Today, I formally applied to naturalise in Japan.
I went to the Legal Affairs Office in Kawasaki, and Yuriko met me there (we were both going from work). I arrived a bit early, but my case worker soon came to speak to me. First, she took all my application documents off me, and took them into the Nationality Consultation Room to look through them. That took her about twenty minutes, while I waited. Yuriko arrived just after she had finished checking, and she said that she would speak to me first. (As I mentioned before, they speak to the husband and wife separately, to make sure the marriage is genuine.)
The first thing she asked me was whether I was happy to give up my UK citizenship. I said I’d prefer not to, but that I understood it was necessary, so I would. We also discussed the absence of a certificate of citizenship, but as the UK will no longer issue those, it wasn’t an immediate problem. The Justice Ministry may ask about it later. Next, there was a short list of extra documents she wanted. I need my 2013 tax return as well as the 2014 one, and the proof of Yuriko’s income, and a couple more documents about my family for the family record. When I submit these, I only need to submit one copy, and photocopies are fine for most of them. (The proof of Yuriko’s income needs to be the original.)
Then she started going through the documents. There was a short discussion to confirm the katakana spelling of my parents’ names on my family record, if I am allowed to naturalise, and the way that my previous name will be written. She wanted to confirm the county I was born in, and I got a bit stuck, because it’s Greater Manchester now, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t when I was born. (Wikipedia confirms that I was right; I was born in Cheshire.) She is going to look into that for me, because it needs to be right according to the Japanese government, which may not be exactly the same as what the UK government thinks. Then she asked who was going to be the first name on the family record. That was something I hadn’t realised. Apparently, I can choose to be added to Yuriko’s current family record, or to create a new family record, with me at the top, and have Yuriko and Mayuki added to that. As I didn’t know about this complication, I hadn’t talked about it with Yuriko, so we postponed a decision on that. She wanted to know which school Mayuki was going to, and was a bit surprised that she wasn’t going to an International School, until I told her how high the fees were. She asked what language I spoke to Mayuki in, and I explained that I talk to her in English and she replies in Japanese.
There weren’t many questions about most of the documents, just confirmation that I don’t have a driver’s licence, and a few other minor points. Most of her questions were based on my CV, which is fair enough. She asked me about the background, and for some more details. For example, she wanted to know how I became a member of the Foreign Residents’ Assembly, so I told her that it was openly advertised. (She doesn’t work for the city, so she is allowed to not know about it.) She also asked a bit about my jobs, and, of course, about how and when I met Yuriko, and the process leading up to our marriage, and she wanted to know whether we had had a wedding ceremony, and where. (If you are marrying a Japanese citizen and think you might want to naturalise later, have a ceremony. It helps make the wedding look real.)
My interview took about 45 minutes, and then I came out while Yuriko went in. Her interview took about 20 minutes, and I asked her about it afterwards. She said it was more like a friendly chat, and that, while they did talk about where we met, and our wedding ceremony, and how Yuriko’s parents felt about our marriage, they also talked about Mayuki and I speaking a mix of Japanese and English, and about the choice of characters for my name. Yuriko mentioned that Mayuki was strongly opposed to a kanji surname, and the case officer agreed. She said Mayuki was really cute, and the current balance of her name suited her. My case officer once again wondered why I would want to take Japanese citizenship. I should emphasise that this wasn’t in any way a hostile “Why do you think you can become Japanese?” attitude, but rather “Why would you want to become Japanese?”. I think the Japanese still have a bit of an inferiority complex.
Now, I think that one reason for Yuriko’s relaxed interview was that there is nothing suspicious-looking about our marriage. One of the big documentary things is that we are joint owners of the flat. But I suspect that another reason is that this is actually an effective way to catch false marriages. By picking up on things that were mentioned in passing, it is easy to spot people who haven’t very carefully prepared their stories.
In any case, after Yuriko’s interview, she was ready to accept the application, so I was called back into the room, and I sat down at the table.
I signed my oath to respect the constitution, and signed my application forms. She accepted them.
While she was off getting my acceptance number (which I need to include on all future correspondence), Yuriko and I talked about who would be on top of the family record. We quickly concluded that it probably wouldn’t make any difference to anything practical, so in the end we decided based on how we felt.
Finally, my case worker explained a bit about what will happen next. If she has any questions, or needs any more documents, she will phone me. She will also phone me when she has sorted out my county of birth, to confirm that it is OK. Similarly, if I have any questions, I should phone her. I also need to phone her if I move, get divorced, Yuriko gets pregnant, I change jobs, and so on. Basically, if anything major changes on the application, I need to tell her. I also need to tell her when I leave the country, and when I get back. There is no problem with my leaving (as long as I have a passport), but it is policy not to grant permission while someone is out of the country, so they need to know whether I am. I suspect that there would be a problem if you were barely in Japan during your application, as well. One thing she mentioned was that the authorities take a very dim view of hiding important things from them. This was in the context of saying that, in our case, we didn’t need to tell her if Yuriko changed jobs (because she is in the process of starting a new one), because Yuriko’s employment is not a significant part of the application, so the point is that they want an accurate picture of your life, not one that is completely precise about all the details. I imagine that, if they want details about some thing, they will ask. She said that she would like the remaining documents by the end of April, if at all possible, which suggests to me that she expects to send the the application package to the Ministry of Justice in that sort of time frame. I have no idea how long it will take once it gets to them, of course, and after that I have to wait for my renunciation of UK citizenship to go through. So far, it has taken a little less than four months from my first phone call to the Legal Affairs Office to the formal acceptance of my application.
Incidentally, you may have noticed that I formally applied on Friday 13th. However, today is also Taian, the luckiest day of the Japanese fortune-telling cycle. Today is unlucky for the UK, lucky for Japan…
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