Tsumitate Wrestler wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 2:22 am
I really appreciate the discourse here on this topic.
I think some of the tension is that as parents we will have to make recommendations to our children, that may not mesh with what they read in Japanese about the subject.
I think it would be easier to encourage them to follow through with the declaration, and if questioned by immigration etc, state bluntly that they have declared and are "endeavoring".
This! Thank you!
Make the declaration or not?
Up to the person.
It says the Association of Japanese Lawyers is not aware of anyone who had Japanese Citizenship revoked for simply not choosing.
Making or not making the declaration is Not the same as being discovered to have taken another Nationality by your own choice, to have taken a government job for the other country that can only be done by a citizen of that country, or to have selected the other country's nationality according to the laws of that other country, which all can result in revocation of Japanese Nationality under different articles of the Japanese Nationality Law.
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This Guide to Japanese Taxes, English and Japanese Tai-Yaku 対訳, is now a little dated:
It seems slightly safer to make the declaration and then 'not get around' to renouncing any other nationalities, but people are currently doing both (declaring and not declaring) and not suffering any adverse consequences.
English teacher and writer. RetireJapan founder. Avid reader.
I asked my wife--neither of us had ever heard that there was an actual form (as discussed above). I think both of ours (in their 30s) have had one if not two passport renewals after turning 20, and while the form may have been mentioned to our kids at the passport office (on application, or pickup), that info/tidbit didn't get passed along to us. Maybe they dealt with it on their own.
Also, I'll guess that it's only at renewal time in the passport office that this might come up, where on the renewal application it asks about other citizenships. On entering/leaving Japan, using your Japanese passport (as should be done), they'd only see that you're presenting a Japanese passport, as any other citizen would. I doubt the immigration officers doing that duty would ever be tasked with grilling any 'foreign-looking' people who present Japanese passports if they have a second citizenship--the goal there is to process people thru.
RetireJapan wrote: ↑Wed May 07, 2025 7:10 am
It seems slightly safer to make the declaration and then 'not get around' to renouncing any other nationalities, but people are currently doing both (declaring and not declaring) and not suffering any adverse consequences.
That's my conclusion as well.
Just wondering if there will ever be a day when the rules are suddenly enforced even in an indirect way. Like 20 some years ago when we foreigners all suddenly had to get Japanese driver's licenses instead of simply renewing our international driver's licenses every year. Not a perfectly comparable situation but somewhere in the ballpark maybe.
Dual nationals are a third rail that even the most conservative politicians won't want to touch. These people are still Japanese and unnecessarily causing them distress won't be a popular position I would think. The current position of "technically not allowed but people just look away" seems like such a Japanese solution that doesn't seem to be going away soon.
