Guest Post: Turning Japanese

Naturalising in Japan as a UK national

This is a guest post very kindly submitted by Thomas after I pestered him to write it. I am also considering naturalising and giving up my UK citizenship, so I was very interested to read this comprehensive and personal account. Take it away, Thomas!

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“I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese I really think so” go the lyrics of the well-known 1980s song by The Vapors, but have you ever thought about what it really means to become Japanese?

Many people born outside Japan (or to parents who were not Japanese nationals), have, and around 10,000-15,000 people each year go through the process to make it happen (帰化申請). The acceptance rate of those who apply is well over 90% on average.

The following is only one person’s story, but I hope it is useful for those who are thinking about becoming Japanese, or purely of academic interest or entertainment value for those who are not.

I was born in the UK in 1978, and grew up in a small town called Luton, just north of London. At the University of Bradford in my final year of a degree in French and German in 1999, I came across an advert for the JET Programme and applied, mainly because I was not sure what I wanted to do next and it seemed like an adventurous option. After being accepted, I was placed in Tottori Prefecture and stayed for two years until 2002. I did not want to return to the UK straight away, but felt it was my duty due to a family issue. In 2003, I married my Japanese fiancée Junko Kinoshita, and she moved to the UK with me. We supported each other through teaching qualifications at the University of Sheffield and a few years teaching experience in Yorkshire high schools, before deciding that Japan was the place for us. We have been here since 2009.

During my first four years I taught English at Kanda University, studied for a distance learning MA at the Open University (UK), and wrote five academic papers (which can be counted as equivalent to a PhD when seeking permanent positions at universities). I also put a lot of effort into improving my Japanese, which was what really got me a tenure-track position at Nihon University in 2013.

My university job involves teaching and researching both language education methodology and Japanese history as well as a huge dose of admin. I also write books, YouTube documentaries (for Voices of the Past), textbooks, and articles, as a freelancer.

My wife has worked in a local elementary school since we arrived, and we have two children, 13 and 10 (correct as of March 2024). Both are currently citizens of Japan and the UK.

Naturalization was a long process for me. It probably first occurred to me a few years after returning here for good, but was by no means a developed concept, still less a decision.

However, as the atmosphere in the UK became more hostile to foreign nationals and the law was changed to limit the rights of non-UK national spouses, like many others UK citizens abroad, I became alarmed at the direction things were going, and the legalized discrimination against my family.

Concurrently in Japan, I was able to forge a good career, made many wonderful friends, and could not really imagine returning to the UK, particularly as my wife would have been forbidden from working for two years which would have driven her mad.

I decided to apply for Japanese nationality on the night of the Brexit vote, convinced that discrimination in the UK would only subsequently get worse.

It was something I immediately regretted.

Changing nationality should be about positive feelings for the new country, rather than negative ones about the old (if you are fortunate enough to have that luxury). So, I spent several years pondering it, wanting to make the right decision for the right reasons. I also ensured that my children’s UK citizenship was secure so that they could make their own choice in the future.

In the end, taking in to account the UK law changes and certain awful immigration stories in Japan, for the safety of my immediate family I concluded it is always best to have the same citizenship as them.

Furthermore, as someone who never intends to live anywhere else besides Japan, there didn’t seem much reason not to apply for citizenship. It was a logical step.

I finally made the first phone call to the local law office (地方法務局) in January 2020, just before the world went mad over Covid. Having waited about 6 weeks for an appointment, I met with a case advisor who established my right to apply by marriage to a Japanese citizen* (I could also technically have claimed it as the parent of a Japanese national, and by length of residency as I understand it), checked I had no criminal record, and talked me through the process over the course of a couple of hours.

The list of required proofs is long, aiming to establish that you are who you say you are, that you are a responsible potential citizen, and that you can command sufficient funds to support yourself.

These things are generally easy to prove with readily available documents from your embassy, the Japanese police, and local tax office, so the Japanese side of the paperwork went smoothly. However, the UK documents were heavily disrupted by Covid. For example, I could not get a transcript of my university degree for over six months because the offices were closed and then they were dealing with the backlog.

There are also a series of forms to fill out, the most arduous of which is the ‘story of your life’, starting with birth and going through every major event. The only part that is required to be written by hand is the motivation for application (動機書) which is fortunate because my Japanese handwriting is awful. It took me only a few days to get these done, including researching small details like the date and place of my parents’ marriage etc.

The final stage of application was the physical submission of all the documents, the choosing of a family name (this is the fun part as you can change it to anything you want! Or leave it as is. We chose to combine our surnames to make Kinoshita-Lockley) and the signing of an oath to uphold the Japanese constitution. The application was then sent to the Ministry of Justice in Tokyo to be vetted.

I waited several months, and was informed that my application had been provisionally approved. However, as a final condition, I was required to renounce my UK citizenship before Japanese nationality could be granted. This is not the case in all naturalizations, and I do not know why this was asked of me. Other people I know who have been through the process have been allowed to take this step after being granted Japanese citizenship.

Covid again intervened, and it took nine months for the UK Home Office (interior ministry) to approve the renunciation application. After submitting the certificate, I waited a few more weeks (technically stateless!) before being informed that I had been granted Japanese nationality on June 27, 2022.

On that same day, I obtained the certification from the local law office, annuled my Foreign Residents Card (在留カード) at the immigration bureau (to warm congratulations from the officer in charge), and visited the local government office to apply for our new family register (戸籍謄本).

I was now Japanese and had a new name to boot.

It was a daunting task to inform people, but of course there is no way to avoid it. Work, welfare, tax, pension, banks, and a whole load of other name-changing bureaucracy ensued, and even a year later, Junko and I were finding obscure places where we had omitted to submit the necessary paperwork. It would have been much easier had we not changed our surname.

Among friends and colleagues, the news got around, and I would assume most people close to me now know.

So how did others react? My UK family had mixed feelings. Both of my siblings were supportive, but my father, while signing the required documents to certify that I was his child, made clear that he would rather I had not renounced my UK citizenship. Coming from a family where many people in the generation above him naturalized in the UK after WWII, it was challenging for him to accept.

Japanese family, friends, colleagues, and just people who find out in the course of everyday interactions, have been overwhelmingly positive, in fact many have gone out of their way to emphasize that they welcome me as a compatriot. Non-Japanese national friends have been positive too, but some have been surprised. The reason for this is almost always that they had never thought of naturalizing, and many were even unaware that it was possible to do so.

When you live in Japan, there will almost always be things that do not quite live up to something you were brought up with in the land of your birth: food, natural disaster occurrence, ease of navigating the language, healthcare, social services, human friendship, the list is endless.

This is because, of course, virtually everywhere on earth has something amazing going for it, and your birthplace is one of them. However, something that everyone who is thinking about naturalization in Japan, or anywhere else for that matter, has in common, is that there are enough plus points to outweigh the negatives. Japan is comfortable enough, welcoming enough, delicious enough, loving enough, supportive enough, lucrative enough, …. etc. to be considered home.

From my point of view, the key point was the safety of my family, and the fact that it is easier to participate in society as a citizen rather than a foreigner. While Japan is relatively benign in its treatment of legal foreign residents, there are still barriers which occur occasionally, such as in borrowing money (incidentally most other countries seem stricter), and perhaps, if we are realistic, a mental barrier as well.

Personally, I am extremely glad that I became Japanese, and I hope this article helps others who are considering it.

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There are a number of things to bear in mind if you are thinking about naturalizing in
Japan. These are the most important in my opinion.

1. You MUST renounce your former nationality if that is feasibly possible. Dual citizenship is only legally permitted for those under the age of 22 who are born with it.
2. You need to have ‘an appropriate level’ of Japanese to deal with the process. At a minimum this means basic spoken Japanese to engage in the interview, there is no formal language test. Lawyers can and do offer support to people with all competencies in Japanese, and can even manage virtually the whole process for you. Their details can easily be found online, and the services are not especially expensive either. I did not use a lawyer as I had sufficient Japanese and my claim to citizenship was unambiguous.
3. Between giving up your old passport and getting the required documents to obtain the new Japanese one may take a month or two, so it is best not to have any urgent engagements abroad for that period.
4. If you choose to change your name, altering your, and your family’s, bank details, and all the other myriad official places your name is recorded (you will be surprised how many this is), is a daunting task. Try to have a comprehensive list ready beforehand so you can get it done as quickly as possible to save hassle later, or simply don’t change your name.
5. Your country will probably be cooperative when you renounce your former citizenship, but it might not. The USA for example imposes various conditions to do with tax, some countries outright forbid the renouncing of citizenship, and of course if your country is in difficulty and the civil service cannot process such requests, then you will not be able to get the necessary documents. Japan does allow for this, and your case worker can advise you. There is also no time limit, as I understand it, to the process.
6. The process of naturalization does not technically cost anything, but getting the documents will. In Japan, these only cost a few hundred yen each, but depending on your country, they may cost a lot more. The UK charged me considerable sums every step of the way, £372 to renounce my citizenship for example.
7. Acquiring a new nationality is a legal process, and nationality is a legal status. You can still remain who you are, the fact of being a national of a different country does not change you.
8. One small note of historical trivia, if you will permit me, is that the first non-Asians to naturalize as Japanese citizens in the modern age were the original inhabitants of the Ogasawara Islands (formerly colonized by the British Empire under the name Bonin Islands) in the 1870s and 1880s. One of the first was a British subject, Robert Myers.

I would sincerely like to thank Ben Tanaka and Retire Japan for giving me the opportunity to share this experience, and providing solid and impartial financial advice for people like me and my family to help us plan for our futures.

Thomas Kinoshita-Lockley (who goes by his birth name, Thomas Lockley, professionally) works for Nihon University, and writes as a freelancer. He has published numerous academic papers, contributed to Ministry of Education (MEXT) approved textbooks, and written several books, the best known of which is African Samurai (coauthored with Geoffrey Girard, 2019), concerning the life of Yasuke, the African man who fought beside Oda Nobunaga.

Thomas Lockley’s latest book, A Gentleman from Japan: The Untold Story of an Incredible Journey from Asia to Queen Elizabeth’s Court is published on May 21 st 2024 and is available to pre-order now.

*About Japanese nationality from Ministry of Justice

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Thank you very much, Thomas! I really appreciate you taking the time to write this for us. If anyone else has an idea for a genuine guest post that might be of interest to our readers, please get in touch and I’ll be happy to consider it.

How about you? Have you naturalised in Japan or are you considering it?