Advice in English

Q: Where and how do I get married in Japan?

A: Japanese law requires that all marriages here must take place at a local Ward or City office. The couple must submit a notice of "Intention to Marry" or "kon-in-todoke" to the Ward/City office, the Marriage officer will then issue a "Certificate of Acceptance of Notification of Marriage" or "kon-in-todoke-juri-shomeisho" and the couple will be married. Any additional ceremonies in Japan at churches, temples and so on are at your own discretion and are not a requirement under Japanese law.

Certain documents must be shown to the Ward/City office Marriage officer before the marriage will be accepted. Japanese nationals must show a recently certified copy of their family register (koseki-tohon). When the marriage involves a non-Japanese national, the Marriage officer must be shown a "Certificate of No Impediment" (CNI or in Japanese "Konin yoken gubi shomeisho") by the non-Japanese party.

Some Ward/City offices require additional documents to be shown, such as birth certificates, so it is advisable to check with the Ward/City office in your area to find out exactly what additional documents they may require.

Q: Where do I get a certificate of No Impediment?

A: A Certificate of No Impediment/CNI for a British national can only be issued by a British consular officer for the consular district of Japan in which you intend to marry.

There are currently two consular districts in Japan - The British Embassy (Consular Section) Tokyo covers those who live in Eastern Japan and the British Consulate-General in Osaka covers those who live in Western Japan.

If you live in one consular district but intend to marry in the other, you will still need to apply for the CNI in the consular district where you are living. The CNI itself will be issued by the other consular district.

Q: How do I get a certificate of No Impediment to marry in Japan?

A: The process for getting a CNI depends on where you normally reside: Japan, the United Kingdom or elsewhere in the World.

British nationals residing in Japan:

1. Ensure you have the following documents:
   
   • Your passport showing that you have been in Japan for at least the previous 21 days. If you have a residence visa (i.e. not a temporary visitor visa) and have recently returned to Japan after being temporarily absent from Japan for only a short period, then this is normally acceptable;
   • If you have been previously married then you need to provide evidence of the termination of the previous marriage (i.e. divorce decree or death certificate of former spouse). If it was a UK divorce then you must have the original decree absolute bearing the High Court seal;
   • If you are under the age of consent (e.g. under 18 if you are from the UK, under 21 if you are from Hong Kong) then you must have evidence of parental consent.
     
2. Complete a questionnaire and send it by fax/email/post, together with copies of the documents referred to in Step One, to the Consular Section for the consular district where you are living in Japan.
   
3. Once the Consular Section has received the completed questionnaire and copies of the documents listed above, we will contact you to arrange an appointment to come and give notice of marriage.
   
4. Attend an appointment with the consular officer. (Only the British national needs to attend this appointment) At the appointment, you will present the original documents requested in step two and make a declaration on oath or by affirmation of capacity to marry and make a Notice of Marriage which will be displayed on the Consular notice board for 21 days. Your partner's capacity to marry must also be shown.
   
   • The Consular fee for giving Notice of Marriage  is payable on the day of your appointment. 
   • If you wish to receive the documents by post you must submit 700 yens worth of stamps or make payment with other fees at the time of the appointment.
   • All Consular fees are payable in Japanese yen. You may pay by visa or mastercard, visa/mater card.  
     
5. Provided no impediment has been shown to exist during the 21 days of the notice being displayed, the Certificate of No Impediment can be issued - in both English and Japanese. You can either collect the CNI from Consular Section during opening hours (appointment required) or receive it by post.

• The consular fee for the actual Certificate of No Impediment should be paid on the day of collection or, if you are receiving the certificate by post, please send the fee to us a few days before the date of the certificate or pay when you visit us for notice of marriage. If you are sending cash through the post please use cash registered mail. "Genkin Kakitome" in Japanese. 
  

British nationals residing in the United Kingdom:

1. Give Notice of Marriage to your local Registrar in the UK. After being displayed to the public for the prescribed period get it endorsed by the Registrar with "No Impediment Shown."
   
2. Contact the ward office or city hall in Japan where you plan to register your marriage.  Since detailed requirements are decided by each individual ward office or city hall, you need to find out the following:

-whether a Certificate of No Impediment(CNI) issued in the UK and your own translation will be accepted. If so, prepare a Japanese translation of your CNI. 

-or whether a CNI issued by the British embassy/British consulate-general in Japan is required. If you would like us to prepare a CNI, please contact us, so that we can give you further instructions.

-if any other documents are required for marriage registration.

 

British nationals residing elsewhere in the World and wanting to marry in Japan:

• Commonwealth countries: Contact the nearest British high commission and ask whether they provide a nulla osta service. Nulla osta is a public notice of  your marriage, published in a  local newspaper. Please contact the nearest British high commission for more details.
  
  
• Non-Commonwealth countries: If you are a British national residing in a Non-Commonwealth country, you should give Notice of Marriage to the British Embassy or Consulate for the Consular district in which you currently reside. After this has been displayed for 21 days in your country of residence it will be endorsed "No Impediment Shown" by the consular officer and you can take it with you. When you bring this document with you to Japan, the British Consular Officer will be able to issue the Japanese CNI on payment of the Consular Fee when you pick up the certificate. Please contact  the British Embassy Tokyo (for Eastern Japan) /the British Consulate-General Osaka (for Western Japan) in Japan for further instructions.  We suggest that you contact the ward office or city hall in Japan where you are planning to register marriage and ask if any other documents are required for marriage registration.
  
  
• Exceptions: there are some countries where you may encounter difficulty giving Notice of Marriage at the British Embassy/Consulate in connection with a proposed marriage in Japan. Often this is because the local authorities in those countries do not require CNIs from foreign nationals and therefore the British consular staff may have never encountered this procedure before. If you do have problems, please let us know: we can then liase on your behalf with the relevant British mission.
  

Q: How long will my CNI be valid for?

A: Although the Certificate of No Impediment has no expiry date, the Japanese Ward/City Office will normally only accept one within 3 months of the date of issue (as they do with the Japanese Family Register or koseki-tohon). The date of issue on the certificate will be 21 days after you give Notice of Marriage.

Q: What does my partner need to do?

A: If your partner is a British national s/he too must obtain a Certificate of No Impediment. If both parties live in Japan, two Notices of Marriage will be displayed on the consular notice board, and two Certificates of No Impediment will be issued.

If your partner is not a British national the British Consular Officer has an obligation to ensure, as far as possible, not only that the British partner is free to marry but that the circumstances of the proposed spouse will not invalidate the marriage. Consequently before the appointment with the Consular Officer you must produce evidence that they are single, divorced or widowed. In the case of a Japanese national, this evidence is usually contained in a recently certified copy of the family register (koseki-tohon).

Those marrying partners of other nationalities must produce documents testifying to place & date of birth and freedom to marry. They will almost certainly also need to obtain a Certificate of No Impediment from their country's Embassy/Consulate in Japan before they will be able to marry at a Japanese City/Ward Office.

 

Q: After marrying in Japan, Do I need to take any further action at the British Embassy Tokyo/Consulate-General Osaka or with the UK authorities?
A: No. But you can, if you want to, have your Japanese "Certificate of Acceptance of Notification of Marriage" deposited in the records of the relevant office of the General Register Office (GRO) for the part of the UK you come from - England & Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

There is no legal obligation for you to do this and doing so will not affect the validity of your marriage in English law. However, you may find it useful since it means that, once the certificate is deposited, you can obtain an officially certified English-language translation of your marriage lines at any time, upon application and payment of the appropriate fee to the relevant GRO.

The Ward/City office where you marry can issue you with a special certificate (sho-jo type), also called a "Certificate of Acceptance of Notification of Marriage" ("kon-in-todoke-juri-shomeisho"). Normally Japanese nationals getting married don't obtain one of these special certificates, since all the information and more is contained in the Family Register. The Ward/City office can issue a special calligraphic parchment version of the "Certificate of Acceptance of Notification of Marriage." If you do decide to deposit your marriage certificate with the GRO you will first need to obtain this special parchment version from the Ward/City Office and then submit it, together with the Deposit of marriage application form and translation using the template provided to the British Embassy/Consulate-General (not directly to the GRO). Please enclose a photocopy of your passport data page including your photo. (If your nationality is not shown as British on the certificate, please produce the original  of your passport. *700yen stamps should be submitted for return mail). You should also include the appropriate fee.

There are three important points you should bear in mind:

• The Japanese Certificate issued by the Ward/City office comes in two sizes, but the GRO only accepts the larger version. This is usually on beige cartridge paper. 
• The Embassy/Consulate-General acts only as a forwarding 'post-box' in this process. We send the original certificate to the GRO and this will be stored by the GRO indefinitely and will never be returned to you. Therefore, if you wish to keep a parchment version of your marriage certificate, you should buy two (or more) copies from the ward office.      

• The application must be signed by a British party                                  

Please note that the fee for sending the document to the GRO via the Embassy in Tokyo/Consulate-General in Osaka is subject to exchange rate fluctuations and may change at short notice.

If you send cash through the post, please use cash registered mail (in Japanese, "genkin kakitome"). After they have received the document, the GRO will send notification of safe receipt to your contact address, which can be in Japan or elsewhere in the world, enclosing an order form - you will then be able to apply to the GRO to buy a certified copy or copies of the translation.

Follow this link for the GRO's Internet page.

Q: Can I obtain a British marriage certificate after my marriage has been registered with the Japanese authority?

Once your marriage has been registered in Japan, there is no system to register your marriage in the UK. The British embassy and the British consulate-general in Japan do not register any marriages.  Once your marriage has been registered in Japan, a British marriage certificate cannot be issued. If you need advice about whether a marriage conducted in Japan is legally valid in the UK we recommend that you contact a lawyer in the UK. If you are asked to obtain a British marriage certificate  to apply for a Japanese spouse visa,  please explain to the immigration officer that the UK authorities do not issue marriage certificates when marriages are conducted in Japan.  If the immigration officer is unsatisfied with that explanation we are happy to speak to them directly if they contact the consular section at the British Embassy Tokyo (for Eastern Japan) or the British Consulate-General Osaka (for Western Japan).

POST-MARRIAGE ISSUES Q & A

Q: Can my spouse apply for British Nationality?

A: Almost without exception, people who wish to apply for naturalisation as a British citizen must spend a minimum period of time living in the UK - the minimum period of residence for spouses is currently three years.

People who are naturalised as British citizens may, as a result, lose or risk losing their existing nationality or citizenship. This depends on the law of the country concerned - Japanese law does not allow adults to retain Japanese nationality and another nationality. You can find further information in English on the Ministry's of Justice's "choice of nationality" website .

Q: If we marry in Japan, canwe then marry elesewhere, e.g. in the UK?

A: Legally a consular officer is not permitted to express an opinion on the validity of a marriage contracted in Japan or elsewhere. "For administrative purposes" consular officers can accept Japanese marriages in order, for example, to issue UK spouse visas to non-EU spouses to enable them to live in the UK or to accept children born to a couple as legitimate.

In order for someone to marry in the UK, that person has to show the Registrar/Priest that s/he is free to marry. Having gone through the only form of marriage procedure available in Japan, the Registrar/Priest may well conclude that the person is not free to marry and therefore no ceremony can be conducted. However, this is not an authoritative view and a consular officer may not give any form of guarantee that a marriage will be valid in English law. If you needed further guidance on this, you would have to consult a lawyer.

IMMIGRATION INTO THE UNITED KINGDOM:
For information on UK immigration, please refer to the UK Visas website at www.ukvisas.gov.uk .

Q: If we have any children born in Japan, will they have British nationality?
A: Nationality is a complex area. For more information on the nationality of children born outside the United Kingdom please check the UK Home Office's web pages .

Q: What about children's surnames?
A: British citizen men marrying Japanese women should be aware that under the Japanese Family Registration Law a wife can open her own family register (if she has not already done so) and change her surname on the register to that of her husband if she wishes to. She must do this within six months of marriage. If she does not, it becomes very complex and may even be impossible to change her name later. After six months any change of name would have to be done through the Japanese courts and is far from guaranteed. If the Japanese wife does not change her surname on the Family Register any children will normally be shown on the Family Register as having her maiden surname and not the British Father's surname.

All further Japanese documentation, including any Japanese passport, will normally show the child's name to be that of the mother's maiden name but can sometimes include the father's name in parenthesis.

However, an optional British birth registration made at the Embassy or Consulate-General in Osaka can show the surname to be that of the father, providing that we receive confirmation from both parents that you are happy to do so.

Any British passport, issued whilst the child is in Japan, will, on the details page, show the name on the British birth certificate but, unless documentary evidence is submitted to show that this name is used for all purposes, an endorsement will be added to the passport to the effect that "The holder is also known as .. ..".

Q: What about errors in translations of a name into Katakana?
A: Because of the possible error in a name being translated into katakana, the forename can be anglicised. The forename given in the Family Register will normally be the first forename given in the British birth registration.

Q: What about children's middle names?
A: Provided that (for children born in Japan) the only reason a middle name or names do not appear on the Japanese birth documents is because the Japanese Family Register system does not allow it. Middle names can be included in the British birth registration, after the first name shown in the Family Register. If the birth has not been registered at either the British Embassy or the Consulate-General at Osaka, middle names can be added only if the passport officer is satisfied they are to be used for all purposes.

Q: Is it necessary to sign a formal declaration concerning the child's name?
A: Provided both parents sign the declaration on the form for the registration of a birth, there is no need to sign any further, formal declaration.

OTHER USEFUL INFORMATION:

• If your fiancé(é) is Japanese, the Ministry of Justice's Internet pages have some useful information on the Japanese Nationality Law.
  
• For visa information in English, follow this link for The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' home page.