Currents/'Japanese' kids speak out over identity battle
Currents/'Japanese' kids speak out over identity battleHarumi Ozawa Daily Yomiuri Staff WriterIn the Tokyo District Court's Room 611, an 11-year-old girl summoned up her courage to testify in front of the robe-clad judges. "My name in Japanese is Jurian Arashiro, but my passport bears Julie-Anne Chittum as my name," she said. "I made my name [in kanji] myself." She explained the three kanji that she picked to phonetically match her Japanese-pronounced first name, Ju-ri-an. Three Filipino women accompanied by their children--two aged 8, and one 9--also testified at the first hearing on July 15. Demanding the government recognize their Japanese nationality, Jurian and eight other Japanese-Filipino children filed on April 12 the nation's first-ever class action suit over the issue. Their supporters and lawyers believe they are only the tip of the iceberg, a hidden social group of illegitimate children born to foreign women and Japanese men. Under the current law, an illegitimate child of a foreign mother and a Japanese father is eligible for Japanese nationality only when the father legally admits paternity before birth. Once the baby is born, it takes the nationality of the mother unless the parents legally marry--a rule that many lawyers argue discriminates against illegitimate children. === Hidden problem This problem of illegitimate children of foreign women and Japanese men became especially prominent in the 1990s, particularly among women coming to Japan on entertainer visas. The majority of these women come from the Philippines, with most of them working as hostesses in men's clubs. No firm statistics are available, however, on how many children are in the same situation as Jurian and the eight other children--born to Japanese men but not having Japanese nationality. A Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry publication on Japan's "vital statistics," the demographic data of which includes information on foreigners, provides some clues on the size of this population. In 2001, for example, the total number of live births by Filipino mothers in Japan was 5,510, while the number of legitimate births by Filipino mothers was 4,821. The difference of 689, therefore, is the number of illegitimate births by Filipino mothers. These figures, however, include cases of both foreign and Japanese fathers. There is a 0.049 ratio of foreign fathers among the year's legitimate births by Filipino mothers. If this figure is applied to illegitimate births, the number of illegitimate births to Japanese fathers works out to about 655. By applying this formula, the number of illegitimate Japanese-Filipino children can be presumed to have significantly increased since early last decade, as shown in the chart. Still, the nine Filipino mothers may be the lucky ones, as they had their children's fathers legally recognize their paternity after DNA testing was conducted and a lawsuit for recognition filed. Foreign women with illegitimate, unrecognized children are subject to deportation. === Costly battle Filing a case against the government places a considerable financial and psychological burden on the women's shoulders. Almost all the mothers involved in the class action suit needed a loan to file their lawsuit for recognition and fund the necessary DNA testing, and they are taking out another loan for the nationality lawsuit. They have to be absent from work when attending court hearings. Given the costs and risks, suing the government seems reckless. But these mothers--their children's sole guardians--are painfully concerned about their kids' future. "When a child is still a baby, a mother like us is OK, as long as she has residential status and a job," Jurian's mother, Charlette, said. "But the problem starts as the child grows older. What are we supposed to tell the child when they grow up and ask, 'Why am I not Japanese?' They ask so many 'whys.'" "We mothers don't need Japanese nationality. We want to go back to the Philippines when we become old," Charlette added. "But I can't bring my daughter to my country. She only speaks Japanese and only knows life in Japan. She'd have such a difficult time in the Philippines. She wants to live in Japan." "If I go back to the Philippines, I'd have to leave my child alone in Japan. I'd feel lonely and full of worries," she said. Loretta Ligon, mother of a 9-year-old boy, agreed. "Unless we solve this problem now, my son, who already has to deal with bullying at school, will face even more difficulties in the future--just as I do right now," she said. "My son has been told by his classmates that he isn't Japanese. He doesn't have confidence in who he is. I'm worried if he can adopt to Japanese society when he becomes a grown-up," she added. According to Rieko Ito of Citizens' Network for Japanese Filipino Children, in the 1990s, the major problem for Filipino mothers was getting child support payments from uncooperative fathers or even finding them. "But as the children grow older and start going to school, mothers face more and more issues that worry them...including discrimination," she said. === Government inflexible For these children, the Justice Ministry takes the position that the current law offers enough options to solve their grievances. "As long as their parents marry, they can get Japanese nationality," ministry official Ryoji Izumoto said. But at least in the cases of the nine mothers, it is impossible for them to think about marrying the children's fathers, as many of them severed contact with the mothers as soon as they became pregnant. Some of the fathers were married. The fact the women had to go through DNA testing and a recognition lawsuit proves they cannot hope for marriage to their children's fathers. Izumoto said the other option was to seek naturalization. But Yasuhiro Okuda, professor at Chuo University Law School, disagreed. "Naturalization can't be a salvation to these children, and the Supreme Court mentioned this in its past ruling, although it still concluded the law was constitutional," he said. Since requests for naturalization are determined by administrative discretion, the Japanese-Filipino children may be rejected. According to Okuda, no court has ever reversed a government decision to refuse naturalization. "Naturalization is a painstaking, time-consuming process," Okuda said. "If they have enough money, they can hire an administrative scrivener, but they'd still have to show up for a series of interviews. This option is out of the question for working, single, foreign mothers." "No other nation has a system like Japan's, which draws the line of citizenship between the father's recognition of paternity before and after birth," Okuda added. Britain used to not grant citizenship to illegitimate children born to a British father and a foreign mother, but it revised the law in 2002 after a committee of the U.N. children's rights convention found that it was discriminatory, he said. The U.N. Human Rights Committee also has expressed concern over the Japanese nationality law. Okuda found in a survey conducted in 2000 and 2001 that about one-fourth of the 241 children assisted by 174 child-counseling centers in Japan were illegitimate children born to a Japanese father and a foreign mother. "None of them had their fathers' recognition before birth," he said. The law professor, who has dealt with this issue since the 1990s, said there had been a long-running legal debate over the problem. "A large number of children are constantly left in this situation," he said. "But most of them are just bearing it and staying silent." (Oct. 2, 2005)