adding a Japanese language proficiency condition for permanent residency.
This part makes sense as long as the bar is set at a reasonable level.
In a policy proposal last September, the party, then in the opposition camp, argued that the five-year residency requirement for citizenship--a weightier legal status--was inexplicably shorter than the 10 years required for permanent residency.
I don't disagree with that in principle but... perhaps it just means PR takes too long? Or maybe if Japan allowed dual citizenship, more people would focus on that rather than PR?
I'm not even sure what the point is in focusing on citizenship. Less than 10,000 people a year become Japanese citizens.
Not that many people WANT Japanese citizenship. You have give up your other passport (essentially your right to visit your family) and change your name to a Japanese name, which is also a weird requirement.
*edit, I looked it up and you DO NOT have to change your name to a Japanese name. Just katakana your own name legally, which is also a pain in the ass.
Well, if you want to get super technical about it, in a way it does. But even then, you can have your Japanese passport have the original spelling of it anyway. If you're now ジョン・スミス, you can have your passport printed as "John Smith" and not "Jon Sumisu".
I personally don't think it changes the name. For instance, if you are John Smith, in Katakana it will just be ジョン・スミス, which reads exactly like your original name (with Japanese flavour of course).
It's not that different to spelling it with Cyrillic letters such as Джон Смит - you're not preserving the English pronunciation anyways.
As long as the new stanldardization on Hepburn Romanization for government does not mean your romaji name in your passport becomes "Jon Sumisu" (currently you have a lot of leeway in how your romaji name appears so usually the original spelling is accepted).
There’s an entire separate area in the passport form specifically for people (Japanese and foreign born) with non hepburn romanization so why would that change.
If I remember correctly, a lot of people that come from disadvantaged countries rush ftor the citizenship. I had a Peruvian friend that got it as soon as he could and then used it to bring his whole family (it was easier as a citizen).
A lot of people might be choosing to be PR (I'm one of these people) rather than take citizenship in Japan because, in doing so, I would have to give up my birth citizenship. I can't hold both.
So, instead, people take PR because you can hold a foreign passport and be a PR holder simultaneously. There are nearly a million PR holders in Japan. I'm guessing that number would be much lower if people could hold two passports.
Look at the thread. It starts with ME, then u/pandarista replies to me. I'm not sure where you come into the conversation until you ask "what do you mean?", directed at me. I then reply to that comment and explain what I mean. You then reply with the above comment saying it has nothing to do with your comment.
The app sometimes notifies you of comments in a chain that you have participated in even if they are not a direct reply to you. I have no idea why someone thought this would be a good idea. I guess it's to drive extra "engagement".
I see you responding to a comment about names with an unrelated topic. Apparently people are seeing different things, but it looks like you originally replied to the wrong comment when you spoke about focusing on Hal citizenship rather than PR.
Or who don't intend to ever return to our home countries because we've started families and new lives here. A Japanese passport still allows me to visit my relatives back home.
The whole "passport strength" thing is just bullshit anyway. It's purely based on how many visa free countries you can visit as a tourist. And no matter how "strong" a passport is, if it's not of the country you're entering then there's still no guarantee that you'll be allowed in.
Say you’re a white collar worker at a multinational corp and your entire workday is in English. You make a solid yearly salary of 200k euros. Your kids go to an English language international school in Tokyo. And you have lived in Japan like this for 10 years and plan to do so indefinitely.
Isn’t this person being in Japan and paying taxes a huge benefit to the country? Wouldn’t Japan want to keep this person here and give them some security?
If you come from a country with a stronger passport than japan, all you really need is Permanent Residency if you want to live in japan indefinitely as far I as know.
under the law as in if you commit a crime or get involved in a crime scene as a victim?
I assume you’re talking about how they will revoke your PR if you commit crimes. Because I searched up on google and they said that PRs and citizens have basically the same rights except that PRs don’t get to vote during elections and if they commit a crime they can have their PRs revoked.
I guess the best option would to quite literally just…..not commit any crimes?
I personally don’t mind not being able to vote, I mean my one vote is more than likely not gonna change much anyway.
Unless I’m missing something here, I’m not an expert so feel free to correct me.
No. Just look to COVID times. PR could not renter the country, while citizens could. Nothing to do with crimes.
You are missing that PR is not just about voting or criminal prosecution. PR status can turn suddenly with no recourse. You are not a citizen. You do not have full rights under the law.
Things like covid don’t happen often, and even if they did, I remember quite clearly that the news were flashing daily about how COVID was spreading everywhere and governments were discussing lockdowns.
Just try to reenter the country before the lockdown officially happens. If my boss doesn’t let me then I would try to convince him somehow.
If you ignore all the warning signs on the news and delay your flight back then that’s on you.
worst case scenario, at least your old country is waiting for you. Your passport is stronger than japan’s passport. But if your passport is weaker then i would agree with getting the JP citizenship, the pros are more than the cons.
Yeah, no one who was paying any attention was blindsided by the lockdowns. China had people locked down and videos of soldiers in the streets enforcing it in early January and other countries didn't follow suit for a couple more months.
Not committing crimes helps avoid being convicted of crimes but it's by no means 100% reliable, especially for someone treated the way Japan treats foreigners.
PERMANENT RESIDENCY CHANGES
They also require applicants to have resided in Japan for the “maximum period” under their current residence status.
While current practice allows this to be “three years,” the officials plan to require “five years” instead.
What this means is, if you have a 3-year visa or longer, right now (and for the decades before this), you could apply for PR.
But they want to up that to holding a 5-year visa at the time of application, which is obviously less common and harder to get.
So if you're sitting there with a 3-year visa and just crossed that 10-year residence line and have been waiting years for your chance, well, oops, you might be waiting another 1~3 years to even apply for PR, because your first gonna have to renew that visa and hope to heaven it's upgraded to a 5-year instead of staying at 3 (or even worse, with the new expensive fees, busted down to a 1-year >_<).
If they bring this in, I really hope they kind of grandfather it in and give 3-year visa holders a slight grace period to get their PR applications in. I don't think they WILL do that, mind you, but it'd at least take some of the sting out.
It likely won't take effect immediately and you can technically reapply for a visa just to ask for a 5 year one. Need to see how it pans out though.
Immigration themselves probably doesn't want to need to keep having to process visas for people around forever. Time was back when they'd literally tell people more or less "hey why do you keep doing this, just apply for PR we don't want to keep wasting time with you" lol
Seems like a really bad idea to get Japanese citizenship anyway with all this political volatility where Japan can swing far right and start targeting foreigners. Better to keep the option to leave if things get worse.
This. This policy is what the right would call "virtue signalling". It changes nothing of substance but "signals" to the alt-right that foreigners are not wanted.
"Virtuous new Prime Minister Dear Leader is keeping the foreigners out, the yen will surely regain its 30% loss any day now!"
In an objective sense, no. Subjectively however the bar for citizenship in Japan is very low compared to many industrialized countries, and there's some cases of people who get Japanese citizenship and then afterwards openly talk about how they don't care about the country and just wanted a more powerful passport to travel with, which of course gets circulation among Japanese right-wing circles.
Functionally though, even now the requirement isn't a hard 5 years of residency but can be shortened to ~3 years in some cases where people have significant ties to Japan. So for example someone who was born and raised in Japan then works overseas for a few years after uni because they get a position at an elite gaishikei or the like doesn't need to wait another 10 years after returning if they decide to naturalize. I expect those cases will remain the same, quite possibly similar for people who for example went to uni in Japan or the like and have "legitimate" ties, but it will most likely cut down on for example rich Chinese (who are the focus of much ire of the Japanese right-wing, generally mostly for reasons of racism, though there's a veneer of arguably legitimate issues such as overseas investors buying up real estate etc.) who come in and register company just to live for a few years and get a passport.
I'm fresh out of fucks to give about the future of Japan if the politicians don't even care about it. I just hope the 6 people under 35 who's still living in Japan in 25 years are fluent in Chinese.
This is such a big factor. A lot of people don't realize that Japan isn't exactly "Mr. Popular" in Asia. The second China can export heaps of trash to Japan to be burned because Japan is impoverished, China will do that.
Japan needs to stay wealthy because China is chomping at the bit to replace it in business and soft power, and to humiliate it globally as retaliation for the Nanjing Massacre/Japanese Imperialism on the whole.
Korea has already surpassed the point of no return of a demographic cliff that will completely annihilate that country as we know it within the next three or four decades.
So what? Capitalism has so indoctrinated people that anything other than "line go up!" is a disaster. Korea is vastly overpopulated for it's size and is in need of a correction in the other direction.
They’re rushing to restrict immigration, yet the population is decreasing perhaps faster than anywhere else on earth. Many business owners I know are struggling to find help. We are witnessing cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. Where will the labor force come from? We are living through one of the most rapid declines in history right now.
Idk why someone downvoted you. It’s true. Any objective lens on this shows that too many Japanese are more obsessed about “purity” of culture rather than any sort of pragmatism and practicality.
Not to mention, Japan’s prosperity is incumbent on there being a working population. They’re struggling to have children, a big part being due to the culture. They’re literally at the brink of demographic collapse. Without workers, how do the Japanese think they can maintain their economy?
Like, sure, one can empathize with the desire to maintain one’s culture unadulterated by outside influence (which is silly because modern Japanese culture has already been heavily
influenced by the outside world) but at what cost? The collapse of your country’s prosperity which means Japan and the Japanese at large are going to suffer.
They've been "at the brink of demographic collapse" for decades and yet the quality of life here is still much better than nearly anywhere else on earth
Reddit’s obsession with Japanese fertility rates is lowkey weird af. It’s a common problem for all developed countries tbh. Migration is just a cheap way to push the problem down the road not solving it.
Reddit is obsessed with finding whatever nice, well functioning high trust areas remain in the developed world and flooding them with third world migrants.
LOL … your comment falls into a pretty common trap: assuming that because Japan still feels like a great place to live, the demographic problem must be exaggerated.
That’s a kind of status-quo or survivorship bias. Today’s quality of life is a lagging indicator — it’s built on decades of past growth, infrastructure, and social cohesion — not proof that current trends are harmless.
Demographic decline doesn’t show up as an overnight crash. It creeps in through labor shortages, fewer caregivers, shrinking rural towns, stagnant wages, and heavier tax burdens on fewer workers — all of which Japan is already dealing with.
Saying “things are still good” ignores the data and mistakes delayed consequences for non-existence.
Japanese value social cohesion far more than economic wealth. Population decline would be far less damaging to them than seeing the cultural makeup of the nation change forever.
Wut?! Your claim rests on an essentialist fallacy: it treats “Japanese culture” as fixed, timeless, and uniformly hostile to change, rather than historically adaptive and pragmatic.
In reality, Japan has repeatedly re-engineered its social and cultural order when survival or prosperity required it — from the Meiji Restoration’s wholesale importation of Western institutions, to post-war reforms that reshaped law, education, gender roles, and even serious debates about elevating English as an official or co-official language.
To assert, without evidence, that demographic decline is somehow less threatening than cultural change is not an argument; it’s a projection of outsider stereotypes onto a complex society that has repeatedly shown it can absorb change while retaining cohesion.
Rural areas are fine. The rural population density is still vastly higher than Europe or North America. Japan's population decline is just a correction for a greatly overpopulated country. 50-60 million is more natural for a nation of this size with so few natural resources.
This is actually a really good point. I'm just not sure what the economy would look like with a population like this. Maybe with the help of AI in the future, it's not that bad at all.
Japan is a better country to live in than basically every other country on earth
You realize my Japanese girlfriend, who was in real estate, would routinely have clients walk in, be assigned to her, then say "Nope, I want a male real estate agent" and the company would immediately drop her from the client, right?
This was 2023... She was ~40 years old just trying to make a living. Japan is a hellhole for women (50% of the population, I might remind you).
Good. Why briefly destroy social cohesion when population decline is inevitable across the world? The world needs to know how to take it on with other means than just mass migration.
The immigrants are significantly younger and take more jobs (~99% of them are working and under the age of 40) and work them for longer. The numbers are hypothetical.
That's not going to solve unemployment for Japanese tho. More people are competiting for the same job, it is going to make the unemployment rate worse. What you said doesn't make sense at all.
Japanese don't have unemployment problems, they have more jobs than they need. They have aging population problems, they are getting older, they need more people to fill those roles. Not to help reduce the unemployment rate.
Temporary bandaid solution. Adding mass amounts of migrants solves nothing besides creating social headaches. Fertility rates are going to be below replacement nearly everywhere in a few decades. What’s the solution then?
Not sure why people are downvoting you. Why is it so bad for a country to prefer remaining culturally and socially intact rather than becoming just another global village? If anything, more countries should take the same position.
Because economic realities hit hard, and Japan will be in serious trouble if their economy continues this downward spiral.
It sounds great in theory to be able to maintain some bizarre idea of "purity" but the fact is that it's economic suicide, and it Japan goes over the edge the repercussions will be FAR worse long term.
The fertility rate across the entire first world is below the rate of replacement. Europe is no different (average birthrate 1.38). This is a problem that simply every first-world country is having to countenance, one way or another, especially with its impacts on retirement age, national pensions/insurance, economic growth, etc.
At a certain point we need to take a long and hard look at any paradigm predicated on continuous growth. Because it seems that the long curve of development leads to people having far fewer children and drastically smaller families. All of the baked-in assumptions of the 19th and early 20th centuries no longer apply.
The biggest problem they have in common being overpopulation. Only India, and parts of Indonesia and the Philippines are worse, and even there their populations are finally stabilizing and about to go into much needed decline.
But Japan has had this problem for a way longer time. And due to how population growth inertia works, Japan is the Asian country with the fastest declining population right now.
No one is going to die out, that's doomer nonsense. Population boom and bust cycles are natural and have happened throughout history. The decline we're seeing is a response to resource scarcity: housing, jobs, education, space in society.
When there are too many people competing for limited resources, fertility drops. That's not a crisis, it's a correction.
The problem is when we try to "fix" this by importing millions of people. All that does is maintain the competitive pressure that caused low fertility in the first place. The immigrants face the same constraints and their fertility drops too. You haven't solved anything. You've just delayed the system from reaching a natural equilibrium while making conditions harder for everyone.
This argument is not the 'gotcha' you think it is – and is rather tediously trotted out by reflexively pro-immigration proponents in the entire first world (e.g. neoliberals in the States and Europe).
The conservative right globally are aware of declining populations and the implications of that for the economy, growth rates, pension plans, the whole entire social contract, etc. The point is that they have weighed the downsides and do not care. Conserving cultural customs and traditions, or instating protectionist measures for native workers, etc., is their reasoned worldview. They aren't stupid! They would rather go down the fork in the road that involves managing population/economic decline in their own way.
If Japan allows immigration, in a few generations there won't be a Japan to worry about. The economy is meaningless in comparison to retaining your culture and high-trust society.
You obviously don’t talk to many young people. Most I know are very worried about the economy and complaining they are having a difficult time living because of low wages. I think your perception is a bit skewed by your situation. Also, rural areas are not fine and are suffering, which is reflected in the fact that to,yo’s population is rising as rural areas dwindle. People are leaving for the city in order to live. Yes, Japan has a great culture, and I love living here, but people need to face up to the reality of the situation.
It makes 0 sense to increase citizenship to 10 years when the country doesn't allow double citizenship. The whole point of 5 years was because the drawback was losing you old citizenship. Man I loved Japan so much. My dream was to come and live here. Now I am looking where to move next. So sad.
If your dream was to come and live in Japan, why does it matter if the wait is 10, 20, etc?
The fact that you want to keep your old citizenship suggests that you only want to stay until you get tired/bored, at which point you then move back to wherever you came from.
No I want to renounce my old citizenship and live in Japan. But I don't want to live in a country that actively changes the rules every year to make our lives more difficult. There is no guarantee that if I stay 4 more years the rule won't become 15 years for citizenship and then 20 years and then 10 million yen to apply for it. And then higher taxes for foreigners to help with the pension.
You are looking at this from your perspective. It doesn't make sense for you. For Japan, it makes perfect sense and I hope they succeed in preventing foreigners from getting citizenship.
Only foreigners that will get citizenship are the ones Japan tries to prevent from getting it. Hint, it's not gonna be white people. The ones that get citizenship and bring here their whole family and have 10 kids each living in a tiny apartment with 10 people inside. Wait and see how Japan will become the next Frankfurt where residents and citizens with immigrant background outnumber the Germans.
They will prevent those brown people you are clearly shaming about from getting that citizenship too. Sounds to me like Japan isn’t going to be the place for you.
That sounds like blackmail, not sensible foreign policy.
Japan needs to completely end citizenship for foreigners. By all means allow tourism, temporary business visas etc, but don't sell the country's soul for a few shekels.
Population is declining across the developed world. This trend will hold across the world in a few decades if trends continue. Mass migration is a temporary bandaid that does not address the problem
are you talking about people in this context? you know we aren't cattle that will happily move to just about anywhere (and even then that wouldn't solve the issue). The planet doesn't need redistribution, we could squeeze all of humanity in Australia (and that's a ridiculous idea) but that wont stop the global trend on birthrate decline.
I don't mean forced redistribution. Very obviously. Putting aside the fact that countries will never ever work together, what we need is to move some people from overpopulated countries to lesser populated ones for better balance. The climate crisis has just started anyway.
I am rather for declining births so I don't mean immigration will help with the birth rate necessarily. I'm just saying there's too many people already.
Correct. Every nation that tries it sees an increase in housing costs which lowers the birthrate due to people delaying having children due to affordability.
So a source is something like a scientific paper published in a reputable journal, or an expert opinion from someone with a Ph.D who works at a think-tank, etc... You'll learn this when you get to college.
I'm just curious if someone applied for naturalization now, when the eligibility is 5 years, would they still qualify or would the rule change in April/May result in denial?
More outrage about all this but I don't remember loads of people saying that Japan should make the path to permanent residence or citizenship easy to help the population problem. They'd never attract enough people willing to, for starters.
Redditors are overwhelmingly western minded hard lefty and want Japan to be as trashy and unharmonius as highly multicultural places such as NYC or Paris. Sad!
Love to have the mass of homeless folks yelling and threatening random bystanders? The smell of piss on public transportation/sidewalks? People littering right onto the streets because they don't bother to find a(n empty) trashcan. Rat infestations. etc. etc
Or for Paris, a bunch of street scammers who try to take advantage of unsuspecting tourists by forcing onto them and then pressuring them to buy cheap trinkets or residents who act all uppity and superior to non-Parisians.
ironic part of your comment is that Japan is waay more rapey. It's like embedded in the culture. It's in so much popular media. It's an wildly unreported crime. It's a crime that barely punishes the perpetrator and is based on old definitions of what rape is.
😆 this is going to be only poorer country folks now applying. Naturalized Japanese are seldom rich from other countries with significant wealth. More Bangladeshi Japanese / Viet Japanese / Indonesian Japanese now. Who the heck wants to be Japanese with their stupid inheritance and exit taxes 😆
Frankly if one wasn’t planning to live longer term in Japan then giving them PR or citizenship at the end of their time there wouldn’t really mean much. 5 years is pretty short to be considered permanent resident in an average person’s lifespan, and evidences attachment and commitment
Japan is best viewed through the soft focus lens of admiring their culture from afar.
Japan’s overt racism today is just them removing the mask to reveal what is underneath. I lived in Japan between 1999-2002 and it was racist in sneaky ways back then. I actually prefer their openness today than the two-faced style back then. You know where you stand today, rather than being gaslit 20 years ago about how I “just don’t understand Japan” (said to me by other foreigners) anytime I criticized it. Now the cat is out of the bag.
Why the heck are you worried about changes to permanent residency and becoming a Japanese national when you haven’t even visited here?
Don’t stress yourself out. You couldn’t have come to Japan to live right after graduating from high school anyway. You need to have a university degree to get a job and residency unless you marry a Japanese national of the opposite sex.
Igiem doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s a college student in Canada somehow upset with changes to permanent residency and getting Japanese nationality, when he hasn’t even visited here.
He’s complaining that he should have come over here directly after high school instead of going to university, completely ignorant of the fact that he needs to have a university degree to get a job and residency without being married to a Japanese person
My brother in Christ, you have a degree. That is not a waste of time! Second of all having dreams of running away is probably more of something you find on a pamphlet than an actionable reality in the first place.
I think instead of feeling betrayed by whims of politicians, I would focus on your near future and enumerate your goals past “I want to run away to Japan”, which is not really a goal but a fantasy
This person you are replying to hasn’t even been to Japan yet. He’s a college kid in Canada. Not sure why he’s upset about changes to permanent residency and becoming Japanese
I am Canadian. Moving to Japan was a dream of mine since I was young because I found the culture fascinating and the people were amazing when I visited.
Until Japan allows dual citizenship, is anyone really racing to do this?
Well yeah; folks with weak passports actually rush for japanese one
People from countries with irrevocable citizenship
There are people from Central Asia or Africa who die in Ukraine just for a Russian passport
Hopefully they never do.
This part makes sense as long as the bar is set at a reasonable level.
I don't disagree with that in principle but... perhaps it just means PR takes too long? Or maybe if Japan allowed dual citizenship, more people would focus on that rather than PR?
I'm not even sure what the point is in focusing on citizenship. Less than 10,000 people a year become Japanese citizens.
Not that many people WANT Japanese citizenship. You have give up your other passport (essentially your right to visit your family) and change your name to a Japanese name, which is also a weird requirement.
*edit, I looked it up and you DO NOT have to change your name to a Japanese name. Just katakana your own name legally, which is also a pain in the ass.
You don't have to change your name to a Japanese name. You can keep your current name in katakana.
Not to be that guy, but doesn’t changing your name to Katakana actually mean changing your name?
Well, if you want to get super technical about it, in a way it does. But even then, you can have your Japanese passport have the original spelling of it anyway. If you're now ジョン・スミス, you can have your passport printed as "John Smith" and not "Jon Sumisu".
I personally don't think it changes the name. For instance, if you are John Smith, in Katakana it will just be ジョン・スミス, which reads exactly like your original name (with Japanese flavour of course).
It's not that different to spelling it with Cyrillic letters such as Джон Смит - you're not preserving the English pronunciation anyways.
As long as the new stanldardization on Hepburn Romanization for government does not mean your romaji name in your passport becomes "Jon Sumisu" (currently you have a lot of leeway in how your romaji name appears so usually the original spelling is accepted).
There’s an entire separate area in the passport form specifically for people (Japanese and foreign born) with non hepburn romanization so why would that change.
That works alright for John Smith, but not so great for Zhimin Garfunkle.
ジミン ガーファンクル
If I remember correctly, a lot of people that come from disadvantaged countries rush ftor the citizenship. I had a Peruvian friend that got it as soon as he could and then used it to bring his whole family (it was easier as a citizen).
"got it as soon as he could and then used it to bring his whole family"
This is exactly what is ruining western Europe. The sooner Japan shuts the gate the better.
What do you mean?
A lot of people might be choosing to be PR (I'm one of these people) rather than take citizenship in Japan because, in doing so, I would have to give up my birth citizenship. I can't hold both.
So, instead, people take PR because you can hold a foreign passport and be a PR holder simultaneously. There are nearly a million PR holders in Japan. I'm guessing that number would be much lower if people could hold two passports.
I meant I don’t know what you mean by replying that to me, since it has nothing to do with my comment.
? you replied to me and asked "what do you mean?"
Look at the thread. It starts with ME, then u/pandarista replies to me. I'm not sure where you come into the conversation until you ask "what do you mean?", directed at me. I then reply to that comment and explain what I mean. You then reply with the above comment saying it has nothing to do with your comment.
For some reason the app showed me that you made that comment on my previous reply to pandarista, but the web version shows you didn't. Wth.
The app sometimes notifies you of comments in a chain that you have participated in even if they are not a direct reply to you. I have no idea why someone thought this would be a good idea. I guess it's to drive extra "engagement".
Sucks!
And this is why I still use third-party apps (or just old.reddit on Desktop).
I see you responding to a comment about names with an unrelated topic. Apparently people are seeing different things, but it looks like you originally replied to the wrong comment when you spoke about focusing on Hal citizenship rather than PR.
And then there are of those of us getting it specifically to avoid shitty family.
Fair enough.
Or who don't intend to ever return to our home countries because we've started families and new lives here. A Japanese passport still allows me to visit my relatives back home.
I don’t even think of my country of origin as ‘home’, the thought makes me ill.
>You have give up your other passport (essentially your right to visit your family)
That's cap. Japanese passport is one of the top 10 strongest globally
The whole "passport strength" thing is just bullshit anyway. It's purely based on how many visa free countries you can visit as a tourist. And no matter how "strong" a passport is, if it's not of the country you're entering then there's still no guarantee that you'll be allowed in.
Does the language proficiency make sense?
Say you’re a white collar worker at a multinational corp and your entire workday is in English. You make a solid yearly salary of 200k euros. Your kids go to an English language international school in Tokyo. And you have lived in Japan like this for 10 years and plan to do so indefinitely.
Isn’t this person being in Japan and paying taxes a huge benefit to the country? Wouldn’t Japan want to keep this person here and give them some security?
If you come from a country with a stronger passport than japan, all you really need is Permanent Residency if you want to live in japan indefinitely as far I as know.
PR does not give you equal protection under the law. You are not a citizen.
under the law as in if you commit a crime or get involved in a crime scene as a victim?
I assume you’re talking about how they will revoke your PR if you commit crimes. Because I searched up on google and they said that PRs and citizens have basically the same rights except that PRs don’t get to vote during elections and if they commit a crime they can have their PRs revoked.
I guess the best option would to quite literally just…..not commit any crimes?
I personally don’t mind not being able to vote, I mean my one vote is more than likely not gonna change much anyway.
Unless I’m missing something here, I’m not an expert so feel free to correct me.
No. Just look to COVID times. PR could not renter the country, while citizens could. Nothing to do with crimes.
You are missing that PR is not just about voting or criminal prosecution. PR status can turn suddenly with no recourse. You are not a citizen. You do not have full rights under the law.
Things like covid don’t happen often, and even if they did, I remember quite clearly that the news were flashing daily about how COVID was spreading everywhere and governments were discussing lockdowns.
Just try to reenter the country before the lockdown officially happens. If my boss doesn’t let me then I would try to convince him somehow. If you ignore all the warning signs on the news and delay your flight back then that’s on you.
worst case scenario, at least your old country is waiting for you. Your passport is stronger than japan’s passport. But if your passport is weaker then i would agree with getting the JP citizenship, the pros are more than the cons.
Yeah, no one who was paying any attention was blindsided by the lockdowns. China had people locked down and videos of soldiers in the streets enforcing it in early January and other countries didn't follow suit for a couple more months.
Not committing crimes helps avoid being convicted of crimes but it's by no means 100% reliable, especially for someone treated the way Japan treats foreigners.
The part that really sucks here is this:
What this means is, if you have a 3-year visa or longer, right now (and for the decades before this), you could apply for PR.
But they want to up that to holding a 5-year visa at the time of application, which is obviously less common and harder to get.
So if you're sitting there with a 3-year visa and just crossed that 10-year residence line and have been waiting years for your chance, well, oops, you might be waiting another 1~3 years to even apply for PR, because your first gonna have to renew that visa and hope to heaven it's upgraded to a 5-year instead of staying at 3 (or even worse, with the new expensive fees, busted down to a 1-year >_<).
If they bring this in, I really hope they kind of grandfather it in and give 3-year visa holders a slight grace period to get their PR applications in. I don't think they WILL do that, mind you, but it'd at least take some of the sting out.
It likely won't take effect immediately and you can technically reapply for a visa just to ask for a 5 year one. Need to see how it pans out though.
Immigration themselves probably doesn't want to need to keep having to process visas for people around forever. Time was back when they'd literally tell people more or less "hey why do you keep doing this, just apply for PR we don't want to keep wasting time with you" lol
Seems like a really bad idea to get Japanese citizenship anyway with all this political volatility where Japan can swing far right and start targeting foreigners. Better to keep the option to leave if things get worse.
Are they having issues with naturalized citizens..?
Right-wingers have no actual solutions but they sure do have scapegoats
This. This policy is what the right would call "virtue signalling". It changes nothing of substance but "signals" to the alt-right that foreigners are not wanted.
"Virtuous new
Prime MinisterDear Leader is keeping the foreigners out, the yen will surely regain its 30% loss any day now!"In an objective sense, no. Subjectively however the bar for citizenship in Japan is very low compared to many industrialized countries, and there's some cases of people who get Japanese citizenship and then afterwards openly talk about how they don't care about the country and just wanted a more powerful passport to travel with, which of course gets circulation among Japanese right-wing circles.
Functionally though, even now the requirement isn't a hard 5 years of residency but can be shortened to ~3 years in some cases where people have significant ties to Japan. So for example someone who was born and raised in Japan then works overseas for a few years after uni because they get a position at an elite gaishikei or the like doesn't need to wait another 10 years after returning if they decide to naturalize. I expect those cases will remain the same, quite possibly similar for people who for example went to uni in Japan or the like and have "legitimate" ties, but it will most likely cut down on for example rich Chinese (who are the focus of much ire of the Japanese right-wing, generally mostly for reasons of racism, though there's a veneer of arguably legitimate issues such as overseas investors buying up real estate etc.) who come in and register company just to live for a few years and get a passport.
Who the fuck cares why someone wants citizenship as long as they follow the laws and pay their taxes?
Japanese nationalists, which is why these changes are happening, because they current admin is trying to appease them.
I don't agree with them, I'm telling you the motivation.
I know the motivation, I just mean it's so nonsensical..patriotism is bullshit to begin with, so is to expect it
Bigots care
Those who care about their nation's culture.
What culture? Define some examples that are at risk
Are you serious? You can't see the difference in culture between Japan and other countries?
I'm fresh out of fucks to give about the future of Japan if the politicians don't even care about it. I just hope the 6 people under 35 who's still living in Japan in 25 years are fluent in Chinese.
This is such a big factor. A lot of people don't realize that Japan isn't exactly "Mr. Popular" in Asia. The second China can export heaps of trash to Japan to be burned because Japan is impoverished, China will do that.
Japan needs to stay wealthy because China is chomping at the bit to replace it in business and soft power, and to humiliate it globally as retaliation for the Nanjing Massacre/Japanese Imperialism on the whole.
Honestly, Korea is more poised to take over Japan's spot in Soft power, especially with JPoP, and manwha etc. . .
Korea has already surpassed the point of no return of a demographic cliff that will completely annihilate that country as we know it within the next three or four decades.
South Korea, that is.
So what? Capitalism has so indoctrinated people that anything other than "line go up!" is a disaster. Korea is vastly overpopulated for it's size and is in need of a correction in the other direction.
Not necessarily disagreeing with you but that hardly translates to SK being poised to step in as the new big soft power hegemon of Asia.
That's the issue though isn't it. What is the 'need' for any nation to have 'power' unless the leaders intend to abuse it?
There's no benefit at all for most people other than potentially being used as cannon fodder for some rich guy's war.
Both might be screwed.
They’re rushing to restrict immigration, yet the population is decreasing perhaps faster than anywhere else on earth. Many business owners I know are struggling to find help. We are witnessing cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. Where will the labor force come from? We are living through one of the most rapid declines in history right now.
Don’t you know? They don’t care if they die out. As long as they die out pure Japanese.
Idk why someone downvoted you. It’s true. Any objective lens on this shows that too many Japanese are more obsessed about “purity” of culture rather than any sort of pragmatism and practicality.
Not to mention, Japan’s prosperity is incumbent on there being a working population. They’re struggling to have children, a big part being due to the culture. They’re literally at the brink of demographic collapse. Without workers, how do the Japanese think they can maintain their economy?
Like, sure, one can empathize with the desire to maintain one’s culture unadulterated by outside influence (which is silly because modern Japanese culture has already been heavily influenced by the outside world) but at what cost? The collapse of your country’s prosperity which means Japan and the Japanese at large are going to suffer.
They've been "at the brink of demographic collapse" for decades and yet the quality of life here is still much better than nearly anywhere else on earth
Reddit’s obsession with Japanese fertility rates is lowkey weird af. It’s a common problem for all developed countries tbh. Migration is just a cheap way to push the problem down the road not solving it.
And their preferred solution is mass immigration which causes far more problems than it solves, I should know I'm from Canada
The housing market is completely nuts in Canada. I have a hard time after college.
Reddit is obsessed with finding whatever nice, well functioning high trust areas remain in the developed world and flooding them with third world migrants.
LOL … your comment falls into a pretty common trap: assuming that because Japan still feels like a great place to live, the demographic problem must be exaggerated.
That’s a kind of status-quo or survivorship bias. Today’s quality of life is a lagging indicator — it’s built on decades of past growth, infrastructure, and social cohesion — not proof that current trends are harmless.
Demographic decline doesn’t show up as an overnight crash. It creeps in through labor shortages, fewer caregivers, shrinking rural towns, stagnant wages, and heavier tax burdens on fewer workers — all of which Japan is already dealing with.
Saying “things are still good” ignores the data and mistakes delayed consequences for non-existence.
Japanese value social cohesion far more than economic wealth. Population decline would be far less damaging to them than seeing the cultural makeup of the nation change forever.
Wut?! Your claim rests on an essentialist fallacy: it treats “Japanese culture” as fixed, timeless, and uniformly hostile to change, rather than historically adaptive and pragmatic.
In reality, Japan has repeatedly re-engineered its social and cultural order when survival or prosperity required it — from the Meiji Restoration’s wholesale importation of Western institutions, to post-war reforms that reshaped law, education, gender roles, and even serious debates about elevating English as an official or co-official language.
To assert, without evidence, that demographic decline is somehow less threatening than cultural change is not an argument; it’s a projection of outsider stereotypes onto a complex society that has repeatedly shown it can absorb change while retaining cohesion.
In Tokyo it’s fine but rural areas are deteriorating.
Rural areas are fine. The rural population density is still vastly higher than Europe or North America. Japan's population decline is just a correction for a greatly overpopulated country. 50-60 million is more natural for a nation of this size with so few natural resources.
This is actually a really good point. I'm just not sure what the economy would look like with a population like this. Maybe with the help of AI in the future, it's not that bad at all.
But then how will I have 25 conbinis within a 1km radius to choose from?!
Where do you get your qualify of life figures from?
just my personal experience moving from canada to japan to be honest
Japan's astronomically high suicide rate tells another story.
You've been sold propaganda, its not even in the top 10
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
As if being 17th out of 183 is much better lmao.
Japan's suicide rate is literally higher than Zimbabwe's, it's higher than Latvia's, it's higher than Estonia's! Click your own link and sort by All!
now compare the poverty rape housing homicide theft and every other metric :)
Japan is a better country to live in than basically every other country on earth
You realize my Japanese girlfriend, who was in real estate, would routinely have clients walk in, be assigned to her, then say "Nope, I want a male real estate agent" and the company would immediately drop her from the client, right?
This was 2023... She was ~40 years old just trying to make a living. Japan is a hellhole for women (50% of the population, I might remind you).
Have you ever lived in Japan? The new Prime Minister praised a book about Hitler's politics - https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/japan-adolf-hitler-book-haunts-interior-minister-sanae-takaichi-1465067
Yes Im living in japan right now are you? or are you commenting on a country you dont even live in
🤣keepin’ it real!
Good. Why briefly destroy social cohesion when population decline is inevitable across the world? The world needs to know how to take it on with other means than just mass migration.
The yen is down ~30% in 5 years... If it drops another 30% people will be eating out of trashcans.
Isn't it better to just move from being 98% Japanese, 2% foreigner -> 93% Japanese, 7% foreigner to prevent having a 50% unemployment rate?
Isn't it better to just move from being 98% Japanese, 2% foreigner -> 93% Japanese, 7% foreigner to prevent having a 50% unemployment rate?
How tho? More foreigners can prevent having a 50% unemployment rate? What???
The immigrants are significantly younger and take more jobs (~99% of them are working and under the age of 40) and work them for longer. The numbers are hypothetical.
That's not going to solve unemployment for Japanese tho. More people are competiting for the same job, it is going to make the unemployment rate worse. What you said doesn't make sense at all.
Japanese don't have unemployment problems, they have more jobs than they need. They have aging population problems, they are getting older, they need more people to fill those roles. Not to help reduce the unemployment rate.
Temporary bandaid solution. Adding mass amounts of migrants solves nothing besides creating social headaches. Fertility rates are going to be below replacement nearly everywhere in a few decades. What’s the solution then?
The immigrants take the jobs that Japan needs filled, thus reducing the unemployment rate.
You might want to check the definition of unemployment rate. Japan have insanely low unemployment rate, probably one of the lowest.
Such as?
Not sure why people are downvoting you. Why is it so bad for a country to prefer remaining culturally and socially intact rather than becoming just another global village? If anything, more countries should take the same position.
Because poverty (the yen is down 30% in 5 years) destroys culture and society in an even worse way than immigration.
So continue mass migration for a few decades until fertility rates are below replacement in every country. Then, what’s your solution?
Then bank all that $ to properly transition to a more aged economy.
Because economic realities hit hard, and Japan will be in serious trouble if their economy continues this downward spiral.
It sounds great in theory to be able to maintain some bizarre idea of "purity" but the fact is that it's economic suicide, and it Japan goes over the edge the repercussions will be FAR worse long term.
That’s actually the best way to summarise it up. Not that it’s bad I think their dedication to their culture is admirable
Well, that is not true. Most of E. Asia has a lower fertility rate than Japan.
In 2024 -
Fertility rate S. Korea: .75
Fertility rate PRChina: 1.1
Fertility rate ROChina (Taiwan): 1.1
And Japan? 1.15
The region is boiling slowly in the same pot.
The fertility rate across the entire first world is below the rate of replacement. Europe is no different (average birthrate 1.38). This is a problem that simply every first-world country is having to countenance, one way or another, especially with its impacts on retirement age, national pensions/insurance, economic growth, etc.
At a certain point we need to take a long and hard look at any paradigm predicated on continuous growth. Because it seems that the long curve of development leads to people having far fewer children and drastically smaller families. All of the baked-in assumptions of the 19th and early 20th centuries no longer apply.
Most of East Asia have the same problems and the same xenophobia to some extent, and I'm saying this as a Chinese person
That said, the West and the rest of the world isn't far behind in birth rate or stupidity, so dunno
Agree. People here discuss Japan's migration policy, but China is especially concerning since there is near zero migration.
Yet for some reason, nobody is pushing the PRC to accept third world migrants.
The USD hasn't declined in value 30% in the last 5 years like the yen has.
Japan is in freefall. They have to do something.
The biggest problem they have in common being overpopulation. Only India, and parts of Indonesia and the Philippines are worse, and even there their populations are finally stabilizing and about to go into much needed decline.
But Japan has had this problem for a way longer time. And due to how population growth inertia works, Japan is the Asian country with the fastest declining population right now.
I said “perhaps” as in expressing some uncertainty. I did not say it was absolute.
No one is going to die out, that's doomer nonsense. Population boom and bust cycles are natural and have happened throughout history. The decline we're seeing is a response to resource scarcity: housing, jobs, education, space in society. When there are too many people competing for limited resources, fertility drops. That's not a crisis, it's a correction.
The problem is when we try to "fix" this by importing millions of people. All that does is maintain the competitive pressure that caused low fertility in the first place. The immigrants face the same constraints and their fertility drops too. You haven't solved anything. You've just delayed the system from reaching a natural equilibrium while making conditions harder for everyone.
spider face?
They haven't really restricted anything yet though.
This argument is not the 'gotcha' you think it is – and is rather tediously trotted out by reflexively pro-immigration proponents in the entire first world (e.g. neoliberals in the States and Europe).
The conservative right globally are aware of declining populations and the implications of that for the economy, growth rates, pension plans, the whole entire social contract, etc. The point is that they have weighed the downsides and do not care. Conserving cultural customs and traditions, or instating protectionist measures for native workers, etc., is their reasoned worldview. They aren't stupid! They would rather go down the fork in the road that involves managing population/economic decline in their own way.
If Japan allows immigration, in a few generations there won't be a Japan to worry about. The economy is meaningless in comparison to retaining your culture and high-trust society.
You obviously don’t talk to many young people. Most I know are very worried about the economy and complaining they are having a difficult time living because of low wages. I think your perception is a bit skewed by your situation. Also, rural areas are not fine and are suffering, which is reflected in the fact that to,yo’s population is rising as rural areas dwindle. People are leaving for the city in order to live. Yes, Japan has a great culture, and I love living here, but people need to face up to the reality of the situation.
It makes 0 sense to increase citizenship to 10 years when the country doesn't allow double citizenship. The whole point of 5 years was because the drawback was losing you old citizenship. Man I loved Japan so much. My dream was to come and live here. Now I am looking where to move next. So sad.
That is the point of this, they want less immigrants of certain ethnic backgrounds and from specific countries.
If your dream was to come and live in Japan, why does it matter if the wait is 10, 20, etc?
The fact that you want to keep your old citizenship suggests that you only want to stay until you get tired/bored, at which point you then move back to wherever you came from.
No I want to renounce my old citizenship and live in Japan. But I don't want to live in a country that actively changes the rules every year to make our lives more difficult. There is no guarantee that if I stay 4 more years the rule won't become 15 years for citizenship and then 20 years and then 10 million yen to apply for it. And then higher taxes for foreigners to help with the pension.
You are looking at this from your perspective. It doesn't make sense for you. For Japan, it makes perfect sense and I hope they succeed in preventing foreigners from getting citizenship.
Only foreigners that will get citizenship are the ones Japan tries to prevent from getting it. Hint, it's not gonna be white people. The ones that get citizenship and bring here their whole family and have 10 kids each living in a tiny apartment with 10 people inside. Wait and see how Japan will become the next Frankfurt where residents and citizens with immigrant background outnumber the Germans.
They will prevent those brown people you are clearly shaming about from getting that citizenship too. Sounds to me like Japan isn’t going to be the place for you.
That sounds like blackmail, not sensible foreign policy.
Japan needs to completely end citizenship for foreigners. By all means allow tourism, temporary business visas etc, but don't sell the country's soul for a few shekels.
Isn’t this the opposite of what they need right given their population decline?
Population is declining across the developed world. This trend will hold across the world in a few decades if trends continue. Mass migration is a temporary bandaid that does not address the problem
But other nations are combating that decline with immigration, Japan is not, at least not in any significant way.
which is why japan has maintained its cheap housing costs and low crime rate
Neither is distracting from real issues with non-issues, dumbass. And the planet needs more redistribution. Ever thought about that?
are you talking about people in this context? you know we aren't cattle that will happily move to just about anywhere (and even then that wouldn't solve the issue). The planet doesn't need redistribution, we could squeeze all of humanity in Australia (and that's a ridiculous idea) but that wont stop the global trend on birthrate decline.
I don't mean forced redistribution. Very obviously. Putting aside the fact that countries will never ever work together, what we need is to move some people from overpopulated countries to lesser populated ones for better balance. The climate crisis has just started anyway.
I am rather for declining births so I don't mean immigration will help with the birth rate necessarily. I'm just saying there's too many people already.
No it doesn’t. American that’s never went to university?
Neither
It's not even a bandaid, it's deadly and stupid as it accelerates the fertility drop
Correct. Every nation that tries it sees an increase in housing costs which lowers the birthrate due to people delaying having children due to affordability.
Source?
The UK.
So a source is something like a scientific paper published in a reputable journal, or an expert opinion from someone with a Ph.D who works at a think-tank, etc... You'll learn this when you get to college.
Source?
You need to pay for a piece of paper to tell you what others can see with their own eyes? Sorry for your loss.
Tell me you hate gaijin without saying "I HATE GAIJIN!"
So 100 years?
Hopefully.
They really want the 3% to leave huh 😂
I'm just curious if someone applied for naturalization now, when the eligibility is 5 years, would they still qualify or would the rule change in April/May result in denial?
More outrage about all this but I don't remember loads of people saying that Japan should make the path to permanent residence or citizenship easy to help the population problem. They'd never attract enough people willing to, for starters.
Oh noooooo
Anyway.
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It's strange. Reddit wants to flood every developed nation with third world migrants. Perhaps it's a fetish.
Redditors are overwhelmingly western minded hard lefty and want Japan to be as trashy and unharmonius as highly multicultural places such as NYC or Paris. Sad!
NYC and Paris are awesome cities though. Would love if Tokyo had even a tenth of the personality of those cities.
Love to have the mass of homeless folks yelling and threatening random bystanders? The smell of piss on public transportation/sidewalks? People littering right onto the streets because they don't bother to find a(n empty) trashcan. Rat infestations. etc. etc
Or for Paris, a bunch of street scammers who try to take advantage of unsuspecting tourists by forcing onto them and then pressuring them to buy cheap trinkets or residents who act all uppity and superior to non-Parisians.
Not rapey enough for you? Feel a bit too safe in Japan? There are plenty of other options for you to enjoy in other countries.
ironic part of your comment is that Japan is waay more rapey. It's like embedded in the culture. It's in so much popular media. It's an wildly unreported crime. It's a crime that barely punishes the perpetrator and is based on old definitions of what rape is.
Because I live here and it effects my life? That's why I care at least. Don't know about everyone else
Great idea! The population of citizens is growing way too fast and too high , it’s time to clamp down on it
Any talk of it affecting existing permanent residents at all?
Ugh
😆 this is going to be only poorer country folks now applying. Naturalized Japanese are seldom rich from other countries with significant wealth. More Bangladeshi Japanese / Viet Japanese / Indonesian Japanese now. Who the heck wants to be Japanese with their stupid inheritance and exit taxes 😆
Good point. Don't go.
Is 20+ years ok?
Frankly if one wasn’t planning to live longer term in Japan then giving them PR or citizenship at the end of their time there wouldn’t really mean much. 5 years is pretty short to be considered permanent resident in an average person’s lifespan, and evidences attachment and commitment
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Japan is best viewed through the soft focus lens of admiring their culture from afar.
Japan’s overt racism today is just them removing the mask to reveal what is underneath. I lived in Japan between 1999-2002 and it was racist in sneaky ways back then. I actually prefer their openness today than the two-faced style back then. You know where you stand today, rather than being gaslit 20 years ago about how I “just don’t understand Japan” (said to me by other foreigners) anytime I criticized it. Now the cat is out of the bag.
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Why the heck are you worried about changes to permanent residency and becoming a Japanese national when you haven’t even visited here?
Don’t stress yourself out. You couldn’t have come to Japan to live right after graduating from high school anyway. You need to have a university degree to get a job and residency unless you marry a Japanese national of the opposite sex.
You don’t get grandfathered in?
Igiem doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s a college student in Canada somehow upset with changes to permanent residency and getting Japanese nationality, when he hasn’t even visited here.
He’s complaining that he should have come over here directly after high school instead of going to university, completely ignorant of the fact that he needs to have a university degree to get a job and residency without being married to a Japanese person
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My brother in Christ, you have a degree. That is not a waste of time! Second of all having dreams of running away is probably more of something you find on a pamphlet than an actionable reality in the first place.
I think instead of feeling betrayed by whims of politicians, I would focus on your near future and enumerate your goals past “I want to run away to Japan”, which is not really a goal but a fantasy
Literally nothing about this affects people moving to Japan.
No offense but how long were you in Japan for? The discrimination against foreigners (eg: not sitting next to us on the train) is pretty obvious.
This person you are replying to hasn’t even been to Japan yet. He’s a college kid in Canada. Not sure why he’s upset about changes to permanent residency and becoming Japanese
Looks like you're wrong.
Ok visited but never lived. Kid is getting all dramatic and worked up for nothing
Jesus. Someone not sitting next to you is a lucky thing, not something to get worked up about