Misinfo: No, even without an official father, kids can be Japanese
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| credit: Ann Swinderman |
Without an official father, kids can be stateless
[in Japan]
Is this really true? With the semantics word "can", this is pedantically true, although in reality, many other, much more rarer conditions must also (fail to) be met.Although arguably not an ideal situation, there are countless children born in Japan who receive Japanese nationality at birth even without an official or known father. To be born without a nationality in Japan, many more conditions must not be met (such as, and arguably much more important, like the existence of a birth certificate). What IS true is that when neither jus sanguinis nor jus soli can be used to determine a child's origins, then it is possible that a child may not acquire Japanese nationality immediately at birth.
The author of the article seems to be aware, due to his translated quote near the end of the article, that the lack of a birth certificate is the most probable cause of statelessness in Japan — not lack of a known father — so it is likely that an editor at the Japan Times wrote the inaccurate and sensational headline; writers for newspapers do not often get to choose the headline for these pieces.
To put this in simpler English, the correct, less sensational (albeit longer) title of the article should have been:
"Without a birth certificate or any other documentation linking a child to the territory of a nation-state or any parent with a nationality, a child could be born stateless."
or alternatively, depending on the original author's primary message he wished to convey:"Without at least one official Japanese national parent, kids can be non-Japanese"
In other words, a state is hesitant to make a child "one of their own", not just because they are conservative with assignment of their own nationality, but also because they might be mistakenly making claim to a citizen that does not in fact belong to them or may be against the wishes of the parents or legal guardians or another government.To understand why its much harder to be born stateless than this article implies, we need to look back into Japan's legal history with the United Nations, which caused Japan and other countries to make important changes to their nationality law for the express purpose of preventing exactly what the alarming headline of the article claims.
The first change Japan made to its nationality law was done in 1985, at the behest of United Nations' directives (CEDAW) at the time to address its member countries' legislation that discriminated against sexes. Prior to 1985, Japan's jus sanguinis nationality laws stipulated that nationality was inherited only from the father. Starting in 1985, that changed so that a child could inherit at birth ("natural-born") Japanese nationality from either the father or the mother. This change was retroactive, meaning that people born in 1984 or earlier without Japanese nationality because only their mother had Japanese nationality could retroactively acquire Japanese nationality as a birthright. This process is different than naturalization (åž°å) and is called "Nationality Acquisition" (åœç±ååŸ) and is tracked and recorded differently in both statistics and on the family register (æžç±). A famous example of this post-birth Japanese nationality acquisition due to the law change, mentioned in the same article, is the former leader and president of the DPJ and DP (æ°äž»å ／æ°é²å ): æç°è®è« aka her preferred public mononym "Renho".¹
The second change to the nationality law was also done on behest of the United Nation's coordinated efforts (via the UNHCR) to reduce and eventually eliminate the status of statelessness among people in the world. The UN learned and agreed, through the experiences of the World Wars and the millions of stateless people they created, that the condition of involuntary² statelessness is not a desirable condition as these people lacked the protection and rights and abode provided by a nation-state. Thus, Article 15 of the UDHR declares that:
The United Nations aims to end statelessness by 2024.
- Everyone has the right to a nationality.
- No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Japan modified its nationality law in the spirit of United Nations guidelines to add for the possibility of deciding Japanese nationality by jus soli (right of the soil [Japan territory]):
- (Acquisition of nationality by birth)
- When both parents are unknown or have no nationality in a case where the child is born in Japan.
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é¢ (Jikei Hospital) in çæ¬ç (Kumamoto Prefecture) allows people to anonymously give up their unwanted baby born secretly (å å¯åºç£) via a "Cradle of the Stork" (ããã®ãšãã®ãããã) |
However, this law also benefits rare cases such as when a baby is abandoned and/or given up for adoption anonymously by person in Japan.
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| Former House of Representatives member and HyÅgo Prefectural Assembly Member |
As [äºæžæ£æ] told the business magazine, [æ±æŽçµæž], in March [4] 2016, “There are many reasons why a child does not have a koseki. In some cases, the parents’ financial situation or environment prevented them from submitting a birth report, but that’s not a justification for depriving a person of a koseki.³ These children are being neglected and abandoned by society and the state.”This suggests that the society and state is motivated by stinginess regarding the awarding of nationality, but there is good reason for the State of Japan or any other country to err on the side of caution and being conservative with respect to the issuing of nationality and especially a "koseki". A nationality is not just rights and privileges, but also duties and responsibilities. Without knowing who the true legal parents / legal guardians of a child are and what their nationalities may be, one could easily deny the true parents custody of a child, or assign the "wrong" nationality to a child, depriving that child (and its parents) of rights and possibly its true family (not to mention child support). The birth certificate is a document that helps provide clarity to the situation. Assigning an incorrect or undesired nationality on a person could subject them to legal liabilities such as extraterritorial taxation or military conscription, and may make it harder to travel or be in certain countries.
There are some countries in the world (especially in Africa) that still do not keep accurate vital records such as birth certificates, but in a modern developed country like Japan, there is a method for obtaining a birth certificate even if you are not born in a hospital, and obtaining a birth certificate or the legal equivalent does not have any fees. It is time consuming and arduous, but unfortunately this is necessary due to the government needing to be absolutely sure who the true parents are, to prevent fraud, child kidnapping, and false custody / alimony / child support claims and denials.
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- Although this same article mentioned that Renho's
… nationality was questioned …
, the article fails to clarify that the reason she was questioned was not because people doubted if she had acquired Japanese nationality, but rather her truthfulness about what she knew and how she handled her possession of an additional nationality (ROC); the press had uncovered multiple conflicting claims and statements regarding what she knew and what she had done about it, both orally and on paper, she had made publicly on the record about it over the years. In other words, some Japanese voters believed the lawmaker lied about her legal ties to another government (which is what nationality is) — a government which has territorial disputes and other disagreements with Japan and other conflicts with its official foreign policy — and its set of laws and its citizens' duties & responsibilities.
To compare, when other politicians were discovered to have accidentally retained a second citizenship, they were let off the hook when they were completely open with their paperwork, corrected the situation by relinquishing their other citizenship, and apologized to their constituents. - Voluntary statelessness is complicated. The United States of America is an outlier in that it is one of the view countries in the world that will allow its citizens to become voluntarily stateless. Most countries, to comply with the United Nation's guidelines on eliminating statelessness, will not allow it. Japan will allow all of its nationals, including those who are natural-born (acquired Japanese nationality by birth) citizens to renounce and rid themselves of their Japanese citizenship as this right is guaranteed in its Constitution, but only if they can prove that doing so will not make them stateless.
- The logic behind this thinking is not sound and backwards. The birth certificate is a far more important and necessary document to possess, as this is considered to be a breeder document for natural-born citizens, that is, an official document that is used to generate other documents, including the family register (æžç±), which is used domestically to prove nationality and from that used to generate a Japanese passport, which is only used to prove nationality internationally informally. The breeder document to create a æžç± (family register) for a naturalized citizen, in contrast, is the åž°åè ã®èº«å蚌ææž.
