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...

Can You Bring Your Spouse, Family Member, Boy or Girlfriend, S.O. , Lawyer, Friend with you to all the personal interviews? The placeholder photo that serves as the avatar for the pseudonym "Ken Seeroi" aka "Ken C Roi". TL;DR : "No". I noticed a popular blog, called "The Japanese Rule of 7" , had written recently an anecdote about attempting to acquire Japanese Citizenship because it had a link to this site, which generates an automatic notification to me. I read it. And I enjoyed it. Very funny tale. However, it's important to keep this in mind while reading it: It's a fictional account. Normally, I'd leave fiction alone and not file it in the "Misinformation" page . Unfortunately, from reading the comments on the post and other entries in the blog, it's not clear that most of the blog's fans are in on the joke. In the real world, they want to interview only the actual candidate (or if it is a l...

One of the neat things I accidentally discovered when I started this site is people from all walks of life contact me regarding private questions about naturalization. Some are directed to all the contributors of our site, but some of them, due to the seriousness of the matter of changing one's nationality, contact me directly and privately. During the middle of last year, a representative for Charles Robert Jenkins contacted me via email. Mr. Jenkins, during his forty years in North Korea beginning with his drunken defection from the U.S. Army in 1965, didn't really get a chance to learn how to use email or the internet. Or even develop basic skills in computer literacy. Charles Jenkins, however, was interested in obtaining Japanese nationality, so an acquaintance of his contacted me on his behalf asking for advice regarding his situation. "I'd like to thank the ministry for giving me permanent residency so quickly. I'd also like Japanese citizen...

A Eurasian ハーフ { hāfu } (mixed race), some say she resembles Anne Hathaway ( アン・ハサウェイ { An · HASAWEI } ). Not long after it was discovered that Japan's The Democratic Party 's Renho ( 村田蓮舫 { MURATA Renhō } ), born with Taiwanese ROC nationality but later acquired Japanese nationality at the age of 18 due to the 1985 nationality law change , had failed to legally renounce her foreign nationalities, people discovered that another member of the House of Councillors, Kimi Onoda ( 小野田紀美 { ONODA Kimi } ), had failed to complete her Declaration of Choice by legally relinquishing her U.S. nationality after making her Declaration choosing Japanese nationality. Kimi Onoda was born in Chicago, Illinois, to an American father and a Japanese mother, in 1982. Her family returned to Japan, where she did all of her compulsory schooling and high school education in Setouchi City, Okayama Prefecture ( 岡山県瀬戸内市 { Okayama-ken Setouchi-shi } ) before moving to Tokyo and graduating f...

licensed from iStock Japan has a procedure called 国籍選択 { kokuseki sentaku } (Choice of Nationality). It was created with the revision of the Japanese nationality laws to address the issue of involuntary multiple nationality acquisition by Japanese — usually those who are minors that received citizenship from a new world country in the Americas such as the United States via jus soli (nationality based on where you were born, sometimes called "birthright nationality"): Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians, for example. However, it can also apply in other circumstances, such as if you acquire another nationality involuntarily (meaning, you did not directly apply for it or naturalize) — such as through marriage to a person from a country that does not separate nationality with marriage (called jus matrimonii ) or religion. It can also happen when somebody acquired citizenship after birth due to the revision in the Japan Nationality Law in 1985 that allowed people to...