Passport Versus Visa

Just a funny fact to add about Japanese dual citizenship. I know the dual citizenship laws for Japan say that you must relinquish any other passport in order to maintain Japanese nationality by the age of 22 in the case of children. However, dual American/Japanese citizens have found a loophole in maintaining both. They inform the US authorities that they wish to keep their US passports and the Japanese authorities are trying to force them to relinquish their US citizenship. Since the US does not recognize another entity forcing an American to give up their US citizenship, they still remain US citizens. On the embassy website, I found it saying *somewhere* for US citizens to just ignore letters from Japanese authorities to relinquish US citizenship. Meanwhile, they just keep renewing their Japanese passports...

I think that doing that (if you got caught, etc) would result in you losing your Japanese citizenship because they will assume you chose the US. That being said, it's probably entirely possible to get away with it in various circumstances. I have two Japanese/American first cousins, actually and I don't know which they chose. They were both living in the US at the time they were 22 (which is the time they would have had to choose) but now both live in Japan (not sure if they are doing so as citizens or on some kind of work visa, I haven't seen them in many years).