Becoming Japanese

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry seal & the Fair Trade Commission Seal The nationality law for Japan says that all applications must be approved by the Minister of Justice ( 法務大臣 { hōmu daijin } ). And indeed, when you are approved, your documents are returned with an enormous seal from that Minister, serving effectively as a signature in official Japanese legal documents. In Japan and other Asian countries that use this system, the bigger the seal, the more important the person or entity is. A personal seal ( 印鑑 { inkan } ) is usually about 1cm in diameter . The seals for companies are usually square and about 3cm wide and high. The seals for important public officials, such as Ministers and members of the Cabinet are the largest. Only the Emperor's seal (seen on the last page of the Japanese Constitution) is larger. While it's neat to think that the current Minister of Justice has taken his or her time away from important legal matters affecting the future of...

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...

This little guy completely changed the notion regarding international freedom of movement In early interviews with people done many years ago , people would often ask me, "Why did you naturalize? Why not just have Permanent Residency?" People expected me to answer with things like "so I could vote" or "so I could run for office" . When I actually answered, "so I have the right to live here," they would follow-up with: "but doesn't permanent residency give you that?" I would reply, "No, Japanese permanent residency gives you permission to be in Japan. With Japanese nationality, you have the right to be in Japan." I would then talk about how that in theory, there is nothing "permanent" about "permanent" residency — it is simply an idiomatic expression meaning you no longer had to qualify or keep renewing your SoR (status of residence {as a non-Japanese}). Many ...

Naturalization, being the acquisition of Japanese nationality not from birth, has been a legal procedure in the Nationality Laws of Imperial Japan and the State of Japan. As of 2015, a total of almost 581,000 people have become legally Japanese since the fall of the shogunate and the rise of constitutional "westernized" Japan. Because being a Japanese national is defined by law (by Article 10 of both the Meiji Constitution and the modern constitution, naturalization events are recorded by law and accurate data is kept. The graph above is a visual depiction of the recorded data. Some notes: Under the Meiji Constitution's nationality law , over a period of about eighty years from 1868 to 1951, a total of only 333 people became Japanese subjects . That's an average of 4.4 people per year. Individual year statistics do not exist for the fifteen years from 1951 to 1966. During this period: 41,151 Koreans naturalized (average of 2,743/year) 4,320 Chinese naturaliz...

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 sa...

G.W. and the Constitution Convention, 1787 This year the a project called the Comparative Constitutions Project , which was seeded with grant money from Google Ideas , along with the University of Texas, the University of Chicago, and the University College London, developed a web tool called Constitute . One of the purposes of constitute.org is to help people who draft constitutions refer to and cross-reference between the articles in the constitutions of other sovereign nations. Constitute Project Logo Constitute is a interactive digital archive that allows one to not only to read almost all of the constitutions of the world (over 175 constitutions have been digitized), but to compare and dissect them regarding what rights they offer and how they define the legislature, executive, and judicial powers of government. Some, especially Americans whose Constitution is old and Japanese whose Constitution has never been amended, may think, "how many people outside ...