Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, a registered domicile (本籍, ''honseki'') is the place where a Japanese citizen is considered to have their roots. It determines the city/ward/town office where their

koseki A or family register is a Japanese family register, family registry. Japanese law requires all Japanese households to make notifications of their vital records (such as births, adoptions, deaths, marriages and divorces) to their local Municipa ...

is kept.

Features

A registered domicile is not necessarily the same as a Japanese citizen's place of birth or current residence (despite the name). It is printed on a person's

and passport, and is listed (albeit on the prefecture level only) on the latter in lieu of someone's place of birth. A registered domicile can be any address within the boundaries of Japan which possesses an official postal address and postcode. This has led to people registering their domiciles at addresses such as the

Tokyo Imperial Palace is the main residence of the Emperor of Japan. It is a large park-like area located in the Chiyoda, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda district of the Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda ward of Tokyo and contains several buildings including the where the Emperor h ...

(~2000 registrations) and

Okinotorishima , or Parece Vela, is a coral reef, geologically an atoll, with two rocks enlarged with tetrapod-cement structures. It is administered by Japan with a total shoal area of and land area . Its dry land area is mostly made up by three concrete enc ...

(~200 registrations). There are exceptions to this rule: places which do not fall within a prefecture's boundaries, areas not belonging to a city/town/village, and the

Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands are a volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. The islands stretch approximately northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the ...

. Naturalised Japanese (unless coming from a background like

Zainichi Korean () are ethnic Koreans who immigrated to Japan before 1945 and are citizens or permanent residents of Japan, or who are descendants of those immigrants. They are a group distinct from South Korean nationals who have immigrated to Japan since t ...

) often do not have ancestral origins or ties to a specific place in Japan; choosing a registered domicile from scratch is therefore part of the naturalisation process.

Academic analysis

Karl Jakob Krogness (2014) notes in ''Jus Koseki'' that, per Chikako Kashiwazaki (1998)'s exploration of the Japanese nationality system that it includes elements of ''jus domicilis'' (law of domicile). One who has a registered domicile in Japan is therefore Japanese because they possess such a domicile, and therefrom deriving a

References

{{Reflist Law of Japan Civil registries

Features

Academic analysis

See also

References