I received good news from one of our clients yesterday. This is upgrading case.
Have you ever heard the word ‘upgrading Koseki’? Koseki is the family registry for all Japanese. Any Japanese citizen has own Koseki. Minor and single are together with a parent.
Upgrading can be done according to the old Koseki law before 1985. Let me explain more now.
Old Koseki law states:
Any child whose legal father is Japanese gets Japanese citizenship by birth without birth registration. Before and after the World War II, many Japanese moved abroad and built family there. Japanese generations, Nikkeijin. Many of them didn’t have chance to register children’s birth at Japanese Embassy and moreover because of the war, many Japanese generations are forced to hide their root.
According to the new Koseki law, without prompt birth registration, child of Japanese cannot get citizenship by birth after turning 20 years old.
But according to the old Koseki law, birth registration was not necessary. That’s why upgrading is possible.
There are 2 ways for upgrading. The one is submitting birth notification at city hall with documents to prove his/her father is Japanese. When approved, your koseki will be compiled and prove that you have a Japanese citizenship. As Gyosei shoshi, we can handle these cases all through the procedure.
The other one is filing the case at the family court in Japan. Generally it is for someone who is still alive. I am an immigration lawyer who cannot get involved into the court procedure. So we support our client as an interpreter and a translator for family court matters. Once approved, the family court orders “Shuseki o mitomeru”. Shuseki is producing Koseki. Once you koseki is complied, it proves that you are a Japanese citizen.
Unfortunately, my office doesn’t have positive result always. Because of lack of documents, some cannot make it. And location affects much for the procedure. Some city hall/Ministry of Justice or family court/judge is positive attitude to upgrading procedure while others are not.
However, you might have chance to get Japanese citizenship if you were born before 1985 and your grand father and father are Japanese.
Upgrading procedure is very complicated. We need to examine lots of documents at first in order to find out if your family has possibilities to get upgraded. Our office charge 22,000 yen for this pre-investigation. If you are interested in our office service, please contact us.
And if you are not Japanese generation and if you want to get Japanese citizenship/passport, what you need is applying for naturalization, in Japanese word Kika.
I promised to release video for naturalization in the beginning of this year. But I could not make it so far now. If you are waiting for the video, sorry for delay. Due to stay of emergency, I order half of my staff to stay home. That’s why we are terribly occupied presently. Clients, sorry our late operation. Please be patient for a while. We are handling the cases one by one.
Cold rain in Tokyo. Heavy snow in your area?
Please stay safe everyone and Happy Sunday!
