TO QUALIFY FOR JAPANESE CITIZENSHIP, YOU MUST:
a) have lived continuously (hiki tsuzuki) at Japanese addresses for five years
b) be over twenty years of age "in terms of mental and legal capacity" (20 sai ijou de honkokuhou ni yotte nouryoku o yuusuru koto)
c) behave well (sokou ga zenryou de aru koto)--and they do check--my dictionary even has the word "sokou chousa" (personal conduct survey) in it
d) demonstrate the means to support your family
e) be willing to relinquish the citizenship of your native country once Japanese citizenship is granted
f) respect the Japanese Constitution (i.e. don't plot against or advocate destroying it, or associate or join a group or political party which does)
(extenuating circumstances for the above considered if the applicant is married or related to a Japanese)
]
Fine. Most of the above are typical "we don't want just anybody naturalizing" types of conditions, used to weed out candidates in the US as well. But wait, there's more! For Japanese naturalization, you must go through three rounds of paper chase:
=Should you be elligble, the steps will be as followed=
ROUND ONE--PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION
1) Birth Certificate (shussei shoumeisho) and Proof of Citizenship (kokuseki shoumeishou)--ask your country if they will give you some proof other than just your passport. Passport will do in a pinch.
2) Overseas family documents: Marriage Certificate of your parents overseas (fubo no kon'in shoumei)--including divorce and remarriage papers. Adoption papers (youshi engumi no shoumei) if you were adopted or had your name legally changed. Papers showing relations to siblings (kyoudai kankei), or lack of siblings if available.
3) Domestic family documents: your own Marriage Certificate, Birth Certificates for children, spouse's ward registration form (koseki touhon) and ID papers (mibun shoumeisho), police records (keisatsu shoumeisho), death certificates (shibou shoumeisho), and your gaikokujin version of your ward registration form.
Why all this information? Because if you become a Japanese, you have to complete a ward registration form (koseki touhon) like any other Japanese, and this sort of information matters. Whether or not you are a bastard child, whether or not you are the eldest son--these things affect your legal standing in this society. Still, if documents are legally unavailable from your country, waivers are possible.
=Next, if they say you qualify, go to:=
ROUND TWO--APPLICATION PROCEDURES
Fill out:
1) Naturalization Permission Application Form (with picture)
2) Outline of your overseas relatives (shinzoku no gaiyou). This includes names and addresses of all members of your immediate family (including those of members that may be inaccessible after divorce).
3) A list of all your addresses since birth (called a "resume"--rireki sho). Note that this is even more thorough than a US govt security check, which would want all your addresses for the past ten years. I asked about transient years--college rooms and dormitories etc--and he said to the best of my memory would be fine.
4) Japanese documents: ward registration forms for all members of your Japanese family as far as the parents stage. Proof of Residence Form (juumin hyou) for your spouse.
5) Your gaijin card with history of where you've lived for the past five years in Japan.
6) An outline of your livelihood (seikei no gaiyou). I forgot to ask for more details on this.
7) Proof of your employment (zaikin shoumeisho)
8) Proof of your earnings (gensen choushuu hyou)
9) Tax records from the local tax office for your family and business (to show you've paid)
10) Records, contracts showing your land ownership and house ownership
11) Snapshots of your family, home, and workplace
ROUND THREE--WAIT AND BE CONSIDERED
Applications take about one year to a year and a half to process (
sumo wrestler Konishiki took quite a bit longer than that).
The fee is free (except for the cost of all the documents, which at around 300 yen a pop will add up). Fortunately, it could be worse: there are no taxation stamps (shuunyuu inshi) to buy, and all translations of overseas documents can be done by nonofficial translation agencies, such as yourself.
I then asked about "acculturation requirements"--like the US INS Test--or minimum language ability. The official said that there is no test on Japanese history, culture, and the like. Minimum language ability is about third-grade level (shougakkou sannensei) for reading and writing ability, and basic conversation level would do. I would pass, he said.
However, there must be a demonstrated level of assimilation on my part. Who are my Japanese friends and how many do I have? What kind of house interior do I have? Do I get along with my neighbors? (There are occasions when they come and ask them, he said.) Nonsarcastically, I asked him too quantify a minimum level of "Japanization"--if I had to wear a yukata and geta during off-hours, if I had to be able to eat nattou, if I had imported a Canadian prefab house would I be invalid?, etc.
He laughed (once you make a bureaucrat laugh, magic happens), and said none of that was really necessary. But any inspection of my lifestyle should not inflict upon the officials any sense of incongruity (iwakan), whatever that meant. I guess that if we weren't practicing some American form of suttee or female circumcision with the inspectors looking on, we'd be okay.
He laughed (once you make a bureaucrat laugh, magic happens), and said none of that was really necessary. But any inspection of my lifestyle should not inflict upon the officials any sense of incongruity (iwakan), whatever that meant. I guess that if we weren't practicing some American form of suttee or female circumcision with the inspectors looking on, we'd be okay.
OKAY, YOU'VE PASSED THE INSPECTION, AND QUALIFIED. NOW WHAT?
If citizenship is granted after a year or two, you will be issued the proper documents for citizenship and passport, and be given a document (in Japanese) to put your seal on (not sign), saying "I give up my American citizenship and take Japanese citizenship exclusively".
Bring your gaijin passbook, inkan, documents, and driver licence, and do what they say. Choose a name in kanji (with legal Japanese readings) and/or kana, and that's it. You are a Japanese citizen. Congratulations. You've burnt your bridges.
There you go Ayumi!
All credit goes to www.debito.org
P.S. Something else interesting (Debito lives in Sapporo by the way):
So let's talk about proclivity. I asked the Japanese official whether or not large numbers of people naturalize every year through Sapporo. He said plenty do (but inexplicably declined to give numbers), and not all of them ethnic Koreans and Chinese. But after peeking at my Japan Almanac (which has no stats for naturalization), I resorted to an independent source to find that 11,146 persons naturalized into Japan in 1994 (see issho Resources and Information).
But in America, things are radically different. Enough people pass the test and get through the paper chase--over one million this year alone, according to the Post, demonstrating to me, at least, that it's not all that bad. Proof and pudding: according to the above Washington Post article, the equivalent of the TOTAL NUMBER OF ALL FOREIGNERS IN JAPAN (just over one per cent of Japan's population) naturalize into the United States recently EVERY YEAR. Or, according to the US Census Bureau, 1300 would-be immigrants every day enter America (Daily Yomiuri, Nov 25, 1996, p.3).
That means that America absorbs all of Japan's annual intake of foreigners in just over a week!