Editing Demographics of Japan (section)

==Citizenship==
Japanese [[citizenship]] is conferred ''[[jus sanguinis|jure sanguinis]]'', and monolingual Japanese-speaking minorities often reside in Japan for generations under permanent residency status without acquiring citizenship in their country of birth, although legally they are allowed to do so. This is because Japanese law does not recognize dual citizenship after the age of adulthood, and so people becoming naturalized Japanese citizens must relinquish their previous citizenship upon reaching the age of 22 years <ref>{{Cite web |last=Atsushi |first=Kondo |date=Oct 2016 |title=Report on citizenship law: Japan |url=https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/43625/EudoCit_2016_11Japan%20.pdf?sequence=1 |access-date=13 Feb 2024 |publisher=Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies |archive-date=12 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230512115321/https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/43625/EudoCit_2016_11Japan%20.pdf?sequence=1 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wilkinson |first=Aoife |date=2020 |title=Forfeiting Citizenship, Forfeiting Identity? Multiethnic and Multiracial Japanese Youth in Australia and the Japanese Nationality Law |journal=New Voices in Japanese Studies |volume=12 |pages=21–43|doi=10.21159/nvjs.12.02 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

In addition, people taking Japanese citizenship must take a name using one or more of the Japanese character sets ([[hiragana]], [[katakana]], [[kanji]]). Names written in the Western alphabet, Korean alphabet, Arabic characters, etc., are not acceptable as legal names. Chinese characters are usually legally acceptable as nearly all Chinese characters are recognized as valid by the Japanese government. Transliterations of non-Japanese names using katakana (e.g. {{lang|ja|スミス}}　"{{transliteration|ja|Sumisu}}" for "Smith") are also legally acceptable.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

However, some naturalizing foreigners feel that becoming a Japanese citizen should mean that they have a Japanese name and that they should abandon their foreign name, and some foreign residents do not wish to do this—although most [[Special Permanent Resident (Japan)|Special Permanent Resident]] Koreans and Chinese already use Japanese names. Nonetheless, some 10,000 [[Zainichi Koreans]] naturalize every year. Approximately 98.6% of the population are Japanese citizens, and 99% of the population speak [[Japanese language|Japanese]] as their first language. Non-ethnic Japanese in the past, and to an extent in the present, also live in small numbers in the Japanese archipelago.<ref name="lie">[[John Lie (professor)|John Lie]], ''Multiethnic Japan'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001) {{ISBN|0-674-01358-1}}</ref>