Applying for a British passport for a newborn child while living in Japan

If you are a British citizen, and you meet certain criteria, your children are automatically British citizens from birth. In this case, you can apply for a British passport for them without having to first apply for citizenship for them.

Requirements

You'll be asked for the following during the process.

• A digital photo of the child. You can do this yourself with a smartphone camera, but you have to closely match their photo requirements.
• An indentity reference. This can be challenging, because of the stringent criteria for who can be an indentity reference. In particular, they must be a "current UK, Irish or other EU, US or Commonwealth passport holder". You must tell them in advance the applicant's (meaning the child's): "current address; place and date of birth, including the year; parents’ names and years they were born".
• A color photograph of the identity reference's passport. You'll be asked to "write your full name and application reference on the back of the photocopy".
• The child's birth certificate. They will request a "full birth (civil and hospital) or adoption certificate showing both the child’s and parents’ details", but if you enclose a note that in Japan the hospital birth certificate is surrendered to the government, and you just get a civil certificate, they will accept that.
• A translation of the child's birth certificate. The birth certificate must be translated by a professional.
• Your own birth certificate.
• The birth certificate of your mother. When you reach the "send us documents" stage of the process, they may ask you to send all the child's grandparents' birth certificates also. Rather a burdensome task. However, in practically, they only need to confirm you had the right to pass on your British citizenship. So one certificate can be sufficient. If the documents you provide are not sufficient, they will email you asking for further documents.

Note that it is easy to get copies of British birth certificates for literally any person. You go to the General Register Office website, enter the details of the person, and they will send you a copy of that person's certificate. If you do this as part of an additional documents request, you can also set your mailing address to the address of the passport office (they'll provide their address), so long as you include your application reference number in the address. This saves the time and cost of you being a middleman for it when you're overseas.

Also note that all documents must be originals unless specified otherwise. They will return the documents back to you at a later date.

Process

As of 2023, the process is:

1. You complete a passport application online.
2. You give them the email address of your identity reference, who'll then be asked to confirm your identity and the applicant's (the child), online.
3. You mail them the supporting documents.