read part 1 here . In the previous post, I talked about the first consultation and the homework I got from the case worker. This time, I will talk about the other preparations I did before going to the second consultation, and the second consultation itself. Thanks to the wealth of information on this blog, I already had a pretty good idea of what other documents I will need. Since there are templates for them here and elsewhere on the internet, I decided to prepare a few of them in advance. Documents I prepared in advance 親族の概要 shinzoku no gaiyō , family outline (inside and outside Japan) 履歴書 rirekisho , Personal History (parts 1 and 2) 帰化の動機書 kika no dōkisho , motivation essay for naturalization 生計の概要 seikei no gaiyō , Living Expenses Outline (parts 1 and 2) 略図 ryakuzu （ 自宅 jitaku 、 勤務先 kinmusaki ）, map of vicinity of home and employment Note: document n...

Hello everyone! In a previous blog post , I talked about my motivation for obtaining Japanese citizenship. This time, I will go into detail regarding the steps I took to apply. All of the conversations and phone calls were conducted in Japanese. In order to give this story more context, you should know a bit more about me. I am a natural-born Filipino citizen in my late 20s, single, living in Aichi Prefecture. Thus, all of the requirements, documents required will be from the point of view of a person with the above qualities.  On to the main story: In the beginning of April 2021, I looked for the 法務局 hōmukyoku (Legal Affairs Bureau) that has jurisdiction over my place of residence and that has a 国籍課 kokusekika (citizenship section), which was the Nagoya Legal Affairs Bureau . I called the number on the website, navigated through the voice prompts, and got connected to a person on the other end. I told them that I would like to apply for citizenship. They asked me: Where I live...