Becoming Japanese

You will submit a lot of paperwork for your naturalization application. At the top of the application, however, will be a simple one page form that serves as the "header" document for all the "support" forms and documents detailing your finances, your entrances and exits to Japan, your family, etc. This form is called 帰化許可申請書 { kika kyoka shinseisho } (Naturalization Permission Application Form). It's called "Permission Application" ( 許可申請 { kyoka shinsei } ) because an successful approval of this form does not actually create your 戸籍 { koseki } (family register). An application that is approved by the Ministry of Justice ( 法務省 { hōmushō } ) creates and gives you the "breeder document" called the 帰化者の身分証明書 { kikasha no mibunshōmeisho } (Proof of Naturalized Person Identity Document). You use this form exactly once: you take it to the 戸籍課 { kosekika } (family register section) of your local 区役所／市役所 { kuyakusho/shiyakusho } (Wa...

Some people mistakenly believe that the only way to get Japanese nationality at birth is from a racially/ethnically Japanese parent, but this is not true. There are many ways to acquire Japanese nationality other than naturalization, but the most common method is by birth to a parent who already has Japanese nationality . For example, if one or both * of a Caucasian/Black/Latino couple naturalize to Japanese, their future racially non-Japanese child will be Japanese at birth, automatically. Even if the child is not born in Japan (" jus soli "; right of the soil). * naturalizing to Japan as an entire family unit is not unusual and there is a procedure for it. It's not uncommon, in fact, for children born in the United States to receive Japanese nationality due to one of the parents possessing Japanese nationality. In most of these cases, one of those parents is ethnically/racially Japanese — the child's racial makeup is often described as ハーフ { hāfu } (multi-r...

I'm going to take a little bit of a different tack for this next post that belongs in the "Misinfo" section. The article itself really isn't about obtaining Japanese citizenship or naturalizing to Japanese, but about Japanese immigration as a whole. As "naturalization to Japan" is a form of immigration, though, I figured tallking about it is appropriate. On CNN's blog, Indian-American CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria does a comparison between the three countries immigration systems to contrast them with the United States: Japan, the European Union, and Canada . His opinions on both the EU and Japan are mixed, while he gives high praise to Canada's system. While there's nothing wrong with that, I did take exception to the particular examples he used to make his point with Japan. To begin with, let's take a look at the very first sentence of his section entitled "Japan: A Cautionary Tale": Japan has one of the strictest immigration...

TL;DR answer: they're completely fine with what it means legally and symbolically. While all of my immediate family are U.S. citizens, my father was actually born in England and naturalized to U.S. citizenship. He has been living in North America — both Canada and the United States — since he was a child so he has no British accent. He did not keep his U.K. nationality, as the laws and politics regarding nationality were very different back in the early 20th century. So you could say I came from a family who is no stranger to the concept of changing continents and nationalities. What they're not fine with? The fact that I (and these days, more importantly, their grandchild) are physically on the other side of the planet. They'd be perfectly fine with me taking Japanese citizenship then living in the U.S. under permanent residency. Or they'd be fine if I lived in sovereign nation of Japan as long as Japan was an island nation off the coast of the Commonwealth of Vir...

Dr. Bill Totten ( ビル・トッテン { Biru·TOTTEN } ) is a naturalized Japanese citizen originally born (1941) in California and educated at USC. He became a Japanese national in September of 2006, at the age of 65. After school, he starting worked at North American Rockwell as a systems developer in 1963, which was a contractor for the NASA space program Apollo — earning his Ph.D in economics while working there. He first came to Japan in 1969, connected to IBM mainframe software. In 1972, he founded the Japanese independent software B2B distribution company K.K. Ashisuto ( 株式会社アシスト { kabushikigaisha Ashisuto } ; "Assist, Inc.") which has over 800 employees and has been running for more than 30 years. While usually seen in a business suit and bow tie, he says he rather go to work in a kimono (his employees complained, so he stopped). In interviews, he has called himself a Japanese nationalist — yet he doesn't belong to any political party — and like public institutions in Ja...

Everybody that has a U.S. passport, regardless of whether they have other passports or other nationalities, must use their U.S. passport to enter the United States. Of course, when an American changes citizenship, they can still enter the United States — albeit with a visa and a foreign passport. However, some people that travel a lot to the U.S. for business have asked if it's possible to travel to the U.S. after you've turned in your U.S. passport for processing and are awaiting a CLN (certificate of loss of nationality) but before before you've received your cancelled passport back from the U.S. State Department. After all, aren't you in a legal limbo, where you're still technically an American but you no longer have a U.S. passport (i.e. it's in the possession of the State Department in Washington, D.C. for processing)? The answer is yes, you can travel to the U.S. during this time. What happens is after your final appointment at the U.S. Consulate/Em...

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. The application contains a two part form, titled 生計の概要 { seikei no gaiyō } (livelihood overview), which is in our Documents and Forms page : Part 1 of the form is used to summarize your personal income and your financial obligations Part 2 of the form is used to detail your real estate assets, your bank holdings, your stocks and bonds, and extremely valuable assets such as jewelry There is another completely separate form for detailing any business(es)...