Q: obtaining UK passport for child born in Japan (UK/Japanese parents)

[Tkydon]

And you need to provide a copy of ALL pages of the child's other (Japanese) Passport(s).

Eek. The blighter is on his second Japanese passport, that's going to be a lot of paper, though I suppose I can copy both at the same time.

Sorry, I meant all Current passports, if he had other passports than the Japanese one... (Edited)

[CluelessToshika]

And you need to provide a copy of ALL pages of the child's other (Japanese) Passport(s).

Eek. The blighter is on his second Japanese passport, that's going to be a lot of paper, though I suppose I can copy both at the same time.

Sorry, I meant all Current passports, if he had other passports than the Japanese one... (Edited)

He has one current Japanese passport, and one expired Japanese passport, but no others.

[CluelessToshika]

Just an interim update, have not made any progress on this due to Reasons, but as yesterday my wife finally got a copy of her koseki tohon, and the documents I requested from the GRO (which I probably won't need, but you can never have too many documents) arrived the same day, I will take that as a sign I need to get a move on, and will report back as and when Developments (probably Kafkaseque) occur.

[UK in Japan]

I'm also applying for my child's UK passport and found this information very helpful - thanks!

For our situation, the UK Gov passport site has said I need to provide:

"full birth (civil and hospital) or adoption certificate showing both the child’s and parents’ details"

Based on the previous posts, I understand that I need to submit a copy of theFamily Register - Koseki Tohon.

Also my understanding is that I will need to submit a copy of at least one of these:
a) Japanese Certificate of Delivery / Shussei Shoumeisho
b) Birth Notification Document Shussei Todoke
c) Certificate of Acceptance of Birth Notification Shussei Todoke Juri Shoumeisho

When I called the City Office (Setagaya,Tokyo), where our child's birth was registered, asking for (b) Birth Notification (Shussei Todoke), they told us that they no longer have it as the birth was registered over 10 years ago. They think I can get a copy if I contact the Japanese Ministry of Justice which I haven't done yet as first I'd like to check:

1) Is my understanding of what documents I need to submit correct?
2) Has anyone ever heard of the need to contact JPN MoJ to get the Birth Notification (Shussei Todoke)?
3) If yes, what's the process?
4) Alternatively, where can I get a) Certificate of Delivery or c) Birth Notification from?

[Tkydon]

I'm also applying for my child's UK passport and found this information very helpful - thanks!

For our situation, the UK Gov passport site has said I need to provide:

"full birth (civil and hospital) or adoption certificate showing both the child’s and parents’ details"

Based on the previous posts, I understand that I need to submit a copy of theFamily Register - Koseki Tohon.

Also my understanding is that I will need to submit a copy of at least one of these:
a) Japanese Certificate of Delivery / Shussei Shoumeisho
b) Birth Notification Document Shussei Todoke
c) Certificate of Acceptance of Birth Notification Shussei Todoke Juri Shoumeisho

When I called the City Office (Setagaya,Tokyo), where our child's birth was registered, asking for (b) Birth Notification (Shussei Todoke), they told us that they no longer have it as the birth was registered over 10 years ago. They think I can get a copy if I contact the Japanese Ministry of Justice which I haven't done yet as first I'd like to check:

1) Is my understanding of what documents I need to submit correct?
2) Has anyone ever heard of the need to contact JPN MoJ to get the Birth Notification (Shussei Todoke)?
3) If yes, what's the process?
4) Alternatively, where can I get a) Certificate of Delivery or c) Birth Notification from?

Apparently, you are supposed to submit the Official Stamped Copy of the Shussei Todoke, the real official birth certificate (Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho)

The “Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho” is the correct birth certificate because it’s an exact official copy (with city stamp) of the hospital form you submitted to the city when you registered the birth.

The City Hall apparently only keeps the document for a limited period of time, after which you would have to apply for a copy from the MoJ, as you said.

[UK in Japan]

Thanks for the confirmation.

I just contacted the Legal Affairs Bureau (part of MoJ) and the person informed me to they can only issue copies of birth certificate from 2015. My daughter was born in 2013 and so they said they don’t have a copy and so they can’t provide one!

When I asked if there was another way to receive the birth certificate there was a long pause and then the answer of they don’t know!

Has anyone ever heard of this and how I can get a birth certificate in this situation? Alternatively has anyone heard of how UK Gov handle an application with no birth certificate? Would some other document be ok?

I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this

[kuma]

Was just in the midst of posting that I obtained extra copies of my children’s shussetodoke kisaijiko shomeisho (出生届記載事項証明書) from the Legal Affairs Bureau (法務局; houmukyoku). The process was swift and free. (In my case this was not for passport applications.)

However, that’s no longer helpful to ‘UK in Japan-san’.

I think you’ll have to continue to pursue avenues to receive documents and build a case based on what you are able to provide. I may have time to provide some further thoughts/links during the week, but for now:

* The Koseki Tohon is recognized as a birth certificate by some foreign jurisdictions. It can be referred to as ‘Certificate of All Matters’ and does state the main facts about the birth including parentage so might be accepted by some jurisdictions for some purposes. (Link to follow when have time.) Other users might have tips and tricks; can an extract of the Koseki Tohon be ordered bearing only (/focusing on) the child’s details, and if so, how similar or dissimilar to a birth certificate does this document seem?

* Do you have the Mother and Child Book? I don’t know how long the system has been in place, but upon birth registration at the ward/municipal office, a certificate in sticker form is placed in this book. Official translation of this could be another strand of evidence.

* Caseworker guidance for HM Passport Office is often published online and this may explain the process of discretion to accept alternative evidence

[Tkydon]

Thanks for the confirmation.

I just contacted the Legal Affairs Bureau (part of MoJ) and the person informed me to they can only issue copies of birth certificate from 2015. My daughter was born in 2013 and so they said they don’t have a copy and so they can’t provide one!

When I asked if there was another way to receive the birth certificate there was a long pause and then the answer of they don’t know!

Has anyone ever heard of this and how I can get a birth certificate in this situation? Alternatively has anyone heard of how UK Gov handle an application with no birth certificate? Would some other document be ok?

I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this

I would get official translations of all the documents you have;

Koseki Tohon - 戸籍謄本 if the child has Japanese Citizenship
Shussei Todoke with the Shussei Shomeisho if you have it - 出生届 & 出生証明書
Juminhyo - 住民票
Shussei Todoke Juri Shomeisho if you have it - 出生届受理証明書 -
(I think this is the real Birth Certificate - the Certificate of Acceptance of the Registration of Birth, with all the relevant information; Date of Registration, Child's Details, Date and Place of Birth, Parents' Names, and who filed the registration... the equivalent of a UK Birth Certificate)

Photocopies of all Pages of the child's other valid passports (Japanese, if the child has Japanese Citizenship, and others)
Consular Birth Certificate - if you have it
Your Marriage Certificate
Your (UK Citizen Parent(s)') Birth Certificate(s)
Your (UK Citizen Parent(s)') Passport(s) - Picture page
If the UK Citizen Parent(s) born after 1992, then you have to provide the UK Citizen Grandparent(s)' Birth Certificate(s)

[kuma]

I may have time to provide some further thoughts/links during the week

Apologies; one of my children was hospitalised.

Below is both lengthy and incomplete, but hopefully contains some useful links and points relevant to the case. In due course, some of the info from this thread and elsewhere will be tidied up, added to, referenced, and presented in wiki form.

=======

People might be unable to produce birth certificates for a variety of reasons. HMPO understands this and there are provisions in place to examine alternative evidence. Were HMPO not to show flexibility and discretion, some individuals could be denied passports through no fault of their own; in 2018 UNICEF estimated that over 25% of children under 5 worldwide are not registered. https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-pro ... istration/

This HMPO Caseworker Guidance on birth registration has lots of information on alternative evidence and how decisions will ultimately be made. Providing a body of evidence may suffice in cases where the ‘usual’ documentation is not available.

(As a general note, HMPO publishes a sizable library of policy and caseworker guidance documents.)

If you are a British citizen otherwise than by descent, your child born overseas will automatically be a British citizen in all but a handful of cases (see bottom left cell of the table).

If your child automatically received British citizenship upon birth (see above) then the child should be able to receive a British passport if sufficient evidence is supplied. Clearing the hurdle of sufficient evidence may be challenging in some cases, but a body of evidence should prove the facts of the case to the satisfaction of HMPO, though the case may need referring to a senior member of staff if the evidence varies from that which is ordinarily encountered. In your case it sounds as if the birth was correctly registered, so any complications arise from the array of possible documents/translations of 'birth certificate' (including the potential non-availability of one item) and the lack of clear guidance from HMPO as to which document(s) are critical. Many on the forum may have waded through these murky waters already and emerged with British passports.

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Japan uses the Family Register system whereas the UK uses the General Register system causing a slight mismatch in documents, and there are of course other cultural/bureaucratic differences. As we on the forum are acutely aware, non-Japanese citizens are not ‘full participants’ of the Family Register system, compounding some issues. Further complications exist because both Japan and the UK have several different forms of ‘birth certificates’. Another layer of complication is added when these similarly-named certificates are translated and/or compared.

However, as your spouse is Japanese, presumably you can relatively easily receive:

1. Koseki Tohon; 戸籍謄本 (Family Register: Certificate of All Matters; this can be used as a birth certificate in some instances in some jurisdictions)
2. Koseki Shohon; 戸籍抄本 (extract of Family Register, in this case only detailing the child; this can be used as a ‘birth certificate’ in some instances in some foreign jurisdictions; this document may not be essential in this case, but for the low cost of obtaining and the big prize of the passport, it might be something you wish to pursue)

Presumably you can also readily arrange:

3. (Shussei Todoke) Juri Shomeisho;- (出生届)受理証明書 -Shussei Todoke Juri Shomeisho (Certificate of Acceptance of Birth Notification; I think technically this is only issued to the informant of the birth, so could be problematic if the informant is deceased, though my understanding may be incorrect and there may be workarounds in any case)

And presumably you already have:

4. Boshi Kenko Techo; 母子健康手帳 (Mother and Child Health Handbook): this document has a legal precedent for being issued, and contains some key information about the birth, including one form of a ‘birth certificate’. More on this later.

In my opinion, this represents an excellent set of evidence (when officially translated), and no doubt some people have been successful with only a subset of this, so it's up to you how to proceed. Packaging the evidence and explaining it concisely yet clearly could be critical. (“Japan has a different system of birth registration and certification than the UK; I have provided official translation of the following 4 documents which all constitute official documentation of the birth…”)

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Allow me to pause to ask a couple of questions:

For our situation, the UK Gov passport site has said I need to provide:

"full birth (civil and hospital) or adoption certificate showing both the child’s and parents’ details"

UK in Japan, when were you presented with this information? Had you already stated the country of birth?

I’m trying to establish if this is a generic or specific instruction. In any case, it is poorly worded as it effectively presupposes a hospital birth. Under strict interpretation, two out of my three children would fail to produce the required evidence on the grounds of not being born in hospitals.

Unfortunately, there are several deficiencies in the customer-facing info published by HMPO, particularly for overseas applicants, some of which are detailed on Retirewiki.jp.

Apparently, you are supposed to submit the Official Stamped Copy of the Shussei Todoke, the real official birth certificate (Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho)

The “Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho” is the correct birth certificate because it’s an exact official copy (with city stamp) of the hospital form you submitted to the city when you registered the birth.

Tkydon, is this something HMPO have stated either publicly or privately?

There appears to be no HMPO Knowledge Base for Japan, which is the place where information about Japanese documentation would be expected to be published.

In any case, the Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho is perhaps little known (a ward office official didn’t know about it when I requested it) and also time-limited (in Sapporo City, current policy is that it is destroyed after 27 years; my understanding is that the storage time can be shorter in other locations, as the OP has discovered).

It is an excellent document for those who have it, but there should be alternatives for those unable to obtain the document.

In the case of UK Consular Birth Registration, Japan-born Brits are asked to provide the Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho (suggesting the Overseas Registration Unit has a Knowledge Base for Japan…). This may in part be because UK consular birth registration certificates state the specific location where the birth took place, eg the name of the hospital, clinic, midwifery centre, etc. and the Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho states this information whereas the Juri Shomeisho and Koseki Tohon do not. (The Mother and Child Health Handbook states this info too; more of that later...)

It doesn’t necessarily follow that HMPO will also consider the Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho to be the holy grail in terms of birth certificates (HMPO is part of the Home Office; the Overseas Registration Unit is part of FCDO). Passports state the bearer’s place of birth, but at the level of city/town/etc. Such information is presented on other sources, eg (Shussei Todoke) Juri Shomeisho and Koseki Tohon.

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Shussei Todoke Juri Shomeisho if you have it - 出生届受理証明書 -
(I think this is the real Birth Certificate - the Certificate of Acceptance of the Registration of Birth, with all the relevant information; Date of Registration, Child's Details, Date and Place of Birth, Parents' Names, and who filed the registration... the equivalent of a UK Birth Certificate)

Agree here that this is a close match.

UK 'birth certificates' come in varying forms (long v short; current issue v older versions; differences between constituent countries of the UK). Indeed, a UK ‘birth certificate’ will in many cases actually carry the title of ‘Certified copy of an entry pursuant to the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953’. In this sense, it is similar in function (but not identical) to the Juri Shomeisho, the certificate of acceptance. Both confirm the registration of the birth and contain some information about the birth and its registration.

For use in the UAE, this was the form of 'birth certificate' I got translated, legalised, attested, etc.

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In addition to the documents already discussed, the Mother and Child Health Handbook contains some potentially useful and authoritative information including:

* Childbirth Report / State of Childbirth (better translations may exist): a one-page document which includes the time and exact place of birth and specifies whether a ‘birth certificate’ exists and is signed/stamped by a medical professional (p14 for my children)

* Birth registration certificate: a simple stamped certificate provided by the municipal office at the time the birth was registered; certificate states some basic info about the birth (location only at ward/town/etc level) and an official stamp confirms that the birth was registered. The actual certificate doesn’t state the parents BUT (in 3 out of 3 samples from my household) the parents are mentioned on the same page, as the opening information to the whole book, in fact (p1 for my children)

The above could constitute part of a pack of evidence. You could translate ‘Selected entries from the Mother and Child Health Handbook of XXXX’ for example, including the cover, the page with the parents’ details and the birth registration certificate and the ‘childbirth report’.

If you wish to pursue UK consular birth registration, which ordinarily requires the Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho for Japan-born British citizens, I wonder whether entries from the Mother and Child Health Handbook could be provided in lieu of the Shussei Todoke Kisaijiko Shomeisho, as these entries would document the exact place of birth, which is ordinarily entered on the UK consular birth registration certificate.

[Silversurfer]

Hi

I'm new here and currently trying to get various ducks in a row regarding Serious Life Stuff. I will, as per handle, have some clueless questions about the money end of things, but right now I'm trying to kick off the process for getting a UK passport for my child and wondering if anyone else has done that recently. I did find this related thread: British consular birth registration but it's a couple of years old.

Me: bog-standard UK citizen born in the UK descending from a long line of bog-standard UK citizens
My wife: bog-standard Japanese citizen born in Japan descending from a long line of bog-standard Japanese citizens
Child: 9 years old, has Japanese passport (no middle name and the romanisation of his name in the Japanese passport is "correct"); has not been registered at the UK consulate (my understanding is that this is not necessary)

Specifically, I've done a "trial run" through the online application process and it tells me I need:

Grandparents’ documents
Send all of the following for both maternal grandparents:
• full birth or adoption certificate (showing both the child’s and parents’ details)
• grandfather’s marriage certificate to your grandmother (if this applies)

And all of the following for both paternal grandparents:
• full birth or adoption certificate (showing both the child’s and parents’ details)
• grandfather’s marriage certificate to your grandmother (if this applies)

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, the above is all from the viewpoint of the applicant, so this will be the parents of my wife and myself respectively. Does anyone have any recent experience with supplying this information for the Japanese grandparents? Which document(s) correspond here? Would a 戸籍謄本 cover birth and marriage? Are they even actually necessary, given that they have no bearing on establishing the child's UK ancestry?

Also, any recommendations for translation services? The linked thread does have one, but open to others.

Any advice, tips greatly appreciated.

Dazed and Confused of Tokyo.

Why don’t you just contact the United Kingdom Embassy directly instead of asking a bunch of strangers on the Internet? Seems more direct, no? Go there in person.

I have more than one passport and enjoy traveling to Tokyo to get FIRST-HAND information direct from the source(s).

It boggles the mind how some countries are so slack in their record-keeping. I had to get a SERIOUS, IMPORTANT, VITAL and CRUCIAL document once from one embassy and they never bothered to verify whether or not I was entitled to it. They just gave it to me. Total slackers!