The residence requirement for naturalisation in Japan doubled on 1 April. Applicants now need ten years of continuous residence rather than five.
What changed
The Nationality Act sets out several conditions for naturalisation: a residence period, good conduct, sufficient means to support yourself, loss of your existing nationality on acquiring Japanese nationality, and no history of advocating the overthrow of the Japanese state.
Only the first of those moved. Five years became ten, announced in late March and effective from the start of the new fiscal year.
The shorter routes that sit outside the general rule were not the target of the change, and applicants in those categories — the spouse of a Japanese national, someone born in Japan, someone with a Japanese parent — should check their own position rather than assume the general rule applies to them.
Naturalisation and permanent residence are not the same
This is the distinction that causes the most confusion, and it is worth being clear about.
Naturalisation means becoming a Japanese national. You surrender your existing citizenship, you gain a Japanese passport and the vote, and you are no longer a foreign resident. It is handled by the Legal Affairs Bureau under the Nationality Act.
Permanent residence means holding a status of residence with no expiry and no work restriction. You keep your nationality and your passport. It is handled by the Immigration Services Agency under the Immigration Control Act.
The two now converge on residence period — both are built around ten years — but they remain separate applications, to separate bodies, with separate criteria.
Who this affects
Anyone who had been counting on the five-year mark. Long-term residents who arrived in 2021 or 2022 and were preparing to file this year or next now have several more years to wait.
For most of that group, permanent residence is the nearer option. It has its own ten-year rule, but with meaningful exceptions — spouses of Japanese nationals and permanent residents, holders of Long-Term Resident status, and the accelerated one- and three-year routes for Highly Skilled Professionals. Naturalisation's exceptions are narrower.
What to do
If you were about to file, contact your regional Legal Affairs Bureau before doing anything else. Transitional treatment of applications already in progress is decided case by case, and the bureau handling your file is the only reliable source on it.
If you were planning to file in a few years, the calculation has changed and it is worth revisiting whether permanent residence gets you what you actually wanted.