Hello everyone!
My local driver’s license center is overseen by the police. When I called them to set up an appointment to convert my foreign license to a Japanese license, they asked if I have dual citizenship. Since I do, they asked me to bring both passports.
I am a USA / Japan dual citizen. Acquired USA citizenship by birth.
I have heard the passport office ask about dual citizenship before, but not the police. I am guessing the police would log that kind of thing, so my dual citizenship may cloud any future interaction I may have with them. I am concerned this might jeopardize one of my citizenships down the line.
Any other dual citizens (with Japanese citizenship) deal with this before? Is it a good idea to show the police both passports? Would love to hear your thoughts!
13 comments
If you’re 20 or more, then you should have chosen one nationality by now and surrendered the other, since Japan. Doesn’t allow dual citizenship after the age of 20.
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If you were born with both passports you are legally in the clear to keep both passports.
They may want the passport as proof of residence in the US after obtaining the US license, although this doesn’t really work for Americans because the US doesn’t stamp the passports of US citizens. The license conversion document checklist from Tokyo does say to bring all old passports with you.
It’s also possible that they want documentation of any potential name mismatch, as suggested by another comment.
I converted my license a couple years ago. From Hawaii so one of less than a handful of states that can do a 100% conversion. During my visit they didn’t care about my citizenship status in a gatekeeper sense. More like, they need it to make sure everything matches up (FYI my name in my passports differ from each other). I was openly dual citizenship. Went extremely smoothly. They’re not immigration. Needless to say YMMV.
If you haven’t yet eventually you should declare you choose JP citizenship and will make an attempt to throw away other citizenships. Other dualies here can chime in on the exact paperwork.
Just a word of warning, a lot of these Japan subs are anti-dualies and will just parrot one-sided legalese to you whenever a discussion of our gray zones pops up. They’re not wrong, but also not always helpful to us.
Does anyone know how this works backwards? Say a Japanese citizen moves abroad to get a new citizenship through Marriage and passed the requirements needed to obtain said citizenship.
Will their original Japanese passport / citizenship be revoked? I’ve read stories of Japanese citizens living abroad for a long time (without changing citizenship) only to be denied access to Japan upon returning.
However If the new country of citizenship doesn’t require denouncing Japanese citizenship, how does the Japanese foreign affairs handle this for their original citizens?
Don’t they just want to see why you don’t have a visa in your U.S. passport ? The police would want to know that you aren’t in Japan illegally
You’re most likely overthinking this. The police officer just wants to see proof you’ve been in the US for a given time after getting your US driver’s licence. That’s literally the only reason he wants to see it.
He’s not going to call up the MOJ and let them know they’ve found another one of those pesky duel citizens.
He’s got nothing on his mind but checking the boxes on the paperwork to approve your licence transfer and how much golf he’s going to be playing when he retires next year.
There is a reason for this. If they are going to convert your foreign licence to a Japanese one, they need proof that you were actually living in the place where you got your original licence and did indeed use it to drive there for some time (at least 3 months).
This is to prevent residents of Japan from going over to one the accepted countries for a week or two, getting a foreign licence on the cheap and coming right back to Japan and converting it. I believe it is significantly more expensive to get driving lessons and exams in Japan than a lot of other places in the world. I’m not sure if they do this to protect the local driving school industry or if it’s because they only want either experienced drivers or those trained to Japanese standards on the roads. Either way it’s just a quick check on your landings/departures history to make sure you aren’t trying to circumvent the Japanese system by going abroad. It’s nothing personal and nothing to be worried about.
Do they even authorize dual citizenship? I thought they only tolerate when you are less than 22 yo
The police don’t care about your nationality just need both passports on record.
Instead of the typical hypotheticals from people who never went through this, I just went through this last week in Hokkaido.
Once I said I didn’t have a Zairyu card, they just asked me for my other passport.
No problems, got both back.
Most likely to make sure you don’t have a different driving record under a different name.
If you got your dual citizenship at birth, and you live in Japan under your Japanese nationality, you have nothing to worry about.
I live in the land of hafas. Even have three adult ones of my own.
Don’t lie.