"I don’t think citizenship is a light thing. It is not rational to make it friction-free or fast. I was not ready to naturalize in 2012. The system is arcane and arbitrary, and also worked correctly to weed me out of the process. It impressed upon me the importance of following the rules and making a contribution, which honestly impacted how I behaved and thought thereafter. When I was absolutely committed, I was able to get through the process."
This. My manager begged me at one point to apply for citizenship so itd make his life easier. I told him no, not until I was ready to make the oath in good faith.
Japan is one of those countries that doesn’t allow dual citizenship and they require proof of renunciation. Something to think about for those from other “strong” countries who want to go down that route.
> How do you get proof of renunciation before becoming a japanese citizen? You would be stateless in between?
Usually they say:
“Here’s your new passport. You have X months to provide proof you renounced all your prior citizenships, otherwise we will revoke your citizenship. If we find out you had a 2nd undisclosed citizenship, we will revoke you then too.”
There is a range of options depending on a country, but it's some variation of two phase commit. Some places give you a citizenship certificate and a temporary id (paper one at that) that allows voting but does not allow travel and only gives out the actual passport once you give them the proof or renunciation (or proof of trying hard enough and not being able to get one for reasons outside of your control). If you don't come up with either or get the extension, the decision is annulled.
Some places give you and option of citizenship that is contingent only on renouncing the previous one. Here you can actually become stateless if you get the option, renounce the old one and never use it.
Some places just give a passport and a strongly worded letter to do or else.
It's of course ridden with loopholes added there on purpose, because life is complicated and operation manual for clerks that deal with it is ... something. I'm for example supposed to renounce my blue passport since I got a nice bordeaux colored one, but that obligation is suspended due to unfortunate circumstances outside of my control.
Sometimes you don't have to renounce if you are married to a citizen, sometimes your children get a free pass, but only if insist on filling in the form 42-2002/13477 which they don't like you to know about. Sometimes the cost of renunciation procedure or length of it are enough to pinky swear instead and send the passport to the embassy with registered mail and itemized contents bill.
Some people have two passports and only renounce (or promise to not use) one of them, thinking they outsmarted the system only to get it renounced 10 years later once they pissed off somebody more then they expected (the drama you didn't even knew existed: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-910451 )
> Japan is one of those countries that doesn’t allow dual citizenship and they require proof of renunciation.
Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship if you acquire the japanese one later in life.
Plenty of people in Japan, like my nephew, have dual citizenship by birth. I don't know if they can keep both when they're adult. But as kids 100% guaranteed Japan allows it.
And then a great many mixed couple do, on purpose, give literally two different identities to their kids. One by registering them, say, in Germany with the name written in roman characters (say "Akane") and the other in Japan with the name written using kanjis (or kanas for that is allowed to).
I'm not talking about dual citizenships / two passports: I'm talking about the same person having two entirely different identities because his parents registered him, on purpose, differently in two different countries.
So, yes, there are literally a few people counted twice on earth. And you probably don't want to do that with the US citizenship (for US taxes its citizens worldwide and it's a reporting clusterfuck). But if you've got, say, a japanese identity and whatever european one: you're totally fine.
I lived in Japan and know many people in this situation. Most people just never tell the government and keep both. There's no proactive outreach by the government for these cases and it's ok unless you happen to mess up and produce your foreign passport when entering Japan instead of your Japanese passport. It's a "don't ask, don't tell situation".
There was a lawyer, originally from Japan, living in the US who did try to force clarity on this issue and sued the Japanese government. Unfortunately she lost so the status quo remains. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15077494
The law is somewhat vague. You have a "duty to make efforts" (努力義務) in rescinding your foreign citizenship after electing Japanese citizenship. The Ministry of Justice has never clarified its interpretation of 努力 (i.e. what counts as "making efforts"?) I am friends with a few Japan-US dual citizens who have done nothing after electing Japanese citizenship; they are essentially gambling on a gray area of law.
Note if you acquire Japanese citizenship afterwards (or never had a second citizenship in the first place), then 国籍法11条1項 automatically voids your Japanese citizenship at the time you obtain a foreign citizenship.
> they are essentially gambling on a gray area of law.
It's not so much a gray area if they didn't do anything at all. The translation in English isn't on a vague side of legalize. One needs to go and try to renounce citizenship and keep the receipts, so if the motion is denied or you get sucked into a bureaucratic hell, you have a proof that effort has been taken, but the bureacracy prevailed.
It's interesting, that the word "effort" doesn't have a qualifier here, like "reasonable". Hazard guess -- the general language of the law somehow implies it, that if renouncing citizenship costs 1mm USD, you don't have to try unless it's pocket money for you or at all. If renouncing takes flying half the world to a country where things are happening , something should say ah nah.
The Japanese law attempts to require citizens to hold no more than one citizenship and return any extra passports to your countries of origin, as would seem to be the most reasonable to Japanese laypeople. OTOH, recognizing a citizen is within sovereign rights of a nation.
So, for the Japanese government to a person to hold no more than one citizenship is beyond the rights held by the Japan as a nation. It cannot demand e.g. the King of England to revoke citizenship of a British subject, just because that guy is currently in Japan and on its own family register. If the UK's HM Government recognizes that guy leaving and converting, and amends his status accordingly, voluntarily, then that is just friendly international coordination and cooperation, and the sovereign rights of the UK is not violated.
And therefore, Japanese laws merely state its official stance of not allowing dual citizenship, and require applicant to make efforts, but it will not require the results of the effort to be exactly as it desires.
In an ideal world, there can be something like a "UN global citizen register" for every person on Earth, and the current nationality and/or recognized available nationalities can be fields in the global koseki printouts that can be printed out at a 7-11 everywhere. That would be very friendly to Japanese mental model of citizenship, but we're still maybe a century from there.
Stopped when he said he waited forever to get naturalized, skipping 6 years, and then saying he never got his permanent resident card, so he was just living off renewed visas, and they thought it was strange.
It is strange. A lot of the things he said he needed, would have been done in the permanent residence portion of his time in Japan. Just as it is in any country.
Once you are living in the country for a while, you can pretty much do anything and people don’t care about your resident status at all. For my daily lives in UK I only need my address and driving license. You pretty much have the feeling that you’ll be fine without bothering to do the paperwork, that’s how things work in the last 20-50 years.
Yes my friend moved from Sydney to London for work and he said it was a nightmare. He had his job in London lined up but he needed a UK bank account. He couldn’t get a bank account until he had a UK residence. His apartment lease needed his proof of employment.
He had to use his friend’s address for the bank account and then changed it.
I also moved from Sydney to Britain and just paid my rent from my Australian bank account until I got my British bank account. Your friend may not have thought to do this because he probably expected the ‘prison guard LARP’ attitude that Australian real estate agents have to also exist here in Britain.
But that’s exactly the point. A passport (assuming it’s a British passport) proves you have the right to work in the U.K. The commenter above is claiming all you need or ever needed is an address and a driving licence, and that’s nonsense.
Picking up illegal immigrants who are hanging out in a parking lot and, ostensibly, are very honest about being unemployed, ultimately to pay them under the table and not hire them because they lack paperwork, is supposed to be some kind of gotcha with regards to how much you can get away with without citizenship in the US?
This is true until the wind changes. After Brexit quite a few long-stay Europeans without full paperwork were deported from the UK. Some had stayed for decades.
Meanwhile Sweden has started deporting British citizens who didn't do the paperwork.
If you travel out of a country, your odds of being allowed in without a visa, residency, or a native passport are basically zero.
I thought Japan requires 10 years residence for PR, but only 5 years residence to naturalize, in which case it wouldn't be surprising if many people naturalize before getting PR!
> A lot of the things he said he needed, would have been done in the permanent residence portion of his time in Japan.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Having PR isn't a prerequisite for naturalization, nor does it waive any of the requirements. Do you mean he should have collected extra copies of documents and applied for PR in parallel?
I know a few folks personally who got rejected for PR but got approved for citizenship. First, both of these get handled by different branches of government with the different screening guidelines (often not published). Second, perception differs: for a long time PR was viewed as something like 'all the benefits of living in Japan without any consequences', so the income requirements were stricter etc. (albeit all of this is changing now and it's difficult to say what will be the final state).
It is very sobering to consider the demographic cliff that Japan faces combined with the barriers the government puts up to immigration and naturalization.
I sincerely wonder what kind of country Japan will be in 50 years.
Immigration is a temporary fix. Seems they aren't willing to completely change their countries racial and cultural demographics to put a bandaid on a change in how the world works.
What you're saying is identical to what people 'on the other side' say in regards to allowing broad immigration. Japan is a place where the language is not widely spoken at all, outside of Japan, and it has an extremely distinct culture that's quite alien to much of the rest of the world.
If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks. Even their language itself could die.
I think the big take-away when both sides are saying the same thing, even if on a sort of horse-shoe of logic, is that the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
> If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks.
You've inadvertently described the US. A lot of our culture and traditions are a mismash of the immigrants who came before.
As for Japan being "pure" culturally, that's a fantasy conjured up by "nationalists" if you're generous or xenophobic racists when we're not.
The historical lineage of the Japanese includes continuous mixing with the Chinese and Koreans, alongside the Ainu and Ryukyuan. Elements considered central to traditional Japanese life were borrowed from neighboring civilizations like China, with Buddhism and rice cultivation being the most well known. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, and we haven't even gotten to the modern era.
This is a common misconception about the US. Here [1] is a graph of foreign born population in the US. It previously peaked at around 14.8% in the late 19th century. This started causing substantial anti-immigrant sentiment to emerge as it was felt to be having an overall negative affect on culture, society, labor, etc. That eventually led to various restrictions on immigration sending it to a valley of 4.7% in 1970.
That graph is by decade; the actual valley was probably more around 1965 because That's when a new immigration act was passed that greatly loosened the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent. Note that 14.8% includes all groups, including illegal aliens. The number of foreign born residents in Japan is, and has been, much lower.
nothing in your comment disproves my point about US culture being a mixture of all the immigrant populations that have settled here. Also until very recently, US immigration controls were really terrible. In the past, the only country with amazing and consistent immigration controls is Japan at over 99% enforcement. In light of that, it isn't surprising that we're witnessing population collapse in Japan due to xenophobia. Coincidentally with better immigration controls, the US is now at a fertility rate of 1.6 instead of the population sustaining 2.1
> It previously peaked at around 14.8% in the late 19th century. This started causing substantial anti-immigrant sentiment to emerge as it was felt to be having an overall negative affect on culture, society, labor, etc.
Yes, in the 19th century there was a lot of racism and prejudice directed towards the Irish, German, and Italian immigrants. Not surprisingly, they did not destroy US society or culture. Instead, the US absorbed respective parts of their cultures and assimulated all of their populations over decades. now they are an integral part of America
> their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift
Why is it critically important to maintain a particular culture at a cost that is not sustainable? Why is allowing creation of a new culture, a mixture of multiple cultures, such a bad that thing? Particularly when a country is facing serious popular decline.
> the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
Never mind. I did not realize the solution was so simple. And I am surprised it did not occur to anybody else.
> Why is allowing creation of a new culture, a mixture of multiple cultures, such a bad that thing? Particularly when a country is facing serious popular decline.
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
And yes, every country on earth has another culture/country they absolutely hate and consider them the villain. America included.
Which specific culture/country does America hate and consider the villain?
It seems to me like the conservatives change the targets of their culture wars often enough that I’m honestly not sure what your answer is going to be.
Let's see, throughout US history at times it's been: British, Irish, Italians, Mexicans, Hispanics, Blacks, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Jews, Muslims, Russians, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians...
Do you have any data on this? I think it just depends on the country. I was born in Italy, very low trust: the culture is that when a person is interacting with you, you have to assume they are trying to scam you.
Moved to Canada, heavy culture mix yet that "scam feeling" is gone, trust feels higher across the board.
When we speak of the decline of Japan, what makes it so undesirable? Is it that the geographic location around 36N 138E will no longer have as large a human presence? Or is it that the culture of that region will fade from society? Obviously we both agree that it'd be the culture. Where we disagree is you want to argue that it's not going to disappear, but instead just be changed. And that's reasonable, since cultures do constantly change. Tempura is a great example. People think it's Japanese, and in some ways it is, but it was borrowed, more or less wholesale, from Portuguese traders.
But I'm sure you'd agree that if a culture changes 'quickly enough', it's not really changing it but basically deleting it. For instance I'm sure if you squint hard enough today, maybe there's some Native American influence on American culture, but for the most part we just destroyed it. And I don't think it was the violence, so much as the raw numbers. Something similar happened to the Maori in New Zealand without anywhere near the scale of violence, just lots of immigration and lots of babies.
So how fast will fertility change things? A fertility rate of 1 means each generation decreases in size by about 50%, but that's compounding. The length of a generation is proportional to the window of human fertility, which is about 20 years. So in an average human lifetime we'll each get to see around 4 generations play out. With a 50% compounding decline that means a generational decline in size of 94% in a human lifetime.
So if you want to try to deal with fertility declines with immigration, you're basically going to be replacing the entire population in extremely rapid order. So I don't think we really need to debate what 'quickly enough' means because it's way slower than what fertility collapse is going to do. And this is all far more true in places like Japan where you, out of necessity, are speaking of bringing in immigrants who the locals can't comfortably communicate with and who come from radically different cultures. So basically, from my perspective, I think you're speaking of having your cake and eating it too.
> So if you want to try to deal with fertility declines with immigration, you're basically going to be replacing the entire population in extremely rapid order.
Are you basing this on history and data because America is country of immigrants and its culture has survived for hundreds of years now by absorbing the cultures of immigrants and assimilating them within 1 generation. I haven’t looked at the numbers as closely but I feel that Canada and Australia have largely done the same. The countries with major issues are the ones with little to no experience with assimilation like France, Germany, or the UK
Also Japan and South Korea have tried nearly everything sans immigration like media (shows promoting Natalism), monetary incentives and other benefits, and so on, but nothing even made a dent except for immigration. Why do you think there are so many foreign workers in Japan now? For show?
Fertility imo is an even harder problem to solve than immigration issues because it’s not just a socioeconomic issue. Pollution with endocrine disrupters like BPA and PFAS are the likely culprits but they’re too embedded in our supply chain and there’s even less incentive to fix them
Indeed I am! The data are very surprising at first. This [1] is the US foreign born population since the census started measuring that in 1850. The US foreign born population peaked in the late 19th century, at 14.7%. That's about when you started seeing a bunch of anti-immigrant sentiment rising with people thinking it was having a negative affect on culture, society, labor, etc.
That sentiment gradually led to various restrictions on immigration sending it to a valley of 4.7% in 1970. In 1965 a new immigration act was passed that loosed the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent.
----
I 100% agree that getting fertility rates back up will be much harder than it was to bring them down, but fortunately I don't think environmental or other issues are playing a significant role yet, at least not in terms of direct infertility. The vast majority of people that are not having enough children are (or were) still fertile.
But ultimately it's not even a choice. On top of the cultural issues, I think immigration is simply also unrealistic on a long-term scale. All you do is just kick the can, and not even especially far. And even in places like South America, they're also experiencing a fertility rate collapse. Humanity is simply going to have to change how we're doing things, in a rather dramatic way.
It's not existential because it is the most absurdly self-correcting problem imaginable, but I'd rather we all just start having more babies than ending up in a world dominated by the e.g. Amish and Haredim. Though it'd be pretty funny if we do finally meet an alien intelligence, it turns out they went through the same sort of crisis, and as a result these enlightened aliens everybody has attributed every positive characteristic to end up being Space Mormons. 'Ah Earthling, can I have a minute to talk to you about Gazurazu the Great?'
>Why is it critically important to maintain a particular culture at a cost that is not sustainable?
Don't you like cultural diversity? Would you prefer the whole world to be culturally the same? It will not be a mishmash as you think, the new culture would be the culture of people with most kids. I doubt you would like it.
> If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks. Even their language itself could die.
I strongly believe that if people directly saw the money themselves that comes from not demographically declining (or other financial benefits from properly organized immigration), they would immediately abandon all this stuff. I dont think people actually care if money is on the table. Unfortunately its too vague a process currently.
>it has an extremely distinct culture that's quite alien to much of the rest of the world.
It's not that distinct. Their language has heavy Chinese influence, their religion originated in India, their cuisine has heavy Portuguese influence, and that isn't even getting into the massive amount of influence that America has had on Japanese culture. Besides, cultures always change over time, with or without immigration.
I agree with you but we've seen that many people will just blame the immigrants. It's easier to blame change that you can visibly see rather than change that is forced to happen due to abstract demographic trends. No one has a good solution for this. If immigration gets too high, citizens will vote for parties that support anti-immigrant policies to bring it back in line.
these comments appear like clockwork whenever Japan is mentioned, and I usually get no coherent response when I ask which of the many countries thoroughly enriched with vibrant immigrants had reversed (or even meaningfully slowed) their demographic decline.
yes, you certainly can continuously replace the natives with outsiders from around the world. a number of countries had chosen to do that rather than address the reasons why the natives are no longer able to even maintain their numbers. but I'm rather baffled that such atrocity is celebrated by the very same people who endlessly harp about the capital being the root of all evil, for it is the capital who doesn't give a shit about ethnicity and culture of its indebted laborers. it's the rich you claim to want to eat who benefit, who are removed from the negative consequences of the policies they promote, and who are free to leave on a whim.
It helps catch attempted identity theft. Lots of people who are not eligible for employment steal the identities of those who are. But they will have to make up any data they don’t know, or that is inapplicable because the true holder of that identity died a while ago.
Well, I'm going to have to do without that then. This is no great loss because I had already decided to forego traveling to the US because the way the border guards treated me on my last visit was enough to make me decide I didn't need that kind of headache. They still owe me a pair of boots.
>Well cross Japan off my list. I would not be able to produce that residence list under any circumstances.
If you won't be able to produce the accurate list, the chances are that the agency reviewing it would not be able to fail your application by cross-referensing it with some dataset that proves it inaccurate.
I don't know if something's wrong with me, but this sounds like a humiliation ritual. I understand citizenship is a serious business to the point of creating a duty to go to war for your new motherland. But why would you go to war for a country that subjected you to this?
Japan can't go to war though, that's unconstitutional ;)
But actually to answer the question: it's a weeding-out process. Only the people who genuinely in their heart of hearts feel that they belong will persist. And those people will act in the nation's interest because they feel part of the nation, even if the process of being recognised as such is a bit demeaning. Just look at how OP rationalised his abuse by bureaucracy...
What's not seen is how many people gave up which would have made perfectly fine citizens. That's IMO the real problem with this approach.
That's a lot of documents. When I naturized (in 2025) as a swamp creature living at the bottom of the sea, I had to get something like a naturalization test results and the letter from HR that I'm still employed and making money. Everything else, like tax records, birth certificate and the rest are already known to the government, so they found it themselves and sent it to the king to stamp his king approval on it.
Because you forgot to look at how many westerners move to other countries, too, and how many people in those countries move to western countries. You're asking a question based on an assumption that doesn't hold.
Ok I know a ton of people move to the west and so many move to other countries within the west as well. I moved to America too but I never got why people here talk so much about Japan. Like I have white/American friends who plan yearly or bi-yearly trips, learn the language, etc
I have nothing against the country or anything I’m just curious why Japan is so popular. Was it historical or something?
It was the most developed Asian country for a long period; so naturally it attracted the most attention from the west, as it was seen as a peer. Especially as it's allied to the US and is a liberal democracy, unlike e.g. China.
Because it has fast trains and the letters look cool, and most everything is not like in the West. Also the obvious sexual fetishism that is not mentioned once.
I think there's a lot of historical ties going back a long way that explain this, which I also think are often overlooked when people talk about the western fixation on Japan.
Here's my best stab at an answer: The short story is, the western world has been tied to Japan moreso than most other countries in Asia for centuries, and Japan's position in western culture grew from that foothold more and more as time went on. This meant that for a long time now, Japan has been the most "foreign" place that westerners frequently interact with, making it naturally very interesting to talk about and think about. It's also been a relatively safe, stable, and industrialized place for a long time, meaning that it's an easy way as a westerner to visit and experience somewhere very different without having to actually go that far off the beaten path.
I think you could trace this back even as far as World War 1, where Japan was the a notable power in the allies, having a special relationship with Britain, and thus already having a special position in the European subconscious. Add on to this the close bond between America and Japan after WW2 reconstruction, which was amplified even more in the 80s when Japan became a huge presence in everyday life through its automotive and technology exports, and from there its cultural exports too, to the point where Mario and Pikachu became household names. Japanese cuisine became popular through the Japanese diaspora in America and Britain. And, of course, the position of Japanese media in western culture has continued to grow dramatically since then. So in my mind, what we're seeing now is essentially the continuation of a special relationship between Japan and the west that goes back much longer than people realize.
It’s modern orientalism. Which is also why so many westerners feel really strongly about Japan‘s immigration, they want the culture to be frozen in time, as a sort of real life attraction park
Some westerners are, maybe they like manga and other aspects of the exported media.
Some westerners are obsessed with Finland, the happiest country in the world.
Some westerners are obsessed with the idea of being an artist and musician in Berlin.
In short the internet makes these niches and obsessions seem larger than they are, because people with such a shared interest can find others to talk to. But I'd wager that most westerners aren't specifically obsessed with any specific country, or region.
I've never been there but the clean streets and waters, customary politeness (even if sometimes play-pretend only) and exceptionally healthy environment in some way, allowing people to live in the good health for ages, is very alluring.
I'm very aware there are many dark issues as well, but you asked why.
Oh, you asked why _obsessed_? You don't really think everyone thinking Japan is an attractive country is automatically obsessed with it?
For some reason, the author chose to imitate a "strikethrough" text effect by following each letter with "U+0336 COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY", rather than just using the <s> HTML element.
They survive format changes. If copied and used as plain text, the meaning does not suddenly change from a joke to an ominous "interrogation consultation room".
It certainly doesn't survive everywhere. It fails or renders differently in various applications I've just tested such as pdf renderers, tts, messaging, different browsers, terminals, and at least the one email client I tested it in.
When failing it appears either as "interrogation-" or some form of "interrog̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶-" or as "i-n-t-e-r-r-o-g-a-t-i-o-n-"
Unlucky? Crappy tools? I just pasted it into several places on my Android phone, including browsers and renaming a file, and it rendered correctly each time.
That is true for more countries, but there are also various countries that have agreements allowing their citizens to travel between them without passports, at least in areas close to their common borders.
For example a EU citizen may travel through most of EU without a passport.
Even in those cases you still need ID of some sort.
For example, before February 2026 you could use any sort of photo ID (e.g. driving license) between UK and Ireland. Now you need a passport. [1]
Regarding the EU. Yes, an EU citizen may travel through most of EU without a passport. But:
1. Most (all ?) of the EU also has ID cards, and people will fly between EU countries on their ID cards. Many young Europeans fly intra-Europe with nothing more than their iPhone (Apple Pay) and their ID card in a slot of the iPhone holder – and maybe a backup physical credit card if you're lucky.
2. Many EU countries have requirements to show your ID on demand. So you still need a passport or an ID card on you, even if you are taking advantage of Schengen land crossings. Because you will have a bad day in the office if a Police officer stops you and requests your ID and you are unable to produce because you left it at home 400 kilometers away in a different country.
>The system is arcane and arbitrary, and also worked correctly to weed me out of the process. It impressed upon me the importance of following the rules and making a contribution, which honestly impacted how I behaved and thought thereafter. When I was absolutely committed, I was able to get through the process.
The most kafkian thing I have read in my life. With a tinge of orwell: "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
jesus fucking christ, what a nightmare culture for individuality.
Same in the UK, mate, same here. You'll be always worse.
It's less hidden since the Brexit campaign encouraged the xenophobia on the streets, TV, papers, even one of the past PMs was famously racist and xenophobic and it flew without any issue.
The rules changed in 2025, as of q2 2025 it was only a requirement of five years residency within Japan to become naturalized and this route as considered easier than permanent residency.
Everything is now harder. Even business manager visa. So many 夢の日本 have been shattered and pushed into other Asian countries. I’ve also seen a push into Europe , Italy, which also changed the rules last year too which was considered a very easy way to become a European citizen, Canada for Americans protesting Trump, etc.
It really does feel like the prelude or reshuffle of the world balance, open borders, Covid, closing borders, higher qualifications..
It's because the economy sucks ass and we're all struggling more to get less. Countries only want somebody who's basically guaranteed to bring something to the table and not somebody perceived to be a drag on an already struggling economy.
What it means (IMHO), if things don't get better, is more unpredictable politics. The Old Guard is already seen as having gotten us into this mess, and people will be more likely to try something new. We've seen a more authoritarian turn on both the right and the left. The ship could still right itself, but a lot of our problems are feeding back into each other and we may be seeing the beginnings of a phase transition, to borrow a metaphor from complexity theory.
i'm tempted to say "all politics is downstream from economics", but really economics an politics is quite intertwined; its not surprise things are spiraling...
Doesn't it mostly stem from demographics? Developed countries are experiencing lower natural population growth so some have tried to make that up with immigration. Our economy and centralized fiscal policies generally assume a growing population. Without that, there's little that can be done. Automation can be used to increase productivity but that also faces a backlash from people worried about their jobs. People will blame the problems on politicians but the problem is beyond them.
It genuinely depends. The author refers to zainichi koreans, i.e. a pretty large population of koreans that ended up in Japan just before and during WW2. Quite a few of them are still not Japanese citizens despite having lived in Japan for several generations.
"Hanako, my lovely wife, should we settle down and have kids?"
"I want nothing more than to raise a family, but alas I simply can't face brining a child into a world in which people applying for citizenship in this country have to present such a long list of documents."
> In light of that final insult and all the above and more details I have forgotten or omit, it may seem strange to say that overall, I am okay with the process.
> I don’t think citizenship is a light thing. It is not rational to make it friction-free or fast. I was not ready to naturalize in 2012. The system is arcane and arbitrary, and also worked correctly to weed me out of the process.
If you were born in Nigeria, it would've been literally impossible to procure all those family documents. Or even if you were born almost everywhere to a single mom/deadbeat dad, or just one such sibling it'd be impossible to get a birth certificate. Or if you grew up in poverty and moved around a lot. Attended school in war-torn countries, and so forth. From the article this doesn't sound like the government would bend the rules for such cases. If they truly do then it sounds like they don't really check in which case the whole process is just fake it until you make it.
That's not a process that's okay. It's one that excludes people purely on the basis of not having been born in a happy, American, nuclear family.
I hate culture war but if there was ever a time where "privilege" is apt, it's here. Could do with some more self-awareness.
Despite the language used, the requirements aren’t as absolute as they seem and the civil servants in charge of the process have a lot of leeway in deciding whether or not to let certain requirements slide.
"I don’t think citizenship is a light thing. It is not rational to make it friction-free or fast. I was not ready to naturalize in 2012. The system is arcane and arbitrary, and also worked correctly to weed me out of the process. It impressed upon me the importance of following the rules and making a contribution, which honestly impacted how I behaved and thought thereafter. When I was absolutely committed, I was able to get through the process."
This. My manager begged me at one point to apply for citizenship so itd make his life easier. I told him no, not until I was ready to make the oath in good faith.
Japan is one of those countries that doesn’t allow dual citizenship and they require proof of renunciation. Something to think about for those from other “strong” countries who want to go down that route.
How do you get proof of renunciation before becoming a japanese citizen? You would be stateless in between?
The state department specifically warns that this may result in statelessness, yes: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
That is saying that if you do the dumb thing, you can end up stateless. It does not say that this happens in Japan.
That's because it doesn't. I checked today. Japan requires that you renounce your US citizenship after you obtain Japanese citizenship, not before.
> How do you get proof of renunciation before becoming a japanese citizen? You would be stateless in between?
Usually they say:
“Here’s your new passport. You have X months to provide proof you renounced all your prior citizenships, otherwise we will revoke your citizenship. If we find out you had a 2nd undisclosed citizenship, we will revoke you then too.”
There is a range of options depending on a country, but it's some variation of two phase commit. Some places give you a citizenship certificate and a temporary id (paper one at that) that allows voting but does not allow travel and only gives out the actual passport once you give them the proof or renunciation (or proof of trying hard enough and not being able to get one for reasons outside of your control). If you don't come up with either or get the extension, the decision is annulled.
Some places give you and option of citizenship that is contingent only on renouncing the previous one. Here you can actually become stateless if you get the option, renounce the old one and never use it.
Some places just give a passport and a strongly worded letter to do or else.
It's of course ridden with loopholes added there on purpose, because life is complicated and operation manual for clerks that deal with it is ... something. I'm for example supposed to renounce my blue passport since I got a nice bordeaux colored one, but that obligation is suspended due to unfortunate circumstances outside of my control.
Sometimes you don't have to renounce if you are married to a citizen, sometimes your children get a free pass, but only if insist on filling in the form 42-2002/13477 which they don't like you to know about. Sometimes the cost of renunciation procedure or length of it are enough to pinky swear instead and send the passport to the embassy with registered mail and itemized contents bill.
Some people have two passports and only renounce (or promise to not use) one of them, thinking they outsmarted the system only to get it renounced 10 years later once they pissed off somebody more then they expected (the drama you didn't even knew existed: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-910451 )
> Japan is one of those countries that doesn’t allow dual citizenship and they require proof of renunciation.
Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship if you acquire the japanese one later in life.
Plenty of people in Japan, like my nephew, have dual citizenship by birth. I don't know if they can keep both when they're adult. But as kids 100% guaranteed Japan allows it.
And then a great many mixed couple do, on purpose, give literally two different identities to their kids. One by registering them, say, in Germany with the name written in roman characters (say "Akane") and the other in Japan with the name written using kanjis (or kanas for that is allowed to).
I'm not talking about dual citizenships / two passports: I'm talking about the same person having two entirely different identities because his parents registered him, on purpose, differently in two different countries.
So, yes, there are literally a few people counted twice on earth. And you probably don't want to do that with the US citizenship (for US taxes its citizens worldwide and it's a reporting clusterfuck). But if you've got, say, a japanese identity and whatever european one: you're totally fine.
They allow it until the kids are 19. Then they are supposed to make a decision about which one they want to keep.
Yes, but my understanding is you can keep saying you're working on making a decision and de facto keep both.
I lived in Japan and know many people in this situation. Most people just never tell the government and keep both. There's no proactive outreach by the government for these cases and it's ok unless you happen to mess up and produce your foreign passport when entering Japan instead of your Japanese passport. It's a "don't ask, don't tell situation".
There was a lawyer, originally from Japan, living in the US who did try to force clarity on this issue and sued the Japanese government. Unfortunately she lost so the status quo remains. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15077494
They may ask why you don’t have a stamp from the foreign country you were just in though, no? (At least for the ones that still do stamps)
You are supposed to renounce your other citizenship by the age of 20. Not everyone does that, though, because it isn't checked.
The law is somewhat vague. You have a "duty to make efforts" (努力義務) in rescinding your foreign citizenship after electing Japanese citizenship. The Ministry of Justice has never clarified its interpretation of 努力 (i.e. what counts as "making efforts"?) I am friends with a few Japan-US dual citizens who have done nothing after electing Japanese citizenship; they are essentially gambling on a gray area of law.
Note if you acquire Japanese citizenship afterwards (or never had a second citizenship in the first place), then 国籍法11条1項 automatically voids your Japanese citizenship at the time you obtain a foreign citizenship.
>i.e. what counts as "making efforts"?
> they are essentially gambling on a gray area of law.
It's not so much a gray area if they didn't do anything at all. The translation in English isn't on a vague side of legalize. One needs to go and try to renounce citizenship and keep the receipts, so if the motion is denied or you get sucked into a bureaucratic hell, you have a proof that effort has been taken, but the bureacracy prevailed.
It's interesting, that the word "effort" doesn't have a qualifier here, like "reasonable". Hazard guess -- the general language of the law somehow implies it, that if renouncing citizenship costs 1mm USD, you don't have to try unless it's pocket money for you or at all. If renouncing takes flying half the world to a country where things are happening , something should say ah nah.
The Japanese law attempts to require citizens to hold no more than one citizenship and return any extra passports to your countries of origin, as would seem to be the most reasonable to Japanese laypeople. OTOH, recognizing a citizen is within sovereign rights of a nation.
So, for the Japanese government to a person to hold no more than one citizenship is beyond the rights held by the Japan as a nation. It cannot demand e.g. the King of England to revoke citizenship of a British subject, just because that guy is currently in Japan and on its own family register. If the UK's HM Government recognizes that guy leaving and converting, and amends his status accordingly, voluntarily, then that is just friendly international coordination and cooperation, and the sovereign rights of the UK is not violated.
And therefore, Japanese laws merely state its official stance of not allowing dual citizenship, and require applicant to make efforts, but it will not require the results of the effort to be exactly as it desires.
In an ideal world, there can be something like a "UN global citizen register" for every person on Earth, and the current nationality and/or recognized available nationalities can be fields in the global koseki printouts that can be printed out at a 7-11 everywhere. That would be very friendly to Japanese mental model of citizenship, but we're still maybe a century from there.
One would hope that should there ever be a global citizen registry, that it actually is for global citizenship.
If you renounce UK citizenship then you can usually get it back. But only once.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/form-rs1-guidance...
Can't believe I just learned this, thanks!
If by “strong” you mean visa free global access, Japan is tied for #2, behind Singapore.
Stopped when he said he waited forever to get naturalized, skipping 6 years, and then saying he never got his permanent resident card, so he was just living off renewed visas, and they thought it was strange.
It is strange. A lot of the things he said he needed, would have been done in the permanent residence portion of his time in Japan. Just as it is in any country.
Once you are living in the country for a while, you can pretty much do anything and people don’t care about your resident status at all. For my daily lives in UK I only need my address and driving license. You pretty much have the feeling that you’ll be fine without bothering to do the paperwork, that’s how things work in the last 20-50 years.
that's... really abd
What do you mean? Any major employer in the UK will need more than that for you to work there.
Yes my friend moved from Sydney to London for work and he said it was a nightmare. He had his job in London lined up but he needed a UK bank account. He couldn’t get a bank account until he had a UK residence. His apartment lease needed his proof of employment.
He had to use his friend’s address for the bank account and then changed it.
I also moved from Sydney to Britain and just paid my rent from my Australian bank account until I got my British bank account. Your friend may not have thought to do this because he probably expected the ‘prison guard LARP’ attitude that Australian real estate agents have to also exist here in Britain.
Oh for sure, he was working for the UK government in some capacity so wanted to make sure everything was by the book.
When? Renting is far harder now than it was 20 years ago, even without right to rent checks. References, guarantors etc.
So only a few times in many years, I think most need an NI number only
That's the case now.
A decade ago a bank account, passport and bill with your home address was all that was needed to work legally.
But that’s exactly the point. A passport (assuming it’s a British passport) proves you have the right to work in the U.K. The commenter above is claiming all you need or ever needed is an address and a driving licence, and that’s nonsense.
I presented a foreign (EU) passport and opened a bank account in one of the biggest banks operating in the UK.
That was almost everything I needed, I didn't even have UK driving licence at the time.
This isn't true. I knew someone that lived illegally in the UK for almost a decade.
They could only get terrible restaurant jobs that didn't report anything to the government and were visited by immigration multiple times.
Even after getting an immigration lawyer couldn't help with citizenship.
What finally worked was having a kid and marrying a citizen.
That is what many people think before risking deportation for no other reason than not taking this seriously enough.
This is so wrong in pretty much all developed nations.
Are you American? Have you been to a Home Depot on Saturday?
And seen the disproportionate use of military style force to run down naturalized citizens in the parking lot with tanks and tear gas?
Picking up illegal immigrants who are hanging out in a parking lot and, ostensibly, are very honest about being unemployed, ultimately to pay them under the table and not hire them because they lack paperwork, is supposed to be some kind of gotcha with regards to how much you can get away with without citizenship in the US?
The ICE headlines in the USA makes a severe counterpoint
This is true until the wind changes. After Brexit quite a few long-stay Europeans without full paperwork were deported from the UK. Some had stayed for decades.
Meanwhile Sweden has started deporting British citizens who didn't do the paperwork.
If you travel out of a country, your odds of being allowed in without a visa, residency, or a native passport are basically zero.
I thought Japan requires 10 years residence for PR, but only 5 years residence to naturalize, in which case it wouldn't be surprising if many people naturalize before getting PR!
Not anymore.
> A lot of the things he said he needed, would have been done in the permanent residence portion of his time in Japan.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Having PR isn't a prerequisite for naturalization, nor does it waive any of the requirements. Do you mean he should have collected extra copies of documents and applied for PR in parallel?
I have PR and only needed a small fraction of this stuff.
I know a few folks personally who got rejected for PR but got approved for citizenship. First, both of these get handled by different branches of government with the different screening guidelines (often not published). Second, perception differs: for a long time PR was viewed as something like 'all the benefits of living in Japan without any consequences', so the income requirements were stricter etc. (albeit all of this is changing now and it's difficult to say what will be the final state).
It is very sobering to consider the demographic cliff that Japan faces combined with the barriers the government puts up to immigration and naturalization.
I sincerely wonder what kind of country Japan will be in 50 years.
Immigration is a temporary fix. Seems they aren't willing to completely change their countries racial and cultural demographics to put a bandaid on a change in how the world works.
If you look at the data, sure they are willing. Economy doesn't run of feelings and 90 year old grandmas wishes.
What you're saying is identical to what people 'on the other side' say in regards to allowing broad immigration. Japan is a place where the language is not widely spoken at all, outside of Japan, and it has an extremely distinct culture that's quite alien to much of the rest of the world.
If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks. Even their language itself could die.
I think the big take-away when both sides are saying the same thing, even if on a sort of horse-shoe of logic, is that the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
> If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks.
You've inadvertently described the US. A lot of our culture and traditions are a mismash of the immigrants who came before.
As for Japan being "pure" culturally, that's a fantasy conjured up by "nationalists" if you're generous or xenophobic racists when we're not.
The historical lineage of the Japanese includes continuous mixing with the Chinese and Koreans, alongside the Ainu and Ryukyuan. Elements considered central to traditional Japanese life were borrowed from neighboring civilizations like China, with Buddhism and rice cultivation being the most well known. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, and we haven't even gotten to the modern era.
This is a common misconception about the US. Here [1] is a graph of foreign born population in the US. It previously peaked at around 14.8% in the late 19th century. This started causing substantial anti-immigrant sentiment to emerge as it was felt to be having an overall negative affect on culture, society, labor, etc. That eventually led to various restrictions on immigration sending it to a valley of 4.7% in 1970.
That graph is by decade; the actual valley was probably more around 1965 because That's when a new immigration act was passed that greatly loosened the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent. Note that 14.8% includes all groups, including illegal aliens. The number of foreign born residents in Japan is, and has been, much lower.
[1] - https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/07/foreign-born-...
nothing in your comment disproves my point about US culture being a mixture of all the immigrant populations that have settled here. Also until very recently, US immigration controls were really terrible. In the past, the only country with amazing and consistent immigration controls is Japan at over 99% enforcement. In light of that, it isn't surprising that we're witnessing population collapse in Japan due to xenophobia. Coincidentally with better immigration controls, the US is now at a fertility rate of 1.6 instead of the population sustaining 2.1
> It previously peaked at around 14.8% in the late 19th century. This started causing substantial anti-immigrant sentiment to emerge as it was felt to be having an overall negative affect on culture, society, labor, etc.
Yes, in the 19th century there was a lot of racism and prejudice directed towards the Irish, German, and Italian immigrants. Not surprisingly, they did not destroy US society or culture. Instead, the US absorbed respective parts of their cultures and assimulated all of their populations over decades. now they are an integral part of America
> their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift
Why is it critically important to maintain a particular culture at a cost that is not sustainable? Why is allowing creation of a new culture, a mixture of multiple cultures, such a bad that thing? Particularly when a country is facing serious popular decline.
> the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
Never mind. I did not realize the solution was so simple. And I am surprised it did not occur to anybody else.
> Why is allowing creation of a new culture, a mixture of multiple cultures, such a bad that thing? Particularly when a country is facing serious popular decline.
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
And yes, every country on earth has another culture/country they absolutely hate and consider them the villain. America included.
Which specific culture/country does America hate and consider the villain?
It seems to me like the conservatives change the targets of their culture wars often enough that I’m honestly not sure what your answer is going to be.
In movies they usually cast the British as the villains.
Let's see, throughout US history at times it's been: British, Irish, Italians, Mexicans, Hispanics, Blacks, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Jews, Muslims, Russians, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians...
Why is allowing creation of a new culture, a mixture of multiple cultures, such a bad that thing?
Because all evidence points to mixing cultures resulting in (extremely) low trust societies.
I mean no offense but both the US and Europe's demographic 'issues' probably don't look very attractive from a Japanese perspective.
Do you have any data on this? I think it just depends on the country. I was born in Italy, very low trust: the culture is that when a person is interacting with you, you have to assume they are trying to scam you.
Moved to Canada, heavy culture mix yet that "scam feeling" is gone, trust feels higher across the board.
When we speak of the decline of Japan, what makes it so undesirable? Is it that the geographic location around 36N 138E will no longer have as large a human presence? Or is it that the culture of that region will fade from society? Obviously we both agree that it'd be the culture. Where we disagree is you want to argue that it's not going to disappear, but instead just be changed. And that's reasonable, since cultures do constantly change. Tempura is a great example. People think it's Japanese, and in some ways it is, but it was borrowed, more or less wholesale, from Portuguese traders.
But I'm sure you'd agree that if a culture changes 'quickly enough', it's not really changing it but basically deleting it. For instance I'm sure if you squint hard enough today, maybe there's some Native American influence on American culture, but for the most part we just destroyed it. And I don't think it was the violence, so much as the raw numbers. Something similar happened to the Maori in New Zealand without anywhere near the scale of violence, just lots of immigration and lots of babies.
So how fast will fertility change things? A fertility rate of 1 means each generation decreases in size by about 50%, but that's compounding. The length of a generation is proportional to the window of human fertility, which is about 20 years. So in an average human lifetime we'll each get to see around 4 generations play out. With a 50% compounding decline that means a generational decline in size of 94% in a human lifetime.
So if you want to try to deal with fertility declines with immigration, you're basically going to be replacing the entire population in extremely rapid order. So I don't think we really need to debate what 'quickly enough' means because it's way slower than what fertility collapse is going to do. And this is all far more true in places like Japan where you, out of necessity, are speaking of bringing in immigrants who the locals can't comfortably communicate with and who come from radically different cultures. So basically, from my perspective, I think you're speaking of having your cake and eating it too.
> So if you want to try to deal with fertility declines with immigration, you're basically going to be replacing the entire population in extremely rapid order.
Are you basing this on history and data because America is country of immigrants and its culture has survived for hundreds of years now by absorbing the cultures of immigrants and assimilating them within 1 generation. I haven’t looked at the numbers as closely but I feel that Canada and Australia have largely done the same. The countries with major issues are the ones with little to no experience with assimilation like France, Germany, or the UK
Also Japan and South Korea have tried nearly everything sans immigration like media (shows promoting Natalism), monetary incentives and other benefits, and so on, but nothing even made a dent except for immigration. Why do you think there are so many foreign workers in Japan now? For show?
Fertility imo is an even harder problem to solve than immigration issues because it’s not just a socioeconomic issue. Pollution with endocrine disrupters like BPA and PFAS are the likely culprits but they’re too embedded in our supply chain and there’s even less incentive to fix them
Indeed I am! The data are very surprising at first. This [1] is the US foreign born population since the census started measuring that in 1850. The US foreign born population peaked in the late 19th century, at 14.7%. That's about when you started seeing a bunch of anti-immigrant sentiment rising with people thinking it was having a negative affect on culture, society, labor, etc.
That sentiment gradually led to various restrictions on immigration sending it to a valley of 4.7% in 1970. In 1965 a new immigration act was passed that loosed the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent.
----
I 100% agree that getting fertility rates back up will be much harder than it was to bring them down, but fortunately I don't think environmental or other issues are playing a significant role yet, at least not in terms of direct infertility. The vast majority of people that are not having enough children are (or were) still fertile.
But ultimately it's not even a choice. On top of the cultural issues, I think immigration is simply also unrealistic on a long-term scale. All you do is just kick the can, and not even especially far. And even in places like South America, they're also experiencing a fertility rate collapse. Humanity is simply going to have to change how we're doing things, in a rather dramatic way.
It's not existential because it is the most absurdly self-correcting problem imaginable, but I'd rather we all just start having more babies than ending up in a world dominated by the e.g. Amish and Haredim. Though it'd be pretty funny if we do finally meet an alien intelligence, it turns out they went through the same sort of crisis, and as a result these enlightened aliens everybody has attributed every positive characteristic to end up being Space Mormons. 'Ah Earthling, can I have a minute to talk to you about Gazurazu the Great?'
[1] - https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/07/foreign-born-...
"Space Mormons" So, regular, "orthodox" Mormons?
>Why is it critically important to maintain a particular culture at a cost that is not sustainable?
Don't you like cultural diversity? Would you prefer the whole world to be culturally the same? It will not be a mishmash as you think, the new culture would be the culture of people with most kids. I doubt you would like it.
Isn't it kind of the intersectionality of the right of self determination and the right to freely associate or the right to not freely associate?
> If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks. Even their language itself could die.
I strongly believe that if people directly saw the money themselves that comes from not demographically declining (or other financial benefits from properly organized immigration), they would immediately abandon all this stuff. I dont think people actually care if money is on the table. Unfortunately its too vague a process currently.
>it has an extremely distinct culture that's quite alien to much of the rest of the world.
It's not that distinct. Their language has heavy Chinese influence, their religion originated in India, their cuisine has heavy Portuguese influence, and that isn't even getting into the massive amount of influence that America has had on Japanese culture. Besides, cultures always change over time, with or without immigration.
Japan is on its way to losing its culture because of demographic decline. Babies aren't happening, and that doesn't seem likely to change soon.
Making citizenship as hard as possible for acculturated foreigners is a good way to guarantee the culture will collapse from the inside out.
Racism and nationalism are cultural monkey traps. Sometimes you have to let go of the thing you're holding on to to keep it alive.
I agree with you but we've seen that many people will just blame the immigrants. It's easier to blame change that you can visibly see rather than change that is forced to happen due to abstract demographic trends. No one has a good solution for this. If immigration gets too high, citizens will vote for parties that support anti-immigrant policies to bring it back in line.
When DHH said literally the same thing he was labeled a white supremacist nazi racist, so be careful posting stuff like that
these comments appear like clockwork whenever Japan is mentioned, and I usually get no coherent response when I ask which of the many countries thoroughly enriched with vibrant immigrants had reversed (or even meaningfully slowed) their demographic decline.
yes, you certainly can continuously replace the natives with outsiders from around the world. a number of countries had chosen to do that rather than address the reasons why the natives are no longer able to even maintain their numbers. but I'm rather baffled that such atrocity is celebrated by the very same people who endlessly harp about the capital being the root of all evil, for it is the capital who doesn't give a shit about ethnicity and culture of its indebted laborers. it's the rich you claim to want to eat who benefit, who are removed from the negative consequences of the policies they promote, and who are free to leave on a whim.
>I sincerely wonder what kind of country Japan will be in 50 years.
You could wonder the same if they would accept a massive influx foreigners, like Europe did.
50 years is not so long, UNIX is about that old. It'll take more like 150 years for the result of these to be clear enough.
> every address you've ever lived at, and the dates you lived there.
Well cross Japan off my list. I would not be able to produce that residence list under any circumstances.
Australia generally requires at least 10 years for some things.
I can recommend keeping a list from now on. It's helped me quite a few times.
Anything that needs that data I can do without. Besides that, they'd never believe it in the first place.
Would have to be able to do without many jobs in the USA! (Obviously glad though you’ve got your options and they’re sufficient.)
Also recommend to others keeping a list of all places from the past seven years.
WTF is it that employers think they can get out of the last 7 years of addresses? That's private information, absolutely none of their business.
It helps catch attempted identity theft. Lots of people who are not eligible for employment steal the identities of those who are. But they will have to make up any data they don’t know, or that is inapplicable because the true holder of that identity died a while ago.
So basically I just need to hire a professional with access to a data broker to tell me what a prospective employer already knows about me.
The Work Number might be a good start there. Salary history and stuff apparently.
It's used for background checks to identify relevant criminal records, debt records, etc.
That information can be pulled as part of a background check, if that's required for the job.
>Would have to be able to do without many jobs in the USA!
I've literally never had a US employer ask me for prior addresses. That's in ~20 years of employment.
Hell, I've had employers that didn't ask for current address.
DHS requires 7 or so years of residence and travel history for Trusted Traveler Programs like Global Entry.
Yup, I think it's 5 years but yes.
Helps identity verification (or theft I guess)
Well, I'm going to have to do without that then. This is no great loss because I had already decided to forego traveling to the US because the way the border guards treated me on my last visit was enough to make me decide I didn't need that kind of headache. They still owe me a pair of boots.
In the US you can pull your credit report to get that information.
As a non-citizen I don’t think you are eligible for TTP.
Edit: derp. See below.
Global Entry application is open to citizens of 22 additional countries in addition to US citizens.
Fair, and it's not like it's hard to keep a google doc. But I literally don't know my apartment number from 10 years ago.
If it’s ever lived in the country, the us has a similar requirement for applying to the greencard
>Well cross Japan off my list. I would not be able to produce that residence list under any circumstances.
If you won't be able to produce the accurate list, the chances are that the agency reviewing it would not be able to fail your application by cross-referensing it with some dataset that proves it inaccurate.
I’ve been through the same process. It’s best effort really and you don’t really need to have every single address ever.
I'm pretty sure this is more data than what's required for security clearance.
It absolutely is.
I don't know if something's wrong with me, but this sounds like a humiliation ritual. I understand citizenship is a serious business to the point of creating a duty to go to war for your new motherland. But why would you go to war for a country that subjected you to this?
Japan can't go to war though, that's unconstitutional ;)
But actually to answer the question: it's a weeding-out process. Only the people who genuinely in their heart of hearts feel that they belong will persist. And those people will act in the nation's interest because they feel part of the nation, even if the process of being recognised as such is a bit demeaning. Just look at how OP rationalised his abuse by bureaucracy...
What's not seen is how many people gave up which would have made perfectly fine citizens. That's IMO the real problem with this approach.
That's a lot of documents. When I naturized (in 2025) as a swamp creature living at the bottom of the sea, I had to get something like a naturalization test results and the letter from HR that I'm still employed and making money. Everything else, like tax records, birth certificate and the rest are already known to the government, so they found it themselves and sent it to the king to stamp his king approval on it.
Derek's blog is a delight, probably the best thing in my RSS reader. I'd recommend reading more posts, it's a charming slice of life from near Tokyo.
I want to understand something. Why are westerners so obsessed with Japan? I’m not trying to be offensive I’m just curious
Because you forgot to look at how many westerners move to other countries, too, and how many people in those countries move to western countries. You're asking a question based on an assumption that doesn't hold.
Ok I know a ton of people move to the west and so many move to other countries within the west as well. I moved to America too but I never got why people here talk so much about Japan. Like I have white/American friends who plan yearly or bi-yearly trips, learn the language, etc
I have nothing against the country or anything I’m just curious why Japan is so popular. Was it historical or something?
It was the most developed Asian country for a long period; so naturally it attracted the most attention from the west, as it was seen as a peer. Especially as it's allied to the US and is a liberal democracy, unlike e.g. China.
I am partial to China, sadly you cannot become a citizen ever.
Because it seems to have implemented many of the ideals and aesthetics that westerners cherish but fail to achieve.
Wdym? When you say ideals, a stereotype, for better or worse, seems to be they’re neat people. Something like that?
With emphasis on seems.
Their justice system is nowhere near those ideals
Because it has fast trains and the letters look cool, and most everything is not like in the West. Also the obvious sexual fetishism that is not mentioned once.
I think there's a lot of historical ties going back a long way that explain this, which I also think are often overlooked when people talk about the western fixation on Japan.
Here's my best stab at an answer: The short story is, the western world has been tied to Japan moreso than most other countries in Asia for centuries, and Japan's position in western culture grew from that foothold more and more as time went on. This meant that for a long time now, Japan has been the most "foreign" place that westerners frequently interact with, making it naturally very interesting to talk about and think about. It's also been a relatively safe, stable, and industrialized place for a long time, meaning that it's an easy way as a westerner to visit and experience somewhere very different without having to actually go that far off the beaten path.
I think you could trace this back even as far as World War 1, where Japan was the a notable power in the allies, having a special relationship with Britain, and thus already having a special position in the European subconscious. Add on to this the close bond between America and Japan after WW2 reconstruction, which was amplified even more in the 80s when Japan became a huge presence in everyday life through its automotive and technology exports, and from there its cultural exports too, to the point where Mario and Pikachu became household names. Japanese cuisine became popular through the Japanese diaspora in America and Britain. And, of course, the position of Japanese media in western culture has continued to grow dramatically since then. So in my mind, what we're seeing now is essentially the continuation of a special relationship between Japan and the west that goes back much longer than people realize.
It’s modern orientalism. Which is also why so many westerners feel really strongly about Japan‘s immigration, they want the culture to be frozen in time, as a sort of real life attraction park
Wild guess: a bunch of us grew up with animes on screen from age 6 all the way up to adulthood.
In Italy, grandpas and grandmas know soccer AND dragonball. Which is kinda hilarious in a certain way.
I would quote videogames too, but animes probably had a bigger reach, think of the animes with mechas from the 70s and 80s
Some westerners are, maybe they like manga and other aspects of the exported media.
Some westerners are obsessed with Finland, the happiest country in the world.
Some westerners are obsessed with the idea of being an artist and musician in Berlin.
In short the internet makes these niches and obsessions seem larger than they are, because people with such a shared interest can find others to talk to. But I'd wager that most westerners aren't specifically obsessed with any specific country, or region.
Japan has a fantastic public image. Try living there for a few years, though. The charm quickly fades.
This applies to many places.
Experiencing something as a tourist for a few weeks or seeing its image from the sidelines is very different than living it permanently.
I've never been there but the clean streets and waters, customary politeness (even if sometimes play-pretend only) and exceptionally healthy environment in some way, allowing people to live in the good health for ages, is very alluring.
I'm very aware there are many dark issues as well, but you asked why.
Oh, you asked why _obsessed_? You don't really think everyone thinking Japan is an attractive country is automatically obsessed with it?
Why is the word 'interrogation' (appears at least twice) interleaved with unprintable characters?
For some reason, the author chose to imitate a "strikethrough" text effect by following each letter with "U+0336 COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY", rather than just using the <s> HTML element.
They survive format changes. If copied and used as plain text, the meaning does not suddenly change from a joke to an ominous "interrogation consultation room".
It certainly doesn't survive everywhere. It fails or renders differently in various applications I've just tested such as pdf renderers, tts, messaging, different browsers, terminals, and at least the one email client I tested it in.
When failing it appears either as "interrogation-" or some form of "interrog̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶-" or as "i-n-t-e-r-r-o-g-a-t-i-o-n-"
Unlucky? Crappy tools? I just pasted it into several places on my Android phone, including browsers and renaming a file, and it rendered correctly each time.
Not unlucky at all, just thorough. It does work fine in many places, I just happen to know that not everything has 100% ascii coverage.
> Japanese citizens are prohibited from leaving the country without a passport.
I mean, why the hell would you want to leave a country without a passport anyway unless you were forced to do so as a refugee etc. ?
Also name me an airline or whatever that will even allow you to board without a passport these days ?
I understand the overall story they are telling in the blog post, but some of the digs they are having at Japan are a bit excessive and unreasonable.
It might well be a law in Japan, but in the rest of the world its damn common sense. The Japanese just chose to write it down.
That is true for more countries, but there are also various countries that have agreements allowing their citizens to travel between them without passports, at least in areas close to their common borders.
For example a EU citizen may travel through most of EU without a passport.
Even in those cases you still need ID of some sort.
For example, before February 2026 you could use any sort of photo ID (e.g. driving license) between UK and Ireland. Now you need a passport. [1]
Regarding the EU. Yes, an EU citizen may travel through most of EU without a passport. But:
[1] https://www.aerlingus.com/prepare/passports-and-visas/travel...
>The system is arcane and arbitrary, and also worked correctly to weed me out of the process. It impressed upon me the importance of following the rules and making a contribution, which honestly impacted how I behaved and thought thereafter. When I was absolutely committed, I was able to get through the process.
The most kafkian thing I have read in my life. With a tinge of orwell: "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
jesus fucking christ, what a nightmare culture for individuality.
I don't mean to be rude but this website is unreadable. The font really strains my eyes.
You should probably use a browser that has a "reader mode", Firefox even lets you change the "reader mode" font.
Foreigner who becomes Citizen of Japan = Still a gaijin (foreigner) to real Japanese
can you clarify the meaning of the word "real" here? are you ok in your reality? don't be afraid to ask for help!
Ethnic Japanese people who have lived in Japan for thousands of years
Same in the UK, mate, same here. You'll be always worse.
It's less hidden since the Brexit campaign encouraged the xenophobia on the streets, TV, papers, even one of the past PMs was famously racist and xenophobic and it flew without any issue.
Japan is not the only one.
I'm surprised OP's memory can recall this so well
Side note: It’s so satisfying to read a blog article written by an actual human
The rules changed in 2025, as of q2 2025 it was only a requirement of five years residency within Japan to become naturalized and this route as considered easier than permanent residency.
Everything is now harder. Even business manager visa. So many 夢の日本 have been shattered and pushed into other Asian countries. I’ve also seen a push into Europe , Italy, which also changed the rules last year too which was considered a very easy way to become a European citizen, Canada for Americans protesting Trump, etc.
It really does feel like the prelude or reshuffle of the world balance, open borders, Covid, closing borders, higher qualifications..
Wonder what it all means.
It's because the economy sucks ass and we're all struggling more to get less. Countries only want somebody who's basically guaranteed to bring something to the table and not somebody perceived to be a drag on an already struggling economy.
What it means (IMHO), if things don't get better, is more unpredictable politics. The Old Guard is already seen as having gotten us into this mess, and people will be more likely to try something new. We've seen a more authoritarian turn on both the right and the left. The ship could still right itself, but a lot of our problems are feeding back into each other and we may be seeing the beginnings of a phase transition, to borrow a metaphor from complexity theory.
i'm tempted to say "all politics is downstream from economics", but really economics an politics is quite intertwined; its not surprise things are spiraling...
Doesn't it mostly stem from demographics? Developed countries are experiencing lower natural population growth so some have tried to make that up with immigration. Our economy and centralized fiscal policies generally assume a growing population. Without that, there's little that can be done. Automation can be used to increase productivity but that also faces a backlash from people worried about their jobs. People will blame the problems on politicians but the problem is beyond them.
> The preliminary documentation I would need to gather <insert unbelievable list>
It’s hard to imagine why they are having a decreasing population problem
Well the gentleman in question still had kids having presumably Japanese nationality even before obtaining citizenship, so not sure that's related.
It genuinely depends. The author refers to zainichi koreans, i.e. a pretty large population of koreans that ended up in Japan just before and during WW2. Quite a few of them are still not Japanese citizens despite having lived in Japan for several generations.
"Hanako, my lovely wife, should we settle down and have kids?"
"I want nothing more than to raise a family, but alas I simply can't face brining a child into a world in which people applying for citizenship in this country have to present such a long list of documents."
"I feel the same way, honey."
Disclaimer: I carefully read the whole thing.
> In light of that final insult and all the above and more details I have forgotten or omit, it may seem strange to say that overall, I am okay with the process.
> I don’t think citizenship is a light thing. It is not rational to make it friction-free or fast. I was not ready to naturalize in 2012. The system is arcane and arbitrary, and also worked correctly to weed me out of the process.
If you were born in Nigeria, it would've been literally impossible to procure all those family documents. Or even if you were born almost everywhere to a single mom/deadbeat dad, or just one such sibling it'd be impossible to get a birth certificate. Or if you grew up in poverty and moved around a lot. Attended school in war-torn countries, and so forth. From the article this doesn't sound like the government would bend the rules for such cases. If they truly do then it sounds like they don't really check in which case the whole process is just fake it until you make it.
That's not a process that's okay. It's one that excludes people purely on the basis of not having been born in a happy, American, nuclear family.
I hate culture war but if there was ever a time where "privilege" is apt, it's here. Could do with some more self-awareness.
Despite the language used, the requirements aren’t as absolute as they seem and the civil servants in charge of the process have a lot of leeway in deciding whether or not to let certain requirements slide.
おめでとうございます
"Subconsciously, I think I expected to be recognized for surpassing specialness."