[corrected] "In some places it's impossible to become a citizen, like Japan."
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| Misinfo source: the Beeb & U of Chicago's Tom Ginsburg |
"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.
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 amended.
— Vanessa Barford (@veebarford) January 11, 2016
Obviously on a site like this, whose contributors are writers who have ALL become Japanese national citizens, we (and hundreds of thousands of other naturalized citizens) know not just from book-knowledge of Japan's laws, but also from personal experience, that Ginsburg's example is not even half true. Not only do people become Japanese national citizens, but some naturalized citizens have gone on to become nationally elected MP politician leaders and politicians (including one of our contributors). Unlike the United States, which does not allow naturalized citizens (in other words, those who are not citizens from birth) to become President, there are no legal restrictions regarding a Japanese national who naturalized from becoming Japan's Prime Minister.And the ability to become a Japanese citizen is not a new thing introduced with the post World War Ⅱ Constitution and the laws under it: the Meiji Constitution of the Empire of Japan (大日本帝国憲法) also included the original Article 18, which still survives in the modern Constitution as Article 10, that defined a Japanese national as being defined by (nationality) law. The nationality law of that era also defined the processes for foreigners to become Japanese, either through international marriage to a Japanese man (jus matrimonii) or via the pre-20th century naturalization laws. Japan's nationality laws were not made gender equal (being able to inherit Japanese nationality from either the father or mother) until 1985 in order to comply with United Nation's (国連) CEDAW which Japan ratified in 1979, but there are examples of both men and women (of many races & ethnicities) becoming Japanese citizen/subjects in the previous centuries — even couples who never married Japanese and women who never married anybody:
- Scottish Japanese whisky heroine 竹鶴リタ née Jessie COWAN
- Author/journalist Irish/American immigrant 小泉八雲 né Lafcadio HEARN
- American automotive entrepreneur 合波武克人 né William Gorham and his American wife Hazel, who became an expert on Japanese flowers & gardening and an author
- Russian ballerina pioneer 霧島エリ子 née Елена Павлова, enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine (靖国神社) for her troop morale boosting support for the Empire
A half-decade ago when I first started this site, the internet was full of misinformation regarding Japanese naturalization difficulty and eligibility. Prior to naturalizing myself, I had many Americans tell me that it was "illegal" and "impossible" to immigrate to Japan and mistakenly thought that only those with Japanese blood could be Japanese — they'd often cite third or fourth generation Koreans born and raised in Japan without Japanese nationality as proof of their understanding, not understanding that these non-Japanese with the Status of Residence (SoR; 在留資格) of Special Permanent Resident (特別永住者) actually have a fast track path to naturalization — which is even more lenient than the "simplified naturalization" (簡易帰化) process because SPRs don't have to write a motivation essay (動機書) or satisfy Japanese naturalization's General Requirement #4: being able to make a living through his/her own assets or abilities, or through those of a spouse or of another relative who is making a living. Of SPRs, only about 25% who inquire about naturalization give up, and if they do decide to formally apply, applicants have historically had over a 95% chance of approval from the Japanese Ministry of Justice (MoJ; 法務省). The actual reason that most Koreans in Japan do not become Japanese nationals is not because they can't, but because they don't want to.
Although it is 2016, unfortunately misinformation about Japanese naturalization still exists and is propagated in the mainstream press and by academics and journalists.
Dr. Ginsburg may have mistook or assumed Japan was like some other countries where it really is impossible to obtain citizenship via naturalization or become a citizen/national without the proper bloodline. Surprisingly, Article 1 of the United Nations's ICERD, to which Japan agreed to in 1995, permits nation-states to use racial/ethnic criteria for the purposes of naturalization in some cases:
Japan does decide natural born nationality by jus sanguinis (don't let the Latin mislead you; it means inheriting legal nationality regardless of the parent's race — it does not mean determining citizenship by the presence of racial Japanese blood) — although it does have a jus soli provision to comply with the U.N. Treaty on the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Some people who live in New World countries in America may think nationality being determined by where you were born is the norm, but in fact, Japan's nationality law is not an outlier: most nations in Europe, Asia, and Africa are similar.
- Nothing in this Convention may be interpreted as affecting in any way the legal provisions of States Parties concerning nationality, citizenship or naturalization, provided that such provisions do not discriminate against any particular nationality.
Despite Ginsburg's error regarding Japan, I have nothing but positive things to say about the Comparative Constitutions Project that he co-directs, and the collaboration between the CCP & Google Ideas on Project Constitute, which I've used to compare Japan's current constitution with other constitutions.
