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[tsneds01]

Great informative Article on do it your self citizenship by a guy who has "been there,done that."

Japanese Citizenship
On Your Own ~ by Ahmad Tijani


... April 5, 2005

Japan

I've lived in Japan for about seven years which is considered a long time by Japanese people and non-Japanese alike. It is considered a long time because most people don't come here to stay but rather to experience living in "First World" Asia and to earn a bit of money. I had always wanted to live outside the States and had long thought about the possibility of permanently living outside the United States. I wasn't sure where to look but in middle school and high school most of my best friends were from Asia as minorities tended to stick together in my school. I got an introduction to the values of the region through them and their families. The turning point came during university when I was having lunch with a friend from the Philippines who was an international student. I, like most Americans, assumed that when he finished his studies that he would be staying on in the U.S., but the reality was different. He told me that he was going back to Cebu. I couldn't understand why. Surely he could have success in Baltimore or America in general for that matter. I was about to graduate and so he gave me his address in Cebu in case I found myself there. For years I wondered why he was so dead set on going back to Cebu; it was four years from the day he gave me his address before I found out why.




..
I made it to Cebu when I was twenty-five; I was there on a month long vacation. It was beautiful. The city and the people had a texture that Baltimore could not begin to match. I knew then why my friend hadn't been impressed with Baltimore. Baltimore was the dregs of industrialization, while Cebu was a dynamic port city. I walked around and saw little stalls where people were actually fixing things. I remembered how many times I had broken necklaces and thrown them away, but in Cebu people took them to get fixed or sodered. People sat outside and talked the way people used to do in East Baltimore where I grew up.

I started to do some research in order to find out how I could live abroad - my motivation to do so was enhanced by an impending layoff fom my teaching job in NYC. In New York I was going through the international want ads in pre-tech bubble America hoping to find a job. Japan kept appearing in the want ads of the trusty New York Times and in overseas job journals. So I interviewed for and got an English teaching job in Japan. When I got to Japan I never thought I would stay for more than two years. The people who discouraged me the most on the subject of staying were other foreigners. I kept my eye on other countries like Singapore, China(Hong Kong), and the Philippines. I learned that Singapore is very receptive to immigration. They even have a two year citizenship plan for professionals as well as permanent residence. At that time Hong Kong's official policy was "Hong Kong for the Chinese" although you could get a work permit (Ironically, China announced plans to introduce permanent residency recently). The Philippines is my wife's country so I could get a work permit on up to citizenship through my wife. Meanwhile, I was working on getting a renewable one year work visa with my wife and two children on dependant visas. Time was passing as I had now been in Japan for four years. My Japanese speaking ability had improved a lot from that introductory course I taken in my university days, but it wasn't fluent yet. I was stuck teaching in a public junior high school, a job I got through a placement company so I wasn't making much. I was happy living in Japan; it was like the Philippines, but with better paying jobs. However, I didn't see a visa system in Japan that was as accessible and efficient as Singapore's. So I kept looking for other jobs: I applied for jobs in Hong Kong and Singapore again. I applied to the Singapore Ministry of Education for a public school teaching position. There seemed to be a future there. I was rejected. I continued my junior high school/elementary school job and taught classes at night to make ends meet. Without taking any formal lessons in Japanese I was speaking conversational Japanese by the end of my fourth year. By this time I decided to take the Taoist position of not looking to the heavens for hope, but rather to the grass beneath my feet. Armed with a three year visa from the Department of Immigration in Japan I made a decision: stay in Japan and go freelance. Soon after I marched into the local board of education and inquired about work. I got a part-time job in elementary schools that was direct and independent. "Direct and independent" meant a placement company would not pull from my wages. At night and during weekends I continued to do freelance work. With my job in the Japanese public school system and my freelance work, I was making much better money.

The next question I needed to answer was how would my family and I stay in Japan? I read on the Japanese immigration website that it was possible to get permanent residency in Japan after having lived in the country for five years consecutively. I thought that was ticket and went down to the immigration office. I told the immigration official that I wanted to apply for permanent residency. He asked me a few questions to determine my eligibility but was stumped, so he got out the book and asked a few colleagues. Another official was familiar with my case and said, "You are not married to a Japanese woman so your case is business. You have to live here for ten years. It's still early for you." It didn't say that specifically on the website but I didn't argue but rather thanked them for their time and left.

I came back the next day and talked to the same official I had talked with the day before and told him that the Ministry of Justice's website says that you can apply for citizenship after five years. He got the book out and read it, sometimes aloud and said,"You're right." I said okay I want to do that and then asked if I could do it there. He said that citizenship is not handled by immigration. It's a different department called "homu kyoku". He wrote down the phone number and told me where it was. It turned out to be in the same building where I had registered my land.



.....
I went to the citizenship office and met with an official. We talked for two hours in Japanese. He asked me why I wanted Japanese citizenship and whether I was willing to give up my American citizenship.

He asked me to take a test that measured my ability to write in Japanese. After I finished the test, he told me I had a third graders proficiency in written Japanese and therefore I could apply for citizenship. He told me that since my case is that of a person without a Japanese spouse, everthing would be based on me, not my family. He told me to prepare my tax records in Japan, my birth certificate, my sister's birth certificate, my parent's divorce papers, an earnings certificate from all workplaces, a snapshot example of my monthly earnings, a certificate of citizenship issued by the U.S. consulate for me and my children, my children's birth certificates, our family registration certificates from City Hall, additional forms with photos of the family and asset information, an essay about why I wanted to be Japanese - everthing not in Japanese has to be translated into Japanese; this can be expensive if you can't do it yourself - and finally everything has to be submitted in duplicate form.

It took me a year to get all the required information collected and submitted. After many sessions with the immigration official he told me to bring my wife and children to his office. I did and he asked her in surprisingly well spoken English whether she cared if I, and the children, became Japanese without her. She didn't mind because her proficiency in Japanese wasn't good enough. He told her that she could apply when she felt ready to pass the written test I had taken a year before. The immigration official told me that the only things left do were to have a hearing before a judge and for immigration officials to visit my house and take a look at things. They will decide in June; until then I have to wait.


Update from an email correspondenc with the author Sat, 15 Apr 2006 15:35:31 -0800

Hello,

I have lived in Japan for eight years and became a Japanese citizen last year. My children were born here but had to apply for citizenship with me. They also received citizenship, so we are all Japanese.I still live in Okayama city in the same house.


Ahmad(Kenji)

[PAULH]

Citizenship and permanent resident are not the same thing.

Citizens mean they give up their nationality and become Japanese nationals i.e have a Japanese passport. I will add you will have to take a Japanese name if you become a Japanese national.

You can not apply for citizenship outside Japan and you must have lived continously for ten years in Japan if you are single or have a non-Japanese spouse.

Permanent resident applicants can apply for PR in the last year of a spouse visa, or if they have lived here ten years. In theory, you can get PR after living in Japan at least 4 years if you are married to Japanese.

Permanent residents retain their original nationality and passport and do not become Japanese.

I would like to know why the above poster felt it was so important to have Japanese citizenship or nationality, and not just PR?

[luckyloser700]

[tsneds01]

From the article "I came back the next day and talked to the same official I had talked with the day before and told him that the Ministry of Justice's website says that you can apply for citizenship after five years. He got the book out and read it, sometimes aloud and said,"You're right."

[tsneds01]

on the question of "why Japanese citizenship?


AND WHAT THE HELL FOR?

Y'know, it's funny. There's no single compelling motivation. But I can tell you what it is NOT due to: "Japan-headedness"--where I've fallen hook, line, and sinker for the "Japanese Way". I don't see myself coming to extol the virtues of geta and byoubu as I baldly slurp my noodles through a Chaplin mustache (my friends are joking that if I *really* get Japanized and start asking them if they can eat natto with chopsticks, they'll scrag and splifficate me).

I don't see myself becoming a rabid defender of Nihonjinron, or, conversely, a person stressing my uniqueness; quite the opposite, as I shall show below. I don't even see it as a change in identity, as if I'm shedding one skin and donning another. I definitely do not feel like Lafcadio Hearn, sharing a oneness with Japanese society and wanting to fully meld with it. I'm not that naive.

Instead, to me naturalization is just an obvious extension of what somebody in my position would desire anyway--the right to vote and to LEGALLY participate in society the same as any other citizen. I am already as entrenched as any other citizen: I have a house and land with a debt of a quarter-million dollars; with a thirty-year loan I really *cannot* leave Japan.

More to the point, why would I want to? Despite the doom and gloom projected by the overseas mass media, life in Hokkaido is very pleasant, with a standard of living probably as high as any OECD country, and arguably far more comfortable than any other urban area in Japan.

To be sure, everyone around me is a Japanese, with all the occasional culture shocks. But there are buffers: I have been around long enough to pick and choose my friends, I have enough language to get what I want in just about any situation, enough experience to anticipate the results of my actions, enough precedent to preserve my mental integrity, and enough capacity for self-justification should things get weird.

Even more fortunately, I have a great job which enables me to use and develop my language and communication skills, I get mental workouts on a daily basis, and have enough personal space at home or in the back yard to shut the whole goddamn world out if necessary. Furthermore, the wife and kids are for now healthy, happy, and settled--with forseeable domestic alternatives should that change.

The bottom line: as there is neither guarantee nor likelihood that things would be better anywhere else, why leave? It's not just inertia--it's recognizing one's lot for how good it can get and seeking ways to tweak it better. Naturalization is one way.

Moreover, naturalization has knock-on benefits that suit a person with my personality. It will enable me to stand on my rights (yes, more than I do now!) with renewed vigor--because I will indeed HAVE more rights, as well as a firmer ground to demand even more (I can except myself from, say, this "as a foreigner, you are a guest in our country so shut up" bullshit). And--dare I say it?--I would be able to participate in politics as a *candidate* if I so choose).

In sum, it will empower me to contribute and change society for the better, by demonstrating that it is possible for a Nihonjin to exist without having a drop of Japanese blood. That Japaneseness is a matter of legal citizenship, not race.

The rubs? Yes, as Japan does not allow dual nationality, losing my American citizenship is one major mental hurdle--the biggest one for anyone who links their passport with their identity (I know I have in the past, but the more I've talked with truly internationalized people, like Tony Laszlo or Ishimaru Shintarou, the more I've realized that the individual can remain pretty much the same regardless). It may seem like a journey of no return, but there is a solution (outlined amidst my original essays on this subject, written Nov 1996) that provides some breathing room.

Essentially, naturalization--unless you are a known felon--is not nightmarishly difficult. As we will see below with procedures: