Becoming Japanese

(Most graphs in this post are redrawn to reflect absolute numbers instead of percentages) Last year, I encouraged people who were native English speakers in living in Japan, regardless of whether they were naturalized Japanese citizens or not, to participate in a short 26 question survey run by Victoria Ferauge, an American academic expat (and political advocate relating to various nationality issues) who has lived in various parts of the world including Osaka and Versailles, France. Over six hundred (615) valid participants were tabulated from June to August of 2016, and the results were published for the University of Kent on March 24th, 2017 as part of a master's dissertation. I received permission to republish the raw data and add my interpretation here. Of the questions, the first two questions: Do you live in Japan? Are you a native speaker of English? … determined whether or not the remaining 24 questions, listed below, would apply. Disclaimer : while the ...

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...

O Canada! Canada is the most recent country to pass legislation which allows it to remove its (Canadian) citizenship from people with more than one nationality. The legislation, bill C-24, passed June 11th of this year (2015), is called the "Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act". It's a broad bill, covering many portions of Canadian nationality. For example, one of the things it does is make it a little harder to become Canadian by naturalization. For example, you must now spend a total of 365 × 4 (=1,460 or four years; three with permanent resident status and be physically present in the Dominion of Canada for 183 days [about 6 months]) total days in Canada. The previous law required 365 × 3 (= 1,095 or three years; two with permanent resident status) days in Canada. Bill C-24 also made easier to give Canadian citizenship to some people who thought they were legally Canadian but discovered they weren't: such as those born out of wedlock many decades ago or th...