> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [0]
This gratifies intellectual curiosity -- how does one become a citizen in one of the most isolationist countries? What is that like??? Read this to find out.
Having learned too my own share of languages and conquered bureaucracy and process across them, the manner in which this guy writes comes across as vomit-inducingly glib.
Stopped when he said he waited forever to get naturalized, skipping 6 years, and then saying he never got his permanent resident card, so he was just living off renewed visas, and they thought it was strange.
It is strange. A lot of the things he said he needed, would have been done in the permanent residence portion of his time in Japan. Just as it is in any country.
Once you are living in the country for a while, you can pretty much do anything and people don’t care about your resident status at all. For my daily lives in UK I only need my address and driving license. You pretty much have the feeling that you’ll be fine without bothering to do the paperwork, that’s how things work in the last 20-50 years.
Yes my friend moved from Sydney to London for work and he said it was a nightmare. He had his job in London lined up but he needed a UK bank account. He couldn’t get a bank account until he had a UK residence. His apartment lease needed his proof of employment.
He had to use his friend’s address for the bank account and then changed it.
I also moved from Sydney to Britain and just paid my rent from my Australian bank account until I got my British bank account. Your friend may not have thought to do this because he probably expected the ‘prison guard LARP’ attitude that Australian real estate agents have to also exist here in Britain.
But that’s exactly the point. A passport (assuming it’s a British passport) proves you have the right to work in the U.K. The commenter above is claiming all you need or ever needed is an address and a driving licence, and that’s nonsense.
Picking up illegal immigrants who are hanging out in a parking lot and, ostensibly, are very honest about being unemployed, ultimately to pay them under the table and not hire them because they lack paperwork, is supposed to be some kind of gotcha with regards to how much you can get away with without citizenship in the US?
This is true until the wind changes. After Brexit quite a few long-stay Europeans without full paperwork were deported from the UK. Some had stayed for decades.
Meanwhile Sweden has started deporting British citizens who didn't do the paperwork.
If you travel out of a country, your odds of being allowed in without a visa, residency, or a native passport are basically zero.
I thought Japan requires 10 years residence for PR, but only 5 years residence to naturalize, in which case it wouldn't be surprising if many people naturalize before getting PR!
> A lot of the things he said he needed, would have been done in the permanent residence portion of his time in Japan.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Having PR isn't a prerequisite for naturalization, nor does it waive any of the requirements. Do you mean he should have collected extra copies of documents and applied for PR in parallel?
I know a few folks personally who got rejected for PR but got approved for citizenship. First, both of these get handled by different branches of government with the different screening guidelines (often not published). Second, perception differs: for a long time PR was viewed as something like 'all the benefits of living in Japan without any consequences', so the income requirements were stricter etc. (albeit all of this is changing now and it's difficult to say what will be the final state).
Well, I'm going to have to do without that then. This is no great loss because I had already decided to forego traveling to the US because the way the border guards treated me on my last visit was enough to make me decide I didn't need that kind of headache. They still owe me a pair of boots.
>Well cross Japan off my list. I would not be able to produce that residence list under any circumstances.
If you won't be able to produce the accurate list, the chances are that the agency reviewing it would not be able to fail your application by cross-referensing it with some dataset that proves it inaccurate.
"Congrats on your naturalization! Do you have to give up your US passport as well, or do you get to carry both?"
"Thanks! Yeah, the expectation is to give up other citizenships"
Having looked into the process myself, my understanding is it's common knowledge that Japan's government says that is something you must do, but in practice people don't actually do this, and it's not enforced (other than them verbally asking you to confirm). The language here feels chosen to that effect.
The rules changed in 2025, as of q2 2025 it was only a requirement of five years residency within Japan to become naturalized and this route as considered easier than permanent residency.
Everything is now harder. Even business manager visa. So many 夢の日本 have been shattered and pushed into other Asian countries. I’ve also seen a push into Europe , Italy, which also changed the rules last year too which was considered a very easy way to become a European citizen, Canada for Americans protesting Trump, etc.
It really does feel like the prelude or reshuffle of the world balance, open borders, Covid, closing borders, higher qualifications..
It means we're all struggling more to get less and countries only want somebody who's basically guaranteed to bring something to the table and not somebody perceived to be a drag on an already struggling economy.
i'm tempted to say "all politics is downstream from economics", but really economics an politics is quite intertwined; its not surprise things are spiraling...
Doesn't it mostly stem from demographics? Developed countries are experiencing lower natural population growth so some have tried to make that up with immigration. Our economy and centralized fiscal policies generally assume a growing population. Without that, there's little that can be done. Automation can be used to increase productivity but that also faces a backlash from people worried about their jobs. People will blame the problems on politicians but the problem is beyond them.
For some reason, the author chose to imitate a "strikethrough" text effect by following each letter with "U+0336 COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY", rather than just using the <s> HTML element.
They survive format changes. If copied and used as plain text, the meaning does not suddenly change from a joke to an ominous "interrogation consultation room".
It certainly doesn't survive everywhere. It fails or renders differently in various applications I've just tested such as pdf renderers, tts, messaging, different browsers, terminals, and at least the one email client I tested it in.
When failing it appears either as "interrogation-" or some form of "interrog̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶-" or as "i-n-t-e-r-r-o-g-a-t-i-o-n-"
Unlucky? Crappy tools? I just pasted it into several places on my Android phone, including browsers and renaming a file, and it rendered correctly each time.
I'm not sure if this is different depending on where you come from and where you emigrated to, but as a EU citizen this just doesn't click with me, at all.
We can freely move, work, marry, create companies, and everything else here already, I don't even think I'd think about it very often if I had a different passport (and it's not a thing I've only thought about for the last five minutes). (Of course this isn't true for all of them, but some of the neigboring countries).
Japan is one of those countries that doesn’t allow dual citizenship and they require proof of renunciation. Something to think about for those from other “strong” countries who want to go down that route.
> How do you get proof of renunciation before becoming a japanese citizen? You would be stateless in between?
Usually they say:
“Here’s your new passport. You have X months to provide proof you renounced all your prior nationalities, otherwise we will revoke your citizenship. If you lie and we find out later, we will revoke you then.”
There is a range of options depending on a country, but it's some variation of two phase commit. Some places give you a citizenship certificate and a temporary id (paper one at that) that allows voting but does not allow travel and only gives out the actual passport once you give them the proof or renunciation (or proof of trying hard enough and not being able to get one for reasons outside of your control). If you don't come up with either or get the extension, the decision is annulled.
Some places give you and option of citizenship that is contingent only on renouncing the previous one. Here you can actually become stateless if you get the option, renounce the old one and never use it.
Some places just give a passport and a strongly worded letter to do or else.
It's of course ridden with loopholes added there on purpose, because life is complicated and operation manual for clerks that deal with it is ... something. I'm for example supposed to renounce my blue passport since I got a nice bordeaux colored one, but that obligation is suspended due to unfortunate circumstances outside of my control.
Sometimes you don't have to renounce if you are married to a citizen, sometimes your children get a free pass, but only if insist on filling in the form 42-2002/13477 which they don't like you to know about. Sometimes the cost of renunciation procedure or length of it are enough to pinky swear instead and send the passport to the embassy with registered mail and itemized contents bill.
Some people have two passports and only renounce (or promise to not use) one of them, thinking they outsmarted the system only to get it renounced 10 years later once they pissed off somebody more then they expected (the drama you didn't even knew existed: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-910451 )
> Japan is one of those countries that doesn’t allow dual citizenship and they require proof of renunciation.
Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship if you acquire the japanese one later in life.
Plenty of people in Japan, like my nephew, have dual citizenship by birth. I don't know if they can keep both when they're adult. But as kids 100% guaranteed Japan allows it.
And then a great many mixed couple do, on purpose, give literally two different identities to their kids. One by registering them, say, in Germany with the name written in roman characters (say "Akane") and the other in Japan with the name written using kanjis (or kanas for that is allowed to).
I'm not talking about dual citizenships / two passports: I'm talking about the same person having two entirely different identities because his parents registered him, on purpose, differently in two different countries.
So, yes, there are literally a few people counted twice on earth. And you probably don't want to do that with the US citizenship (for US taxes its citizens worldwide and it's a reporting clusterfuck). But if you've got, say, a japanese identity and whatever european one: you're totally fine.
I lived in Japan and know many people in this situation. Most people just never tell the government and keep both. There's no proactive outreach by the government for these cases and it's ok unless you happen to mess up and produce your foreign passport when entering Japan instead of your Japanese passport. It's a "don't ask, don't tell situation".
There was a lawyer, originally from Japan, living in the US who did try to force clarity on this issue and sued the Japanese government. Unfortunately she lost so the status quo remains. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15077494
True, there may be complications if you travel to Japan from a 3rd country. It might be something they are aware of. I imagine most trips are directly from the other country of citizenship/residence.
The law is somewhat vague. You have a "duty to make efforts" (努力義務) in rescinding your foreign citizenship after electing Japanese citizenship. The Ministry of Justice has never clarified its interpretation of 努力 (i.e. what counts as "making efforts"?) I am friends with a few Japan-US dual citizens who have done nothing after electing Japanese citizenship; they are essentially gambling on a gray area of law.
Note if you acquire Japanese citizenship afterwards (or never had a second citizenship in the first place), then 国籍法11条1項 automatically voids your Japanese citizenship at the time you obtain a foreign citizenship.
> they are essentially gambling on a gray area of law.
It's not so much a gray area if they didn't do anything at all. The translation in English isn't on a vague side of legalize. One needs to go and try to renounce citizenship and keep the receipts, so if the motion is denied or you get sucked into a bureaucratic hell, you have a proof that effort has been taken, but the bureacracy prevailed.
It's interesting, that the word "effort" doesn't have a qualifier here, like "reasonable". Hazard guess -- the general language of the law somehow implies it, that if renouncing citizenship costs 1mm USD, you don't have to try unless it's pocket money for you or at all. If renouncing takes flying half the world to a country where things are happening , something should say ah nah.
It genuinely depends. The author refers to zainichi koreans, i.e. a pretty large population of koreans that ended up in Japan just before and during WW2. Quite a few of them are still not Japanese citizens despite having lived in Japan for several generations.
"Hanako, my lovely wife, should we settle down and have kids?"
"I want nothing more than to raise a family, but alas I simply can't face brining a child into a world in which people applying for citizenship in this country have to present such a long list of documents."
Same in the UK, mate, same here. You'll be always worse.
It's less hidden since the Brexit campaign encouraged the xenophobia on the streets, TV, papers, even one of the past PMs was famously racist and xenophobic and it flew without any issue.
It is very sobering to consider the demographic cliff that Japan faces combined with the barriers the government puts up to immigration and naturalization.
I sincerely wonder what kind of country Japan will be in 50 years.
What you're saying is identical to what people 'on the other side' say in regards to allowing broad immigration. Japan is a place where the language is not widely spoken at all, outside of Japan, and it has an extremely distinct culture that's quite alien to much of the rest of the world.
If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks. Even their language itself could die.
I think the big take-away when both sides are saying the same thing, even if on a sort of horse-shoe of logic, is that the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
This is a common misconception about the US. Here [1] is a graph of foreign born population in the US. It previously peaked at around 14.8% in the late 19th century. This started causing substantial anti-immigrant sentiment to emerge as it was felt to be having an overall negative affect on culture, society, labor, etc. That eventually led to various restrictions on immigration sending it to a valley of 4.7% in 1970.
That graph is by decade; the actual valley was probably more around 1965 because That's when a new immigration act was passed that greatly loosened the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent. Note that 14.8% includes all groups, including illegal aliens. The number of foreign born residents in Japan is, and has been, much lower.
nothing in your comment disproves my point about US culture being mixture of all the immigrant populations that have settled here. Also until very recently, US immigration controls were really terrible. In the past, the only country with amazing and consistent immigration controls is Japan. In light of that, it isn't surprising that we're witnessing population collapse in Japan due to xenophobia. Coincidentally, the US is now 1.6 instead of the population sustaining 2.1
> their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift
Why is it critically important to maintain a particular culture at a cost that is not sustainable? Why is allowing creation of a new culture, a mixture of multiple cultures, such a bad that thing? Particularly when a country is facing serious popular decline.
> the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
Never mind. I did not realize the solution was so simple. And I am surprised it did not occur to anybody else.
> Why is allowing creation of a new culture, a mixture of multiple cultures, such a bad that thing? Particularly when a country is facing serious popular decline.
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
And yes, every country on earth has another culture/country they absolutely hate and consider them the villain. America included.
Which specific culture/country does America hate and consider the villain?
It seems to me like the conservatives change the targets of their culture wars often enough that I’m honestly not sure what your answer is going to be.
Let's see, throughout US history at times it's been: British, Irish, Italians, Mexicans, Hispanics, Blacks, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Jews, Muslims, Russians, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians...
Do you have any data on this? I think it just depends on the country. I was born in Italy, very low trust: the culture is that when a person is interacting with you, you have to assume they are trying to scam you.
Moved to Canada, heavy culture mix yet that "scam feeling" is gone, trust feels higher across the board.
When we speak of the decline of Japan, what makes it so undesirable? Is it that the geographic location around 36N 138E will no longer have as large a human presence? Or is it that the culture of that region will fade from society? Obviously we both agree that it'd be the culture. Where we disagree is you want to argue that it's not going to disappear, but instead just be changed. And that's reasonable, since cultures do constantly change. Tempura is a great example. People think it's Japanese, and in some ways it is, but it was borrowed, more or less wholesale, from Portuguese traders.
But I'm sure you'd agree that if a culture changes 'quickly enough', it's not really changing it but basically deleting it. For instance I'm sure if you squint hard enough today, maybe there's some Native American influence on American culture, but for the most part we just destroyed it. And I don't think it was the violence, so much as the raw numbers. Something similar happened to the Maori in New Zealand without anywhere near the scale of violence, just lots of immigration and lots of babies.
So how fast will fertility change things? A fertility rate of 1 means each generation decreases in size by about 50%, but that's compounding. The length of a generation is proportional to the window of human fertility, which is about 20 years. So in an average human lifetime we'll each get to see around 4 generations play out. With a 50% compounding decline that means a generational decline in size of 94% in a human lifetime.
So if you want to try to deal with fertility declines with immigration, you're basically going to be replacing the entire population in extremely rapid order. So I don't think we really need to debate what 'quickly enough' means because it's way slower than what fertility collapse is going to do. And this is all far more true in places like Japan where you, out of necessity, are speaking of bringing in immigrants who the locals can't comfortably communicate with and who come from radically different cultures. So basically, from my perspective, I think you're speaking of having your cake and eating it too.
Indeed I am! The data are very surprising at first. This [1] is the US foreign born population since the census started measuring that in 1850. The US foreign born population peaked in the late 19th century, at 14.7%. That's about when you started seeing a bunch of anti-immigrant sentiment rising with people thinking it was having a negative affect on culture, society, labor, etc.
That sentiment gradually led to various restrictions on immigration sending it to a valley of 4.7% in 1970. In 1965 a new immigration act was passed that loosed the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent.
----
I 100% agree that getting fertility rates back up will be much harder than it was to bring them down, but fortunately I don't think environmental or other issues are playing a significant role yet, at least not in terms of direct infertility. The vast majority of people that are not having enough children are (or were) still fertile.
But ultimately it's not even a choice. On top of the cultural issues, I think immigration is simply also unrealistic on a long-term scale. All you do is just kick the can, and not even especially far. And even in places like South America, they're also experiencing a fertility rate collapse. Humanity is simply going to have to change how we're doing things, in a rather dramatic way.
It's not existential because it is the most absurdly self-correcting problem imaginable, but I'd rather we all just start having more babies than ending up in a world dominated by the e.g. Amish and Haredim. Though it'd be pretty funny if we do finally meet an alien intelligence, it turns out they went through the same sort of crisis, and as a result these enlightened aliens everybody has attributed every positive characteristic to end up being Space Mormons. 'Ah Earthling, can I have a minute to talk to you about Gazurazu the Great?'
What we're fundamentally speaking about is the scale of things. I'm certainly not aiming for a level where immigrants have no impact - I think controlled immigration where immigrants assimilate, and also bring their own flavor to society, is a great thing and win-win thing for everybody. But there's a point where if you bring in too many people you start essentially wrecking the host culture and causing social instability, exactly as Western colonization did to the various indigenous cultures in place we colonized.
Based on US history, the number seems to be around 15% of the population being foreign born at any given time. This ballpark also seems to be playing out throughout Europe as well. Germany's at 20.9%, Sweden ~20%, UK 19%, and so on. The exceptions that exist like in the Mideast are quite different. For instance Saudi Arabia has around 40% of their population foreign born, but those are all just temporary workers who will never be granted citizenship, and live under a very two-tier system. The temporary residents do not have anywhere near the social impact people who might eventually become citizens, or live in the country forever, do.
Now getting back to fertility collapse. A shared fertility rate of 1 will trend towards you losing approximately 2.5% of your population per year, compounding. So after 80 years, a single human lifetime, you'd have lost 87% of your population. If we're speaking of maintaining population levels with immigration, you'd need to have 87% foreign born at that point in time. So what I'm getting at with the 15% is we can argue whether it's 10%, 15%, 25% or whatever else. But whatever the exact number of 'good' immigration may be, it's much less than 87%.
And furthermore, when you start looking at the actual numbers involved here, it is literally impossible. If we say e.g. 60% of the world, by population, is losing 80% of their population of that timeframe, then there literally are not enough people to replace them in the rest of the world. That'd be a population decline of 48% (of the global population) and only 40% of people in the rest of the world. And that's if you're willing to just accept literally anybody, regardless of whether they have any skills, education, or can even speak your language. It's just not realistic at all.
Yeah, my understanding in Japan, South Korea, and most countries with "fertility problems" is that they have almost zero correlation with any personal human's "fertility problems": they instead have to do with too many humans simply choosing not to reproduce (and for shockingly many of them, choosing to avoid romantic partnership altogether).
The core of that in turn is that capitalism treats human beings as replaceable and disposable cogs in the "earn me enough money for another yacht" machine and nobody wants to reproduce when treated that way.
>Why is it critically important to maintain a particular culture at a cost that is not sustainable?
Don't you like cultural diversity? Would you prefer the whole world to be culturally the same? It will not be a mishmash as you think, the new culture would be the culture of people with most kids. I doubt you would like it.
> Isn't it kind of the intersectionality of the right of self determination and the right to freely associate or the right to not freely associate?
Not entirely sure what you are saying here. Are you saying that people should have the right to keep outsiders out? If so, yeah. Totally. But, if you are rapidly losing population, and the young ones are refusing to make a lot more babies, then your options are rather limited.
> If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks. Even their language itself could die.
I strongly believe that if people directly saw the money themselves that comes from not demographically declining (or other financial benefits from properly organized immigration), they would immediately abandon all this stuff. I dont think people actually care if money is on the table. Unfortunately its too vague a process currently.
>it has an extremely distinct culture that's quite alien to much of the rest of the world.
It's not that distinct. Their language has heavy Chinese influence, their religion originated in India, their cuisine has heavy Portuguese influence, and that isn't even getting into the massive amount of influence that America has had on Japanese culture. Besides, cultures always change over time, with or without immigration.
I agree with you but we've seen that many people will just blame the immigrants. It's easier to blame change that you can visibly see rather than change that is forced to happen due to abstract demographic trends. No one has a good solution for this. If immigration gets too high, citizens will vote for parties that support anti-immigrant policies to bring it back in line.
these comments appear like clockwork whenever Japan is mentioned, and I usually get no coherent response when I ask which of the many countries recently enriched with vibrant immigrants had reversed (or even meaningfully slowed) their demographic decline.
yes, you certainly can continuously replace the natives with outsiders from around the world. a number of countries had chosen to do that rather than address the reasons why the natives are no longer able to even maintain their numbers. I'm rather baffled that such atrocity is celebrated by the very same people who endlessly harp about the capital being the root of all evil, for it is the capital who doesn't give a shit about ethnicity and culture of its indebted laborers. it's rich you claim to want to eat who benefit, who are removed from the negative consequences of the policies they promote, and who are free to leave on a whim.
A "demographic cliff" makes it sound like the entire nation's being plunged into oblivion.
In 50 years they'll probably have a population of 90mil or something, which'd still be top 20, and probably comparable to the current population density of the UK.
Is it really such a crisis? Especially when AI is going to automate a lot of things away. It'd probably be more worrying if the population was exploding.
Because it has fast trains and the letters look cool, and most everything is not like in the West. Also the obvious sexual fetishism that is not mentioned once.
I think there's a lot of historical ties going back a long way that explain this, which I also think are often overlooked when people talk about the western fixation on Japan.
Here's my best stab at an answer: The short story is, the western world has been tied to Japan moreso than most other countries in Asia for centuries, and Japan's position in western culture grew from that foothold more and more as time went on. This meant that for a long time now, Japan has been the most "foreign" place that westerners frequently interact with, making it naturally very interesting to talk about and think about. It's also been a relatively safe, stable, and industrialized place for a long time, meaning that it's an easy way as a westerner to visit and experience somewhere very different without having to actually go that far off the beaten path.
I think you could trace this back even as far as World War 1, where Japan was the a notable power in the allies, having a special relationship with Britain, and thus already having a special position in the European subconscious. Add on to this the close bond between America and Japan after WW2 reconstruction, which was amplified even more in the 80s when Japan became a huge presence in everyday life through its automotive and technology exports, and from there its cultural exports too, to the point where Mario and Pikachu became household names. Japanese cuisine became popular through the Japanese diaspora in America and Britain. And, of course, the position of Japanese media in western culture has continued to grow dramatically since then. So in my mind, what we're seeing now is essentially the continuation of a special relationship between Japan and the west that goes back much longer than people realize.
It’s modern orientalism. Which is also why so many westerners feel really strongly about Japan‘s immigration, they want the culture to be frozen in time, as a sort of real life attraction park
Some westerners are, maybe they like manga and other aspects of the exported media.
Some westerners are obsessed with Finland, the happiest country in the world.
Some westerners are obsessed with the idea of being an artist and musician in Berlin.
In short the internet makes these niches and obsessions seem larger than they are, because people with such a shared interest can find others to talk to. But I'd wager that most westerners aren't specifically obsessed with any specific country, or region.
I've never been there but the clean streets and waters, customary politeness (even if sometimes play-pretend only) and exceptionally healthy environment in some way, allowing people to live in the good health for ages, is very alluring.
I'm very aware there are many dark issues as well, but you asked why.
Oh, you asked why _obsessed_? You don't really think everyone thinking Japan is an attractive country is automatically obsessed with it?
If we found intelligent life out in space, we'd be pretty fascinated by it. I'm guessing for Europeans back in the day, there was a slight fascination with the fact that there was a slightly comparable level of civilization on the other side of the world which was totally unknown to anybody.
Europe has been warring with Middle Eastern powers forever, so there's no mystery and wonder. Someone new popping up, however, and actually rising to take the fight to established powers and become an actual competitor is pretty impressive. Maybe the Brits liked the fact they were an island, too, and lots of wonder and interest stemmed from that?
I'm guessing it'd have been the same if the Inca didn't collapse, and went on to hyperdevelop upon contact..
Would be interesting to see how Japan was referred to by Europeans in imperial times. That messaging might have continued onwards in the common psyche.
That's a lot of documents. When I naturized (in 2025) as a swamp creature living at the bottom of the sea, I had to get something like a naturalization test results and the letter from HR that I'm still employed and making money. Everything else, like tax records, birth certificate and the rest are already known to the government, so they found it themselves and sent it to the king to stamp his king approval on it.
> In light of that final insult and all the above and more details I have forgotten or omit, it may seem strange to say that overall, I am okay with the process.
> I don’t think citizenship is a light thing. It is not rational to make it friction-free or fast. I was not ready to naturalize in 2012. The system is arcane and arbitrary, and also worked correctly to weed me out of the process.
If you were born in Nigeria, it would've been literally impossible to procure all those family documents. Or even if you were born almost everywhere to a single mom/deadbeat dad, it'd be impossible to get a birth certificate. From the article this doesn't sound like the government would bend the rules for such cases.
That's not a process that's okay. It's one that excludes people purely on the basis of not having been born in a happy, American, nuclear family.
I hate culture war but if there was ever a time where "privilege" is apt, it's here. Could do with some more self-awareness.
Despite the language used, the requirements aren’t as absolute as they seem and the civil servants in charge of the process have a lot of leeway in deciding whether or not to let certain requirements slide.
I don't know if something's wrong with me, but this sounds like a humiliation ritual. I understand citizenship is a serious business to the point of creating a duty to go to war for your new motherland. But why would you go to war for a country that subjected you to this?
Japan can't go to war though, that's unconstitutional ;)
But actually to answer the question: it's a weeding-out process. Only the people who genuinely in their heart of hearts feel that they belong will persist. And those people will act in the nation's interest because they feel part of the nation, even if the process of being recognised as such is a bit demeaning. Just look at how OP rationalised his abuse by bureaucracy...
That is true for more countries, but there are also various countries that have agreements allowing their citizens to travel between them without passports, at least in areas close to their common borders.
For example a EU citizen may travel through most of EU without a passport.
Even in those cases you still need ID of some sort.
For example, before February 2026 you could use any sort of photo ID (e.g. driving license) between UK and Ireland. Now you need a passport. [1]
Regarding the EU. Yes, an EU citizen may travel through most of EU without a passport. But:
1. Most (all ?) of the EU also has ID cards, and people will fly between EU countries on their ID cards. Many young Europeans fly intra-Europe with nothing more than their iPhone (Apple Pay) and their ID card in a slot of the iPhone holder – and maybe a backup physical credit card if you're lucky.
2. Many EU countries have requirements to show your ID on demand. So you still need a passport or an ID card on you, even if you are taking advantage of Schengen land crossings. Because you will have a bad day in the office if a Police officer stops you and requests your ID and you are unable to produce because you left it at home 400 kilometers away in a different country.
>The system is arcane and arbitrary, and also worked correctly to weed me out of the process. It impressed upon me the importance of following the rules and making a contribution, which honestly impacted how I behaved and thought thereafter. When I was absolutely committed, I was able to get through the process.
The most kafkian thing I have read in my life. With a tinge of orwell: "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
jesus fucking christ, what a nightmare culture for individuality.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 9.5 ms ] threadThis gratifies intellectual curiosity -- how does one become a citizen in one of the most isolationist countries? What is that like??? Read this to find out.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What's up with all these, "you can't ask that" in HN now?
I'm a typical HN reader (I think) and I found it interesting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It is strange. A lot of the things he said he needed, would have been done in the permanent residence portion of his time in Japan. Just as it is in any country.
He had to use his friend’s address for the bank account and then changed it.
A decade ago a bank account, passport and bill with your home address was all that was needed to work legally.
That was almost everything I needed, I didn't even have UK driving licence at the time.
They could only get terrible restaurant jobs that didn't report anything to the government and were visited by immigration multiple times.
Even after getting an immigration lawyer couldn't help with citizenship.
What finally worked was having a kid and marrying a citizen.
Meanwhile Sweden has started deporting British citizens who didn't do the paperwork.
If you travel out of a country, your odds of being allowed in without a visa, residency, or a native passport are basically zero.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Having PR isn't a prerequisite for naturalization, nor does it waive any of the requirements. Do you mean he should have collected extra copies of documents and applied for PR in parallel?
Well cross Japan off my list. I would not be able to produce that residence list under any circumstances.
Also recommend to others keeping a list of all places from the past seven years.
I've literally never had a US employer ask me for prior addresses. That's in ~20 years of employment.
Hell, I've had employers that didn't ask for current address.
If you won't be able to produce the accurate list, the chances are that the agency reviewing it would not be able to fail your application by cross-referensing it with some dataset that proves it inaccurate.
"Congrats on your naturalization! Do you have to give up your US passport as well, or do you get to carry both?"
"Thanks! Yeah, the expectation is to give up other citizenships"
Having looked into the process myself, my understanding is it's common knowledge that Japan's government says that is something you must do, but in practice people don't actually do this, and it's not enforced (other than them verbally asking you to confirm). The language here feels chosen to that effect.
Everything is now harder. Even business manager visa. So many 夢の日本 have been shattered and pushed into other Asian countries. I’ve also seen a push into Europe , Italy, which also changed the rules last year too which was considered a very easy way to become a European citizen, Canada for Americans protesting Trump, etc.
It really does feel like the prelude or reshuffle of the world balance, open borders, Covid, closing borders, higher qualifications..
Wonder what it all means.
When failing it appears either as "interrogation-" or some form of "interrog̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶-" or as "i-n-t-e-r-r-o-g-a-t-i-o-n-"
We can freely move, work, marry, create companies, and everything else here already, I don't even think I'd think about it very often if I had a different passport (and it's not a thing I've only thought about for the last five minutes). (Of course this isn't true for all of them, but some of the neigboring countries).
That's because it doesn't. I checked today. Japan requires that you renounce your US citizenship after you obtain Japanese citizenship, not before.
Usually they say:
“Here’s your new passport. You have X months to provide proof you renounced all your prior nationalities, otherwise we will revoke your citizenship. If you lie and we find out later, we will revoke you then.”
Some places give you and option of citizenship that is contingent only on renouncing the previous one. Here you can actually become stateless if you get the option, renounce the old one and never use it.
Some places just give a passport and a strongly worded letter to do or else.
It's of course ridden with loopholes added there on purpose, because life is complicated and operation manual for clerks that deal with it is ... something. I'm for example supposed to renounce my blue passport since I got a nice bordeaux colored one, but that obligation is suspended due to unfortunate circumstances outside of my control.
Sometimes you don't have to renounce if you are married to a citizen, sometimes your children get a free pass, but only if insist on filling in the form 42-2002/13477 which they don't like you to know about. Sometimes the cost of renunciation procedure or length of it are enough to pinky swear instead and send the passport to the embassy with registered mail and itemized contents bill.
Some people have two passports and only renounce (or promise to not use) one of them, thinking they outsmarted the system only to get it renounced 10 years later once they pissed off somebody more then they expected (the drama you didn't even knew existed: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-910451 )
Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship if you acquire the japanese one later in life.
Plenty of people in Japan, like my nephew, have dual citizenship by birth. I don't know if they can keep both when they're adult. But as kids 100% guaranteed Japan allows it.
And then a great many mixed couple do, on purpose, give literally two different identities to their kids. One by registering them, say, in Germany with the name written in roman characters (say "Akane") and the other in Japan with the name written using kanjis (or kanas for that is allowed to).
I'm not talking about dual citizenships / two passports: I'm talking about the same person having two entirely different identities because his parents registered him, on purpose, differently in two different countries.
So, yes, there are literally a few people counted twice on earth. And you probably don't want to do that with the US citizenship (for US taxes its citizens worldwide and it's a reporting clusterfuck). But if you've got, say, a japanese identity and whatever european one: you're totally fine.
There was a lawyer, originally from Japan, living in the US who did try to force clarity on this issue and sued the Japanese government. Unfortunately she lost so the status quo remains. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15077494
Note if you acquire Japanese citizenship afterwards (or never had a second citizenship in the first place), then 国籍法11条1項 automatically voids your Japanese citizenship at the time you obtain a foreign citizenship.
> they are essentially gambling on a gray area of law.
It's not so much a gray area if they didn't do anything at all. The translation in English isn't on a vague side of legalize. One needs to go and try to renounce citizenship and keep the receipts, so if the motion is denied or you get sucked into a bureaucratic hell, you have a proof that effort has been taken, but the bureacracy prevailed.
It's interesting, that the word "effort" doesn't have a qualifier here, like "reasonable". Hazard guess -- the general language of the law somehow implies it, that if renouncing citizenship costs 1mm USD, you don't have to try unless it's pocket money for you or at all. If renouncing takes flying half the world to a country where things are happening , something should say ah nah.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/form-rs1-guidance...
It’s hard to imagine why they are having a decreasing population problem
"I want nothing more than to raise a family, but alas I simply can't face brining a child into a world in which people applying for citizenship in this country have to present such a long list of documents."
"I feel the same way, honey."
It's less hidden since the Brexit campaign encouraged the xenophobia on the streets, TV, papers, even one of the past PMs was famously racist and xenophobic and it flew without any issue.
Japan is not the only one.
I sincerely wonder what kind of country Japan will be in 50 years.
If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks. Even their language itself could die.
I think the big take-away when both sides are saying the same thing, even if on a sort of horse-shoe of logic, is that the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
That graph is by decade; the actual valley was probably more around 1965 because That's when a new immigration act was passed that greatly loosened the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent. Note that 14.8% includes all groups, including illegal aliens. The number of foreign born residents in Japan is, and has been, much lower.
[1] - https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/07/foreign-born-...
Why is it critically important to maintain a particular culture at a cost that is not sustainable? Why is allowing creation of a new culture, a mixture of multiple cultures, such a bad that thing? Particularly when a country is facing serious popular decline.
> the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
Never mind. I did not realize the solution was so simple. And I am surprised it did not occur to anybody else.
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
And yes, every country on earth has another culture/country they absolutely hate and consider them the villain. America included.
It seems to me like the conservatives change the targets of their culture wars often enough that I’m honestly not sure what your answer is going to be.
Because all evidence points to mixing cultures resulting in (extremely) low trust societies.
I mean no offense but both the US and Europe's demographic 'issues' probably don't look very attractive from a Japanese perspective.
Moved to Canada, heavy culture mix yet that "scam feeling" is gone, trust feels higher across the board.
But I'm sure you'd agree that if a culture changes 'quickly enough', it's not really changing it but basically deleting it. For instance I'm sure if you squint hard enough today, maybe there's some Native American influence on American culture, but for the most part we just destroyed it. And I don't think it was the violence, so much as the raw numbers. Something similar happened to the Maori in New Zealand without anywhere near the scale of violence, just lots of immigration and lots of babies.
So how fast will fertility change things? A fertility rate of 1 means each generation decreases in size by about 50%, but that's compounding. The length of a generation is proportional to the window of human fertility, which is about 20 years. So in an average human lifetime we'll each get to see around 4 generations play out. With a 50% compounding decline that means a generational decline in size of 94% in a human lifetime.
So if you want to try to deal with fertility declines with immigration, you're basically going to be replacing the entire population in extremely rapid order. So I don't think we really need to debate what 'quickly enough' means because it's way slower than what fertility collapse is going to do. And this is all far more true in places like Japan where you, out of necessity, are speaking of bringing in immigrants who the locals can't comfortably communicate with and who come from radically different cultures. So basically, from my perspective, I think you're speaking of having your cake and eating it too.
That sentiment gradually led to various restrictions on immigration sending it to a valley of 4.7% in 1970. In 1965 a new immigration act was passed that loosed the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent.
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I 100% agree that getting fertility rates back up will be much harder than it was to bring them down, but fortunately I don't think environmental or other issues are playing a significant role yet, at least not in terms of direct infertility. The vast majority of people that are not having enough children are (or were) still fertile.
But ultimately it's not even a choice. On top of the cultural issues, I think immigration is simply also unrealistic on a long-term scale. All you do is just kick the can, and not even especially far. And even in places like South America, they're also experiencing a fertility rate collapse. Humanity is simply going to have to change how we're doing things, in a rather dramatic way.
It's not existential because it is the most absurdly self-correcting problem imaginable, but I'd rather we all just start having more babies than ending up in a world dominated by the e.g. Amish and Haredim. Though it'd be pretty funny if we do finally meet an alien intelligence, it turns out they went through the same sort of crisis, and as a result these enlightened aliens everybody has attributed every positive characteristic to end up being Space Mormons. 'Ah Earthling, can I have a minute to talk to you about Gazurazu the Great?'
[1] - https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/07/foreign-born-...
Based on US history, the number seems to be around 15% of the population being foreign born at any given time. This ballpark also seems to be playing out throughout Europe as well. Germany's at 20.9%, Sweden ~20%, UK 19%, and so on. The exceptions that exist like in the Mideast are quite different. For instance Saudi Arabia has around 40% of their population foreign born, but those are all just temporary workers who will never be granted citizenship, and live under a very two-tier system. The temporary residents do not have anywhere near the social impact people who might eventually become citizens, or live in the country forever, do.
Now getting back to fertility collapse. A shared fertility rate of 1 will trend towards you losing approximately 2.5% of your population per year, compounding. So after 80 years, a single human lifetime, you'd have lost 87% of your population. If we're speaking of maintaining population levels with immigration, you'd need to have 87% foreign born at that point in time. So what I'm getting at with the 15% is we can argue whether it's 10%, 15%, 25% or whatever else. But whatever the exact number of 'good' immigration may be, it's much less than 87%.
And furthermore, when you start looking at the actual numbers involved here, it is literally impossible. If we say e.g. 60% of the world, by population, is losing 80% of their population of that timeframe, then there literally are not enough people to replace them in the rest of the world. That'd be a population decline of 48% (of the global population) and only 40% of people in the rest of the world. And that's if you're willing to just accept literally anybody, regardless of whether they have any skills, education, or can even speak your language. It's just not realistic at all.
The core of that in turn is that capitalism treats human beings as replaceable and disposable cogs in the "earn me enough money for another yacht" machine and nobody wants to reproduce when treated that way.
Don't you like cultural diversity? Would you prefer the whole world to be culturally the same? It will not be a mishmash as you think, the new culture would be the culture of people with most kids. I doubt you would like it.
Not entirely sure what you are saying here. Are you saying that people should have the right to keep outsiders out? If so, yeah. Totally. But, if you are rapidly losing population, and the young ones are refusing to make a lot more babies, then your options are rather limited.
I strongly believe that if people directly saw the money themselves that comes from not demographically declining (or other financial benefits from properly organized immigration), they would immediately abandon all this stuff. I dont think people actually care if money is on the table. Unfortunately its too vague a process currently.
It's not that distinct. Their language has heavy Chinese influence, their religion originated in India, their cuisine has heavy Portuguese influence, and that isn't even getting into the massive amount of influence that America has had on Japanese culture. Besides, cultures always change over time, with or without immigration.
Making citizenship as hard as possible for acculturated foreigners is a good way to guarantee the culture will collapse from the inside out.
Racism and nationalism are cultural monkey traps. Sometimes you have to let go of the thing you're holding on to to keep it alive.
yes, you certainly can continuously replace the natives with outsiders from around the world. a number of countries had chosen to do that rather than address the reasons why the natives are no longer able to even maintain their numbers. I'm rather baffled that such atrocity is celebrated by the very same people who endlessly harp about the capital being the root of all evil, for it is the capital who doesn't give a shit about ethnicity and culture of its indebted laborers. it's rich you claim to want to eat who benefit, who are removed from the negative consequences of the policies they promote, and who are free to leave on a whim.
You could wonder the same if they would accept a massive influx foreigners, like Europe did.
In 50 years they'll probably have a population of 90mil or something, which'd still be top 20, and probably comparable to the current population density of the UK.
Is it really such a crisis? Especially when AI is going to automate a lot of things away. It'd probably be more worrying if the population was exploding.
Here's my best stab at an answer: The short story is, the western world has been tied to Japan moreso than most other countries in Asia for centuries, and Japan's position in western culture grew from that foothold more and more as time went on. This meant that for a long time now, Japan has been the most "foreign" place that westerners frequently interact with, making it naturally very interesting to talk about and think about. It's also been a relatively safe, stable, and industrialized place for a long time, meaning that it's an easy way as a westerner to visit and experience somewhere very different without having to actually go that far off the beaten path.
I think you could trace this back even as far as World War 1, where Japan was the a notable power in the allies, having a special relationship with Britain, and thus already having a special position in the European subconscious. Add on to this the close bond between America and Japan after WW2 reconstruction, which was amplified even more in the 80s when Japan became a huge presence in everyday life through its automotive and technology exports, and from there its cultural exports too, to the point where Mario and Pikachu became household names. Japanese cuisine became popular through the Japanese diaspora in America and Britain. And, of course, the position of Japanese media in western culture has continued to grow dramatically since then. So in my mind, what we're seeing now is essentially the continuation of a special relationship between Japan and the west that goes back much longer than people realize.
In Italy, grandpas and grandmas know soccer AND dragonball. Which is kinda hilarious in a certain way.
I would quote videogames too, but animes probably had a bigger reach, think of the animes with mechas from the 70s and 80s
Some westerners are obsessed with Finland, the happiest country in the world.
Some westerners are obsessed with the idea of being an artist and musician in Berlin.
In short the internet makes these niches and obsessions seem larger than they are, because people with such a shared interest can find others to talk to. But I'd wager that most westerners aren't specifically obsessed with any specific country, or region.
Experiencing something as a tourist for a few weeks or seeing its image from the sidelines is very different than living it permanently.
I'm very aware there are many dark issues as well, but you asked why.
Oh, you asked why _obsessed_? You don't really think everyone thinking Japan is an attractive country is automatically obsessed with it?
Europe has been warring with Middle Eastern powers forever, so there's no mystery and wonder. Someone new popping up, however, and actually rising to take the fight to established powers and become an actual competitor is pretty impressive. Maybe the Brits liked the fact they were an island, too, and lots of wonder and interest stemmed from that?
I'm guessing it'd have been the same if the Inca didn't collapse, and went on to hyperdevelop upon contact..
Would be interesting to see how Japan was referred to by Europeans in imperial times. That messaging might have continued onwards in the common psyche.
> In light of that final insult and all the above and more details I have forgotten or omit, it may seem strange to say that overall, I am okay with the process.
> I don’t think citizenship is a light thing. It is not rational to make it friction-free or fast. I was not ready to naturalize in 2012. The system is arcane and arbitrary, and also worked correctly to weed me out of the process.
If you were born in Nigeria, it would've been literally impossible to procure all those family documents. Or even if you were born almost everywhere to a single mom/deadbeat dad, it'd be impossible to get a birth certificate. From the article this doesn't sound like the government would bend the rules for such cases.
That's not a process that's okay. It's one that excludes people purely on the basis of not having been born in a happy, American, nuclear family.
I hate culture war but if there was ever a time where "privilege" is apt, it's here. Could do with some more self-awareness.
But actually to answer the question: it's a weeding-out process. Only the people who genuinely in their heart of hearts feel that they belong will persist. And those people will act in the nation's interest because they feel part of the nation, even if the process of being recognised as such is a bit demeaning. Just look at how OP rationalised his abuse by bureaucracy...
I mean, why the hell would you want to leave a country without a passport anyway unless you were forced to do so as a refugee etc. ?
Also name me an airline or whatever that will even allow you to board without a passport these days ?
I understand the overall story they are telling in the blog post, but some of the digs they are having at Japan are a bit excessive and unreasonable.
It might well be a law in Japan, but in the rest of the world its damn common sense. The Japanese just chose to write it down.
For example a EU citizen may travel through most of EU without a passport.
For example, before February 2026 you could use any sort of photo ID (e.g. driving license) between UK and Ireland. Now you need a passport. [1]
Regarding the EU. Yes, an EU citizen may travel through most of EU without a passport. But:
[1] https://www.aerlingus.com/prepare/passports-and-visas/travel...The most kafkian thing I have read in my life. With a tinge of orwell: "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
jesus fucking christ, what a nightmare culture for individuality.