Donald Keene was an honorary citizen of Tokyo before he naturalized and became a legal Japanese citizen

Throughout the world, there are all sorts of "honorary" statuses that cities give to living (and dead) people, animals, fictional characters, and even abstract concepts:

• Honorary degrees (i.e. Harvard& Princeton)
• Freedom of the City (also: Key to the City)
• Honorary citizenship (nations and municipalities)
• Honorary/special residency registrations (Japan)

特別住民票 {tokubetsu jūminhyō} (Special Certificate of Residence)

Japanese & American love was very taboo around WW2

March 14th is a recognized in Japan for many reasons, the top two of which are:

1. It is "White Day" (ホワイトデー {howaito dē}), a day where boys & men reciprocate for the gifts they receive from women on Valentine's Day exactly one month before. White Day was invented by Japan in 1978, and now the "tradition" has spread and some men in close Asian countries (South Korea, Taiwan, China) also follow the commercially invented custom.
2. It is much lesser known as "International Marriage Day in Japan" (国際結婚の日 {kokusai kekkon no hi}), recognizing the day that a Japanese national married a non-Japanese national for the very first time. This happened during the Meiji Era (明治時代 {Meiji jidai}): 1873

When the first marriage attempt between a national and a non-national occurred, neither the "Meiji Constitution" (『明治憲法』 {"Meiji Kempō"}) nor the corresponding Nationality Law (国籍法 {kokusekihō}) — due to its Article 18 — it spawned, existed yet. Those wouldn't come into existence until 1890 — seventeen years after the first international marriage in Japan.

In fact, what could be called the first modern nationalized Japanese family register (戸籍 {koseki}) didn't come into existence until just one year earlier: 1872.

Those familiar with the modern late 20th/early 21st century form of the Japanese family register know that it's designed with the following intentional limitations:

• Old B4 style family register Boxes are pre-printed.

  Everybody (head of the family and the spouse and children listed under him/her) needs to have the same family name. While this is often a man, it's more common for a man to take a woman's family name for marriage than it is in most western European countries.

• New A4 style family register Boxes are computer printed.

  The details that track lineage track Japanese nationals (regardless of sex, race, national origin, or ethnicity) only. While it is true that foreigners who are spouses or children are not noted in the same way as Japanese nationals, it is not true that this means Japanese law doesn't recognize non-Japanese as spouses or children of Japanese.
  
  With the earlier analog (big white B4 pieces of paper with the text printed vertically RTL) versions of the register, this was more obvious because some sections for Japanese parents and children had their own boxes. With the new digital versions that are printed on forgery-resistant standard A4 sized paper which are printed horizontally LTR, it's harder to notice this because the blank details simply aren't printed within the respective event/matter (事項 {jikō}) areas.

Some people have written in asking why diplomats aren't allowed to naturalize in most countries of the world.

No. When you ask somebody what "naturalization" to Japanese gets you, the first answers off the top of their head are "the right to vote" or "the right to hold office", and they will usually follow that up with "these aren't things you do very often, so naturalization really doesn't give you much over permanent residency"

However, there is one right that you get to exercise every day: the right to enter and live and work in Japan at will.

When you are a foreign resident of Japan you have "permission to be in Japan". When you are a Japanese national, you have the right to be in Japan."

Contrary to popular belief, "permanent resident"SoR (永住者在留資格 {eijūsha zairyū shikaku}) does not give you the right to be in Japan, nor is it a promised to be truly "permanent"— either by the foreign resident or by the State of Japan. Permanent Resident Status, just like other "non-permanent" legal foreign resident statuses, can be lost, revoked, and taken away under certain circumstances— either due to one's own actions (being deported or letting one's "permanent" status of residence "expire" due to being outside of Japan for too long) or due to no fault of your own (change in immigration policy via the legislature).

If you're a Japanese national, however, you have what is often called in other countries (such as the United Kingdom), an irrevocable "right of abode" (ROA).

You do not lose the ability to enter Japan even if you lose your Japanese passport and/or your identification while overseas (obviously there must be some way to verify you're Japanese via official documentation on file with the Government of Japan, however). Japan's Ministry of Justice immigration site explains the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, Section 7, Articles 60 & 61 (日本人の出国及び帰国／入管法第７章第６０〜６１条 {Nihonjin no shukkoku oyobi kikoku / nyūkan-hō dai-7-shō dai-60~61-jō}):

  日本人が帰国することは，国民が当然に有する権利として解されています。このような権利を有する日本人の帰国を外国人の入国と同様の手続とすることは適当でないので，入管法は日本人の帰国手続について外国人の入国手続とは別な方法を規定しています。

  日本人の帰国の手続は，入国審査官が帰国を確認し，原則として旅券に帰国の証印をすることになっていますが，やむを得ない事情により旅券を所持していない場合には，帰国証明書を交付することによって行うと規定されています。これは，たとえ旅券を所持することがなくても日本の国籍を有することを証する文書を所持するなどして，日本人であることが確認されれば，帰国することに支障がないことを明らかにしたものです。

Translated:

The ability for a Japanese to return to Japan is understood to be an obvious right for all legal nationals. This is why the procedures for a Japanese entering the country are different from the procedures that a non-Japanese uses for entering Japan.

The procedures for a Japanese to return to Japan through immigration are facilitated via using a passport as proof of one's nationality, however in extenuating circumstances where one is not in possession of a Japanese passport, a certificate allowing return [such as a Travel Document for Return to Japan] will be issued to allow one to return without hindrance, after their Japanese nationality has been confirmed through other means [such as a Japanese driver's license].

I've actually experienced this situation personally first hand: I got into a situation where I left Japan without possessing a Japanese passport yet. After confirming that I had Japanese nationality, immigration let me back in the country despite me not having proper Japanese papers!

In addition to the immigration law, there are two other laws that guarantee a Japanese national come and go and live and stay in Japan as they please. The first is the Japanese Constitution, Article 22:

• Every person shall have freedom to choose and change his residence and to choose his occupation to the extent that it does not interfere with the public welfare.
• Freedom of all persons to move to a foreign country and to divest themselves of their nationality shall be inviolate.

The second is Article 13 of the UDHR (which is translated to Japanese), which defines the phrases "human right" and "fundamental freedoms" that are used in the UN Charter, of which Japan is a member:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Of course, just because a naturalized person can unconditionally enter Japan at any time, no matter what they've done (for example, an illegal activity), unlike a non-Japanese, does not mean they're free from consequences of your actions, either done within Japan or done overseas.

For crimes and misdemeanors, Japan can fine you. It can imprison you. It can even execute you. But it you're a Japanese national, they can't deport or banish you.

O Canada!

Canada is the most recent country to pass legislation which allows it to remove its (Canadian) citizenship from people with more than one nationality. The legislation, bill C-24, passed June 11th of this year (2015), is called the "Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act". It's a broad bill, covering many portions of Canadian nationality. For example, one of the things it does is make it a little harder to become Canadian by naturalization. For example, you must now spend a total of 365 × 4 (=1,460 or four years; three with permanent resident status and be physically present in the Dominion of Canada for 183 days [about 6 months]) total days in Canada. The previous law required 365 × 3 (= 1,095 or three years; two with permanent resident status) days in Canada.

Bill C-24 also made easier to give Canadian citizenship to some people who thought they were legally Canadian but discovered they weren't: such as those born out of wedlock many decades ago or those who took are children of a spouse who took another citizenship long ago when the laws were different. These people are sometimes called "Lost Canadians".

However, in addition to adding legislation to make it easier to give citizenship to those that never had it, the law also makes it easier to take away Canadian citizenship from those who are dual nationals.

Target: Terrorists, not "Canadians of Convenience", "Double Dippers" or "Astronaut's Family"

There have always been critics who have felt that Canadian citizenship was too easy to obtain by people whose ties to Canada are minimal. "Canadians of Convenience" is a term, coined by some Canadian politicians, which refers to those who stayed in Canada only long enough to obtain its nationality (as a second nationality), then returned back to their home country — only to exercise their Canadian citizenship during times of overseas crisis (often at great expense to the Canadian homeland taxpayer) — such as evacuation.

Immigration "Double Dippers" are those who use the possession of two passports as two separate identities, either to double the amount of benefits they receive (when they should only be receiving a single benefit: for example, Working Holiday Visas) or to escape debt and bill collection.

Biometrics, such as fingerprint scanners, which are used by Japan, at immigration and/or embedded in e-Passports, are primarily used to prevent double dipping; taking just the prints from one's index fingers and not all ten fingers is useful for linking a person using more than one name or more than one passport, but is not very useful for domestic crime forensics.

"Astronaut Families" are those where the breadwinner of the family stays in another country and works under a different tax system without declaring their income to Canada while the rest of the family lives in Canada, supported solely from money coming from abroad. In reality, most "Astronauts" (usually Chinese nationals) would want Canadian permanent residency or citizenship because Canada requires a visa for PRC nationals — yet they don't stay in the country long enough to qualify or hold on to permanent residency. Instead, some Chinese have resorted to using dodgy Passports-of-Convenience (such as St. Kitts and Nevis) where nationality can be bought instantly with cash to bypass Canada's visa requirements. In response to this abuse, Canada has revoked visa-waiver privileges from the Caribbean island of just about 50,000 actual physical residents. Hoping for leniency, St. Kitts & Nevis now prints birthplaces on its passports, so other countries can easier tell the difference from jus soli natural-born citizens and naturalized Citizens of Convenience.

Kids! We're home! Whoa! You've grown up! I feel like I was in a black hole like "Interstellar"!

While the term "Astronaut families" was coined from a Cantonese word 太空人 {taai hùng yàhn} (a Chinese word pun: can be interpreted to mean "astronaut" or "man without a wife") due to the original trend setters being Hong Kong families fleeing around the time of the handover to the PRC and the Tiananmen Square Incident, some mainland Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Japanese do this family living arrangement. In Japan, the breadwinner working and living far from the spouse and children and home also happens and is called 単身赴任 {tanshin funin}; although in the Japanese case it often happens as part of a career with a big corporation, and being assigned to remote offices is more common for domestic locations within Japan than international locations overseas.

However, the conditions laid out in C-24 for revoking Canadian nationality make it clear that the intended target for nationality stripping is those who wish to use Canadian Nationality in order to facilitate high crime.

Criminal and terrorist elements know that possession of certain nationalities attracts attention from immigration authorities and the police more than other nationalities.

Thus, terrorists and other criminals often try to obtain an additional passport that is considered to be:

• easy to obtain; Canada is considered to be open to immigrants
• does not invite scrutiny; Canadians are considered to be low risk when it comes to committing immigration violations or participating or abetting in violent illegal crime.

Not. Fooling. Anybody.

There's a reason why some Americans affix Canadian flags on their backpacks when traveling in foreign countries. Canada is considered to be a peaceful country and has few enemies. It's not necessarily because the backpacker is a fan of curling and lacrosse.

Passports-of-Convenience (POC) are not just sought after by criminals and terrorists or the very wealthy individual who is looking for a foreign tax shelter. Honest hard working and law abiding middle & upper class people, who just happen to hail from countries who statistically present high risks of illegal immigration, also desire passports that allow for easier visa-free travel.

Unfortunately, bad elements too would like to lessen the scrutiny they get as well. Having a Canadian passport allows them to travel with less restriction and examination of their activities. When it comes to international travel, not all passports/nationalities are considered equal.

Not all passports are equal. It's one thing to have a passport from a small Pacific (ex. Tonga, Samoa, the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu and Nauru) or Caribbean (ex. Commonwealth of Dominica and the Federation of St. Kitts & Nevis) island that is obviously selling their nationality to anybody. These passports automatically draw suspicion because authorities know the nationality can be had with little effort, loyalty, commitment, or proper vetting of the person. A passport from a G-7 country, on the other hand, is trusted and allows visa-waived travel to much of the world.

The intent of the revised law is to strip Canadian citizenship of those who have more than one nationality besides Canadian nationality AND they have been caught committing or have committed an act of terrorism. Skeptics of the bill, however, are concerned that the language is loose enough that it could be abused to allow the stripping of citizenship from people who are not really dangerous terrorists.

In almost all United Nations member countries, the requirement for stripping of the citizenship of a country usually requires that you possess more than one nationality.

Of course, as a matter of sovereignty, a country can only strip its own citizenship from people.

Canada post-9/11 nationality law revision dealing with terrorists abusing multiple nationalities is said to have been inspired by the United Kingdom's revision of its nationality laws concerning terrorists abusing dual nationality.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

The reason the Canadian law (and many other nationality laws) that strip people of citizenship only apply to dual nationals is because of the United Nation's UDHR, a document ratified in 1949 by eighteen countries and chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt — four years after her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, died.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Democratic Party has often been on the wrong side of history with respect to Japanese relations.

As an interesting ironic side note, Eleanor Roosevelt's husband was responsible for Executive Order 9066, which violated the human rights of many U.S. nationals of Italian-American, German-American, and especially Japanese-American, decent in 1942 — about 70,000 of the 110,000 ethnic Japanese that were detained were legal U.S. nationals. U.S. President Gerald Ford officially rescinded EO 9066 thirty four years later in 1976. U.S. President Ronald Reagan approved the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that would lead to a formal apology, via letter, to those who were affected by EO 9066. President George H.W. Bush signed the apology letters which provided reparations ($20,000/person), eventually providing redress to over 80,000 people.

A key provision in the UDHR which gives less protection to multi nationals than it does to one's final nationality is Article 15:

1. Everyone has the right to a nationality.

The key phrase in Article 15 is "a nationality" (singular); it does not say "one's nationalities" (plural). In other words, having ONE nationality is recognized as a human right / a fundamental freedom. Having additional nationalities is a not; while having more than one nationality is not a universal human right or fundamental freedom (meaning the right exists regardless of country) as recognized by the UN, it may be a right protected by individual states as a matter of sovereign decision.

Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness

The world wars of the 20th century caused a lot of nation-states to simply vanish and disappear. When this happened, the former peoples of the country did not necessarily get new nationalities to replace the nationality of the state they used to belong to.

These stateless people were recognized as a huge humanitarian problem because those who lacked a nationality lacked access to welfare and protection from a nation-state.

Thus, an international treaty was set up so that basically everybody in the world can receive a nationality, and states agreed not to remove the nationality of anybody if it would cause them to be stateless — unless the nationality was obtained fraudulently. From the Convention:

5. If a law entails loss of nationality, such loss shall be conditional upon the person acquiring another nationality. This only applies to loss by marriage, legitimation, divorce, recognition or adoption. A child that loses nationality by recognition or affiliation shall be given opportunity to reacquire by written application under terms not more rigorous than provided by Article 1(2).
6. If a law entails loss of nationality by a spouse or child by virtue of the loss of nationality by the other spouse or a parent, such loss shall be conditional on the person's possession or acquisition of another nationality.
7. Laws for the renunciation of a nationality shall be conditional upon a person's acquisition or possession of another nationality. (Exceptions: not to frustrate freedom of movement of nationals within a country, not to frustrate return of nationals to their country, not to frustrate a person's ability to seek asylum)
8. Contracting States shall not deprive people of their nationality so as to render them stateless. (Exceptions: where otherwise provided in the Convention; where nationality has been acquired by misrepresentation or fraud; disloyalty to the Contracting State).

However, for Article #8, in practical application, even those who obtained a nationality fraudulently do not usually have that nationality revoked if it's their only citizenship. For cases of discovered naturalization fraud where the applicant has already shed their other nationalities, the state will usually punish (by fine or imprisonment) the naturalized person via other local laws related to fraud.

The 2014 British Nationality Act 2014

The United Kingdom, post-9/11, has been one of the most aggressive nations in the world with respect to revoking British nationality from those suspected of terrorism, and the conditions and intent in the new Canadian C-24 bill resemble that of the 1981 British Nationality Act, section §40(2):

2. The Secretary of State may by order deprive a person of a citizenship status if the Secretary of State is satisfied that deprivation is conducive to the public good.

It first came into effect in 2006, and since 2010 the United Kingdom has removed the British citizenship of an additional 16 nationals, on top of the 37 denaturalized Britons since 9/11. This includes not just people that acquired British nationality post-birth via naturalization, but natural-born British dual nationals. The removal of citizenship almost always occurs when they are outside of United Kingdom territory, so no deportation occurs.

Once you lose your citizenship, the revoking country can officially claim that they didn't kill one of their citizens or nationals.

Two of these exiles have since been killed by United States drone strikes while they were in terrorist conflict zones. Another was sent to the United States for prosecution via rendition.

Similar to the current Canadian law, the old 1981 British law, section §40(4), says:

4. The Secretary of State may not make an order under subsection (2) if he is satisfied that the order would make a person stateless.

This section of the law was put to the test by the United Kingdom's Supreme Court in 2013. The U.K. was attempting to strip a man, who was born in Iraq with Iraqi citizenship, came to England as an asylum refugee, and naturalized in the year 2000. The man had been caught fighting with terrorists against U.S. and coalition forces in 2004. He has been living not in Great Britain, but in Turkey, with his third wife and four children, ever since.

The U.K. tried to remove his British citizenship. He challenged this in the high court, saying that because the 1963 Iraqi Citizenship Law No. 43 caused him to automatically lose his Iraqi citizenship upon the voluntary acquisition of another citizenship, removing his British nationality would effectively make him stateless, which was illegal.

When governments change, so do nationality laws.

However, as the government and laws of the Republic of Iraq under Saddam Hussein had been toppled, the new Iraqi (in the Transitional Period) TAL, article 11(c), automatically/involuntarily gave (new) Iraqi nationality back to him.

The Court ruled against the state, saying that because dual nationality did not exist at the time of deprivation, he effectively only had one citizenship.
In response, the U.K. revised its nationality act in 2014 with section 66, making sure that such a loss to a challenge could not happen again:

4. But that does not prevent the Secretary of State from making an order [deprivation of citizenship] under subsection (2) to deprive a person of a citizenship status if—
   1. the citizenship status results from the person's naturalisation,
   2. the Secretary of State is satisfied that the deprivation is conducive to the public good because the person, while having that citizenship status, has conducted him or herself in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom, any of the Islands, or any British overseas territory, and
   3. the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, to become a national of such a country or territory.

Critics of the 2014 bill's revision to British nationality policies were concerned that by aggressively removing undesirable's British citizenship rather than dealing with them directly, the United Kingdom would just encourage them to go elsewhere (such as Canada or another European country like Austria).

A New View on "Boomerang" and "Safety Net" Citizenship Laws

The 2014 British Nationality Act, section §66 4a(c), is controversial because it attempts to exploit a clause in many countries' nationality laws. Many countries have provisions intended to lessen the commitment one of their nationals must make to other countries should they choose to expatriate and naturalize to a country which does not allow multiple citizenship. They do this in one or more of the following ways:

• They do not allow their citizens to lose their citizenship. This is actually in contravention to the UDHR Article 15.2, which says that the ability to change one's (not merely "add an additional") nationality is a human right:

  2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

  Many countries in South America do not allow or make it almost impossible for a natural-born citizen, especially born jus soli, to renounce or relinquish their nationality. Interestingly, their nationality laws usually consider naturalized citizens as a lesser form of nationality in that they will allow a person who acquired their nationality via naturalization to lose their nationality. Many countries in the Americas treat naturalized citizens as lesser citizens (including the United States, which does not allow naturalized citizens to become President).
• Instant or almost instant resumption of citizenship laws. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom and France, have systems that allow you to essentially naturalize to a country that forbids dual nationality with naturalization while allowing you to almost effortlessly restore your original nationality — essentially keeping your original nationality as a "safety net". Two countries that allow this are the United Kingdom (requiring a mere completion of form RS1— which can be done online and paid for with PayPal! — and a £823 fee) and France.
  
  The United Kingdom also has a provision in its laws that allow for one to automatically regain citizenship should one renounce it for the purposes of naturalization and for some freak reason fail to acquire a new nationality.
  
  Even Japan has Re-acquisition of Nationality procedures in its Nationality Law for those who failed to do the Choice of Nationality in time or those who were entitled to natural-born citizenship but their parents never reserved their Japanese nationality as a minor. Article 17 of the Japanese nationality law explains:

  1. A person under twenty years of age who has lost Japanese nationality in accordance with Article 12 [reserving the Japanese nationality of a child born overseas] may reacquire Japanese nationality by making notification to the Minister of Justice if he or she has a domicile in Japan.
  2. A person who has received a notice under paragraph 2 of Article 15 [Choosing Japanese Nationality as an Adult] and has lost Japanese nationality under paragraph 3 of the said Article may reacquire Japanese nationality by making notification to the Minister of Justice within one year after he or she has become aware of the fact that he or she has lost Japanese nationality, if he or she fulfills the condition set forth in item (5) of paragraph 1 of Article 5 [Willing to lose all other nationalities]. However, in the case where he or she is unable to make notification within the period due to natural calamity or any other cause not imputable to him or her, such period shall be one month after he or she becomes able to do so.
  3. The person who has made notification in accordance with the preceding two paragraphs shall acquire Japanese nationality at the time of the notification.

Easy Resumption of Nationality ability = de facto dual nationality?

If you have a net, you care less about consequences.

The interesting and controversial part of the United Kingdom's new nationality law is that it's basically saying that if they believe, due to the nationality laws of another country, that you can acquire or re-acquire that nationality with little chance of rejection (in other words, a "safety net" nationality to catch you if you should fail with your other nationality), then they will treat you like somebody that has more than one nationality from a United Nation's UDHR perspective, and they will not hesitate to strip you of your acquired U.K. nationality.

The new 2014 British Nationality Act specifically states that for this case, they will only target those who acquired British nationality through naturalization, not natural-born British citizens who acquired another nationality.

Natural-born citizenship = Naturalized citizenship

The Canadian C-24 Bill, while it will not strip those without at least two (2) nationalities of citizenship, unlike the British Act, does not differentiate between naturalized Canadian citizenship and natural born citizenship.

In other words, if you were born Canadian, then acquire another country's citizenship, then commit terrorist acts — the Canadian government can legally strip you of the citizenship you were born with.

While many countries in the world treat naturalized citizens as being less than natural-born citizens (often by excluding certain public office or servant roles for them), neither Canada nor Japan legislatively discriminate against how one obtained their citizenship.

Austria and the Citizenship Act

Austria doesn't have a problem with its citizens serving as the Governor of foreign states comprising of over 37M people.

Austria is following Canada and especially the United Kingdom with similar legislation that targets dual nationals (because they can, according to the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights) that are engaged in terrorism.

Austria has a unique problem, considering the small size of its country, in that almost 100 people with Austrian citizenship are known to be self-proclaimed jihadists and are fighting in Syria's civil war.

They are debating modifying their nationality act, of which articles 32 & 33 only provide for removing the citizenship of persons serving in the public or military service of a foreign country. The problem with this outmoded article is that most jihadists and terrorists are not formally associated with any sovereign recognized nation-state's military. Austria plans to modify their nationality act to say:

Personen, die sich an bewaffneten Konflikten einer ausländischen bewaffneten Gruppierung beteiligen

which which roughly translates to "persons participating in armed conflicts in a foreign armed group".

Initially they are planning to make their law and process in compliance with the United Nation's fundamental freedoms in that they will only remove the nationality of those with more than one.

However, Austria is planning to go a step further: they believe that it is okay to cause somebody to become stateless if they do something as severe as "enters, on his own free will, the military service of a foreign state" (Article 32) or if a Austrain citizen "employed by a foreign state seriously damages the interests or the reputation of the Austrian Republic" (Article 33). The Ministry of Interior explained:

Das hohe Gut der österreichischen Staatsbürgerschaft darf durch Islamisten nicht missbraucht werden

which roughly translates to "Austrian citizenship is of great value and must not abused by Islamists".

This is actually not a flip-flip in thinking or policy for Austria, as it was one of the few countries that had officially declared reservations about the lack of exceptions for statelessness when the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness was ratified in 1972. Austria added the following to its ratification on September 22, 1972:

Difference between "Denaturalization" and "Administrative Denaturalization"

"Denaturalization" is when they remove your citizenship for something you did after you legitimately acquired your citizenship (either through naturalization or being born with it).

"Administrative Denaturalization" is a sub-type of denaturalization which is similar to annulling a marriage (as opposed to divorce): it is a recognition that the citizenship should have never been given to you in the first place, due to an oversight: you lied on an immigration or naturalization or permanent resident form, or you failed to complete all the requirements of naturalization yet they gave the nationality to you anyway. Administrative denaturalization is as though it is completely erased - legally, it declares that the acquired nationality never technically existed and was never valid.

Summary

It is not clear if what these countries are doing is a trend. What is clear, however, is that the policy of removing citizenship from people that have more than one is not considered controversial at the international United Nation's level from the perspective of human rights.

Some Canadians are upset with Bill C-24 because they have said that it means that not everybody's Canadian nationality is considered equal. From a domestic point of view they are correct. From an international modern human rights point of view, however, those with more than one nationality have never had the right to have all of their nationalities be considered irrevocable.

Changing from U.S. Nationality to Something Else went from costing nothing to thousands of dollars.

The United States has experienced a wave of accidental Americans giving up their U.S. nationality. That is, people with multiple nationalities that happen to have U.S. nationality but don't live in America nor use their U.S. nationality in any way. Some didn't even know they had U.S. nationality until that checked when the crackdown began due to FBAR and FATCA.

If you have been following the sports news in Japan recently then you have probably heard about the national rugby team's success at the Rugby World Cup. They defeated South Africa's legendary Springboks and went on to captivate Japan. Not all of the foreign born members of the national team are actually naturalized as this is not a regulation of the Rugby Union. Players on the national team must meet the minimum residency requirement in order to represent a particular country.

Here is a brief profile of the naturalized members of Japan's national rugby team.

Luke Thompson

Born in New Zealand and naturalized 2011, Luke Thompson has been playing for the Japanese national team since 2007. He currently plays professionally for the Kintetsu Liners.

Michael Leitch

Originally from New Zealand and granted citizenship in 2013, Michael Leitch is also a member of the Toshiba Brave Lupus professional team.

Contrary to popular belief, the "Y" on these license plates doesn't mean "Yankee". ☺

The United States and Japan, like many other countries, have a special treaty called the "Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan" (日本国と {Nipponkoku to}​アメリカ合衆国との間の {Amerikagasshūkoku to no Aida no}​相互協力及び {Sōgo Kyōryoku oyobi}​安全保障条約 {Anzen Hoshō Jōyaku}), known as the 安保条約 {anpo jōyaku} or even just 安保 {anpo} for short. It's a long and complicated (and controversial) treaty that has been in place and renewed since 1960.

Part of the provisions of the treaty allow for the U.S. military to bring in and rotate tens of thousands of U.S. military (and civilian) personnel in and out of Japan, living on or near military bases.

Because so many U.S. citizens (almost as many as U.S. nationals that live in Japan as a standard foreign resident) move in and out of Japan, serving the U.S. military, the U.S. military has crafted an agreement with Japan's MoFA (外務省 {gaimushō}) which allows Americans serving the U.S. military in Japan to bypass almost all of the procedures related to obtaining status and permission to live in Japan as a foreign resident.

U.S. military and some civilians serving them who are posted in Japan do not need a visa to enter Japan. Some do not even need a passport! In fact, some young soldiers do not have one.

The CAC, similar to Japanese domestic ID, has a smart-chip, 2D code & RFID.

A U.S. military I.D. and proper order papers is all they need to enter and stay in Japan (though it should be noted that where they can be and what they can do is dictated and controlled strictly by the U.S. Armed Forces) To drive, they do not need a Japanese driver's license — their cars have special license plates with the Latin letter prefix "Y" on them (which means "Yokosuka", the location of a large base, though you will see these cars near all bases such as those in 沖縄Okinawa even though they're nowhere near 神奈川県横須賀市Kanagawa-ken Yokosuka-shi (Yokosuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture).

This agreement is known as the SOFA (地位協定 {chiikyōtei}).

Of course, there are some in the U.S. military that come to love Japan and have either stayed here so long or developed or had ties to the country that they want to stay in Japan after their service to the U.S. Armed Forces is over. And there are some who even want to naturalize. A person in Okinawa recently asked us if the time spent in Japan via the SOFA counts towards the required physical residency condition— either five (5), three (3) or one (1) consecutive year(s) depending on whether it's regular naturalization or simplified naturalization.

The answer for this person, unfortunately, is sorry, but no: because people staying in Japan via the SOFA bypass all the requirements and checks for acquiring and staying in Japan via a regular visa or SoR (在留資格 {zairyū shikaku}), there is explicit language in the SOFA agreement that says that it doesn't entitle the person to have any expectation of being able to live in Japan permanently or even to live medium to long term as a normal foreign resident of Japan. The legal language in the agreement is as follows:

ARTICLE Ⅸ

2. Members of the United States armed forces shall be exempt from Japanese passport and visa laws and regulations. Members of the United States armed forces, the civilian component, and their dependents shall be exempt from Japanese laws and regulations on the registration and control of aliens, but shall not be considered as acquiring any right to permanent residence or domicile in the territories of Japan.

And in Japanese:

第九条

2. 合衆国軍隊の構成員は、旅券及び査証に関する日本国の法令の適用から除外される。合衆国軍隊の構成員及び軍属並びにそれらの家族は、外国人の登録及び管理に関する日本国の法令の適用から除外される。ただし、日本国の領域における永久的な居所又は住所を要求する権利を取得するものとみなされない。

Even if somehow the ministry did allow time spent in Japan via the SOFA to count towards one's physical residency requirement for naturalization, it'd be extremely difficult to prove it. Because no records are made of entrances and exits to Japan in either a passport or in Japan's immigration computer databases, calculating and proving that a candidate spent the required amount of time in Japan would be extremely challenging, if not impossible.

In summary, people who spend time in Japan with the military without having obtained a regular will need to apply for a regular visa and earn their time here as a regular foreign resident via a standard foreign civilian SoR (在留資格 {zairyū shikaku}) issued by the MoJ (法務省 {hōmushō}). In contrast, time spent in Japan as a student under a student visa, contrary to what you might read on the internet, does count as foreign residency, although it is unlikely that a student fresh out of school will meet the guidelines regarding being able to show that they established a stable financial situation in Japan enabling them to live there relatively little difficulty.

Finally, a word of caution to U.S. military considering changing their nationality to Japanese: some financial and/or other benefits that the U.S. Armed Forces provides to retired personnel may be forfeited in you voluntarily give up your U.S. citizenship (a requirement for naturalization to Japan). I don't know if "relinquishing" one's U.S. nationality instead of "renouncing" one's nationality counts as "voluntarily" in the eyes of the U.S. military; I would recommend consulting with qualified U.S. military legal advisers regarding this.

Misinfo source: the Beeb& U of Chicago's Tom Ginsburg

Yesterday's BBC News Magazine has an article in it, titled "Does it matter where a country's leader is born?", that had an attributed quote with an example that is 100% untrue:

"In some places it's impossible to become a citizen, like Japan."

The quote surprisingly came from someone who should know better given his field of expertise and because he was a university lecturer in Japan: a professor and dean who specializes in comparative and international law, Dr. Tom Ginsburg.

He is not solely to blame, though. Both the BBC News Magazine as well as the writer of the article should have checked his claims prior to publishing them.

The writer of the article, after being informed of the error by this site, quickly edited and removed Dr. Ginsburg's incorrect statement and noted it in the article:

@legallyjapanese thanks for drawing my attention to this - the article has been amended.

— Vanessa Barford (@veebarford) January 11, 2016

Obviously on a site like this, whose contributors are writers who have ALL become Japanese national citizens, we (and hundreds of thousands of other naturalized citizens) know not just from book-knowledge of Japan's laws, but also from personal experience, that Ginsburg's example is not even half true. Not only do people become Japanese national citizens, but some naturalized citizens have gone on to become nationally elected MP politician leaders and politicians (including one of our contributors). Unlike the United States, which does not allow naturalized citizens (in other words, those who are not citizens from birth) to become President, there are no legal restrictions regarding a Japanese national who naturalized from becoming Japan's Prime Minister.

And the ability to become a Japanese citizen is not a new thing introduced with the post World War Ⅱ Constitution and the laws under it: the Meiji Constitution of the Empire of Japan (大日本帝国憲法 {Dai-Nippon Teikoku kempō}) also included the original Article 18, which still survives in the modern Constitution as Article 10, that defined a Japanese national as being defined by (nationality) law. The nationality law of that era also defined the processes for foreigners to become Japanese, either through international marriage to a Japanese man (jus matrimonii) or via the pre-20th century naturalization laws. Japan's nationality laws were not made gender equal (being able to inherit Japanese nationality from either the father or mother) until 1985 in order to comply with United Nation's (国連 {kokuren}) CEDAW which Japan ratified in 1979, but there are examples of both men and women (of many races & ethnicities) becoming Japanese citizen/subjects in the previous centuries — even couples who never married Japanese and women who never married anybody:

• Scottish Japanese whisky heroine 竹鶴リタTAKETSURU Rita née Jessie COWAN
• Author/journalist Irish/American immigrant 小泉八雲KOIZUMU Yakumo né Lafcadio HEARN
• American automotive entrepreneur 合波武克人 {GŌHAMU Katsundo} né William Gorham and his American wife Hazel, who became an expert on Japanese flowers & gardening and an author
• Russian ballerina pioneer 霧島エリ子 {KIRISHIMA Eriko} née Елена Павлова {Yelena PAVLOVA}, enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine (靖国神社 {Yasukuni Jinja}) for her troop morale boosting support for the Empire

There are even cases of people who were not born with Japanese nationality but were given "natural born" Japanese nationality retroactively when the laws changed.

A half-decade ago when I first started this site, the internet was full of misinformation regarding Japanese naturalization difficulty and eligibility. Prior to naturalizing myself, I had many Americans tell me that it was "illegal" and "impossible" to immigrate to Japan and mistakenly thought that only those with Japanese blood could be Japanese— they'd often cite third or fourth generation Koreans born and raised in Japan without Japanese nationality as proof of their understanding, not understanding that these non-Japanese with the Status of Residence (SoR; 在留資格 {zairyū shikaku}) of Special Permanent Resident (特別永住者 {tokubetsu eijūsha}) actually have a fast track path to naturalization — which is even more lenient than the "simplified naturalization" (簡易帰化 {kan'i kika}) process because SPRs don't have to write a motivation essay (動機書 {dōkisho}) or satisfy Japanese naturalization's General Requirement #4: being able to make a living through his/her own assets or abilities, or through those of a spouse or of another relative who is making a living. Of SPRs, only about 25% who inquire about naturalization give up, and if they do decide to formally apply, applicants have historically had over a 95% chance of approval from the Japanese Ministry of Justice (MoJ; 法務省hōmushō). The actual reason that most Koreans in Japan do not become Japanese nationals is not because they can't, but because they don't want to.

Although it is 2016, unfortunately misinformation about Japanese naturalization still exists and is propagated in the mainstream press and by academics and journalists.

Dr. Ginsburg may have mistook or assumed Japan was like some other countries where it really is impossible to obtain citizenship via naturalization or become a citizen/national without the proper bloodline. Surprisingly, Article 1 of the United Nations's ICERD, to which Japan agreed to in 1995, permits nation-states to use racial/ethnic criteria for the purposes of naturalization in some cases:

3. Nothing in this Convention may be interpreted as affecting in any way the legal provisions of States Parties concerning nationality, citizenship or naturalization, provided that such provisions do not discriminate against any particular nationality.

Japan does decide natural born nationality by jus sanguinis (don't let the Latin mislead you; it means inheriting legal nationality regardless of the parent's race — it does not mean determining citizenship by the presence of racial Japanese blood)— although it does have a jus soli provision to comply with the U.N. Treaty on the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Some people who live in New World countries in America may think nationality being determined by where you were born is the norm, but in fact, Japan's nationality law is not an outlier: most nations in Europe, Asia, and Africa are similar.

Despite Ginsburg's error regarding Japan, I have nothing but positive things to say about the Comparative Constitutions Project that he co-directs, and the collaboration between the CCP& Google Ideas on Project Constitute, which I've used to compare Japan's current constitution with other constitutions.

Army Private 1st Class Hirayanagi né Harris, right after training and his Baptism of Fire

As this site has documented before, there actually have been quite a few non-Asians who took Japanese nationality during the time before the modern constitution, under the nationality/naturalization laws of the Meiji Constitution. There are even some who served the armed forces of the time in some capacity, such as Eliana Pavlova, who brought ballet to the Empire and did morale boosting for the troops. It may surprise some to learn that there were actually some Caucasian men who were naturalized and conscripted and served on the front lines of the Imperial Army. There have been examples of non-Japanese westerners who were indirectly involved. A previous post documented the naturalized Gorham family, who had non-naturalized children who went to regular non-international schools in the early 20th century. One of the children, Don Cyril, participated in compulsory military training and war games — such as games where he'd have to plant a red flag to indicate where the "enemy" was — but was excluded from more sensitive activities such as "strategic planning conferences". Other than this, there was a very small contingent of "blue-eyed Japanese Imperial Soldiers" (青い目の日本兵 {aoi me no Nippon-hei}), but they were very rare. 平柳秀夫HIRAYANAGI Hideo né James Bernard Harris was one of these very rare men.

The Harris' only child, loved by his parents

James B. Harris was born in 1916 in Kōbe, Hyōgo Prefecture to a British father from Wales and a Japanese mother; in modern day language, his phenotype would have probably been referred to as 『ハーフ』 {"hāfu"} (mixed race) in Japanese. He was brought up as a Catholic, both by his father and his international schooling in Japan. His middle name, Bernard, was his Confirmation name, given to him to seal the covenant in his holy baptism.

Changing to Starting out with British Nationality

His Japanese mother was from Chiba Prefecture. Japanese Meiji era marriage and nationality laws, like many laws made before the 20th century, were heavily interconnected and patriarchal. If a foreign woman married a Japanese national man, it was relatively easy for her to obtain Japanese nationality due to the master man of the household being Japanese. On the other hand, if a Japanese women, as is the case here, were to marry a foreign man, she would lose her Japanese nationality because it was assumed she would acquire the nationality of the foreign husband.

When Ura married Arthur Harris, she gained British nationality and lost her Japanese nationality. When James Harris was born, he acquired the nationality of the father, who was British. It would not be until 1985 when Japanese nationality laws were changed so that a child could inherit at birth Japanese nationality from not just the father, but either the father or mother.

Dad's delicious delight

His father was the Far East foreign correspondent for the London Times (aka "The Times"). Harris described his father as being "very British", with a love of drinking, especially Scotch whisky, traditional English billiards, and the same cigars that Winston Churchill smoked. Although he was described as a strict disciplinarian, he was also lauded as a loving and caring husband and father whom James respected. However, he also loved Japan and did not want to leave it. His favorite Japanese food was 鰻丼una-don (eel topped rice bowl).

The politics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emphasized empire-building. Due to the limitations of cooperative global trade and the advancement to the era of industrialization, if you were a country with limited natural resources (such as the United Kingdoms of England + Wales + Scotland & Ireland or Japan), it was thought that the natural thing to do was to expand your territory to include areas that could provide the raw materials to supply your people. Additionally, the housing and transportation infrastructure at the time led people to mistakenly believe that Britain and Japan were overcrowded at the time (despite the population of both lands being fractions of what they are today) and needed more space, which was achievable through colonization. Finally, it was more of a eat-or-be-eaten world back then. Commodore Perry showed Japan with his black ships and cannons that you couldn't just keep to yourself; if you did not militarize and follow the ways of the other empires you would end up being subjugated and become somebody else's territory, as Japan learned from seeing many of its neighboring Asian countries become the property of European and American nations.

American Influence

As it looked back in the early twenties

Partially due to the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which happened when Harris was seven (7) years old and living in Yokohama, his father's job was relocated briefly to California. His father enjoyed living in Japan, but could not turn down the career opportunity it offered. This was before the airplane era, so they traveled to America via ship by way of Vancouver, which took over two weeks. They rested in Seattle for a bit before continuing on to their final destination of the suburbs of Los Angeles in Hollywood. They only stayed in America for five years, up to his 12th birthday, before his father was reassigned yet again to Japan.

In addition to the influence of his father, who was a subject of the British Empire at the time, Harris seeing the what seemed like limitless space and natural resources of America amazed him. In his youth, he learned about the differences between countries that have space and materials, like the America and Canada, and nations that did not, like Japan and the U.K. During the war, being on the losing side, he would later reflect on how this imbalance of manpower and raw supplies meant that in the long run, Japan never had a chance to win in an extended war based on national stamina.

After returning to Japan, "Jimmy" attended the Saint Joseph International School (known as Saint Joseph College at the time) in Japan, which shut down in the year 2000 due to financial difficulties. Because his Catholic international schooling taught exclusively in English & French and followed a primarily American curriculum, he was functionally illiterate when it came to reading and writing Japanese, even though he could speak and understand it without problem thanks to his mother and his early years living in Japan. Additionally, his exposure to California during his formative years allowed him to affect either a British-European or an American appearance in his mannerisms and speaking.

Changing back to Japanese and being Naturalized

They are buried in the foreigner area of the cemetery because they are with his father (head tombstone), who never became legally Japanese.

Tragically, James Harris' father died a sudden relatively early death due to pneumonia when Harris was only sixteen.

Ura, who had changed to British nationality by marrying her husband, was now an early widow and had a difficult choice to make. Both her and her son's connections to the British side of the family was not strong because long-distance travel and communication was not as easy as it is today. Because of this, she decided to re-acquire Japanese nationality and have her child naturalized to Japan and enter the Japan family register with her. His mother gave him the new Japanese name 平柳秀夫HIRAYANAGI Hideo. In this way, Harris' naturalization was similar to Lafcadio Hearn's path in that he was made Japanese effectively through on-paper "adoption": he was invited to register into an existing Japanese family register. In Hearn's case, he was invited into his wife's family register in order to ensure that the 小泉 {KOIZUMI} ex-samurai clan (due to their abolishment with the Meiji Restoration), which had no male heir, continued. In Harris' case, his mother reclaimed her Japanese nationality and brought her natural-born (not adopted) son into her family register.

Under modern naturalization laws, adoption of non-Japanese and even adoption of adults is possible, but it does not (nor does marriage — aka jus matrimoni) de facto confer or imply Japanese nationality. An immediate "family connection" may qualify the non-Japanese for 簡易帰化 {kan'i kika} (simplified naturalization) though.

Harris vs. Hirayanagi

Harris stated in his autobiography that although he was given this new name by his mother, he would use his original birth name that was given to him by his father as a professional name — especially when being associated with English language teaching and writing. However, when he needed to emphasize his Japanese identity (for example, when serving with other Japanese soldiers on the battlefield or to avoid being detained as a foreign spy after the outbreak of the Pacific War), he would use his Japanese name.

An Apprentice in Journalism under Burton Crane

How M&A and name changes made The Japan Times what it is today

English Newspapers in Japan in 1933

	The Japan Times & Mail	The Japan Advertiser
Founded	1897-Mar-22	1890-Nov-1
Organization	T.K.: silent partnership	K.K.: issued-share based company
President	芦田均 {ASHIDA Hitoshi}	Benjamin W. Fleisher
Capital	¥500,000 Funded by a grant from MoFA in 1921	¥150,000 funded from the U.S., especially the first company president
Pages	Evening Edition: 8~16 broadsheets Morning and Overseas Editions: 8 broadsheets	Morning Edition: 8~18 broadsheets Also published the weekly magazine "The Trans-Pacific"
Circulation	27,000 (1933)	15,000 (1932)
Subscription	Monthly: ¥2.50	Monthly: ¥3.30
Advertisement	1in.: ¥4.00	1in.: ¥4.50
Branches	Yokohama, Kōbe, Ōsaka	Yokohama, Kōbe, Ōsaka, various U.S. locations
Office Staff	84	89
Press Staff	20	28

Harris got his first break in the world of journalism with The Japan Advertiser (now known as The Japan Times) at the age of 17, and used the money he earned to pay his way through school.

His mentor at the paper was the "Big In Japan" Burton CRANE (バートン・クレーン {Bāton KURĒN}). Born in upstate Buffalo, New York to a minister's family (His father, Louis Burton Crane, would write the historically important book "The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Holy Spirit" [public domain] which is still republished today), Burton Crane dropped out of Princeton University to work simultaneously at a construction company while writing for Elizabeth, New Jersey's "Elizabeth Times" and the Associated Press' Philadelphia branch. He would move to Japan in the fall of 1925, serving as a reporter for The Japan Advertiser while simultaneously being a special correspondent for the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Crane would work his way up to become the financial editor at the Advertiser, and gained a reputation as being one of the earliest foreign authorities on the Japanese economy. He would leave Japan in 1939 before the full outbreak of war in Europe, and returned to Tokyo during the Occupation to work in the Tokyo Bureau of the New York Times. Although he was based in Japan, he was injured on the battlefield in Korea covering the Korean War.

Burton Crane wrote and directed for this troupe which sometimes performed at The Tokyo American Club.

When he wasn't too busy doing his day job of being a news reporter and journalism correspondent in Japan, Burton Crane had an additional public identity in the fine arts of acting and singing. Crane directing, wrote and published English language plays such as:

• "Stage-Stricken"
• "The House of Atreus"
• "The Mystery of the Silver-backed Hairbrush"
• "Agamemnon"
• "Hecuba"

Crane was also one of the first recorded foreign celebrity singers based in Japan. L.A. White, president of Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd. at the time, discovered Crane by accident when he was singing in broken Japanese at a banquet (with a lot of booze); Crane based his family in 六本木Roppongi (still popular among expats for its nightlife). While his wife not only worked at the paper, was the U.S. Ambassador's secretary, and taught English at the American School in Japan, Burton was known to sing impromptu songs at eating and (especially) drinking establishments around 浅草Asakusa whenever he had free time… dabbling with the famous comedians and actors of the time. This was before the era of カラオケkaraoke— which wouldn't be popularized by Ōsaka's 井上大佑INOUE Daisuke (no relation) until the seventies.

Columbia's L.A. White was looking for "domestic" singers to show off its new imported gramophone technology that used electrical amplification (in other words, the precursor to the modern phonograph) and compete with rival company Victor. American jazz was beginning to spread in Japan, and the American twenties hit which is now a standard, "My Blue Heaven", was very popular in Japan at the time. White had found his first artist, Crane, that checked all of his marketing boxes for showcasing his company and his wares.

This 25 track CD was actually released in 2006!

Crane's first hit would be a single titled, 『酒が飲みたい』 {"Sake ga Nomitai"} ("I want to drink saké[/alcohol]"). The two sided single disc was released in the Spring of 1931, with (heavily accented even for singing) ½ Japanese and ½ English lyrics. The B-side of the same single would humorously be 『家へかへりたい』 {"Ie e ka[e]ritai"} ("I Want to Go Home"), adapted from the same Irving King song, "Show Me the Way to Go Home".

The single was a hit and was even admired by some critics for its unique lyrics. Although Crane is credited with the song, most people believe it is based on either the UC Berkeley college marching ballad, "California Drinking Song" or the old American folk ballad "Drunk Last Night", and he had help with the Japanese lyrics from famous film producer, scriptwriter & critic, 森岩雄 {MORI Iwao} (who became a TOHO Executive Producer who oversaw the making of many Godzilla movies). The two would release a second single at the end of Summer that same year:

1. 『ニッポン娘さん』 {Nippon Musume-san} ("Honorable Japanese Daughter")
   (based on the 1924 World War Ⅰ song "Hinky Dinky Parlez-vous")
2. 『おいおいのぶ子さん』 {"Oi Oi Nobuko-san"} ("Hey hey Miss Nobuko")
   (based on the German drinking song "Trink, Trink, Brüderlein trink" [Drink, drink, brother drink"] by Will Glahé)

Crane would continue to release over two dozen silly comical singles — most of them being modest hits for the era in Japan. Contrary to his boast on an American television quiz show that he was compared to "Bing Crosby" in Japan, he was actually taken more seriously as a journalist; most considered his singing to be a stunt novelty act. Eventually, however, the novelty wore off: Crane's opportunities dried up when White returned to America in 1934. He switched to Teichiku Records in 1936 and produced one more record before packing it up and returning to New York in Autumn of the same year.

Burton Crane would return to Japan during the Occupation and reported mostly on economics, producing a half dozen books on the subject:

• この地獄も愛すればこそ {Kono Chigoku mo Ai Sureba Koso} (The Hell I Also Loved) | 1948 メトロ出版社 {Metoro Shuppan-sha} (translation by 平川唯一 {HIRAKAWA Tadakazu})
• Getting and Spending: An Informal Guide to National Economics | 1956 Harcourt, Brace and Co.
• 稼いで費って {Kaseide Tsuitte} | 1957 六月社 {Rokugatsusha} (translation of "Getting and Spending" by 熊取谷武 {KUMATORI Tanitake})
• A century of financial advertising in the New York times | 1957 New York Times
• The Sophisticated Investor: a Guide to Stock-Market Profits | 1959 Simon & Schuster
• The practical economist | 1960 Simon & Schuster
• Smart Money | 1964 Random House

In one of his final articles for the NYT on Japan, similar to how William Gorham called for the conversion of Japanese to a 100% katakana writing system, Crane enthusiastically wrote about a post-war SCAP movement to teach Japanese using only the rōmaji (Latin alphabet) writing system. In the end, the Japan (and the PRC) decided to "simplify" their what is now called 旧字体 {kyūjitai} (old Japanese sinograms) into 新字体 {shinjitai} (new Japanese sinograms) rather than abandon them. Japan has had a literacy rate exceeding 99% for over a half a century.

The New York Times had to use Crane's handwriting for his Japanese example because they couldn't print Japanese in 1946. Note the use of the now-obsolete ゐ[w]i and ヰ[w]i仮名 {kana} (Japanese syllabet) characters. The last two paragraphs references the 財団法人カナモジカイ {Zaidanhōjin kana moji-kai} that ゴウハム・カツンド {GŌHAMU· Katsundo} was a member of.

After yet again returning to the United States after covering the Korean War from Japan (and getting injured), he lectured at NYU. Along with his wife Esther, he recorded his post Occupation memoirs with Columbia University, continued to publish for books and magazines, made a television appearance on the hit long running quiz show "To Tell The Truth" (Originally aired 1961-Mar-20, billed as a "stock market columnist and hit singer in Japan"), and worked long enough that the New York Times saw to it that he got an obituary (something he did not get from The Japan Times). Burton Crane passed away in 1963 at the age of 62.

On December 20, 1999, Burton Crane was picked and honored, among all the men and women who wrote from 1900 to 1999, to be part of the BNL 100: Business News Luminaries of the Century Awards.

Burton Crane's Influence on James Harris

According to Harris' memoir, Crane was a tough and disciplined mentor; he would only praise him for about ⅓ of what he wrote as a first draft and would often demand complete rewrites. Enamored with his Ivy League education (Harris did not know Crane was a dropout), he respected and looked up to him. Crane told Harris things like, "I can't use this. A newspaper article is not a elementary school or middle school composition!"

　やがて，三回に一回ぐらいはほめてもらえ，手直しをされながらも採用してくれることが多くなった。そうなるとぼくは有頂天になり，持ちまえのうぬぼれも頭をもたげて，翌日はまた張り切って原稿を書いてクレインにさし出す。すると，きのうの上機嫌はどこへやら，またまた苦虫を噛みつぶしたような表情でつき返してくる。ようやくつかみかけた自信が，その瞬間スルリとぼくの指のあいだから抜け落ちて，木っ端みじんにこわれてしまう。

──コンチクチョー，この男はおれにいやがらせをしているのか？

　そんなぼくの心の動きを察したのか，あるときこういってぼくにアドバイスをしてくれた。 「いいかジミー，よくおぼえておけよ。新聞の記事というのはこんなに狭いスペースに印刷されるんだ。それなのにおまえのようにやたら長ったらしい文章を書いてみろ，だらだらするばかりで読みにくくってしょうがない。そんなもの誰も読んでくれるもんか。いいか，アメリカの優秀なジャーナリストはな，センテンスをできるだけ短くして簡潔な文章を書くんだ。形容詞は単なるデコレーションにすぎないんだから必要最小限にとどめる。そのためには動詞が重要な働きをするんだ。まず動詞の使い方に気を配って，なるべく短いセンテンスになるように勉強してみるんだな」

—pg.49, "I Was a Japanese Soldier"

Harris explained that at first he thought Crane was bullying him, however Crane explained how precious space was in a paper and how the best journalists in America wrote the shortest sentences possible. Instead of using adjectives as decorations, the power of rich verbs should be emphasized.

Harris learned the advice well from his 先輩 {sempai} (master/senior), as he would be responsible for this famous three word headline at the age of twenty-five (25):

That point size type wasn't available, so each of the seven letters and exclamation point of "WAR IS ON!" had to be custom carved from wood for the JT's printing press.

Being Arrested, Held, Detained, Released… then Conscripted

After war broke out, the 憲兵隊 {kempeitai} (Imperial Japanese Army Military [secret] Police) detained those who were not legal Japanese nationals. There are indeed examples of Caucasian naturalized Japanese, men and women, such as the former William & Hazel Gorham from America and Rita Cowan from Scotland, and Eliana Pavlova from Russia who lived and worked in Japan during the Pacific War without being arrested or detained by the authorities.

Right after the Pacific War broke out, the police came to his workplace and arrested a bunch of foreigners with known Allied citizenship. Harris was not one of those who were arrested, though, so he assumed that the authorities knew about his Japanese nationality. He was wrong. They came back for him days later, with a warrant to arrest the (assumed to be) American James Harris.

The charge was being a 敵国人 {tekikokujin} (alien from an enemy nation) from America (despite the fact that he was actually originally born with British nationality due to his father's nationality).

He and his colleagues and bosses at work, foreign and Japanese, protested that he was naturalized and in fact, a Japanese national subject of the Empire and the Emperor. Without any immediate proof, however, the military police did not believe him and fulfilled the warrant for his arrest.

Records of nationality were not centralized back then (they didn't start converting 戸籍 {koseki} (Japanese family unit registers) to digital format until the 21st century). It did not help that Harris used his English name in professional life and in public print, and he could not read or write Japanese. Additionally, both the Kempei and the regular police assumed that the use of more than one name was suspicious and the activity that a spy would do; the fact that he didn't use his Japanese name in daily life meant that the name was probably a fake alias.

Led away from the Japan Times & Advertiser in handcuffs, he spent two (2) weeks in a jail cell before being transferred to a 敵国人収容所 {tekikokujin shūyōsho} (enemy alien detention camp) in Yokohama while his mother searched for paperwork and pleaded with authorities to prove that he was a legal Japanese national. He would spend eight (8) months in the internment camp with his name on a 交換名簿 {kōkan meibo} ([prisoner] exchange roster) list, waiting for an available ship to deport him to the United Kingdom in exchange for Japanese being held by Allied nations.

Bon Voyage from Tokyo Bay for Hikawa Maru

A total of 342 non-Japanese who were believed to possess enemy (Allied Forces) nationality (including those like Harris whose Japanese nationality could not be confirmed) were held at 34 locations across Japan.

In Harris' case, he was interned in the same place that was considered to be desired real estate by foreigners living in Japan at the time: he was placed in a re-purposed club house for the yacht harbor in the 京浜 {Keihin} area (in what is now Kawasaki City in Kanagawa Prefecture (神奈川県川崎市 {Kanagawa-Ken Kawasaki-shi}). The cemetery for foreigners was up on a hill in the same area. From the elevated area, you could see Ginkgo trees and the docking activity. Harris would sometimes pass the time by watching the now famous NYK Hikawa Maru (氷川丸 {Hikawa-maru}) do ports of call, usually travelling to Seattle and Vancouver, and sometimes New York.

The two story thatched roof house on the right, which was a Japanese middle school, and the white western style building on the left, served as a detention camp.

Life at the detention camps for foreigners was apparently relatively easy at the very beginning of the Pacific War; Harris described being served sardine fish balls during his 48 hours in the police's jail (which he described as being "not bad" and "you got used to them").

During his time there, he and many others would receive visitors (usually family and friends) almost daily. They would supplement the provided food with things like beef stew & omelettes in addition to the daily soup & bread. Delicacies such as peanut butter and rye bread were also brought in and shared.

Near the end of the war, though, conditions at the detention centers (both for the detained and the staff & guards), like everywhere else in Japan, became desperate. All of Japan was starved of raw materials, fuel, food, and medicine. Five detainees would die due to lack of adequate provisions and medical care.

Most of Harris' days at the 抑留所 {yokuryūjo} (internment facility) were spend walking around in boredom. While being detained, he started and created a camp newspaper titled "Camp News Daily"— although it actually was published once a week. With limited supplies, and especially a lack of paper, he was sometimes reduced to writing notes on his hand while collecting information.

Just a few days before being sent off by boat to a foreign country, they finally confirmed his Japanese identity and released him.

His reunion with his family would be short lived, however, as he soon received papers requesting he report for a medical checkup — the first step before being drafted:

平柳秀夫
　右徴兵検査執行ニ付左記日時徴兵署ニ出頭シ本書ヲ以テ徴兵署ニ届出ツヘシ

Please do clean your screen after using this app.

He underwent a comprehensive medical examination for the first time in his life at the age of 26. "Comprehensive" means the doctors even went so far as to measure his penis! Thanks (?) to his participation in sports, he passed the physical with flying colors and received a certificate to prove it: first class grade-A health and fitness.

Being of perfect health and almost the perfect age (mid-twenties), the 赤紙 {akagami} ("red paper"; military draft card/call-up paper; a colloquialism for 召集令状shōshūmeijō due to their color) arrived at his mother's home soon afterward his physical exam, and the Japan Times and Advertiser's "James B. Harris" officially became 陸軍二等兵平柳秀夫Rikugun ni-tō-hei HIRAYANAGI Hideo (Hideo HIRAYANAGI, Army Private 2nd Class).

The color red was only used by the Imperial Army for standard service. White, blue, and crimson (Navy) versions were also issued.

Stationed in Northern China for Four (4) Years

Hirayanagi né Harris is front right, with his comrades-in-arms right after basic training.

He began training in central Japan in 山梨 {Yamanashi}— where Mt. Fuji (富士山 {Fuji-san}) is located — as part of the 63rd Army Corp, east division.

Training was tough for him, because although he could speak and understand verbal Japanese without any problem, he was practically illiterate, especially when it came to the much more difficult 漢語 {kango} (Sino-Japanese vocabulary) that was used heavily in the military writing — especially since the military had to refer to a lot of non-Japanese Chinese terms and geography for pragmatic reasons. He would secretly look up the words and scribble ローマ字 {rōmaji} ruby readings above the characters, exactly like what this website does. This was a little risky, because if people saw him writing in the alphabet of the enemy they wouldn't trust him at worst; at best they wouldn't trust him with their lives because they would fear that he was incompetent and lacked the ability to understand orders properly.

People who are mixed race with Japanese (ハーフ {hāfu}) tend to fall into three types (and often their phenotype changes due to age as they physically develop, especially from infant to child and during puberty): they look almost Japanese, they look almost completely not Japanese, and then there are those in the middle.

Harris [sic] appeared very Caucasian "White" compared to the other troops who surrounded him. The other soldiers, he joked, must have been considered to be "a Martian" (火星人 {kaseijin}). He noticed the other soldiers in training couldn't help but dart their eyes back and forth when he was first presented his standard issue bayonet-affixed Type 38 military rifle.

On the other hand, he said that some of the officers went out of their way to help and assist him and went (relatively) easy on him, understanding the special circumstances. They considered having him in their unit to be good luck, like a "guardian angel." This was especially unusual for the era and period as it was not uncommon for commissioned officers to bully, slap, and hit non-commissioned troops for no reason at all.

Nevertheless, the training was grueling, as the intent was to turn everybody into effective fighters and to prepare them for actual combat.

河南省新乡市 {Hénán-shĕng, Xīnxiāng-shì} (Xinxiang City, Henan Province, China) Japanese Imperial Army Divisional Headquarters in 新郷 {Shingō} (1942)

After training, his entire unit was sent to northern China to the area written and pronounced as 新郷 {Shingō} in Japanese — it is currently known as Xinxiang City (新乡市 {Xīnxiāng-shì}) in the modern PRC geography and 簡体字 {kantaiji} (simplified Chinese sinograms). This area was in the northern part of Henan (in Japanese: 河南 {Kanan}). It was considered strategic by the Japanese Imperial military for two reasons:

1. It was part of the water route for the 283km Wei River: 卫河 {Wèi hé} in simplified Chinese or 衛河 {Eiga} in 新字体 {shinjitai} (new Japanese sinograms).
2. A new railroad line was being built along with the existing line that stretched from the capital Bĕijīng (北京 {Pekin}) to the Canton region / Guǎngzhōu (広州 {Kōshū}), from Xīnxiāng to Jiāozuò (焦作 {Shōsaku})

The Imperial Army had already invaded the area and was occupying it. Harris/Hirayanagi's soldiers main job was to entrench, defend, and attack the guerrilla tactic NRA Eighth Route Army (八路軍 {hachirogun} / simplified Chinese: 八路军 {bālùjūn}), allied to the communists at the time.

He quickly experienced his first action on the battlefield while shoveling a hole: a rifle bullet grazed his head. His "baptism of fire." After this first incident, he said he became a little less afraid and became a little more accustomed to battle.

A better analogy would be the airport immigration lines for citizens versus non-citizens.

Frequent readers may have looked at the countries, famous people, our authors& contributors, and the statistics and noticed that they see some (former) nationalities than others when it comes to acquiring Japanese nationality.

This naturally leads to the question, "Do we see more of people from one area or country naturalizing to Japanese than another because it's easier?"

The answer is: probably. However, the more general answer is that you see more of people of certain countries and locales naturalizing to Japanese due to deep connections made with that country due to geography (distance to Japan) and due to history: in Asian countries' cases, the connection to Japan during its Empire years. In the case of non-Asian cases (such as America), the connections America forged with Japan due to the Meiji Restoration and War and the post-economic revival that connected the two.

Until recently, the largest number of those naturalizing to Japan were those of Korean origin (either South Korea, North Korea, or the Korea that existed prior to the Korean War). You saw the greatest number of people naturalizing from this country because until recently when the Chinese population in Japan exceeded them, they were the largest group of legally non-Japanese in Japan.

Also, due to history, they often possessed the Status of Residence (在留資格 {zairyū shikaku}) of "Special Permanent Resident" (特別永住者 {tokubetsu eijūsha}). Those with a SPRSoR have an extra special simplified procedure for naturalizing, beyond the process that is called "simplified naturalization" (簡易帰化 {kan'i kika}). In particular, not only do SPRs not need to write a motive/reason for naturalizing (動機書 {dōkisho}), but they are except from meeting the arguably most difficult of the six conditions necessary for naturalizing:

4. Be able to make a living through his/her own assets or abilities, or through those of a spouse or of another relative who is making a living.

Additionally, people who come from countries that are still developing may have it easier because it may be impossible to obtain some of the paperwork normally required for naturalization. For example, in some African countries, there are no official and/or accurate government maintained offices of vital records, making it impossible to obtain reliable birth, marriage, and death certificates. In these cases, the case officer works with the candidate to find alternative ways to ascertain this information.

Additionally, although the letter of the law for the Japanese naturalization process requires one to lose your existing nationalities and be stateless prior to obtaining Japanese nationality via naturalization, some countries do not allow this (which is actually in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 15). Many others (including Japan) will only allow you to lose your nationality once you have proven you have another nationality or are guaranteed to obtain one due to the UNHCRconvention intended to reduce the amount of statelessness in the world. Furthermore, complications with the United States regarding those who attempt to lose their nationality for the purposes of tax avoidance have led to complicated distinctions in America between "relinquishment" and "renouncement" of U.S. nationality, which also affects when certain nationalities give up their nationality: before (which is supposed to be the norm) or after obtaining Japanese nationality.

However, I know of no case verified by third parties or sources where a person received special treatment or exemptions made, in the name of convenience, because of individual circumstances related to their nationality regarding following the procedures. Even Donald Keene had to go through a lot of paperwork for providing paperwork regarding his titles and academic achievements despite all the honors Keene has received from the Japanese government during his lifetime. Thus, do not expect that you will be able to successfully ask to "opt out" of providing family information because collecting the data is difficult if all the other people of your country are expected to provide it. Do not expect that they will let you opt out of losing your original nationality because it is financially disadvantageous to do so if other citizens from your country, some of whom are most definitely richer than you are, were required to do so.

In summary, Japan does not make requirements easier or harder due to your non-Japanese nationalities. However, gathering the paperwork may be harder or easier to do depending on the country you are from. And ironically, depending on your country, some paperwork or procedures may be legally impossible to obtain, which may, depending on the judgement of the Ministry of Justice, make allow you to skip that portion of the process (or use an alternative process).

Vital Records are birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates. Graduation certificates are not Vital.

In order to become a national of Japan, Japan will need to create a family unit register (戸籍 {koseki}) — even if you have no known family inside or outside Japan — with information regarding:

• your marriage(s) and possibly divorce(s)
• your dependents (children, including adoptions etc)
• your legal spouse
• your date of birth
• your parents
• their full names, converted to Japanese: probably カタカナ {katakana} (Japanese syllabet) but possibly 漢字 {kanji} (sinograms) depending on their nationality records
• their birth certificates proving their names and existence
• their death certificate, if applicable
• their marriage and or divorce certificates, if applicable
• their dependents (all known children)

Because the Ministry of Justice needs this very official domestic proof of Japanese nationality to be as accurate as possible, they will want to see official documentation. This official documentation is usually held and certified by governments as one's "vital records."

Your case officer will initially interview you orally ask you personal questions about your family in order to determine what sort of documentation can be obtained and what will be needed, so the exact paperwork depends on a case-by-case basis.

They may even ask for a family photo! Not everybody needs to include family photos, though. It depends on the case. In particular, it seems to bolster the case that the family being described on paper is "real" and not fabricated. This is also why you provide a map to your home and business; if they decide it's necessary, they may visit one's home or work place (with or without warning; they may not even go inside or talk to anybody) and determine if the home/business described in your application matches what they see.

See these two links for more information:

• Collecting a few personal/family photographs
• Completing the Family Outline

What if an applicant comes from a dysfunctional family and has no idea where his or her parents and grandparents live, much less their occupation. What if you are unable to obtain a copy of your parents marriage or divorce certificate? Would a situation like this disqualify the applicant?

They are aware that their are cases like this, and they can be flexible if getting this information or contacting them is an impossibility. Obviously, you'll have to explain the situation to the case officer. More information on this is available here:

• Bobby Ologun: Profile of naturalized citizen
• Dr. John Muwete Muluaka: Profile of a naturalized citizen

However, simply not getting along with your family (or getting the vital records is too troublesome for either them or you) will probably not be acceptable as an excuse to opt-out of getting the paperwork. Unless your family members are (literally) criminals or affiliated with criminal organizations (Mafia, Triads, Yakuza), terrorists, or members of an organization that has actively plotted to violently overthrow the Japanese government (ex. Japanese Red Army, Aum Shinrikyo) and you have connections/contact with them, the case officer does not care about how dysfunctional the relationship is.

The 家族の概要 {kazoku no gaiyō} form has the option to check off a "none of the above" for family members' opinions on whether they approve or disapprove of the person naturalizing.

Ideally, as I said, they want information that I said is accurate. However, they do work (on a case by case basis) with you if due to impossible circumstances you're unable to provide the necessary paperwork. Note that they may ask for an alternative form of proof of family.

YOU DO NOT NEED YOUR PARENT'S COOPERATION TO OBTAIN THEIR VITAL RECORDS

It depends on the nation and the state, but often you do not need your parent's consent to obtain their vital records if you are a direct descendant / have direct lineage. As an example, in the state of Maine in the United States, this means:

• The person named on the record
• The person's spouse or registered domestic partner
• The parent(s) named on the record
• Descendants of the person named on the record (including children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren to the most remote degree)

The legal custodian, guardian, or authorized representative of the person named on the record
In order to prove direct lineage when requesting records concerning your parents or grandparents, a copy of your birth certificate will identify your parents. If your parents were married, this document can be used to obtain a copy of your parents' marriage record, which should identify your grandparents.

Depending on the nation & state (again we use the state of Maine as an example), other acceptable proof of direct lineage could include:

• a hospital or physician's record of birth or death
• a baptismal record
• school enrollment records
• military records
• court records
• a family bible record
• a newspaper engagement, marriage or birth announcement, or an obituary
• a U.S. Census enumeration record
• an insurance application
• an affidavit

If you don't have direct lineage, you (or anybody else) can often access these records if enough time has passed. Again, it depends on the nation and state, but using the state of Maine yet again as a reference, this typically means:

• birth records that are 75 years or older
• marriage records 50 years or older
• death records 25 years or older
• fetal deaths 50 years or older

… are considered public records and informational copies can be issued to anyone requesting them. Obviously, I can't itemize every single nation/state/country, but I checked a few western European countries to determine that other countries have similar (but not identical) guidelines.

Once upon a time, one could obtain the records of anybody at any time with little in the form of identification or need/connection (those with proper genealogy licenses can still do this in some states). With the advent of sensitivity regarding illegal discrimination and awareness of identity theft practices, they are more strict about revealing these documents to people with no legitimate connection or need. Attempting to obtain vital records illegally is considered to be a felony in most places.

Due remember, though, that intentionally lying on your application is grounds for disqualifying the naturalization (even after it has been approved: this is called administrative denaturalization), if they judge the lie to be serious enough (ex. lying about one's criminal record is the benchmark). So I can't recommend lying about your family situation in order to avoid extra paperwork and procedure.

As for completing the Family Outline where it asks whether or not family members "approve" of the naturalization or not, this is your opinion, and any disapproval does not affect your chances for naturalization unless you're attempting to naturalize as a family unit and they are one of the people to be naturalized. They only ask for exact addresses (and phone numbers) of those living in Japan. Everything else is a best effort basis.

The Amendments and Endorsements page of an American passport is in the back. In a Japanese passport, it is in the front.

In a previous post, our contributors documented how to add your pre-naturalized name to a Japanese passport after it has been issued. This is still possible, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has changed its policy so that if somebody changes critical information on the first page of their passport, they now issue an entirely new passport rather than note the change on this special page as our previous post illustrated.

The new protocol became effective March 20th, 2014. Changing the following things on the first page will now require the issuing of a new passport:

• Your Japanese family and given names, transliterated into alphabet
• Your alternate alphabet names in parentheses, if any
• Your Japanese registered domicile
• Your sex
• Your birth date

Why not just update the chip along with the Amendments & Endorsements Page?

(image used per cc 3.0 license; see title for attribution)

"Weeaboo" for those that don't know, is a term used to describe a non-Japanese person (usually non-racially Asian) who is obsessed with all things Japanese. It is usually used pejoratively, for the young and sheltered who can't differentiate between reality and fantasy and whose knowledge of Japan is often superficial and therefore flawed. However, like the older term "otaku" (which can be applied to either Japanese or non-Japanese), recently some Japanophiles have come to "own" the word on their own terms, commodizing the term and lessening the sting of stigma associated with it.

I was interviewed once on YouTube about my naturalization and asked about what motivates people to come to Japan. I joked:

• Those from the '50s and '60s came for their country (the military).
• Those from the '70s came for their god (missionaries).
• Those from the '80s came for the money (the bubble era).
• Those from the '90s came for the relationships (women).
• ... and those that came in the 21st century came for the animé (pop culture).

Being a Generation X person, some people interpreted that to mean I had a negative impression of millennial Japanophiles that come to Japan with a dream to immigrate.

Although I am not really passionate about video games or any of that stuff anymore (I'm now old and boring), I find "weeaboos" to be far less likely to be disillusioned than other stereotypical "Western foreigner groups" in Japan:

• those that came here for money / career (especially those in the software / internet industry)
• those that came here for relationships / sex

Perhaps this is because when the money, career, or relationship hits a speedbump or stalls, and these people have based their happiness in Japan exclusively on these things, they become intolerably jaded, nasty, cynical, and snarky. However, if the local Japanese arts and culture (be it classical, like theater, or contemporary, like mass media) is what the foundation of your joy for Japan is, you're less likely to become bitter.

I prefer fraternizing with people who are near my same life stage (age, career development, marriage, raising children) who I know, obviously. But if I had to choose a random stranger foreigner stereotypical group at a bar to have a few drinks with, I'd choose the weeaboo (type 10) group every time. I probably wouldn't understand what they were talking about, and think their ideas about Japan were a little naïve, but it's better than listening to the Bitter Gaijin (type 7) rant, oblivious to his/her constant comparisons of Japan to their own country with respect to society and politics sound ethnocentric and sometimes bigoted. Thus, I find the young non-jaded enthusiasm ("Genki!") of the young to be refreshing compared to the alternative of snark, cynicism, and depression.

Japan's Blu-ray region's compatible with N&S America & SE Asia

Full disclosure: I'd say I enjoy Japanese pop culture far more than the average American or European. I learned Japanese from the manga and subtitled series うる星やつらUrusei Yatsura (English title: "Lum" or "The Return of Lum")— which was a hit in the mid and late eighties in Japan. In the early nineties, there was no commercial internet and anime from mail order or the local independent video rental store was the only real exposure you could get to the contemporary pop culture-based Japanese language. These days, though, my current middle-aged 2016 understanding of Japanese pop culture is limited to what I'm exposed to through my teenage daughter when she watches television or surfs the net; the only manga I read on my commute home, 週刊モーニングShūkan Mōningu (Weekly "Morning")— in digital subscription form on my smartphone/tablet/browser, of course. Beyond that and what I'm exposed to through casual contact through Japanese news, however, my otaku-centric knowledge is limited.

Recommending Naturalization like Recommending Marriage

I do get mail and messages all the time from very young people that do not fulfill three of the six requirements to naturalize: don't be a minor, live in Japan five years straight, and have skill/career/assets that can provide for your life in Japan. In many of these mails, they often introduce themselves by expressing their profound interest in Japanese culture and their desire to immigrate to Japan permanently — despite the fact that they are often still in school, lack experience working and living in the real world in their own country much less the real world of Japan.

While I'm flattered that they want to do the same thing I did, I flattered in the same way I'm flattered when a teenager tells me they want to get married. Sure, I've been happily married for almost twenty years and it's the greatest thing that ever happened to me besides the birth of my daughter. However, I would never recommend that a teenager get married or have children. You simply need more life experience before you make a serious commitment like starting a family. Or changing your nationality.

I usually write back to these people pointing them to a post a wrote titled, "Are you encouraging people to naturalize?" In that post, I outline the life goals and milestones you should probably achieve first before you consider making the jump and changing to become legally Japanese. I believe that achieve those milestones prior to naturalizing to Japanese will minimize (but not eliminate) the chance that you'd ever regret it. Much like marrying too young. The email I write usually looks something like this:

From: me <…@turning-japanese.info>
To: Emi-chan ("Nathalie") Garoudensetsu <…@gmail.com>
Subj: Re: I love Japan so much. Please tell me how I can be Japanese right now.

> I turn 18 and will be an adult next month. I love everything about Japan. Especially the show Bleach. I have been saving enough money by working as a lifeguard to buy a one-way ticket to Japan after graduating from high school. I plan to apply for citizenship hopefully after I get married in a few years. I'd like to earn money teaching English while I study Japanese. Please advise.

Thanks for your interest. I'm flattered. You don't want to hear this now, but: stay in school, graduate, get a (real) job / go to Japan, have fun, settle down, grow up, get a better stable job, establish and grow roots (family), grow (slightly) old, then write me again in 15~20 years. Please read the post at http://www.turning-japanese.info/2011/12/are-you-recommending-or-encouraging.html for more details. Good luck! I'm rooting for you! Now kindly get off my lawn. :)

The TL;DR summary of that above post and mail is that if you're from a prosperous stable rich country like America, Canada, France… while you probably don't have to be exactly like me and wait until you're married with children, lived in Japan for decades, and forty years old to naturalize. However, I would discourage anybody that's single/childless and in their twenties. Also, much like there are some people I would never encourage to marry or have kids despite their age/maturity/experience because it wouldn't be a right fit for their life expectations and they'd regret it, there are certain people whom I would never encourage to naturalize to Japan.

(image licensed from CartoonStock)

Every blue moon an acquaintance points me to an article about a naturalized person (or somebody related to one) in Japan who has made the news… and often not in a good way (trouble with the law, extreme / bizarre behavior, family / finance trouble, etc). The caption included with the news clipping is often something like:

I'm gonna tell all my friends that if I ever mutter the word "naturalization" to smack some sense into me, because apparently that's the sign that one's mental state is about to crumble.

However, I believe these people have the cause-correlation backwards. Naturalizing doesn't make somebody nuts or causes them to screw up their lives. Rather, people who are already nuts (or are a little dodgy/unethical) tend to be attracted to naturalization (and especially the corresponding losing / renouncing / relinquishing / adding-to one's previous nationality) because in their minds, they view the act of naturalizing and renouncing/changing their nationality as "extreme" and attention getting or a "hack" to get around pesky things like visas and laws. Others that make the news do so because they view changing or losing nationality as a "legal loophole" to bypass checks & balances or responsibilities that are in place to prevent the unsettled from running amok in society.

Also, these types of people tend to be attracted or motivated to see themselves in print (even prior to naturalizing), which makes the sample of naturalized people you see on the internet appear to be disproportionately nutty.

The media is not interested in covering the silent majority that is not part of their target audience. Especially if it's not bad news. If it is, then they're more likely to focus on the perpetrator's change of nationality, because that makes the story unique.

What most naturalized Japanese are really like

I've run this site for over half a decade, and this has given me the opportunity to get data from people who have naturalized. These people have either met me face-to-face or corresponded with me personally about the subject. A quick estimate from my electronic correspondence and records show that I have personally corresponded with hundreds of people. I have personally met dozens over coffee, lunch, and evening drinks. They have often shared with me intimate and private details about their motivations, personal family issues, finances, jobs, and legal issues as it pertains to naturalization. They have been men and women, married and single, from all walks of life (software, education, finance, homemakers) from over ten different countries, ranging in age from high twenties to low nineties (!).

Thus, I think I've become the world's unofficial topic expert / amateur niche sociologist regarding English speakers who naturalize to Japan. I am confident that the only people in the world that have personally met and talked to more naturalized Japanese English/Japanese speaking people are:

• immigration lawyers
• air/sea port CIQ officials
• law enforcement
• public sector workers in Japan's MoJ that deal with nationality matters

The rest are married, often with kids, and … boring. And if they're European or American: they're probably older.

Most non-Asian naturalized people are law-abiding, employed, non-controversial and sane (ergo "boring") and thus you never see them on the internet. They tend to fit two patterns:

1. If they're under 35, they tend to be from BRICS or southeast Asian countries and just want the stability and safety of a wealthy highly advanced developed country like Japan. They don't seem to mind if English language is not a popular first or second language so they skip the obvious economic immigration New World choices of America & Canada.
2. If they're from a G-7 country (especially Americans), they tend to be married, with children, with stable careers or are retired, and quite old. Often this is because getting Japanese nationality is part of their final retirement steps; they are thinking about children and inheritance.

I'm over 45 years old (married with kids), and of the American Men Who Naturalized and Are Boring Club, I'm the young one. Most of the men and women I know who fit the former U.S. Citizen but now with J-Nationality are not only married, but they often have fully-grown kids they raised in Japan who are also starting families and careers. In other words, they're grandparents!


So despite what you read in the news, most naturalized people of English language descent, based on my experience, are quiet, mind their own business, and are generally content. They have lived in Japan for so long they can often measure it not just in decades, but quarters-of-centuries. For them, naturalization is part of the autumn years their life: retirement (and possibly inheritance), and enjoying their senior years in peace with no foreign status-of-residence (在留資格 {zairyū shikaku}) worries.

(image licensed from CartoonStock)

I sometimes get correspondence and communication from internet-based entrepreneurs who live in Japan, often with a Japanese spouse, who make an income from sources that have no brick-and-mortar or human presence within Japan. They are either internet-based businesses or they work for a company whose headquarters is overseas. Sometimes they describe business is described as a "start-up" or they are self-employed or a "serial entrepreneur"; they are sometimes the proprietors of their business and if they do have partners or employees, these relationships are not well-defined in terms of contracts, payroll, or legally recognized shares of a company.

The fourth of the six requirements for naturalization is:

4. 自己又は生計をjiko mata wa seikei o一にする配偶者その他の家族のichi ni suru haigūsha sono ta no kazoku no​資産又は技能によってshisan mata wa ginō ni yotte生計を営むことができること。seikei o itonamu koto ga dekiru koto.

   which roughly translates to:

   Being able to make a living through his/her own assets or abilities, or through those of a spouse or of another relative who is making a living.

Can a remote/telecommuting job or online business / startup qualify for the naturalization livelihood requirement?

Generally, yes. However, non-traditional employment is subject to the same forms of verification that a person who works within traditional employment paradigms. The stability and proof of your income, assets, and liability are not determined by the presence of a web site, a set of business cards, or paperwork from overseas authorities. They are determined by the corresponding domestically recognized paper trail as well as registration and papers and bank accounts they can verify: which means domestic (Japanese) bank accounts, domestic (Japanese) company registrations, domestic tax returns.

In some cases, overseas documentation will suffice and is acceptable. If the documentation isn't convincing enough or they have no way of independently verifying the documentation — that is, they can't tell if the company is not simply a shell company (ex. a post office box or home address with no office space) or an account was temporarily set up and money shuffled around to give the illusion of stable assets and revenue/income, they will likely demand more substantial proof.

The reason they ask for a map to one's place of employment (as well as home), for example, is not because inspectors want to talk to your neighbors and co-workers and determine if they like you. They ask for this information because they want to determine if the information you provided on paper is real and you actually live and work where you say you do and your lifestyle that you put on paper roughly matches your real life.

The length of time one's business has been in operation, its provable capital, its size (both in employees and customers) will also be used as variables which provide weight towards one's proof of means of livelihood. After all, most startups and one-man businesses, no matter how good the idea is and whether the business starts in Silicon Valley in California or Bit Valley in Tokyo, fail after a few years without making any money or worse, leaving the founders in debt. The viability of one's livelihood, as well as your skills, need to be documented through evidence.

Formally declaring your income earned overseas and/or in foreign currency in Japan

Remember that to live in Japan you must actually physically reside in Japan (not just have registered residency or a Status of Residence that entitles one to physical residency) for five continuous years with no long-term and not many medium term absences outside of Japan's territory.

And anybody who is in Japan for years is probably considered to have "permanent establishment" not necessarily in the eyes of immigration, but in the eyes of the National Tax Agency (税務署 {zeimusho}) — without having ever applied for a Permanent Resident Status of Residence (永住者在留資格 {eijūsha zairyū shikaku}) with the Ministry of Justice. The NTA rules state that once you have PE, you must declare (and are possibly liable for Japanese taxes after exceptions have been calculated) on income earned not just in Japan, but overseas as well.

Thus, if you are applying for non-simplified naturalization, you will have obviously been in Japan for at least five years and the inspectors will determine the legitimacy of your foreign or online business by the formal Japanese personal and business annual income, assets, and liabilities you have declared with the Japanese government as well as the taxes you have paid.

Your ability to provide for your livelihood will be judged/proved almost entirely by the history of your Japanese income tax records

If you can document and account for your 100% of your livelihood via official Japanese government sources (for instance, the Japanese tax agency, your local Japanese city hall, or your local legal affairs bureau), who have vetted and certified your foreign-based income and work and/or online business or work, this will serve as proof to the Ministry of Justice regarding your proof of ability to provide for your livelihood in Japan.

Because you are applying for naturalization, it is understood that you intend to be a resident of Japan for life and thus there is no excuse for this proof or proper documentation to only reside offshore.

How to get other Japanese government organizations besides the divisions in charge of nationality and naturalization — 法務省国籍課 {hōmushō kokuseki-ka} (MoJ Nationality Section) — to recognize your livelihood and how you earn a living is case-by-case, can be complex, and is beyond the scope of this website. I would recommend contacting an account or lawyer who is certified to practice in Japan for more advice.

A lot of news has been made recently about the United States' decision to not only massively increase the price for its renunciation (by a whopping 422%), but to also charge the same amount of money for either renouncing or relinquishing American nationality — a process that used to be free.

• Check to make sure the person really isn't becoming stateless (forbidden by almost all United Nations countries — except for the United States — to comply with conventions attempting to prevent statelessness)
• Check to make sure that the person isn't doing this as some sort of fraud or scheme to avoid or escape the law. This is similar to the checks done when one legally changes their name, though, so the process shouldn't be much more expensive than a legal name change.
• Update special databases to prevent future abuse of the nationality change. For example, adding one's name to a special blacklist to make sure that they can't use their birth certificate or other document to claim they are a citizen and attempt to have a passport or other identification re-issued to a person who lost their nationality.

One would think that the process would get cheaper for American embassies & consulates and the state department to do as they do it more and more often (the number of U.S. nationals giving up their nationality has skyrocketed since the implementation of FBAR and FATCA policies to enforce overseas tax compliance) — due to streamlining out the inefficiencies. However, the number of applications is still low enough that simplification and consolidation of bureaucracy still hasn't happened. There are some, however, that suspect the U.S. State Department might actually not just be breaking even from its relinquishment/renouncement fee, but actually making a profit. There does not seem to be a correlation between the fee for renouncing and the prevalence of citizens from certain countries who choose to give up their nationality.

As someone who has gone through the process of relinquishment (back when it was still free of charge), I didn't see of lot of complexity or special handling with respect to my case. In fact, I had such a difficult time getting the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo to provide me with this "service" that I considered alternative venues. I wrote about my personal experience here:

1. Appointment: Relinquishing U.S. citizenship in Tokyo (part 1 of 4)
2. Phone Tag: Relinquishing U.S. citizenship in Tokyo (part 2 of 4)
3. Taiwan? Relinquishing U.S. citizenship in Tokyo (part 3 of 4)
4. Success! Relinquishing U.S. citizenship in Tokyo (part 4 of 4)

There are some countries in the world where, despite the 15th Article of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they will not let you give up your citizenship. Whether or not you are required to give up your nationality or simply make a declaration of which country you are loyal to (via a form called the 国籍選択届 {kokuseki sentaku todoke} or "Choice of Nationality Declaration"), and whether you give up your previous nationalities after or before receiving your Japanese nationality, depends not on your personal circumstances but on your nationality. You don't get to choose which and when you want to do it; your case worker will tell you what procedure and the order in order to meet the requirements for naturalization. If you are told to give up your previous nationality after obtaining Japanese nationality, they can check your family unit register (戸籍 {koseki}) to make sure you've actually done it properly (and there are cases of them checking for compliance). Regardless, doing something about your previous nationality is a required step for obtaining and keeping Japanese nationality.

Looking at the approximately two score (37) country sample of data for which the fees for giving up nationality were available on their embassy sites (plotted on the map at the top of this post) and normalizing to the last year's average U.S. dollar exchange rate for non-greenback based fees, we see:

• a few countries that are free (zero digits):
• Ireland
• South Africa
• Sweden
• one where it's almost free (one significant digit):
• Malaysia
• about a dozen countries where the fee could be considered to be trivial (two significant digits)
• about a dozen countries where the fee could be considered to be considerable (three significant digits)

• "Money is number and numbers never end. If it takes numbers to be happy, your search for happiness will never end."

  two countries where the fee is expensive (four digits):
• The United States of America
• Jamaica

Besides the United States, the only other country in the world that charges over a thousand dollars to give up nationality is Jamaica. It is unclear as to why Jamaica is much more expensive compared to the rest of the world (except the United States).

Still, Jamaica has nothing on America. America's fee ($2350) is more than twice the fee that Jamaica charges (USD$1,000 or $80,000 Jamaican Dollars with a $JMD1,000 certificate fee). After Jamaica, the third most expensive country to renounce nationality is Egypt ($800).

Japan has always been both free of charge (¥0) for submitting the forms and applying for naturalization or renouncing Japanese nationality, although fees to obtain paperwork to complete the application have to be borne by the applicant.

Permanent Residency can go rotten if unused.

One of naturalization's benefits is that it truly is permanent, in that no matter how long you are outside of Japan, it never expires.

Contrary to its name, there is nothing that is truly "permanent" about the Status of Residence (在留資格 {zairyū shikaku}; SoR) known as "PERMANENT RESIDENT" (永住者 {eijūsha}; PR) or even "SPECIAL PERMANENT RESIDENT" (特別永住者 {tokubetu eijūsha}; SPR). You do not have to promise, state, or even intend to live in Japan permanently to receive it. On the other hand, if you leave Japan for more than a year without a re-entry permit or you are outside of Japan for a long enough time that your re-entry permit expires, the PRSoR will become invalid.

Thus, if a family or work emergency requires you to leave Japan for a long time (years), and it is not possible to occasionally return to Japan to renew the re-entry permit, it is possible to lose one's permanent residency status in Japan. You would have to re-qualify to live (and possibly work) in Japan again.

Although this is a possibility for most as we and our overseas families age, most people consider permanent resident status to be "good enough" and "permanent enough".

Permanent Resident status, in addition to losing it by being outside of Japan too long, can also be revoked if you commit certain types of crimes. Naturalization / Japanese nationality cannot be revoked for crimes committed after receiving it. Some countries have passed, or are considering passing, laws which enable the government to remove nationality from dual nationals (because doing so would not leave them stateless) who have committed acts or terrorism or treason. Japan is not (yet) one of those countries. Japanese nationality can be revoked after receiving it if they discover that any part of the application is fraudulent or incomplete. This is called administrative denaturalization.

An alien losing "permanent" residency by being outside of the country is not something that is unique to Japan. You can lose United States Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR) status by being outside of America for more than one year. You can extend this to two years by getting a non-renewable Re-Entry Permit, valid for one year. Ironically, however, U.S. tax filing obligations for a LPR can be permanent if they resided in America for more than eight years — even if they leave the United States and no longer work for a U.S. company or earn U.S. dollars; they need to file a I-407 to get out of this and officially give up their status.

(non-commercial blog-use license from CartoonStock)

A few years ago we covered the 2013 Henley & Partners Annual "The Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index" in a post, noting that Japan is one of the countries that is lucky enough to be in the top five list of passports that can go to the most countries (as a visitor) without needing to apply for a visa in advance.

As Henley & Partners is a visa/international residence legal firm catering primarily to wealthy expat clients, they do a few press releases every year to draw attention to their list, and journalists that are interested in international borders and immigration lap it up like the Olympics (giving them free publicity and drumming up business) because it pits countries against each other which the internet likes to talk about. "Which country is more open / better than another country?"

Anyway, even though you can go to more countries with a Japanese passport in 2016 than you could in 2013, it dropped one rank in the list:

Source: H&P's International Visa Restrictions page

Rank	2013	2016
#1.	Score: 173 territories Finland Sweden United Kingdom	Score: 177 territories Germany
#2.	Score: 172 territories Denmark Germany Luxembourg United States	Score: 176 territories Sweden
#3.	Score: 171 territories Belgium Italy Netherlands	Score: 175 territories Finland France Italy Spain United Kingdom
#4.	Score: 170 territories Canada France Ireland Japan Norway Portugal Spain	Score: 174 territories Belgium Denmark Netherlands United States
#5.	Score: 168 territories Austria New Zealand Switzerland	Score: 173 territories Austria Japan Singapore

While Germany (the fourth largest economy in the world) is now in the top rank and Japan (the third largest economy in the world) has dropped from fourth to fifth place, Japanese nationals are still able to short-term travel to the People's Republic of China (the second largest economy in the world) for tourism or business without needing to pre-apply for a visa, whereas Germans still do need a visa.

Does the list mean anything?

To a limited extent: in my opinion, any countries with a rank ±10 of each other should be considered "equal", and from all intents and purposes most people with a passport issued by a country in the top ten list can go anywhere in the world as a visitor for tourism or business that you would want to go. Of the top five countries listed here, the only countries that can't go to are usually ones that are too unstable or dangerous to go to anyway. Often times the reason the country can't secure a visa-free arrangement with one of the countries at the top of this list is because their government is too poor or weak or in a constant state of flux to negotiate effectively with other governments or they have poor or no diplomatic relations. For example, Japanese cannot go to North Korea easily and vice versa.

Personally, I think that any nationality that allows for visa-free travel to more than 150 countries probably allows one to travel anywhere they would ever want to travel to on the spur of a moment. In the current ranking list, this is the top 23 ranks consisting of 47 countries.

Of the people I've met who have obtained Japanese nationality for business travel reasons, most are from BRICS countries: these people are upwardly mobile and often, for the purposes of getting even higher ahead in their job (usually with a multinational corporation) they want a passport that allows them to travel to many different countries at the last minute without having to apply and wait days or weeks for a visa.

BRICS countries tend to rank rather poorly when it comes to visa-exempt travel, so upwardly mobile professionals that need to travel often consider getting a passport from a rich country (which tend to have easy access to the most countries) to be desirable.

Ranking of BRICS countries for short-term visa-free travel

Country	Rank /Score
	2013	2016
Brazil	#19 (146 territories)	#21 (153 territories)
Russia	#41 (95 territories)	#48 (105 territories)
India	#74 (52 territories)	#85 (52 territories)
China	#82 (44 territories)	#87 (50 territories)
South Africa	#42 (94 territories)	#54 (97 territories)

Outlier: Saint Kitts and Nevis lost Canadian visa-free privileges in 2014.

It's rare that countries get removed from lists entitling their citizens to visa-free travel. One recent exception is Saint Kitts and Nevis. This Carribean Island started a controversial program where they'd give its nationality and passport to anybody that paid a (relatively modest) sum of cash. After countries started to suspect that some people were obtaining this nationality for the purposes of concealing their past, they started to scrutinize people bearing this passport more carefully; Canada removed St. Kitts and Nevis from its list of countries that can travel to it without needing to pre-apply for a visa. As an emergency response, St. Kitts recalled all (there are less than 60,000 residents) of its existing passports and re-issued them so they state the person's place of birth and converting to e-Passports; the non-erasable information in the RFID page of a e-Passport is cryptographically signed and impossible to forge without possessing the government's digital certificate credentials. Additionally, adding one's birthplace to the first page of the passport and embedded chip allows foreign passport inspectors and officials to more easily determine which St. Kitts & Nevis nationals were natural-born (KNA is an unrestricted jus soli country, which while common in the Americans, is not the norm worldwide) and which naturalized, allowing those with birthright citizenship to enter foreign countries less impeded than those who naturalized and possibly obtained the nationality with money alone without being a resident.

Japan's passport, incidentally, does not list one's birthplace; it only lists one's Registered Domicile (本籍 {honseki}), which can be anything a person desires and can be changed. It's not possible to 100% determine from a Japanese passport whether a person is naturalized or natural-born.

My credo. Not a single regret. Not even a single letter, ya know what I'm sayin'?

I obviously can't speak for everybody; I can only answer personally. And my answer is: no, not at all.

In fact, the longer I live in Japan, the fewer regrets I have. This is probably because my primary "investments" in Japan are my Japanese family and Japanese friends. I've enjoyed watching my immediate and my extended family (I'm on good terms with my in-laws and their children) grow up and be happy and advance their careers in Japan. Their upbringing and lives are built on the foundation of the country and society of Japan. There are probably other countries where this could have happened too, but in my case, my family is in Japan, and this is their home. Having the unconditional eternal right to be in Japan protects my ability to enjoy my maturing "investments" in their point of origin where they are growing and flourishing.

I'm middle aged and have started to settle down. Of course, I still have to work hard for quite some time to provide for my family and to secure and protect a future for my spouse and children, so I have the same anxieties that anybody else has about securing the future. However, I look forward to growing old and watching my family grow and expand through time. Japan provides a stable base for both them and me to be happy.

Sure, life has its challenges and not everything is perfect and not everything works out or goes my way. There have been setbacks and sadness. And there probably will continue to be major difficulties that lie ahead for me and my family in Japan. But in the long term grand scheme of things, we've all built a stable foundation based on the country and culture and history of this country. When you look at the big picture, being a permanent enfranchised citizen of Japan has provided me a platform of stability that not even a foreign resident's Permanent Resident status can provide. I know that no matter how bad things get, Japan can be my unconditional home until death do us part, and I have the same national's rights that give me a (very small) say in the governing of this country — and I earned that right not because of my past but because of my pledge/oath to be with Japan for its future.

Do you miss not being able to "Exercise" your previous nationality?

Every country gives rights that are exclusive to its legal citizens. The most obvious rights that most nationalities give to all their citizens are:

• the right of abode
• and the right of suffrage.

The Right of Suffrage

Politics the world over is the party in power vs the opposition party or parties; not that different

The 2016 United States Presidential Elections will mark the second federal election that I am unable to vote in; the last federal election that I was eligible for was Obama's run against McCain in 2008.

I have always enjoyed participating in politics; I have done far more than just diligently vote in every local, state and federal election that I've been eligible for in the United States. I was also registered with a mainstream party and volunteered for candidates (both national and more local) doing phone and local canvassing work.

When I gave up my U.S. citizenship, I worried that I might miss being ineligible to participate in American politics. To my surprise, though, I discovered that participating in Japanese politics, especially during the second decade of the 21st century, has been far more exciting and fulfilling. Although I have only been a Japanese national for a little over a half a decade, I've had the opportunity to vote for:

• the House of Representatives (direct and proportional; voting for people and parties)
• the House of Councillors (direct and proportional; again, voting directly for people and for political parties)
• judges for the high court
• local city councillors
• the Governor of Tokyo

The Right of Abode

The theoretical Right of Abode situation is when a family member, like your mother or father, experiences an accident or disability that requires one's presence for an extended period of time — beyond what is given to you by a short-term visitor visa, which is how I currently visit the United States for personal and business reasons.

So far, I've been lucky enough to have not yet needed to do this. However, there are many cases of the State department provided extended visas for extraordinary circumstances. Because I can prove a blood and legal relationship to my family in the United States, and I come from two wealthy countries (Japan & America), and I have stable roots in Japan, I present a low risk to immigration with respect to fleeing off the grid and becoming an illegal.

Like this. Except White & Illegal.

Although in my opinion, if I was immigration and skeptical, I'd actually consider people like myself to be a high risk because the odds of me being detected as an illegal immigrant in the U.S.A. are low:

• I have an official birth certificate (a breeder document for another ID) saying I am was a natural born American.
• I have a social security number and other registered connections like financial institution accounts.
• I speak native accent-less American English, and have American mannerisms and am a phenotype that is commonly associated with natural-born Americans.

Getting Transferred or Needing to Work in your Home Country

Dear Apple: Japan called. They said to stop copying the Look & Feel of their flag.

The other scenario often brought up regarding possibly regretting changing one's citizenship is: "what if you get a career opportunity in your home country that's too good to turn down, and your nationality prevents you from moving back there and working there?"

I've actually encountered this scenario: my (former) employer, a multi-national U.S. corporation with its headquarters based in California, wanted to transfer me from its Tokyo subsidiary to its headquarters in Silicon Valley.

Was having changed my nationality to Japanese a problem? Not at all. They were willing to hire an immigration lawyer to set me up with either a L-1 visa (giving my spouse a L-2 visa) or an H-1B visa to make this happen.

Even though they offered to pay all of my legal and relocation expenses, I actually turned down the offer and switched jobs because I didn't want to be relocated to America; uprooting my family when they were happy here in Japan, in the gamble that they'd be just as happy or happier in America, wasn't a risk I was willing to take. Besides, I didn't think I'd be happier in northern California. It's not that I dislike the place or the country. It's just simply not part of the lifestyle that I had become accustomed to.

More Important than Being Able to Return to Live and Work in my Country of my Birth-Citizenship: Being Able to Return to Live and Work in Japan

What is more important to me than the ability to stay in the United States for more than 90 days is the ability to return back to Japan and stay in it unconditionally, under the exact same status (national), immediately and without delay, no matter how long I've been away or how many times I've left.

Detractors: Getting Asked About Regrets by non-Japanese

I actually did have tattoos and regretted them; the laser removal was expensive.

Every once in a blue moon, I get asked this question. A lot of times the question is innocent, even though it's a rather delicate question to ask in that if it's not done with tact it can sound judgemental or rude. Can you imagine asking a person who's still married if they regret marriage? Sometimes it's a passive aggressive technique used to disguise their opinion ("you'll never be accepted in Japan" or "those who naturalize will regret it") as a curious question.

Of course, giving them your honest answer will rarely change their mind; if you say "actually, no, and I'm happier in Japan now than I have ever been" they will simply think (and sometimes say) "you haven't been here long enough to know better" (said even to senior citizens who have lived here decades). So I guess I'll have to wait until I'm on my death bed before I give an answer they'll accept.

The only people who will ask you this (or tell you "you will never be accepted or fit in"), by the way, are non-Japanese and Japanese that spend a disproportionate amount of their time around non-Japanese. They have usually lived or spent an influential part of their lives focused outside of Japan. If asked what is the basis for their beliefs, they will either cite other non-Japanese or "international Japanese" who speak English or have strong overseas influences, or they will cite famous naturalized people who failed in very spectacular and public ways.

As of 2016, in my over half-decade of being "naturalized" in Japan, I have never, not once, in the thousands of interactions with Japanese-in-Japan-who-only-speak-Japanese, been given any inclination of negativity regarding choosing Japanese citizenship.

A good exercise to do before naturalizing, is waiting until things are at one's absolute worst in Japan (perhaps you're in between jobs, having financial difficulties that are Japan related, having career troubles, or having relationship troubles or loneliness — and if you don't have these problems, then imagine you do), then pretending you don't have your old nationality to "fall back upon."

Once you've done that, and discovered that your source of contentment within Japan is not limited to the material things beyond modest standards of living, there's no reason to look back with regret. Simply keep looking forward, including past whatever obstacle you currently face.