thisiskyle: Japan does not allow you to hold dual citizenship with another country. If a Japanese person lives and works in another country and maybe married and had children with a citizen of that country, it makes perfect sense for them to want to have citizenship there which, unfortunately, means they have to give up their Japanese citizenship.

Yeah it’s unfortuante you can’t hold dual citizenship if your a native Japanese or a foreigner who is eligible for Japanese citizenship but is required to give up citizenship of their birth country.

This got me interested and got me wondering how many Japanese people have renounced their Japanese citizenship? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_people lists how many Japanese people there are living abroad but alot of those could be native Japanese intending to go back to Japan or 日系人.

Gigatron:
If it’s in the case of the US they could always just hold a green card, as I did for years until I became a US citizen only a few days ago. Granted I’m not 100% sure how the law in Japan works with this, but I’m guessing that as long as you’re just a permanent resident of your host country, and not a citizen, you can keep your Japanese citizenship.

The same works in reverse in Japan, where if you’re a permanent resident you can keep your original citizenship, until such time as you wish to apply for Japanese citizenship, in which case you’d have to renounce it.

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I’ve read that the Japanese government isn’t actually that stringent about renouncing your former citizenship after becoming a Japanese citizen. It’s definitely in the letter of the law, but I’ve heard that the Japanese government really doesn’t care that much.

Also, congratulations on becoming a US citizen!