Becoming Japanese

A regular job is good / best, but not always necessary As this site is in English, I often get questions from people whose native language is English and they have worked and lived in Japan for quite some time. Of that subset of people, three types of employment come up most often: English teachers Software programmers Japanese to English translators Of these professions, it's not uncommon for them to be contractor work, freelance, or self-employed — rather than working as a regular employee ( 正社員 { seishain } ) at a Japanese company. I'm often asked by people "how much money do I have to make to qualify for naturalization?" While Japan's MoJ ( 法務省 { hōmushō } ) doesn't reveal their exact criteria, I have spoken to case officers and inquired about other successful applicants, and the general answer is: you don't have to make much . The generic answer is: if your take-home income, minus your liabilities (debts, expenses for food a...

I was reading the English Wikipedia entry for the Japanese Nationality Law under the section of Naturalization (which apparently was originally written by a young student as part of an assignment) and came across an interesting bit: For many years naturalized citizens were required to adopt a Japanese family name¹. The Ministry of Justice determined in July 1983 that naturalizing citizens were no longer required to adopt Japanese names. As of that time most naturalizing citizens were Koreans². A well-known example of someone who did not adopt a Japanese name is Masayoshi Son, the wealthiest man in Japan as of 2007, who naturalized using his Korean family name rather than the Japanese family name he used during his youth³. I was curious as to where it got this information, so I looked at the sources. There were three, all English: The Boston Globe: " In Japan, Koreans still feel sting of discrimination " by Charles A. Radin (July 29, 1994) Hoover Press: " Japan D...

The Japanese Constitution begins "We, the Japanese people," The Japanese Constitution uses the word "people" a lot in the official English translation where the official Japanese version says 国民 { kokumin } (Japanese national). I've heard conspiracy theories on the Internet that claimed that this was Japan's sneaky way of changing the Constitution from the unaware Occupying Forces who had a significant hand in designing and writing the Constitution by basing it on various Constitutions and legal documents of the world. (When Japan made its first Meiji Constitution, it also evaluated existing overseas supreme laws to craft its own first Constitution) To make things more confusing, the Japanese language version of the Constitution occasionally translates "people" or "all people" more closely to 何人 { nanbito } (everyone). Generally speaking, the high courts of Japan consider the Japanese language version of the Japanese Constitut...

There are no quotas or limits on Japanese naturalization. In fact, there are no limits or quotas for permanent residency or other types of visas (including refugee and asylum seekers) in Japan. There are many misunderstandings about Japan's immigration rules and polices. Superficially, people look at the small legal foreigner population — approximately 2% of the population of Japan if you include the legally non-Japanese but born and raised in Japan that are colloquially referred to as the 在日 { Zainichi } (literally, "residing in Japan", but with the nuance of Koreans born and raised in Japan). There are many reasons for the small foreigner population in Japan, but a restriction on the number of people they let immigrate is not one of them. It's also not true that the immigration process is difficult compared to other countries with respect to the procedures. The procedures and requirements for naturalization are very similar to many European countries such ...

You do not have to have a "kanji name" when you become Japanese. In fact, I know many naturalized people that opted to not choose kanji for their official legal Japanese name. You don't even have to have a name that "sounds Japanese" . I also know many people who chose a Japanese kanji name, but continue to use a katakana form of an English name for their "professional" life in Japan (and often they continue to use their English name outside of Japan). However, you can't have a legal Japanese name that is written in: Latin letters (ex. the English alphabet *) Even initials are forbidden ( JR Sakuragi 's given name is not literally "JR" even though it's pronounced that way, and C.W. Nichol 's ( Ｃ・Ｗニコル { Shī·Daburu NIKORU } ) legal given name is not "CW". The alphabet is allowed, of course, on Japanese passports, and there is considerable flexibility with respect to how you can write it, "Englishnization...

There is a lot of erroneous and false information on the internet, in English, about Japanese naturalization. So much of it is false that we actually have a section of this site dedicated to collecting false articles and pointing out their errors . Sometimes, the webmasters of these sites, when doing SEO tuning, discover the articles on this site that point to and embarrass them by disclosing their site's lack of accuracy. For example, a nice editor at justlanded.com, who was revising and revamping and modernizing the content at the site, reached out to us and let us know that they had seen our article and had rewritten it with the correct information . We replied and noted and thanked them for correcting and propagating the correct information . eHow is another site that has done this. The old article has been deleted, and the old link has been reconfigured to now point to a generic article about Japanese immigration . They have, however, commissioned new article writers ...

"YAMAMOTO" Mona 中西モナ { NAKANISHI Mona } (Mona NAKANISHI née YAMAMOTO) is a retired television journalist and announcer of Japanese and Norwegian descent. She was one of the pioneers of the mixed-heritage public personalities in Japan, even though she grew up entirely in Japan and her connection to Norway is more racial and (was) legal rather than ethnic. She is also known as one of the "intelligent" television announcers / personalities, having received a Masters in Business Administration and graduated from an elite Japanese university. Once she began working for the Tokyo television station TBS, other competing networks had to have educated 「国際人」 { "kokusaijin" } ("International Person") in their lineup of talent, leading to the success of well-known multi-lingual multi-background Japanese nationals such as 滝川ラルドゥクリステル雅美 { TAKIGAWA Rarudu Kurisuteru Masami } ; Takigawa even changed her early "professional public-use" (s...