Becoming Japanese

Army Private 1st Class Hirayanagi né Harris, right after training and his Baptism of Fire As this site has documented before , there actually have been quite a few non-Asians who took Japanese nationality during the time before the modern constitution, under the nationality/naturalization laws of the Meiji Constitution. There are even some who served the armed forces of the time in some capacity, such as Eliana Pavlova , who brought ballet to the Empire and did morale boosting for the troops. It may surprise some to learn that there were actually some Caucasian men who were naturalized and conscripted and served on the front lines of the Imperial Army. There have been examples of non-Japanese westerners who were indirectly involved. A previous post documented the naturalized Gorham family , who had non-naturalized children who went to regular non-international schools in the early 20th century. One of the children, Don Cyril, participated in compulsory military training and war gam...

Misinfo source: the Beeb & U of Chicago's Tom Ginsburg Yesterday's BBC News Magazine has an article in it, titled "Does it matter where a country's leader is born?" , that had an attributed quote with an example that is 100% untrue: "In some places it's impossible to become a citizen, like Japan." The quote surprisingly came from someone who should know better given his field of expertise and because he was a university lecturer in Japan : a professor and dean who specializes in comparative and international law, Dr. Tom Ginsburg. He is not solely to blame, though. Both the BBC News Magazine as well as the writer of the article should have checked his claims prior to publishing them. The writer of the article, after being informed of the error by this site, quickly edited and removed Dr. Ginsburg's incorrect statement and noted it in the article: @legallyjapanese thanks for drawing my attention to this - the article has been...