Outlawed children: Japanese Filipino Children, legal defiance and ambivalent citizenships

Pacific Affairs

Volumn 83, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 31-50

  Suzuki, Nobue ^a  

^a CHIBA UNIVERSITY   (Japan)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CLASS; ETHNICITY; GENDER; LEGAL RIGHTS; NATIONAL IDENTITY; RACE; SOVEREIGNTY; STATE ROLE;

JAPAN;

EID: 77950195210     PISSN: 0030851X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5509/201083131     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. See "court precedent," available from , last accessed 4 June 2008, translated by author. I thank Attorney Kondō Hironori for clarification. In this paper, Japanese names are rendered family names first and given names last.
2. Many individuals and institutions in Japan, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM), intentionally or naïvely use the term "shin nikkeijin" (new people of Japanese descent) to refer to JFC. That this term is not used for newcomer Latinos of Japanese descent (Joshua Roth, email communication, 3 April 2008) puts them in a special category. It is commonly used to refer to the fatherless children born outside marriage to Filipino entertainers and Japanese men. Due to its demeaning connotation, the NGOs introduced below and JFC themselves who are aware of this problem are upset when others, including IOM, uncritically categorize the children as such. The term "JFC" is a category as well which fixes people's identities; nevertheless, according to my informants, it is a more neutral term than "shin nikkeijin." JFC may refer to any children born to Filipino and Japanese parents or only to those born out of wedlock to Filipino and Japanese parents. For the sake of clarity, in this paper I use the term to mean the latter. Note that many JFC have already reached adult age and that the "C" in JFC does not mean the state of childhood. Instead, it reflects the fact that they are the children born to Japanese-Filipino relationships.
3. See, for example, Nicole Constable, ed., Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
4. Ericka Johnson, Dreaming of a Mail-order Husband (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007)
5. Brenda Yeoh and Elli Heikkilä, eds., International Marriages in the Time of Globalization (New York: Nova Science Publishers, forthcoming); and others cited in this essay.
6. nd ed.(London: Routledge, 2009);
7. John Lie, Multiethnic Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001);
8. Sonia Ryang and John Lie, eds., Diaspora without Homeland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009);
9. Joshua Roth, Brokered Homeland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002);
10. Takeyuki Tsuda, Local Citizenship in Recent Immigration Countries (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2006);
11. David Willis and Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, eds., Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender, and Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).
12. For children of foreign and mixed heritages, children born out of wedlock and related statelessness, see Stephan Murphy-Shigematsu, Amerasian no Kodomotachi (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2002);
13. Rumiko Nishino, Herculano wa Naze Korosareta no ka (Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 1999);
14. Chen Tien-shi, Mukokuseki (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2005);
15. Linda Kerber, "The Stateless as the Citizen's Other," in Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik, eds., Migrations and Mobilities (New York: New York University Press, 2009).
16. Linda Richter, The Politics of Tourism in Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989).
17. Elizabeth Eviota, The Political Economy of Gender (London: Zed Press, 1992);
18. Ministry of Justice, Annual Report of Statistics on Legal Migrants (Tokyo: Hōmushō, 1982-1991).
19. Rhacel Parreñas, The Force of Domesticity (New York: New York University Press, 2008);
20. Nobue Suzuki, "Between Two Shores: Transnational Projects and Filipino Wives in/from Japan," Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 23, no.4 (2000), pp. 431-444.
21. See Suzuki "Marrying a Marilyn of the Tropics: Manhood and Nationhood in Filipina-Japanese Marriages," Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 2 (2007), pp. 427-54;
22. see also Nobue Suzuki "Why Filipinas? Capitalist Modernity, Family Formation, and Masculine Desires," in Michael Hsiao and Hong-zen Wang, eds., Cross-Border Marriages with Asian Characteristics (Taipei: Academic Sinica, forthcoming).
23. For more details, see Nobue Suzuki, "Inside the Home: Power and Negotiation in Filipina- Japanese Marriages," Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 33, no. 4 (2004), pp. 481-506;
24. Nobue Suzuki, "Marrying a Marilyn." For further descriptions of Japanese men working and associating with local women in Manila
25. see Fukada Yūsuke's Naoki award-winning non-fiction, Ennetsu Shōnin (Tokyo: Bunshun Bunko, 1984).
26. For sex tourism and the development of affection, see Denise Brennan, What's Love Got to Do with It? (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).
27. All names are pseudonyms.
28. At the end of 2008, there were approximately 160,000 Filipinos who are or were the (formerly) spouses or the children of Japanese.
29. Homusho Nyukoku Kanri Kyoku, Shutsunyūgoku Kanri, 2008 (Tokyo: Hōmushō, 2009).
30. Before 1984, dual nationality was not permitted and jus sanguinis was practiced only through the paternal filiation. Following the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article15-1, which states that everyone has the right to a nationality, Japan also circumstantially adopts jus soli (birthright citizenship) to award Japanese nationality, for example, to children (assumed to have been) born in Japan without known parents (NL Article 2-3).
31. For historical accounts of Nationality Law, see Chikako Kashiwazaki, "Jus Sanguinis in Japan," International Journal of Comparative Sociology, vol. 39, no.3 (2002), pp. 278-300;
32. Okuda Yasuhiro, Kazoku to Kokuseki (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 2003).
33. Many other European countries such as France, Belgium and Italy also subscribe to jus sanguinis and have also granted nationality to children born to unwed men who are these countries' nationals.
34. See Ninomiya Shuhei, "Kokusekihō ni okeru Kongaishi no Byōdō Shogō," Ritsumeikan Hōgaku, vol. 250 (1996), pp. 1360-1388;
35. Okuda, Kazoku to Kokuseki, pp. 149-150.
36. Okuda, Kazoku to Kokuseki, p. 133.
37. Okuda, Kazoku to Kokuseki, p. 130.
38. After 1986, an increasing number of local governments began allowing non-Japanese residents to participate in public services, but the kinds and ranks of positions are still limited.
39. Numerous others had already left Japan due to the lack of proper visas.
40. Okuda, Kazoku to Kokuseki.
41. See also Yasemin Soysal, Limits of Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
42. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, available from , last accessed 21 February 2009.
43. Besides the Nationality Law, there are other implications resulting from JFC, notably those of people who have been trying to revise the CC for the rights of children born out of wedlock. Discussing these movements is, however, beyond the scope of the present discussion.
44. For the case of Japanese children, see Konsakai, Hikon no Oya to Kongaishi (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 2004); for children of cross- national relationships
45. see Imanishi Tomiyuki et al., Kokusai Kongaishi to Kodomo no Jinken (Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 1996).
46. For grassroots activism, see Apichai W. Shipper, Fighting for Foreigners (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).
47. We might consider these cases to be engaging in what Seyla Benhabib calls "democratic reiteration," which is defined as: "complex processes of public argument, deliberation, and exchange through which universal human rights claims and principles are contested and contextualized, invoked and revoked, posited and positioned, throughout legal and political institutions, as well as in the associations of civil society"
48. Seyla Benhabib, Rights of Others, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, p. 179.
49. Miyazaki Makoto, "Statement of Supreme Court Ruling Nationality Law Unconstitutional," Japan Federation of Bar Associations, available from http://www.nichibenren.or.jp/ja/opinion/statement/080604.html, last accessed 28 December 2008.
50. Nagao Hidehiko, "Kokuseki Hō 2-jō to Byōdō Gensoku," Chūkō Hōgaku, vol. 39, no. 3-4 (2005), pp. 129-150.
51. Nagao, "Kokuseki Hō," p. 134.
52. Nagao, "Kokuseki Hō"; Okuda, Kazoku to Kokuseki.
53. Ms. Ito Rieko, Director of CNJFC, interview by author, audio recording, Tokyo, 21 November 2008.
54. Okuda Yasuhiro, "Kosekuki HōIken Hanketsu to Kongo no Kadai," News Commentators Division, available from http://www.nhk.or.jp/kaisetsu-blog/400/9790.html#more, last accessed 26 December 2008.
55. Miyazaki, Statement.
56. "Hōritsu No. 4973," Kanpō, 12 December 2008.
57. For details, see the UHJAC and LHJAC minutes, available from and <<url>http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/cgi-bin/KENSAKU/swk_dispdoc.cgi?SESSION=26696&SAVED_RID=1&PAGE=0&POS=0&TOTAL=0&SRV_ID=9&DOC_ID=9856&DPAGE=1&DTOTAL=7&DPOS=1&SORT_DIR=1&SORT_TYPE=0&MODE=1&DMY=26821,</url> both accessed 28 November 2008.
58. Okuda, "Kokuseki hōiken."
59. Before the computerization of koseki storage, all removed entries were crossed out with an "X."
60. For details, see "Ninchi Sareta Ko no Kokuseki Shutoku no Todokede," the Ministry of Justice, available from http://www.moj.go.jp/ONLINE/NATIONALITY/6-1.html, last accessed 2 April 2009.
61. As of November 2009, due to the political turmoil and consequent change of administration, the review had not yet taken place.
62. A Japanese embassy official, interview by author, tape recording, Manila, 16 March 2009.
63. See note 4 for the literature that describes the difficulties, including bullying, of being foreigners and marginalized people in Japan.
64. From 2003, Philippine Republic Act No. 9225 allows its former citizen to reacquire his/her once abandoned Filipino nationality.
65. Sakanaka Hidenori and Asakawa Akihiro, Imin Kokka Nippon (Tokyo: Nihon Kajo Shuppan, 2007).
66. The Asahi Shinbun, available from http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200910270130.html, last accessed 27 October 2009.
67. The cities where Latinos of Japanese descent are concentrated, such as Toyota, Hamamatsu, Yamoto, Okazaki, Minokamo and Kani, have offered job training, but its effect is limited. Many Japanese-Latinos have already returned en masse to their homelands after losing their jobs.
68. See "Nikkei Shūrō Kenshō Jigyō no Gaiyō," Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, available from http://www.mhlw.go.jp/houdou/2009/04/h0428-2.html, last accessed 30 April 2009
69. "Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Go Home," The New York Times, available from , last accessed 22 April 2009[accept].
70. Other countries, such as the United States, Spain, and Czech Republic, have historically and recently also used similar programs to eject migrant workers;
71. see Ronald Takaki, In the Heart of Filipino America (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1995) and "Feature Story," Migration Policy Institute, available from http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=749&feed=rss, last accessed 8 November 2009.
72. Some private corporations have begun providing certain support provisions. Further investigation is needed to clarify.