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Japan has changed in important and visible ways

noahpinion.substack.com

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Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#11

Post by crunchyfrog »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship: > Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people…

> I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people try.

I did a quick search and as far as I can tell there is no Japanese citizenship test. There is a test of Japanese language skills but even that is not described as a high bar. Maybe this has also changed?

https://we-xpats.com/en/guide/as/jp/detail/9068/

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#12

Post by lmm »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship: > Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people…

> I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people try.

Did they substantiate this claim at all? All available public information is that the vast majority of those who try succeed.

People largely don't apply for citizenship, in part because Japan requires them to renounce other citizenships to do so, and in part because a permanent resident can do almost anything that a citizen can in practice.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#14

Post by YouMeWeThem »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship: > Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people…

This is a common misconception. The reason you don't hear more about English-speaking westerners gaining Japanese citizenship is because they don't recognize dual citizenship. Renouncing your non-Japanese citizenships is a prerequisite to gaining Japanese citizenship, which is understandably too big a hurdle for many.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#15

Post by silverpepsi »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship: > Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people…

My understanding is that the Colombian citizenship test is quite hard too.

I don't think one can meaningfully use the difficulty of a citizenship test as a data point in an argument with zero contextualization. How hard exactly is it compared to the test your average country has in place? Maybe no such survey exists but

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#16

Post by Fordec »

A fertility rate of 1.3 is still a demographic crisis. Just because the neighbors degraded to the same level also isn't supposed to be a point of pride.

Japan at 1.3 and China at 1.2 are both far below replacement rate of 2.1 and both are heavily detrimental to a nations economic and demographic outlook and on par with only the European with the worst outlooks like Spain, Italy and Ukraine.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#17

Post by inciampati »

YouMeWeThem wrote: post #14
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship: > Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people…

This is a common misconception. The reason you don't hear more about English-speaking westerners gaining Japanese citizenship is because they don't recognize dual citizenship. Renouncing your non-Japanese citizenships is a prerequisite to gaining Japanese citizenship, which is understandably too big a hurdle for many.

The only dual nationals I know with Japanese citizenship are operating under the argument that they were born with both citizenships and the non Japanese one is legally impossible to remove by coercion. So they claim that the Japanese state is doing the coercion and don't mention it to the authorities. This would be an interesting case in international in law, but I hope it's never a problem for them.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#18

Post by YouMeWeThem »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship: > Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people…

FYI, The length-of-stay requirements for permanent residence are actually longer than for citizenship.

Guidelines for Permission for Permanent Residence [1]

> In principle, the person has stayed in Japan for more than 10 years consecutively.

What are the conditions for naturalization? [2]

> The person must have been domiciled in Japan for five years or more consecutively

[1] https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/content/930003492.pdf

[2] https://www.moj.go.jp/EN/MINJI/minji78.html#a09

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#19

Post by idiocrat »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship: > Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people…

> the overall culture is extremely hostile to granting citizenship to non-native people

Sorry, I need to disagree with you.

The process is fairly straightforward and formal. You need to fit very few and fair formal criteria, but if you do, then there is nothing special about the process.

For a sincere applicant, there should be severe reasons why citizenship is not granted. There are statistics by nationality. I think Chinese, Korean and South Eastern nationalities are topping the statistics.

Here is a good starting point for better understanding of the process. https://www.turning-japanese.info/

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#20

Post by rippercushions »

com2kid wrote: post #6
asiachick wrote: post #5

I like all the rebuttals but the top still strikes me as mostly unsubstantiated claims > That (gerontocracy) in turn has caused Japanese companies to fall behind foreign rivals as they miss technological revolution after revolution — microprocessors, smartphones, semiconductor foundries, battery-powered cars, etc. smartphones: Japan led the world until iPhone then everyone was catching up. Nokia, Ericsson, Microsoft.…

> Microprocessors: Is this even market? There's 3, Intel, AMD, Arm (I know ARM is a standard) but I don't get what makes Japan's "failure" here special. Japan used to be on the leading edge of microprocessor design. They aren't anymore. > semiconductor foundries: Why should Japan have excelled here vs any other country? Because they used to be a contender. > smartphones: Japan led the world until iPhone then everyone…

Japan peddled its own tech like PDC, i-Mode etc pretty hard overseas, and at one point Sony, Panasonic etc were serious contenders in the mobile phone business. It's kind of striking how they completely managed to fail.
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