Nationality court cases

H・R・アイザックス(著)
我妻洋、佐々木譲 (訳)
神の子ら : 忘れられた差別社会
新潮選書
東京：新潮社
昭和四十五年七月二十五日 印刷
昭和四十五年七月三十日 発行
236 ページ、単子本、函

H. R. Isaacs (author)
Wagatsuma Hiroshi, Sasaki Yuzuru (translators)
Kami no ko-ra: Wasurareta sabetsu shakai
[ Children of god: The forgotten discriminatory society ]
Shinchō sensho
[ Shinchō select book (library) ]
Tokyo: Shinchōsha;
25 July 1970 printed
30 July 1970 published
236 pages, hardcover, slipcase

Limitations of completeness and accuracy of Shapiro v. State timeline

Most of dates and other details in the following timeline are based on documents in my possession. Descriptions of some of the actions taken by Jacob Shapiro, however, are based on Jacob Shapiro's oral testimony in the Tokyo District Court on Monday, 15 October 1979, as recorded by a court stenographyer (see below).

Jacob's testimony was conducted while making reference to documents his attorneys had submitted to the court. While I witnessed the testimony as a spectator, I did not see the documents. And the dates and other particulars in the documents were not disclosed in the testimony.

So I can only conjecture -- from the line of questioning and Jacob's replies -- how Shapiro v. State originated. By the end of 1979, the Shapiro and Sugiyama cases had begun to run on the same calender, but I didn't receive copies of Shapiro case briefs -- with only two exceptions. I received copies of documents that were also used in the Sugiyama case, such as the expert opinion and the translation of a German precedent. And in the course of preparing me for my oral testimony, Itō Sumiko gave me a court stenographer's transcription of Jacob Shapiro's oral testimony. Otherwise, I was not privy to the particulars of the Shapiro case.

I am aware that the district court handed down similar but separate rulings in both cases, on the same day -- Monday, 30 March 1981. The Shapiros, however, had moved to California the month before, and so they were not present in court to hear the rulings, or at the press conference that immediately followed.

Because hearings in the Shapiro and Sugiyama cases came to be scheduded back to back, I did witness some of the Shapiro case hearings. but hearing were generally brief -- just long enough to acknowledge receipt of briefs and make brief responses, agree to what would come next, and schedule the next hearing.

Nor did I take notes at hearings in either case -- because, at the discretion of the presiding judge, no one was allowed to take notes. The first time I pulled out a pad of paper and a pen with the intention of taking notes, I was promptly reproached by a court offical to put them away. Our attorneys had assumed I knew that I wouldn't be able to take notes, but I hadn't seen media reports of what had become a battle between court journalists and judges.

The names and name orders as reported here are those shown in a digest of the Tokyo District Court's ruling in Shapiro v. States in the 11 May 1981 issue of Hanrei jihō (判例時報), and in the transcript. The digest (and a few other other references to Shapiro v. State in legal reports) shows only "Shapiro Esther Hanako" as a plaintiff -- unlike the two Sugiyama v. State cases, in which the children's mother was also a plaintiff.

First instance (lower) court (1977-1982)
Type:       Nationality confirmation request case
Court:      Tokyo District Court, 3rd Civil Bench
Case:       Showa 52 (Gyo-u) 360 [1976 Gyo-u 360]
Filed:      19 December 1977
Plaintiff:  Shapiro Esther Hanako v. State
Legal representives with parental rights (co-litigants):
            Jacob Shapiro and Chiba Teruko
Judgment:   30 March 1981
Ruling:     Shapiro Esther Hanako's request (for nationality) is denied.
            Fees are to be born by the plaintiffs.

The Shapiros, with Hanako and 2nd daughter Akiko, born in 1979,
moved to California the month before this ruling.

Second instance (higher) appeal court (1981-1982)
Filed:      ? April 1981
Court:      Tokyo High Court, 15th Civil Bench
Case:       Showa 56 (Gyo-ko) ? [1981 Gyo-ko ?]
Plaintiff:  Shapiro Esther Hanako v. State
Legal representives with parental rights (co-litigants):
            Jacob Shapiro and Chiba Teruko
Judgment:   23 June 1982
Ruling:     Hanako is not Japanese

The Shapiros did not appeal this ruling.

On 20 October 1981, Hanako and a younger sister Akiko
were naturalized at a federal district court in Los Angegles.

The Shapiro's 3rd daughter, Yasuko, was born in Los Angeles in 1982.

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Oath and signature Face pages Jacob Shapiro's oral testimony As plaintiff's legal representative and person with parental rights Tokyo District Court Showa 52 (Gyo-u) 360 [1976 Gyo-u 360] 15 October 1979, 1 pm Shapiro Yakobu [Shapiro Jacob] Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Page 1 Page 24 Page 23 Page 26 Page 25 Jacob Shapiro's testimony Never mind how intimately connected the Saori's Sugiyama v. State case was to Hanako's Shapiro v. State case. Never mind that the two cases made essentially the same arguments, while sharing supporing documents, through the same attorneys. I did not receive copies of Shapiro briefs or decisions. And I would guess that Shapiro did not receive copies of Sugiyama briefs and decisions. I did however, receive a copy of the court stenographer's transcription of Jacob Shapiro's oral testimony. I had conveyed to Jacob my willingness to split the fees for supporting documents, and he replied wtth thanks and hopped we would be able to meet. So I made it a point to attend the hearing, on the afternoon of 15 October 1979, in which he testified on the witness stand. To the best of my memory, that was the only time I would meet him. Shapiro was examined by Nagaishi Yasuko, then briefly by an attorney for the State, and finally by the bench judge. I was examined by Itō Sumiko, and although I had observed Shapiro's testimony, on the day Itō prepared me for my examination at her office, she gave me a copy of Jacob's testimony. And I would carefully review it as a model of how she would unpack my life, and my understandings of nationality, on the witness stand -- and as a model of how I should confine the scope of my responses to the scope of the questions. Page 1 Shapiro's testimony consumed 26 pages of stenography. Nagaishi asked Shapiro 89 questions in order to establish before the court who he was and what had led to the litigation in progress. The first 3 questions were as follows (see images to the right, (parenteses) in transcript, [brackets] mine). [Naganishi] You're married to Chiba Teruko, right? [Shapiro] Yes. (Referring to an annotation in [Document] A-1) [Nagaishi] According to this, the notification that she had married you was made [to a municipal registrar] on 26 January 1977, but when did you actually come to be together? [Shapiro] Two years before that. [Nagaishi] In 1974? [Shapiro] In 1974. In this mannter, Nagaishi takes the 3-judge- bench, and the representatives for the State, through Shapiro's life, step by step, leaving few stones unturned. He testifies about his childhood and upbringing in Harbin and Japan, his education, his experiences as a stateless alien, his work with Columbia, his naturalization in America, and his return to Japan for work, after which he married Chiba and Hanako was born. Pages 23-26 In her last 5 questions -- 85-89 -- Nagaishi establishes that Jacob, having lived in Japan for over 40 years, had acquired considerable knowledge of and experience with Japanese customs -- to some extent had himself acquried "Japanese-esqe feelings" (Nihon-jin-teki-na kankaku 日本人的な感覚) ["Japan-person-like feelings (sensibilities, perceptions)" -- and he and his wife, together as Hanako's parents, intended to continue a Japanese-esque cultivation, sensibility, and life. True, he had naturalized in the United States. But his wife was Japanese and he spoke Japanese with her. And he'd come to speak Japanese with his own child. And that's the way it was. Naturalization A representative for the defendant, Kikuchi, had a few questions for Shapiro (90-95). When the ward office refused to accept the notification of Hanako's birth as a Japanese, had he considered naturalizating her? He hadn't. Did he know that it would be easy to naturalize Hanako? He didn't remember everything now, but yes, he partly knew, having heard about recently. Did he not have the impression that, especially in cases like Hanako's [i.e., when a child is born stateless], naturalization was very easy? Hehad recently heard that as much. When asked the reason he hadn't applied for naturalization, Shapiro replied like this (Question 93, page 24, [bracketed] clarifications mine). [I] wish to give the person concerned [Hanako] the right. [I] think there is a difference between the nationality of naturalization and nationality naturally through birth. [I] wish to give my own child the right of that difference. In other words, because [I] feel that, in the case [also] of the mother being a Japanese and the father being an American, the child as a matter of course has the right to get both nationalities -- and the person concerned [child] has the right to chose which -- I also am considering like this, and I think the acquisition of nationality by way of naturalization such a natural right at birth, are a bit different. EDIT CHACK On what points did he consider them different? In America, a naturalized person cannot become president. What points this way this is the way And so he wants to leave his daughter Hanako in the position of being able to choose her nationality? Yes, that's one thing. Until then, though, because her ties between a mother and child are very strong, he thinks she should have the nationality of Japan, the same nationality as her mother. CONTINUE WITH JUDGE QUESTIONS

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Shapiro's statelessness

Had Jacob Shapiro still been de jure stateless at the time Hanako was was born -- i.e., had he had no nationality -- she would have become Japanese through Article 3 of Japan's Nationality Law, which was matrilineal for the child of a Japanese woman if the father was unknown (i.e., if she was unmarried), or if the father was known (i.e., she was married) but was stateless. His problem was that Article 3 did not make provisions for de facto statelessness -- i.e., he had a nationality, but either it was not recognized, or its quality was such that his children, born outside the United States, could not acquire it -- as though he was stateless.

Hanako's father, Jacob Shapiro was born stateless through circumstances having nothing to do with either Japan's or America's nationality laws. He grew up stateless in Japan, and was stateless when he went to America, where he naturalized. However, he returned to Japan before he had satisfied the residence requirements he needed to meet in order for a child born outside the United States to acquire U.S. nationality through right-of-blood.

He returned to Japan, no longer stateless himself, but with U.S. nationality. But the quality of his nationality was such that it was not transmissible to children born outside the America.

No child actually "inherits" the nationality of a parent through right-of-blood. Rather a state extends its nationality to a child if the child and the parent meets the state's right-of-blood eligibility requirements. In the United States, these are are called "transmission requirements".

U.S. transmission requirements now make all manner of distinctions, such as between genetic and non-genetic, legal and non legal (wedlock and out-of-wedlock) parents, as well as between genetic and gestational mothers. The most important requirement, other than the quality of the child-parent relationship, is the amount of the the U.S. parent or parents have been physically present in the United States, especially after they have turned 14 -- age at which (in Japan as well) a child is considered to have sufficient legal competency to have a say in their nationality.

Jus sanguinis U.S. nationality transmission requirements

The U.S. Nationality Act is jus soli (right-of-soil) for anyone born in the United States or its territories -- except children born in the U.S. to foreign diplomats and others with immunity to U.S. laws. But U.S. nationality can be acquired through jus sanguinis (right-of-blood) by children born overseas to a U.S. citizen or national parent who meets U.S. residency requirements in effect at the time the child was born.

The residency requirements are intended to prevent the perpetuation of U.S. nationality among people with thin or nill territorial ties to the United States. They have somewhat varied according to whether the child is legitimate, and whether both its parents are U.S. nationals, and they have significantly changed over the decades.

Children born outside the United States or one of its territories, to U.S. citizens or nationals who meet transmission requirements, generally acquire U.S. nationality by obtaining a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA) certificate soon after their birth. A certificate is issued when an American parent presents proof U.S. nationality and sufficient residence in the United States or a U.S. territory, and a birth certificate or equivalent as evidence the parent's relationship to the child.

Delayed petitions for right-of-blood U.S. nationality, especially those filed many years after birth, are subject to more rigorous proofs of identity and eligibility. And legacy laws apply, as eligibility is based on transmission requirements in effect at the time of birth. The amount of paperwork to clear all the legal and bureaucratic hurdles can be staggering.

Transmission requirements in 1978

At time Hanako was born in 1978, the United States gave nationality to a foreign-born child of a U.S. citizen, only if the citizen parent had resided in the United States within 10 years before the child's birth, and for at least 5 years after turning 14.

All manner of family conditions can result in an child born into U.S. citizenship growing up without satisfying the basic nationality transmission requirements. This includes the children of Americans who reside overseas for whatever reason -- and young U.S. servicemen, who are subject to being posted overseas before satisfying the residency requirement.

Transmission requirements in 1986

1986 was a watershed for making it easier to acquire U.S. nationality through right-of-blood, and to retain U.S. nationality when performing acts in other countries that had conventionally been regarded as grounds for expatriation, including naturalization.

Regarding right-of-blood nationality tranmission requirements, they were significant relaxed in 1986 to residence in the United States within 5 years prior to the child's birth, at least 2 years of which had to be after turning 14.

For a fuller discussion of the stateless issue in the Shapiro and Sugiyama lawsuits and changes in transmission requirements, and the implications of the transmission requirements for the 2nd-generation of overseas-born Americans, see Legal issues (below).

See also Statelessness in Japan in the "Nationality" section for a more complete account of stateless cases in Okinawa.

For a look at how a 1980 Supreme Court decision inspired a 1986 amendment in America's nationality law, which made it easier to retain U.S. nationality when naturalizing in another country, see Laws in other countries under "Legal considerations" in the article on "Dual nationality in Japan" in the "Nationality" section.

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Hanako's nationality

At the time Hanako's parents filed Shapiro v. State, she was stateless, meaning she had no nationality. Having no personal relationship with Jacob Shapiro and not wishing to invade his privacy, and wanting to put our shared attorneys in the position of possibly telling me they couldn't disclose what they might have known about Hanako's legal status, I never did learn whether her parents registered her parents filed a birth notification acceptable to the Minato Ward registrar, and then registered her as an alien.

This may seem an odd thing to say. For if she were stateless, surely she would have been registered as an alien, for Japan's laws define a Japanese as anyone who possessess Japanese nationality, while everyone who does not possessess Japanese nationality is an alien -- including stateless people in Japan, who possess no nationality. While stateless people are not really "foreigners" or "aliens" (gaikokujin 外国人 "other-country-person" or "outlander"), they were subsumed under the term and its synonyms for purposes of Alien Registration (until 2012, when the registration system was changed).

But there is a problem. In order to be registered as an alien in Japan, once has to have entered the country in two ways -- through birth, or through a port of entry. If through birth, like Hanako, then a birth notification has to be filed and accepted by a municipal registrar. If the child does not qualify for Japanese nationality, then the child has to acquire proof of nationality (or lack of nationality), and a status of residence generally as a dependant of either a Japanese national or an alien with a status of residence.

On 5 September 1977,

Over the years, I imagined two scenarioes. Perhaps the Shapiros waited until the Nationality Law was revised, which was already assured when the Tokyo High Court issued its rulings in 1982. Surely the revision would make provisions for nationality acquisition in cases like Hanako's. Her statelessness, and other cases of statelessness in Japan, were issues in the Diet as well as in mass media. And the lower and higher court rulings, while rejecting the premises of the Shapiro and Sugiyama cases, had suggested that the legislature might review the Nationality Law to bring it up to date with changing global standards and domestic needs.

As it turned out, the revision -- promulgated on 25 May 1984 and enforced from 1 January 1985 -- made no specific provisions for stateless children. However, it didn't need to.

The revised law had supplementary "transitional measures" that allowed all children born to a Japanese woman married to a non-Japanese man, regardless of whether the child had another nationality, to acquire Japanese nationality by filing a "Nationality Aquisition Notification" at a local legal affairs bureau. The notification had to be filed within 3 years of the date of the revision's effectuation -- i.e., by 31 December 1987. The applicant had to be a minor under Japanese law at the time of notification -- i.e., not yet 20 years old. And the applicant had to be residing in Japan.

I also imagined that the Shapiros, as Hanako's legal guardians, might have applied for permission for her to naturalize in Japan under Article 6 of the 1950 Nationality Law -- which provided that "One who is a child (excluding child by adoption) of a Japanese national and has domicile in Japan" could be naturalized without satisfying items (1), (2), or (4) of the general requirements for naturalization -- namely, without meeting the requirements that one (1) has had a domicile in Japan for five or more years consecutively, (2) is twenty years of age or more and a person of full capacity according to the law of his or her home country, and (4) has property or ability enough to lead independent living.

Hanako's naturalization

The Shapiros and Hanako were invisible to me and the public during the period that Shapiro v. State and Sugiyama v. State were sharing the same attorneys and practically the same litigation track. The family entirely fell off my radar when Hanako's parent declined to appeal the 23 June 1982 Tokyo High Court decision that essentially agreed with the Tokyo District Court ruling against Hanako's request for confirmation that she should be eligible to acquire Japanese nationality through her mother.

I was of the opinion then -- and for the next 40 years -- that Hanako was stateless at the time her appeal was before the high court. She was in fact stateless -- until 5 March 1982 -- 2-1/2 months before its decision -- when she and her younger sister, Miriam Akiko Shapiro, were naturalized into U.S. nationality in Los Angeles, based on a Petition for Naturalization (On Behalf of a Child) filed on 7 February 1981 -- 7 weeks before the district court ruling..

At the time, I wasn't aware that the Shapiro's had had another child,

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Jacob Shapiro's extended family

Parents, siblings, descendants

Nationality issues became important only because of the status problems engendered by migrations and mixtures of people across political borders, and by changing attitudes toward male-female, parent-child, individual-family, and person-state relationships. The nationality laws of all sovereign states, while many may share some principles, are different. And while some states face similar nationality problems. rarely do states directly collaborate with one another for the purpose of solving common nationality issues.

Nationality is a private matter in that nationality constitutes a personal status. The effects of marriage on nationality -- and the nationality of a child whether born in or out of wedlcok, or whether born to parents of the same nationality or with different nationalities, or whether born in the country of a parent's nationality or in another country -- can be discussed without reference to the genealogical details of a particlar family's history, other than the time, place, and other facts that define the cirumstances in which a nationality case originated.

Still, knowing the general history of the Shapiro and Sugiyama families is the best way to understand the extent to which nationality issues figured in the lives of ancestors and descendants, and to what extent -- if any -- the courses of the two family histories were effected by the court proceedings, judicial rulings, and legislative solutions. If nothing else, family histories, spaning several generations, are great sagas, in which nationality issues -- as huge as they may seem when focusing on them -- become relatively minor scenes in a much larger drama.

Family histories to not matter much in nationality court cases, which are generally argued on points of domestic law, domestic needs, and domestic authority, possibly with reference to the laws of neighboring countries and international trends in nationality law. Courts may sympathize with the compaints raised by litigants, but at the end of the day, considerations of law and order trump personal circumstances.

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Shapiro-Chernetzky family
Children of Constantine and Lydia Shapiro

0. Constantine Shapiro (1896-1992) was born Konstantin Isaakovich Shapiro on 31 December 1896, the 2nd of 4 children, in Saratov (Saratow), which was then Russia's 3rd largest city. As its masculine name signifies, it was on the right bank of the Volga river.
   
   For Jews in Russia at the time, the family was very privileged. Music, and literature and philopshy, became focal points in Consantine's life. Then in 1918, in the wake of the continuing socialist revolution, Constantine made his way to Ukraine, and by 1919 was in Germany, studying philosophy while continuing his musical studies, playing mainly the cello but also the piano. He then went to America, from which, in November 1920, he went to Japan to reunite with his parents and sister.
   
   By 1921, the family was in Berlin, but in 1923, Constantine made plans to return to Japan. The Great Kanto Earthquake on 23 September that year, however, forced him to remain in Berlin, where he and Lydia would meet in 1925, and marry on 10 December 1925 at the home of a rabbi.
   
   Then in 1926, apprehensive about anti-Semitism in Germany, Constantine and Lydia moved via Paris to Tel Aviv in Palestine, a mandatory territory of the British Empire, where their first sons were born in 1926.
   1. Constantine Shapiro, his wife Lydia, their youngest son Michael, and the family governess and housekeeper Rebecca Vaisman arrived in San Francisco aboard the SS William Luckenbach on 20 September 1952 (see Michael's story below for details). Constantine filed a Petition for Naturalization on 18 August 1957 and received a Certificate of Citizenship on 11 July 1958,
0. Lydia (Ita) Chernetzky (1905-1983) was born in Russian-controlled Odessa on 13 June 1905 according to her Petition for Naturalization. After a progrom in the city in October 1905, The Chernetzkys moved, when Lydia was 4 months old, to Harbin in Manchuria, where she was raised.
   1. Odessa, known today as Odesa in media that adopt Ukrainian rather than Russian spellings for place names in Ukraine, has been a contested territory throughout its history, owing to its location on the Black Sea. By the late 19th century, roughly one-third of its population was Jewish. Throughout the 19th century, the city experienced a number of pogroms, which spurred considerable Jewish emigration to places safer for Jews, including parts of the Ottomon Empire that became Palestine.
   In 1921, too young to enroll in the Academy of Music in Berlin, Lydia studied for a while at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1922 she studied in New York, and in 1923 went to Germany, where she met Constantine, who was taken away by her both her musical talent and her American-style Roaring Twenties "new woman" modernity.
   1. Lydia, Constantine, their youngest son Michael, and the family governess and housekeeper Rebecca Vaisman, arrived in San Francisco aboard the SS William Luckenbach, on 20 September 1952 (see Michael's story below for details). Lydia filed a Petition for Naturalization on 23 December 1957 and received a Certificate of Citizenship on 11 July 1958, the same day as Constantine,
1. Joseph Shapiro (1926-2002), called Joe by some friends and Yozhik and Yoshinka at home, was born in December 1926 in Tel Aviv, shortly before his fraternal twin Ariel Shapiro (1926-2008). Tel Aviv was then in Palestine, a mandate territory of the British Empire. The brothers, in Manchoukuo when the Pacific War ended, made their way to Harbin, which had been invaded and captured by the Soviet Union.
   1. According to one story, both brothers went to the Soviet Union, where Joseph, a socialist, stayed his entire life, while Ariel returned to Palestine, after it became Israel. According to Isaac Shapiro, however, only Joseph went to the Soviet Union, "where he was immediately conscripted into the uniformed NKVD (the predecessor of the notorious KGB) and put to work interrogating Japanese prisoners of war" (Shapiro 2009, page 215). Joseph went on to become a professor and free-lance translator. Isaac saw Joseph in Moscow in 1959, and again in 1992 when he set up an office of his law firm there, and Joseph did some translation work for the firm. Joseph married a woman named Lydia and they had two daughters. He died in Vladivostok in December 2002.
2. Ariel Shapiro (1926-2008), called Ryuka and Ryushinka at home, was born in December 1926 in Tel Aviv, shortly after his fraternal twin Joseph Shapiro (1926-2002). Ariel was much shorter, less athletic, less political, and more studious than Joseph.
   
   While Joseph clearly went from Harbin to the Soviet Union, Isaac Shapiro writes that "Ariel, his non-identical twin and no Socialist, chose to remain in Harbin. In 1950, two years after the creation of Israel and one year after the Communists took over China, he left for Israel, the land of his birth, along with scores of other Russian Jews stranded in Harbin" (Shapiro 2009, page 215). However, documents suggest a more complex scenario.
   1. Ariel appears to have been aboard the S/S Wooster Victory, when the vessel departed from Tientsin (Tianjin) in northern China, bound for Italy with displaced persons regarded as refugees, most of them Jewish, on 31 October 1949, shortly after the establishment of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949. One document -- titled "A Nominal Roll of Persons Departing from Tientsin, China on 31 October 1949 (S/S Wooster Victory)", prepared by "The International Refugee Organization" -- lists Shapiro Ariel, Palestine [Country of Citizenship or Last Habitual Residence], 1/12/1926 [Date of Birth], passage paid by Palamt (page 2, line 18), with several other "Persons Delcared Ineligible by IRO". However, a list of "Ex-Tientsin -- Individual Resettlers to Israel [via Italy]" shows SHAPIRO Ariel, born "1.12.926" [sic], 23, with a Palestine passport issued in Moscow on "6.12.48" [sic] (page 7, line 185).
   According to Isaac Shapiro, Ariel was drafted into the the Israeli Air Force, and remained in the country for 10 years. He then emigrated to the United States, arriving at Boston, Massachusetts on a Quantas Airline flight from London on 15 January 1960 with Israeli nationality -- according to an admission record, and his "Petition for Naturalization", approved in Los Angeles on 17 June 1966. The petition states his occupation as "Travel Agent". He married Barbara Bloomfield, who had also been an Israeli, on 4 October 1975, in Las Vegas. He died in Santa Monica on 9 January 2008, leaving Barbara, his brothers Jacob, Isaac, and Michael. and several nephews and nieces in America, Russia, and Japan. His ashes are in a crypt at Westwood Memorial Park in Westwood in Los Angeles county.
3. Jacob Shapiro (1918-2020), the middle of the 5 Shapiro boys, was born on 27 August 1928 in Harbin as Yakov Konstantinovich Shapiro, and was called Yasha and Yashinka at home. The "Yacov" pronunciation of his name is clearly reflected in the way he transliterated his name into -- as "Yakobu Shapiro" (ヤコブ・シャピロ).
   
   Jacob's parents brought him to Yokohama in 1929, but in 1931 they separated, and his mother took her 4 sons (including by then Isaac) to Harbin, where her father lived. Lydia brought the boys back to Japan in 1934, and resumed living with their father. So Jacob was entirely educated in schools in Japan, including (after World War II) Gakushuin University (Gakushūin Daigaku 学習院大学), originally a school for children of members of the imperial family and the peerage, meaning noble families with titles. The peer schools, however, were also attended by children of many title-less upper-class families, such as Jacob's stateless parents, who as professional musicians socially circulated with members of the imperial family and the nobility.
   
   Jacob married Chiba Teruko (bc1948) in 1976 and they had 3 daughters -- Esther Hanako and Miriam Akiko, born stateless in Tokyo in 1977 and 1979, and Rebekah Yasuko born an American citizen in Los Angeles in 1982. Jacob died on 15 July 2020, in his 92nd year of life, in Glendale, California.

4. Isaac Shapiro, called Sasha and Shashinka at home, was born Tokyo Sanitarium-Hospital on 5 January 1931, shortly before his mother took her brood of 4 sons to Harbin, in a marital separation that would continue for 5 years.
   1. Shortly after the start of the Allied Occupation of Japan from 2 September 1945, Isaac was adopted for his language skills by Colonel J.C. Munn, a U.S. Army officer who had enough clout to arrange for Isaac to immigrate to the United States and permanently live while pursuing his education and future life. On 12 July 1946, Shapiro, I., Occupation CIVILIAN, Age 15, Country of Which Citizen or Subject NONE, arrived at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, aboard a U.S. Navy plane with a small contingent of high ranking Navy officers, including a rear admiral. An "INFORMATION SHEET (concerning alien passenger arriving on aircraft" stated that his passage was paid for by Col. J.C. Munn, who lived in Pearl Harbor. Munn, described as Isaac's guardian, had written an affidavit of support as his sponsor. Isaac, a student, was able to read English, Japanese, and Russian, and was able write Russian, Isaac's purpose in coming to the United States as "remain permanently". He was admitted under "Sec. 5. Quota Immigrant." for "Perm Res".
   2. Isaac, dubbed "Ike" by U.S. sailors for whom he interpreted at the start of the Allied Occupation of Japan. He witnessed the official surrender on 2 September 1945 from the battleship Utah, next to the battleship Missouri, where the Instrument of Surrender was signed.
   4. Issac was informally adopted by Col. J. C. "Toby" Munn, a U.S. Marine Corps officer, and his wife Leah Munn, who had no children. For 2 years, he lived with the Munns in a Navy housing area in Makalapa in Pearl Harbor. After graduating from high school in 1948. He was offered scholarships to Harvard and Columbia, and opted for Columbia. He flew to the east coast on a Navy transport plane bound for Washington, D.C. via California. Toby was in Washington, and Isaac stayed with him for a week, before catching a ride to New York with a brigadier general who was Toby's friend.
   5. After graduating from Columbia College, Isaac served in the Korean War. After the war, he enrolled in Columbia Law School, and graduated on On 5 June 1956, On 16 September that year, he married Jacquelin "Jackie" Miriam Weiss, an attorney who had also graduated from Columbia, at a synagogue in Teaneck, New Jersey. Jacob and Michael Shapiro, and Jacquelin's brother David Weiss, were ushers. Issac's best man was Major General John Calvin Muun, U.S.M.C.
   6. Isaac and Jacquelin Shapiro honeymooned to Europe aboard the Queen Mary, and resided in Paris for a year, where Isaac studied law on a Fulbright fellowship. The have two daughters and a son. One of the daughters, Alexandra A.E. Shapiro, also graduated form Columbia Law School, in 1991, and clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020), who graduated from Columbia in 1959 and served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court from 1993 to her death in 2020.
5. Michael Shapiro, called Mishinka at home, was born in Yokohama General hospital on 29 November 1939, 3 years after his mother returned to Japan from Harbin and resumed living with his father. Michael migrated to the United States with his parents, and the Shapiro family housekeeper and governess Rebecca Vaisman, arriving in San Francisco aboard the SS William Luckenbach on 20 September 1952. The cabin class passenger manifests shows Shapiro, Mr. Constantine 55; Shapiro, Mrs. Ita (Lydia) 46; Shapiro, Mstr. Michaell [sic] 12; and Vaisman. Mrs. Rebecca 61 -- and the "Nationality" box shows all to be stateless.
   1. Michael eventually plunged into an academic study of Russian, and he became a fairly well-known Slavist and linguist at several universities, with numerous academic articles and a few books to his credit. He also created blogs on which he continues (as of this writing in 2023) to post all manner of content related to his academic and other interests, Shapiro family history, and Marianne.
   2. Michael married the Italianist, poet, and novelist Marianne Goldner (1940-2003) in New York on 25 June 1967, and a daughter, Abigail, was born in Los Angeles on 14 October 1968. According to Michael, Marianne "spoke French and Italian fluently, in addition to her native Hungarian and her flawless English" (Language Lore (3 June 2023). Marianne was refused tenure at two different colleges where she had been teaching Italian literature, for what Michael describes as "spurious reasons" in his copious writing about her after her death. In one case, she pursued litigation that resulted in an out-of-court settlement. Michael has devoted a lot of his life to memorializing her academic work, publishing a novel she had written, and writing a novel of his own about her life.
0. Rebecca Vaisman (1891-1968) was born Reveka Illynishna Lakshtanova on 17 August 1891 in Kremenchug on the left bank of the Dnieper river in Ukraine. Her family migrated to Tel Aviv in the wake of Jewish persecution in both Russia and Ukraine. She was working as a dental technician when Joseph and Ariel were born in Tel Aviv. Her mother, a registered nurse, who was Lydia's maternity ward nurse, told her that Lydia needed help, and she immediately agreed to work for Lydia and the Shapiro family. She accompanied Lydia to Japan, then to Harbin and back to Japan, and finally to the United States, where she remained with Lydia until her own death in Los Angeles in 1968 at age 77 (Shapiro 2009, pages 77-78).

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Shapiro-Chiba family
Children of Jacob Shapiro and Chiba Teruko

0. Constantino Shapiro    Ita (Lydia) Chernetzky 
   1896-1992              1905-
       |     Married 1925     |
       |______________________|
       |
       1 Joseph 1927-
       2 Ariel 1927-2008 
       3 Jacob 1928-2020
       4 Isaac b1931-01-04
       5 Michael b1939-11-29
       |
1. Jacob Shapiro          Chiba Teruko
   1928-2020              1949-
       |     Married 1976     |
       |______________________|
       |      3 daughters
       |
       1 Esther Hanako (Felton) b1977-08-24 Tokyo
       2 Miriam Akiko Shapiro b1979-08-02 Tokyo
       3 Rebekah Yasuko b1982-06-21 Los Angeles
       |
2. Esther Hanako Shapiro / Hanako Shapiro Felton
       | b 1977-08-24 Tokyo
       | n 1981-10-20 Los Angeles with Akiko
       | m 
       |
3. Sophie Felton b2020-06-30

Met in Berlin, where they married in 1925
Took refuge in Palestine (then a British mandate territory)
Moved to Japan.
Esther Hanako Shapiro (b1977)
Hanako Shapiro Felton
Daughter Sophie Felton born 30 June 2020
Miriam Akiko Shapiro (b1981)
Rebekah Yasuko Shapiro (b1982)

Roscoe writes "Because of one legal battle lost in 1981, Hanako Shapiro, now 5 years old, is stateless." Neither allegation is true. Jacob Shapiro, Hanako's father and legal guardian, on her behalf, appealed the 1981 ruling of the Tokyo District Court to the Tokyo District Court, which rejected the appeal in 1982. At this point, Shapiro decided not to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Why? Because, by then, he had moved to Los Angeles, where he immediately filed a Petition for Naturalization in behalf of his Tokyo-born stateless daughters, Hanako (born 1977) and her sister Akiko (born 1979). And both became U.S. citizens in 1982 -- several weeks before the 1982 Tokyo High Court decision. A third daughter, Yasuko (born 1982), was born in Los Angeles.

Among other incorrect allegations, Roscoe wrote that "Japanese law disqualifies her [Hanako's] mother as a full citizen." This appears to allude to a previous allegation that "Japanese women married to foreign husbands are currently denied the right to pass on their nationality to their children". However, Japan's Nationality Law has nothing to do with "citizenship", and no Japanese law related to rights and duties of Japanese nationals -- meaning people who possess Japan's nationality -- gives any Japanese parent the right to transmit his or her Japanese nationality to a child. Japanese nationality is acquired, from the state, if and only if its Japanese parent complies with provisions in the Family Registration Law that qualify a child for acquisition -- which means birth registration in a timely manner. Even in the United States, no American parent has a "right" to transmit their U.S. nationality to a child born overseas if they fail meet minimum arbitrary residential requirements established by Congress -- not the Constitution. Cases in point would be Jacob Shapiro's residential disqualification for transmission of right-of-blood U.S. nationality to Hanako and Akiko -- in striking contrast with Yasuko's qualification for acquisition of right-of-soil nationality, regardless of her parents' nationalities. In fact, parents of children born in the United States, whether they be Americans or aliens, have no say in the right of their children to U.S. nationality, simply because they were born in America.

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Click on pages to enlarge Satomi Naho on cover of 9 December 1977 Shūkan Asahi 3-page article on Isaac Shapiro headlined Attorney "closed country" Japan rocked by landing of black ship "America law office" established in Tokyo by Isaac Shapiro, Resident Partner Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, New York, N.Y. Yosha Bunko scans Click on article to enlarge Article by Isaac Shapiro on "Jurisprudence in Japan and America" The Japan Times, Sunday, 9 August 1979 Yosha Bunko scan 2009 (above) and 2017 (below) editions of Isaac Shapiro's Edokko Click on back covers to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Portrait of Shapiro family taken in Yokohama in August 1941 Standing left to right Isaac, Jacob, Ariel, Joseph Sitting left to right mother Lydia holding Michael, father Constantine, governness Mrs. Vaisman Scanned from 2009 edition, also found in 2017 editon Left Isaac Shapiro as Staff Sergeant in Korea Scanned from 2009 edition of Edokko but also in 2017 edition Right Isaac Shapiro with brother Jacob Scanned from 2017 edition, not in 2009 edition Yosha Bunko scans Isaac Shapiro (b1931) Isaac Shapiro, born and raised in Japan, and educated in Japan until high school, graduated of Columbia School of Law in 1956, studied in Paris for a year, and passed the New York Bar in 1957. He came to Japan to reside for a couple of years in 1977 as a "resident partner" of the New York law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, New York, N.Y. As he tells the story in Edokko (below), he started as an associate of the firm in July 1956, became a partner in January 1966, and remained with the firm until April 1986. He describes his residence in Japan as follows (cited from 2009 edition of Edokko, page 220; differently paragraphed in 2017 edition, page 190). During my thirty-year affiliation with Milbank Tweed, I visited Japan frequently and continued to maintain my many close professional and personal contacts there. I served as president of the Japan Society in New York from 1970 to 1977 and often visited Japan in that capacity. On several occasions, we were invited to tea or lunch with the then-Crown Prince (now the Emperor) Akihito and the Crown Princess. In 1977, I moved to Tokyo for two years with my wife and our two daughters, Alexandra and Natasha, to open Milbank Tweed's office there. (Our son did not join us, as he was away in college. That stay in Japan made it possible for us to be reunited with my brother Jacob, then still living in Tokyo. Isaac had all the connections to exploit contemporary law and policy in Japan regarding the practicing of law in Japan by attorneys from other countries. He was not allowed to act as an attorney concerned with Japanese law, but he could advise individuals and organizations on legal matters under New York law, and probably under Federal U.S. codes and international private law. However, his opening of a law office in Tokyo in 1977, as a "resident partner" of a large New York law firm, upset the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, which pressured the government to halt the establishment of foreign law offices in Japan until more controls could be put into place -- which came about in 1986, nearly a decade later. The problem of whether attorneys from other countries should be allowed to practice law in Japan, and what limits should be imposed on their practice in Japan, was not a new one, but Isaac Shapiro appears to have been confident that he would be able to represent clients who needed the legal services his firm, in New York, could offer. The article shown to the right is one of several that reported the reaction of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, which is very protective of its turf -- namely, Japanese law and Japanese courts. JFBA rankled at the thought of someone from another country, not trained and licensed in Japan, representing a client in matters involving Japanese law, much less take the matter to court in Japan. As the headline of the article stated, Shapiro's "America Law Office" was viewed as something brought to Japan's shores by a "black ship" of the kind that had brought Commodore Perry to Japan in order to force Japan to open a Japanese ports to American vessels for repairs and provisions if not trade. ""Attorney 'closed country' Japan" alluded to the Tokugawa Period, during which Japan was "closed" to all but trickles of Dutch, Chinese, and Chosen trade. Perry's "black ships" and their equivalents from other powerful countries had "opened" Japan in the late 19th century, but some sectors of the country remained "closed" to foreigners or foreign interests. At the time, one had to pass the National Law Exam, complete two years of training at the Supreme Court's Law Institute and pass its exams, then register with the bar association in the localities where one intended to practice. And, like doctors, only attorneys with credentials in Japan could practice in Japan. The banners above and below the headline reads -- "Is a bypath (loophole) for [foreign] attorneys possible?" -- "Bridgehead making in the Japan-America economic war?!". The deck of the article structurally translates as follows (see images to the right). Attorneys, though they may yield a step to doctors when it comes to making money, lead by several steps when it comes to the difficulty of the [national] qualification exam and their scarcity value. But, in that "closed-country Pacific [ocean]", where they are seeking a monopolistic operation within the country, this summer a black ship landed. Of course, the attorney-sans of Japan banded together, and [they] are seeking to evict (deport, expel) [the invader] outside (from) the country, but voices shouting "open country" are also arising from within, and [the confrontation] has become an "internal (domestic, civil) war just like [during] the Bakumatsu (era) [when Commadore Perry's black ships and other farmed foreign vessels forced Japan to open the country]. The article points out that "There is a path for Americans to take the national law examination and get a qualification for [praciting Japanese law in] Japan. But some Japanese attorneys balked at the importation of American attorneys in what amounted to a "Japan-America turf war". Law Number 66 of 23 May 1986, titled "Special measures law concerning the handling of legal services by attorneys of other countries" (Gaikoku bengoshi ni yoru hōritsu jimu no toriatsukai ni kan suru tokubetsu sōshi hō 外国弁護士による法律事務の取扱いに関する特別措置法), provide procedures for attorneys licensed to practice law in other countries, but not in Japan, to be permitted to practice law in Japan in matters concerning laws in the foreign jurisdictions in which they are licensed. Essentially, qualified foreign attorneys must apply to the Ministry of Justice for permission to practice law in Japan, relevant to the laws of their licensed expertise. If approved by MOJ, they apply to the Gaikokuhō Jimu Bengoshi (外国法事務弁護士) or GJB division of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (Nihon Bengoshi Rengōkai 日本弁護士連合会), for special member status as a GJB member of JFBA and of the branch of JFBA in the region where the GJB attorney establishes an office. Note that the term "foreign lawyer" in standard English translations of the 1986 law has misled many people to think that "foreign lawyer" means an attorney of foreign nationality. However, "foreign lawyer" it is merely a poor translation of "foreign country attorney", meaning an attorney licensed in a foreign country -- whatever the attorney's nationality. In other words, the nationality of a GJB attorney is irrelevant. The attorney could be a Japanese national who is licensed in, say, California or Nigeria, and wants to represent people in Japan in matters concerning California or Nigerian codes. The limitation of representation to attorneys licensed within a given jurisdiction is the rule rather than the exception -- everywhere -- for the simple reason that licensing by a local bar examination insures basic understanding of local laws and procedures. In Japan, this means familiarity with Japanese law in Japanese, which requires a high level of Japanese literacy in addition to legal literacy. To practice Japanese law in Japan, one has to pass the National Bar Exam (Shihō shiken 司法試験 "Law exam"), serve a 1-year apprenticeship at the Legal Training and Research Institute of the Supreme Court and pass its exam. In the past, most people who became attorneys in Japan were products of the Legal Training Institute, and for a while Japanese nationality was mandatory. Nationality is no longer a bar to qualify as a lawyer in the practice of Japanese law, but prosecutors and judges -- as high-level civil servants -- must be Japanese nationals. Top   Isaac Shapiro 1979 Isaac Shapiro Jurisprudence: Key to Differences Between Japan, U.S. (With Foundations, Attitudes Toward Law Diametrically Opposed, Misunderstanding Bound to Arise) The Japan Times Sunday, 5 August 1979, page 12 In my personal opinion -- Isaac Shapiro, when writing this article, was high on the sort of culturist convictions that are common among members of organizations that promote "cultural relations" -- like the Japan Society of New York and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. Note two serious problems in his article -- (1) the total absence of an appraisal of the 1,500-year history of laws and their administration and enforcement in Japan, in both civil and criminal matters, and in government -- and (2) his focus on recent developments in federal and state laws in America that reflect new and contentious notions like "freedom of information". Life in Japan has not been possible without compliance with all manner of laws and regulations that govern everything from legal status to income and property taxes, land translations, marriage, adoption, divorce, inheritance, school enrollment, suffrage, vehicle and other machine operating licensing, the practicing of law and medicine, and all manner business related laws and regulations -- most designed for administration and enforcement by legally authorized bureaucrats, with the help of scriveners -- rather than by attorneys and courts. Not to mention the disposition of behaviors criminalized over the centuries by one or another penal code. It is not that Japanese are less "litigious" than, say, Americas. Rather Japan, as a society, has developed a superior system of law and order in which laws are written with trouble-free administration in mind -- and for compliance with little or no need for legal mediation. In this sense, Shapiro is right to say that American society tends to be "adversarial" -- because it was born out of adversarial conditions that favored the development of a legal elite that prospers on contention. This does not mean that laws and their enforcement have not been every bit as important in Japan as in America -- where every state is a legal jurisdiction unto itself, that establishes its own laws and enforces them through its own courts. Shapiro himself did qualify as an "American attorney" -- because there is no such animal. He qualified as a "New York attorney" -- who at the time would not have been allowed to practice law in most other U.S. states. As of this writing, New York has reciprocity agreements with only 26 states and the District of Columbia. New York does not have a reciprocity agreement with California, which does not offer reciprocity. In other words, "jurisprudence" is a lot more complicated than a matter of "East" and "West". Top   Isaac Shapiro 2009, 2017 Isaac Shapiro Edokko (Growing Up a Foreigner in Wartime Japan) New York: iUniverse, Inc., 2009 xiv, 227 pages, softcover New York: iUniverse, Inc., 2010-06-18 244 pages, paper cover Isaac Shapiro Edokko (Growing Up a Stateless Foreigner in Wartime Japan) seasidepress.org, 2017 202 pages, paper cover Handwritten graphs for 江戸っ子, which read "Edokko", appear below the title on the spine of the 2009 edition and on the front cover of the 2010 edition. The 2017 editions shows the graphs on the cover. Note also that the 2017 edition includes "stateless" in the subtitle. The 2009 edition is better illustrated with full-page and smaller photographs of the author, before he came to Japan, while growing up in Japan, and after his migration to the United States after World War II. The reproduction quality of the photos is not, however, very good. The 2017 revised edition has fewer photographs, collected at the end, and reprodudedin a lighter shade of gray. The photos in the 2017 edition include a recent one of Isaac and Jacob, who assisted with the revisions. Jacob Shapiro (1928-2020) The parents of the 5 Shapiro brothers -- the twins Joseph and Ariel, Jacob, Issac, and Michael -- were White Russian refugees in China. The Soviet Union of post-Revolution Russia had denaturalized all White Russians who had fled Russia, or were already outside the country, and were seeking asylum or otherwise renouncing their connections with the new state. And so Jacob, born in Manchuria in 1928, was stateless from birth, as were his brothers. Soon after his birth in 1928 -- in the same year, according to Isaac's autobiography -- Jacob's mother Lydia, a pianist, brought him to Japan, where he was raised and educated bilingually. Jacob's paternal grandparents had settled in Japan after the Russian Revolution in 1917. His mother and father had met and married in Berlin, where they had fled, then lived in Palestine for a while, but moved to Harbin in Manchuria, then part of China, before they had been in Palestine long enough to become citizens. Jacob's younger brother Issac was born on 5 January 1931 in Tokyo, 3 years after his mother brought the twins and Jacob to Japan. By then, 3 generations of Jacob's family were living in Japan. The youngest brother, Michael, was born in Yokohama 8 years later in 1939. Of interest here is Japan's Nationality Law, which provided then (as now) that a child born in Japan, to parents both of whom are known or stateless, are Japanese. If both Constantine and Lydia were stateless, then Isaac and Michael should have been regarded as Japanese and provided with family registers in the minicipality where they were residing when born. Did the Shapiros not wish them to be so registered? Or was their White Russian status such that they were only de facto rather than de jure stateless? At the time, Japan classified White Russians as "Russians" -- signifying that they were subjects of the defunct state of Russia, who had not migrated to the nationality of the Soviet state that had displaced Russia, on account of new Red Russian state not recognizing White Russians as its nationals. I.e., they had "Russian" rather than "Soviet" papers, which made them de facto rather than de jure stateless. A similar situation in Japan today results in some residents being classified as "Chosenese" on the strength of the "Chosen" papers -- namely, the Chosen family registers in the possession of the registrars of the municipalities in Japan where they reside -- rather than ROK or other papers, which would make them nationals of ROK or another state. Some Chosenese have DPRK papers in addition to their Chosen registers, but since Japan does not recognize DPRK, their DPRK documents are not recognized for nationality purposes. The important point is that -- because they possess the nationality of a state that does not exist -- i.e., the state that Japan's territory of Chosen would have become if it had not been divided between ROK and DPRK -- they are not de jure stateless, and therefore they are not classified as stateless in Japan's nationality statistics, but as Chosenese. When Issac was 6-months old -- Jacob 3 years old -- the family returned to Harbin, and would live there for 5 or 6 years until 1936, when they returned to Japan permanently. In Japan they lived in Sagiyama and then Honmoku in Yokohama, and the boys attended Yokohama International School. After college, still stateless, Jacob accepted a job with Columbia Pictures in the United States. Much of the job involved work in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. Five years later, in 1968, he became a U.S. citizen, but Columbia posted him to Japan as the president of Columbia Pictures in Japan.

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Michael Shapiro's edit of his father's Russian, English, German, and French writings Click on back cover to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Constantine Shapiro (1896-1992) Constantine Shapiro Selected Writings Edited by Michael Shapiro Second, Expanded edition Charleston, S.C.: BookSurge Publishing, 2008 3, 238 pages, paper cover The titles and by-line on the cover and spine are in both English and Russian. The 1st edition was published in Los Angeles in 1977 and seems to have had 164 pages. The 2nd edition was expanded by articles Constantine Shapiro wrote after the publication of the 1st edition Michael Shapiro (b1939), the editor of both editions, was the youngest of the 5 sons of Constantine Shapiro (1896??1992), a cellist, and Lydia Chernetsky (1905-1983), a pianist. Michael emigrated from Japan to California in 1952, when 12 years old, with his parents and their housekeeper cum governess Rebecca Vaisman (1891-1969). He went on to study Russian and became a fairly well-known professor of Slavic languages. This enabled him to edit his father's writings, which included essays and poems, and treatises on music and geometry -- Most of them in Russian, but some in German and English, and a poem in French. The book includes a facsimile of the publication of a Japanese translation of one of the German articles on music. Only 41 pages are in English -- the first few articles, several poems, and the geometry treatise. The book is divided into "Part One: Phenomenological Essays" and "Part Two: Poem". Appedix A consists of fascilimes of the typescripts of two geometric problems. Appendix B is a facsimile of the Japaese publication of a translation of Tranzendentale Musiklehre. The first of the essays in Part 1 is titled "The Soul Of Japan" -- apparently a talk Shapiro gave in English before an audience of "Ladies" in the United States. Midway he says this (pages 16-17).     Now, such a nation of artists [like Japan] will, of course, consider the Western foreigners barbarians, the "Western barbarians," as they are called. People who do not understand the "fun" of life are not civilized people. To live and to produce material wealth is not bad in itself, it can even be useful under certain circumstances. But there is no poetry in it, no philosophical meaning or depth -- it is too real. It makes people greedy. It makes them fight. It makes them oppress and exploit nations who have not and do not want the power to control and use nature for the purpose of becoming rich.     But as you know, an actor on the stage does not really want to be killed in a tragedy in which the author wants him to be killed. It is only a play -- therefore the Japanese will, in spite of all his dread of reality, try to protect himself if he feels a real danger. This is the turning point of one of the most interesting short assessments that I have seen, of what Shapiro calls "the 'mentality' of the Japanese". I ordinarily have little sympathy for attempts to characterize the "mind" or "mentality" of "the Japanese" or any so-called "people" or "nation" -- I find any effort to reduce any human population to a singlar collective personality to be unrealistic and sterotypical. But the way Shapiro attempts to do so -- however misleading and erroneous in places -- is entertaining, artistic, even poetic. This one 9-page article, and a couple of the romantic poems, are worth the price of the book.

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Marianne Shapiro 2004 Marianne Shapiro Higher Learning (A Novel) [ Publisher and place of publication not stated ] [ Charleston (SC): BookSurge Publishing, ], 2004 The Kindle edition is promoted like this. In the lively tradition of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and David Lodge's Small World and Changing Places, Higher Learning sends-up sex, blackmail, theft, treachery, political correctness, murder mysteries and scholarship. Set at Ivy League "Redfern University," the story turns on the murder of a student, Selena Fenn, whose grandfather is a prominent member of the Redfern Board of Trustees. Chief suspects are assorted lunatic Redfern faculty members; Keith Chambers, the special assistant to Redfern's president, Grigol ("Chuck") Chavadze; and Selena's lesbian roommate, Hilary Slocombe. As two harried police detectives struggle to cut through University red tape and duplicity to solve the murder, the chaos is amplified by purloined letters, incriminating papers dating back to World War II, a flourishing on-campus prostitution ring, faculty intrigue, the establishment of a politically correct curriculum and a list of Forbidden Words. At stake are millions of dollars, control of a new campus Center, and the reputations of high-powered campus movers-and-shakers. Will scandal destroy the University? Will revelations of past indiscretions ruin careers and lives? Will the police unmask the murderer? We won't spoil the fun by telling you! Marianne Shapiro's novel is definitely not in the class of highly readable fiction like Bonfire of the Vanities. Her novel follows the formula of finding the body of a female student at a basement room of a small Ivy League college, which sends detectives in hot pursuit of the murderer -- who could have been any of several faculty members, if not another student, who had reason and opportunity to kill her. By the end of the story, a few of the suspects themselves are dead for reasons that seem to rule them out as suspects. The police procedures and forensic evidence, and other who-done-it elements of the story, are overshadowed by the back stories, about the ideological rifts between Comp Lit radicals and History conservatives, which divide the administration, faculty, students, and the patrons who bequeath fortunes to the school. It seems the radicals are winning -- but Marianne Shapiro, as the ventriloquist narrator, may sympathize more with the conservatives, who she seems to lampoon and mock less often. The narrator is generally omnipresent and omniscient, at times a detached 3rd person who describes what is happening from a distance, but at times an intimate 3rd person who not only witnesses the world through the sensibilities of a character but slips into a character's skin and assumes the character's 1st-person voice. I would diagnose the narrator as someone who suffers from a multiple personality disorder -- presumably an effect Shapiro intended, but possibly the result of her inability to write a compelling story that creates suspense and tension through clarity rather than confusion. When reading a mystery -- never mind the background stories -- I expect the plot twists to be keep me hooked but not confused. But the narrative of Higher Learning was torturously twisted. It jumped from character to character, place to place, and moment to moment -- sometimes flashing back as though Shapiro had suddenly remembered she had forgotten to write something earlier -- which suggested that her main aim was to keep the reader as off balanced as possible, for the sake of confusion rather than clarity. On a scale of 0 to 10, where better mysteries rank above 5, Shapiro's story is under 5 -- sub par for the genre. Shapiro probably didn't envision Higher Learning as a work of genre fiction, but rather as the title suggests, a novel for readers who would get high on page after page of parody of the sort of ideological wars that have been raging in American liberal arts colleges and universities since campuses were overwhelmed by deconstructionist approaches to knowledge and education in the 1970s and 1980s, and which continue to embattle campuses today. My guess is that Shapiro contrived the murder mystery as a foil for her critique of the sort of campus politics that apparently conspired against her own attempts to gain tenure at a couple of major universities -- at least twice -- for what Michael Shapiro has called "spurious reasons". In the middle of Higher Learning comes a "complaint" which suggests that Marianne Shapiro wrote part of herself into the story. Armin Fishbane, "the Tefflahn Professor of English, Modern Media and Massage, and chairman of Comparative Literature" (page 10), had brought Graziella from Italy to the United States when both were considerably younger. But she turned out to be the wrong kind of Italian (page 105). [Years later] followed the complaints: when was the next raise? when could she get on the faculty as lecturer in Italian? didn't he remember his promise? The life expectancy of a negro on the run Higher Learning begins with a Prologue titled "April 1944", which depicts a pilot identified only as "Will" flying a P-51B Mustang while escorting bombers from an airfield in England on a mission over Germany. All is quiet as they fly over Holland, and Will is thinking of his family in Alabama, when suddenly his plane was hit by a fatal burst of 88mm anti-aircraft fire. He parachuted to the ground, walked a bit, saw an old man sitting by a house he hoped was home to a family that would help him, and announced himself as follows -- in Shapiro's narrative voice (page 2). "I'm American," said Will, as if his clothing and the color of his skin were insufficient evidence of who he was. When the old man looked up but said nothing, Will repeated a line of French he had learned for such an occasion, which began "Je Suis americain." Shapiro's omnipresent, omniscient voice poses a problem. Is the "as if" clause intended to show the reader what Will himself is thinking, or to tell the reader what the narrator feels about what Will has said? A better writer would have revealed only what Will said, and let the reader imagine why he said it. Shapiro appears to be intentionally seeding the reader's imagination with "clothing" and "skin color" -- forcing the reader to imagine what sort of clothing and what color of skin would shout "I'm American" -- thus alleviating the need to state his nationality. Will is called into the house by a man named Mark, who speaks American English, and is a member of a group of "Apostles". The Apostles confer in Dutch, and decide that an Apostle named Peter -- who also spoke good English -- would help him get safely back to England. Peter leads the way and Will follows. They come to a dwelling. Peter knocks a signal on the door, it opens, and they step into a dark room. By the time Will makes out the identities of the three men in the room, Peter had disappeared, and the last words Will heard were "Was könnte die Lebenserwartung eines flüchtigen Negers sein?" "Negers" arches back to "the color his skin" -- Shapiro's way of signaling Will's race -- again, as though to lead the reader to believe that these details will somehow matter in the story that was to unfold. They do, but only in a rather minor way, that makes the Prologue a bit of red herring. Posthumously published Higher Learning was published a year after the author's death by her husband Michael Shapiro. To what extent he edited the manuscript is not known. As a scholar of Italian and comparative literature, Marianne Shapiro had published some books under her name and a few with her husband, on subjects related to literature and language. Michael Shapiro is frank about his dedication to the her memory on his blogs. He would himself would publish a novel in which Marianne Shapiro is a protagonist (above). And he would compile an edit an annotated catalog of her publications (Michael Shapiro, Marianne Shapiro: A Catalogue Raisonné, 2nd edition, CreateSpace, 2010). Amazon's publicity for the Kindle edition of catalogue raisonné describes Marianne Shapiro like this (www.amazon.co.jp (viewed 18 August 2023). y consider disruptive in their own courtrooms. However, the ruling also held that there was no reason why spectators should not be allowed to take notes of what they hear and see in a courtroom, so long as they do so quietly and unobtrusively. Our attorneys were not court gladiators or mass media provocateurs. They were not interested in a lot of publicity. They graciously -- but nervously, I think -- tolerated my out-of-court activism, which was not at all radical when compared with the rhetoric and antics of some of the more fiery interest groups. Looking back, though, I realize that I probably made a fool of myself in their eyes with my legal innocence -- knowing less then than I may know now about the workings of nationality laws in general and Japan's law in particular. They might be surprised with some of my viewpoints today, which are both anti-radical and anti-conservative, as I try to break below the conventional depths of analysis of Japan's nationality laws in their dynamic historical and social contexts.

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Michael Shapiro's fictional reincarnation of Lady Murasaki and her lover Prince Towa no Ai as his wife and himself, who proceed to navigate the labyrinths of the 20th century punctuated with Heian poems and asides on Japanese poetry and Dante Above The beginnings of the 1st an 83rd stories Below The 79th story on narrative imbalance Click on stories to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Michael Shapiro (b1939) Michael Shapiro (b1939), a professor of Slavic languages, turned out to be the writer in the family -- in the wake of his father, Constantine Shapiro, a cellest who who also considered himself a writer. Michael has authored, coauthored, or edited a number of academic articles and books, but also published 4 books related to his family, including his father's writings (above), and after his wife's death her novel (below), then the companion volumes shown here -- his own novel, a fictional celebration of his wife's life -- and a collection of annotations and comments on the novel and their life. Michael Shapiro's principal blog is Language Lore (languagelore.net). This cite includes a link to a companion cite called Books by Marianne and Michael Shapiro (www.marianneandmichaelshapiro.com). Michael Shapiro 2006 Michael Shapiro My Wife the Metaphysician, or Lady Muraski's Revenge 女房は形而上学者又は紫式部の復讐 [ Nyōbō wa keijijōgaku-sha mata wa Murasaki Shikibu no fukushū ] { My wife [is] a metaphysician or [a]} revenge of Muraskai Shikibu ] [ Publisher, and date and place of publication, not stated ] [Charleston (SC): BookSurge Publishing, 2006] 247 pages, paper cover Michael Shapiro 2007 Michael Shapiro Palimpsest of Consciousness (Authorial Annotations of My Wife the Metaphysician, or Lady Murasaki's Revenge) [Charleston (SC): BookSurge Publishing, 2007] Michael Shapiro 2008 Michael Shapiro My Wife the Metaphysician and Palimpsest of Consciousness [Charleston (SC): BookSurge Publishing, 2008] Boxed Set My Wife the Metaphysician My Wife the Metaphysician is a highly imaginary work that brings together the worlds of Marianne Shapiro (1940-2002, a professor of comparative literature and writer, and Murasaki Shikibu (circa 973-1014/1025) of Genji monogarari fame in middle of Japan's Heian period (794-1185). On a Curriculum Vitae (October 2019) posted at Brown University, Shapiro relates that "After retiring, I embarked on a book of fiction (modeled on the Japanese medieval classic The Pillow Book [Makura no Sōshi] by Sei Shōnagon), My Wife the Metaphysician, or Lady Murasaki's Revenge (2006), followed by an authorial commentary, Palimpsest of Consciousness (2007)" (viewed 20 August 2023). The book has 84 numbered and titled "sections" or stories. The English titles represent the opening words of the story. The Japanese above the numbered English titles represents the overarching theme of the story. In his Acknowledgments at the back of the book, Michael Shapiro says this about the Japanese titles (page 249, [bracketed] remarks mine). My brother, Jacob Shapiro, a graduate of the Peers' [Peers] School University (Gakushuin Daigaku) in Tokyo, was instrumental in facilitating the Japanese headings preceding each numbered paragraph [sic = section, story]. His vast knowledge of the language enabled him to suggest variants and otherwise offer material advice on this aspect of the book's presentation. In the October 2019 Curriculum Vitae, Michael Shapiro states that he himself is a "native speaker" of Russian, and had "native fluency" in Japanese and a "reading knowledge" of both German and French (ibid., viewed 20 August 2023). In the Japanese version of the title, "mata wa" does not quite emulate the effects of ", or" in the English title. The English title "X, or Y" sets off "Lady Murasaki's Revenge" (Y) as an alternative title to "My Wife the Metaphysician" (X). Whereas the Japanese title "A wa B mata wa C no D" suggests that "My wife" (A) is both a "Metaphysician" (B) and a "revenge (D) of Murasaki Shikibu (C)". Maybe "A wa B, aruiwa C no D" would have been better. Mother / 1. Turn On the Car Radio Driving Home More important is the clearly autobiography pitch of the novel, evident from the the opening story -- 1. Turn On the Car Radio Driving Home -- "characterized" 母 (haha) meaning mother -- alluding to the 1st-person narrator's "Beautiful Mama" whose name is "Lydia" -- Michael Shapiro's mother. And, indeed, "By order Lydian" is the first poem in the section on "English and French Poems" in Constantine Shapiro's Selected Writings (see above). Death / 83. Lady Murasaki Was Dying The penultimate story portrays the death of Lady Murasaki in Vermont with Towa no Ai at her side. He had "shared almost thirty six years of married life" with her and he "breathed and lived" for her sake. She had gotten him to promise that he would not let her suffer needlessly. He had bought and learned how to use a Beretta, and they "made a suicide pact, in case" (page 245). The doctor wanted to know more about Lady Murasaki's specialty, medieval literature.     "I have to confess to you, Lady Murasaki, that I know next to nothing about your field. Dante and the troubadours are just names to me. Why is it that you chose to make the study of such a rarefied subject your life's work?"     Lady Murasaki did not hesitate in answering. "Because I love my subject." She looked at Prince Towa no Ai in just the way she had always looked at him, all the days of their lives. Then her sweet shy smile lit up her beautiful face for the last time. Note that "Towa no ai" is graphed 永久の愛, which means "love (ai) eternal (towa no)". Balance / 79. There Was a Great Deal of Splashing The story moves all over the world and takes up all manner of themes. Shapiro's erudition is such that less erudite readers, including yours truly, will have difficulty following his allusions and begin to skip ahead in hopes of landing on something resembling a plot and story development. Kirkus Review characterized the novel as "A multilayered love story, cloaked in a demanding writing style that masks the true nature of the plot." The review went on say this about the style of writing (Kircus Reviews, circa fall 2006, retrieved 20 August 2023, [bracketed] remarks mine). Interspersed within these scenes [vignettes] are stream-of-consciousness lists, imagery and snippets of other scenes. The book is extremely talky, making it short on dramatic tension. Shapiro's work is most engaging when he sticks to a narrative, as the final scenes between Lady Murasaki and Prince Towa no Ai are especially tender and moving. The rigorously demanding writing style will likely push most readers far beyond their comfort zone and compel them to keep a dictionary close at hand. Those who do soldier on until the end will be rewarded with the "Postilla Epistolaria,” Shapiro's notes/correspondence on the vignettes. Here, the author informs that Lady Murasaki is based on his late wife Marianne and her experiences in academia, and explains that the characters so brutally revenged upon in the book are based on real individuals. This suggests that the alternative title means "Michael Shapiro's Revenge on his Wife's Academic Enemies". Of interest here -- after reading Marianne Shapiro's posthumously published novel Higher Learning (above) -- is that in her husband's novel about her and himself, she in the guise of Lady Murasaki, and he as Prince Towa no Ai. cross paths with one of the detectives who investigated the murder of Selena Fenn at Redfern college in her novel. And the story goes on to examine the destabilizing narrative style in one of Lady Murasaki's novellas. The "demanding writing style" of Shapiro's novel -- which includes his impulse to jump the tracks of his plot -- could be said of Marianne Shapiro's novel, which makes cameo appearances in several stories. The 79th story, in particular, waxes at great length on the merits of a "narrative voice [that] functions as a powerful destroyer of stability" -- a narrative style that seeks to keep readers off balance -- intentionally "confounding and conflating" clarity and uncertainty in order to make readers feel "the [same] panic and alienation in their own lives" (see the scan of the first 2 of the 5-1/2 pages of the 79th story to the right). Question -- Was Michael Shapiro aware that, when describing Murasaki Shikibu's (his wife's) narrative style, he was to some extent characterizing his own writing? Whatever the answer -- My Wife the Metaphysician is a veritable hall of smoke and mirrors.

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Sugiyama v. State

Forthcoming.

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Legal team

As it turned out, Kaji Chizuko didn't work alone. She was supported by three other attorneys, who were also women, one of whom -- Wakana Mitsuko -- passed away after Saori's case was appeared to the Supreme Court.

Kaji Chizuko (鍛冶千鶴子 1923-2018)
Nagaishi Yasuko (永石泰子)
Itō Sumiko (伊東すみ子 1931-1997)
Wakana Mitsuko (若菜充子)

All members of the team were legal activists, known for their advocacy of sexual equality in Japanese law and improvement in family law.

Kaji Chizuko was somewhat of a celebrity attorney, given the high profile of her column on family law in the Yomiuri shinbun. Her husband, too, was an attorney. We met both of them at her home when visiting her after being introduced to her by Bai Kōichi. That was when she clarified what she expected of us in terms of cooperation and compensation. She briefed us on the Shapiro case, and outlined how she expected to pursue our case, in terms of the similarities and differences of the two cases.

Itō would later become a High Court judge, and then the presiding justice at the Utsunomiya Family Court (宇都宮家庭裁判所長). In 1997, while at the Utsunomiya court, she and 2 other female judges, including a Supreme Court justice and the presiding justice at the Yokohama Family Court, compiled statistics showing the percents of female judges in Japan. In 1980, at the time of the the nationality law suits, 76 (2.8 percent) of Japan's 2,747 judgeships were held by women. However, only 43 (2.0 percent) of the 2,134 judges (判事 hanji) were women, while 33 (5.4 percent) of the 613 assistant judges (判事補 hanjiho) were women. By 1996, women held 257 (8.9 percent) of Japan's 2,879 judgeships, including 101 (4.6 percent) of the country's 2,214 judges and 156 (23.5 percent) of it 665 assistant judges. In 16 years, the percentage of female judges had doubled, but the percentage of female assistant judges had quadrupled, which suggested considerable improvement in female representation in Japanese courts.

Moderates

None of the women on the team were radicals in any sense of the word. They were feminists to the extent that they believed in equal rights and opportunities for women, but within the legal establishment they were moderates if not conservatives.

As attorneys, their arguments focused on legal -- not political -- issues, and in particular on the issues they thought they could raise in the context of Japanese law. They dressed, and otherwise acted, conservatively. They were, after all, the products of essentially conservative educations -- women who had gotten to be attorneys by working hard and following the rules.

They were not, in other words, court gladiators, or mass media provocateurs. They were not interested in a lot of publicity. They graciously -- but nervously, I think -- tolerated my activism, which was not at all radical -- at least compared with the rhetoric of some of the more politically motivated interest groups.

Looking back, though, I realize that I probably made a fool of myself in their eyes with my legal innocence -- knowing less then than I do now about the workings of nationality laws in general and Japan's law in particular. They might be surprised with some of my viewpoints today, which are radical in simultaneously anti-radical and anti-conservative ways as I try to break below the conventional depths of structural analysis of Japan's nationality laws in their dynamic historical and social contexts.

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Retainers and other costs

Litigation is not cheap, and though our attorneys had their hearts in the issues, they did not work pro bono. Kaji was reasonable, though. She charged only her basic retainers, which she shared with the other three members of the team -- how I don't know. Its sort of like buying a bus ticket -- you don't ask how much the driver, mechanics, baggage handlers, and ticket clerks, and others who contribute to the ride are getting -- all you want is the ride, and you hope the bus gets you to where you want to go on time.

In addition to the direct out-of-pocket costs, there were all manner of incidental costs, not all monetary. Working with the attorneys, dealing with the media, and contributing to the publicity took a great deal of time and immeasurable amounts of emotional energy, both of which -- the time and energy -- I continue to spend. I still occasionally buy a book or two on nationality law, and I have to keep the spiders out of the several file drawers and shelves that house the nationality materials in my library.

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Saori's timeline

Saori's case, as noted above, was planned before she was born. We filed the suit pretty much on schedule, in late December 1978, about 2 months after Saori's birth.

As shown in the following timeline, the hearings in Saori's case were quickly synchronized with those in the Shapiro case. The hearings and briefs were of course different, but the cases shared many primary documents and arguments, and were handled by the same team of attorneys, so it made sense to schedule their hearings back-to-back as far as possible.

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First instance (lower) court (1978-1981)
Type:       Nationality confirmation request case
Filed:      20 December 1978
Court:      Tokyo District Court, 3rd Civil Bench
Case:       Showa 53 (Gyo-u) 175 [1978 Gyo-u 175]
Plaintiffs: Sugiyama Etsuko and Sugiyama Saori v. State
Legal representives with parental rights (co-litigants):
            William Owen Wetherall and Sugiyama Etsuko
Judgment:   30 March 1981
Ruling:     Plaintiff Sugiyama Etsuko's complaint (uttae 訴え)
              [of discrimination] [i.e, that that she has the right
                to transmit her nationality to her daughter]
              is rejected (kyakka 却下).
            Plaintiff Sugiyama's [Saori's] request (seikyu 請求)
              [for confirmation that she has Japanese nationality]
              [i.e., that she has the right
                to acquire her mother's nationality]
              is denied (kikyaku 棄却).
            Plaintiffs bear the costs of the suit (sosho 訴訟).
Judges:     Sato Shigeru (chief judge)
            Izumi Tokuji (judge)
            Okamitsu Mikio (judge)
Attorneys for plaintiffs:
            Kaji Chizuko
            Nagaishi Yasuko
            Itō Sumiko
            Wakana Michiko
Expert opinion for plantiffs:
            Yamada Ryōichi (Professor of Law, Nagoya University)
            Hayata Yoshirō (Professor of Law, Tōyō University)
            Sawaki Keirō (Professor of Law, Rikkyō University)            
State representative:
            Yoshii Kimi (Ministry of Justice)
            Kuraishi Tadao (succeeded Yoshii)
            Okuno Seisuke (succeeded Kuraishi)
Ministry of Justice procurators appointed to represent the State in court:
            Narita Nobuko
            Kikuchi Kenji (replaced Narita)
            Ichinomiya Kazuo (replaced Kikuchi)
            Endō Yōichi (present throughout)
           
Second instance (higher) appeal court (1981-1982)
Filed:      ? April 1981
Court:      Tokyo High Court, 15th Civil Bench
Case:       Showa 56 (Gyo-ko) 26 [1981 Gyo-ko 26]
Plaintiffs: Sugiyama Etsuko and Sugiyama Saori v. State
Judgment:   23 June 1982
Ruling:     Saori is not Japanese

Sugiyama Tsuyoshi born 7 March 1982.
His case filed in Tokyo District Court on 11 May 1982
6 weeks before Tokyo High Court's rulings in Hanako's and Saori's cases.

Final (highest) court of appeals (1982-1988)
Filed:      ? July 1982
Court:      Supreme Court, 1st Petit Bench
Case:       Heisei 57 (Gyo-tsu) 133 [1982 Gyo-tsu 133]
Plaintiffs: Sugiyama Etsuko and Sugiyama Saori v. State
Judgment:   None
Withdrawn:  22 March 1988

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Tsuyoshi's timeline

Tsuyoshi's case unfolded pretty much like Saori's case and the Shapiro case. It took about 2 months to file, and about 2-1/2 years for a district court decision.

Tsuyoshi's case had been in the district court just over 2 years when Nationality Law revisions were promulgated on 25 May 1984. The court issued its decision about 6 months later, on 21 December 1984. And the revisions came into effect from 1 January 1985, only 11 days after the decision.

First instance (lower) court (1982-1983)
Type:       Nationality confirmation request case
Filed:      11 May 1982
Court:      Tokyo District Court, 2nd Civil Bench
Case:       Showa 57 (Gyo-u) 57 [1982 Gyo-u 57]
Plaintiffs: Sugiyama Etsuko and Sugiyama Tsuyoshi v. State
Legal representives with parental rights (co-litigants):
            William Owen Wetherall and Sugiyama Etsuko
Judgment:   21 December 1984
Ruling:     Sugiyama Etsuko's claim (of discrimination) is rejected.
            Sugiyama Tsuyoshi's request (for nationality) is denied.
            Fees are to be born by the plaintiffs.
Judges:     Sato Shigeru (chief judge)
            Izumi Tokuji (judge)
            Okamitsu Mikio (judge)
Attorneys for plaintiffs:
            Kaji Chizuko
            Itō Sumiko
            Wakana Michiko
State representative:
            Sakata Michita (Minister of Justice)
            Hatano Akira (succeeded Sakata)
            Sumi Eisaku (succeeded Hatano)
            Shimasaki Hitoshi (succeeded Sumi)
Ministry of Justice procurators appointed to represent the State in court:
            Ichinomiya Kazuo
            Muramatsu Hideo
            Tōmatsu Fumio (replaced Ichinomiya)
            Nakanishi Shigeru (replaced Tōmatsu)
            Kawano Isao (replaced Muramatsu )
            Kudō Satoshi

Second instance (higher) appeal court (1983-1988)
Filed:      ? December 1984
Court:      Tokyo High Court, 4th Civil Bench
Case:       Showa 59 (Gyo-ko) 82 [1984 Gyo-ko 82]
Plaintiffs: Sugiyama Etsuko and Sugiyama Tsuyoshi v. State
Judgment:   None
Withdrawn:  22 March 1988

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Oral testimonies

Our longest day in court was 19 November 1979, when I in the morning, and my wife in the afternoon, gave oral testimonies before our 3 bench-judges and Ministry of Justice representatives of the government. I testified as a legal representative (parent-guardian) co-litigant, and my wife testified as both a plaintiff and representative.

Wetherall William's testimony

I was sworn in as "ウィリアム・オーエン・ウェザロール" (Uiriamu Ooen Uezarooru) [William Owen Wetherall] -- my name as it appeared on court documents. However, I signed the oath as "ウェザロール ウィリアム" (Uezarooru Uiriamu) [Wetherall William] -- family name first, no middle name, and no dot between the family name and personal name, which was how I usually wrote my name in Japanese. I had registered this form of my name with the Ministry of Justice in 1975, and I was legally allowed to use it in Japan in lieu of my Alien Registration name, which was my passport name. I also affixed my "羊舎" (Yōsha) ["Sheepshed" = "Wetherall"] hanko to my signature.

My name
ウェザロール ウィリアム -- would become my legal name as a Japanese national, and I continue to use the same 羊舎 seal, which at the time was registered with Nagareyama city. The seal is no longer registerable, but I continue to use it for banking and other purposes when a registered seal is not required. Signing the oath ウェザロール ウィリアム was a bit defiant, for the court had rebuffed an attempt to file the lawsuit with my family name first. As an alien, I was required to represent my name the way it was shown on my passport but transliterated in kana. The 羊舎 seal usually draws questions. If the court clerk batted an eye, I didn't see it.

Itō Sumiko conducted my entire testimony. She had coached me and we had practiced a bit. I had a general idea of what she was going to ask me, in what would be a mix statements she would make in the form of questions that I would answer simply "Yes" or "That's right", and questions that required me comment, sometimes in great detail. But there was no script.

I remember looking forward to taking the stand, which in a Japanese courtroom faces the bench, and the court clerk and stenographers who sit in front of the bench. My attorneys would be at a table to my left, and government defense attorneys would be at a table to my right. Attorneys on both sides generally direct questions to witnesses while standing at their tables.

I felt a little tense wondering what the opposition attorneys or the judges might ask me. But having read the court transcript of Jacob Shapiro's testimony, I understood that whatever opposition attorneys or the judges might ask me, it would be to elicit or clarify information. It would not be a cross examination, and it would be civil. But the defense and the bench chose not to ask any questions -- perhaps because lunch was approaching and they were hungry.

Itō first task was to get my personal background into the record, including my education, coming to Japan, and present activities. A lot of detail came out.

Question 1 "You were born in 1941 in San Francisco in the United States of America, right?"
"Yes, that's right."
Question 35 "What is the theme of your doctoral dissertation?"
"Suicide, self-destructive behaviors, mental health problems in Japan."

The questions became more interesting, considering my self-incriminating answers.

Question 72   "Regarding Saori, [you] haven't done alien registration, right?"
"That's right."
Question 73 "The reason for that?"
"Because I believe [she] is not an alien."
[Because I don't believe she is an alien.]

Had I heard that [we] could have divorced, and remarried after [Saori] was born? Yes, but I don't think that would have been a good way to do it.
Did you talk about naturalizing Saori?
If [we] thought she was an alien, naturalizing her would be a way. But because she's Japanese, [there's no need] to naturalize her.

This line of inquiry led up to these questions.

Question 83   "Talk of the difficulty of foreign travel came up [in our conversation] Are your parents healthy?"
"Yes. They are well.""
Question 84   "Where are they living?"
"In Grass Valley in California state."
Question 85   "You want to take Saori there, right?"
"Sure, of course."
Question 86   "But, you're worried that permission to re-enter the country (Japan) would be difficult?"
"That's right. At present, [Saori] isn't registered [in Japan] and [so she] doesn't exist [on either birth rolls or resident alien rolls]. Leaving the country would be simple, but returning would be rather difficult, I think."

The last few questions concered my views that Saori's acuisition of Japanese national because her mother was Japanese, would be as natural as her acquiring U.S. nationality because I was an American. And when she gets bigger and becomes an adult, she would be free to make a choice, if necessary. And so I saw no problem with having both nationalities. To have both, and to have a choice, wouldn't especially benefit parents, but it would benefit children.

Representatives of the government stated they had no questions.

Sugiyama Etsuko's testimony

Practically all of Sugiyama's testimony was conducted by Wakana. The defendant's attorneys stated they had nothing to ask. Defense attorneys stated they had nothing to ask. The principle judge asked "It's a fact that Saori-san now has American nationality (Beikokuseki 米国籍), right" The transcript shows that Sugiyama nodded. The judge asked whether she had considered that American nationality was, and she she hadn't. If Saori were to acquire Japan's nationality, whether she [Sugiyama] had considered relinquishing (hōki suru 放棄する) American nationality. At the present time, she hadn't. Was it her thinking that it would be alright to possess both Japanese nationality and American nationality? The only point in her mind, she replied, was that Article 14 of the Constitution says equality of the two sexes (ryōsei no byōdō 両性の平等).

Article 14
The principle clause of Article 14 states that "All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin" (すべて国民は、法の下に平等であつて、人種、信条、性別、社会的身分又は門地により、政治的、経済的又は社会的関係において、差別されない). It does not unequivocally state that the two sexes will be equal in all relationships. The "people" (kokumin 国民) -- meaning "nationals" (kokumin 国民), hence Japanese -- are in fact in some relationships discriminated because of their biological differences. Arguably, however, husband-wife and parent-child relationships would be among those that qualify for equal legal treatment regardless of sex.

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Later developments

1987-11-27

During the morning of Friday, 27 October 1987 (according to my date book) -- with only two months left in the three-year period during which we could file a notification to acquire nationality for our children under the transitional measures in the 1985 revisions -- Sugiyama and I, accompanied by Saori and Tsuyoshi, filed a one-page "Nationality acquisition notification" (国籍取得届 Kokuseki shutoku todoke) for each child, at the regional Legal Affairs Bureau in Matsudo. The form was specifically designed to comply with Paragraph 1 of Article 5 of the supplementary provisions to the 1950 Nationality Law as revised from 1985.

A clerk took separate photographs of each of the children sitting between us, and these photographs were attached to their notifications. My undated copies of the notifications show the photos dated as having been taken on 28 October 1987. The date of nationality acquisition on their registers, however, is 27 October 1987 -- the date the bureau vetted and duly accepted the notifications.

The following four boxes on the forms were checked by way of confirming that the children were qualified under the transitional measures stipulated in Article 5(1) of the supplementary provisions (my translation).

Born between 1 January 1965 and 31 December 1984.
Have not been a Japan national.
At the time of birth mother was a Japan national.
Mother is presently a Japan National.

In accordance with Article 5(4) of the supplementary provisions, Saori and Tsuyoshi became Japanese nationals from the date their notifications were filed. Entries on their family registers show the following three items of information (my paraphrased translations).

[Date] born in U-city of V-prefecture
[deputy mayor]

1987-12-21 Nationality acquisition
1988-1-27 Notification filed by father and mother parental authorities
1988-2-4 [Accepted as] sent from X-city in Y-prefecture
  and entered [= recorded] in register [= and registered]
( Nationality at time of acquisition: United States of America
Hitherto name: Uezarooru, Saorioriinu / Tsuyoshiooen )
[deputy mayor]

1992-3-19 Father and mother file notification [concomitant with divorce notification] to the effect [they] decide that parental authority is mother

1988-03-22

Saori's case was withdrawn from the Supreme Court, and Tsuyoshi's case was withdrawn from the Tokyo High Court.

1988-04

I began living separately from Sugiyama. Five years later we divorced. We dine out together once or twice a year with our children.

1999

The Legal Affairs Bureau in Kashiwa permitted me to apply for naturalization. I gathered all required documents but decided not to file. Details on this fairly simple and predictable experience, and reasons for not filing, are chronicled in the section on naturalization.

2002-06

Saori, my daughter, reconfirmed her Japanese nationality as required by law. She was late in doing so but this made no difference. She graduated first from a university, then from a nutritionist college, and is now a managerial nutritionist, responsible for food preparation and services at a group of six general hospitals.

2006-2

Tsuyoshi, my son, was also late in declaring his intention to continue to be Japanese, again with no consequence. He dropped out of high school then studied for and passed his daiken. He worked part-time for several years overseeing the computers in the business center of the Palace Hotel in Tokyo, but lost this job when the hotel closed for complete rebuilding. On weekends he becomes DJ Family. He has done sets all over Japan, including several in Okinawa, and has also performed in Seoul. He has released two CDs of his own tracks, and contributed tracks to other CDs and on-line games.

Future

Both of my children will spend the rest of their lives endeavoring, as required by Japanese law, to renounce their U.S. nationality. In the meantime, they will continue to be nationals of both countries of birth.

I have, however, given my children two pieces of advice. (1) Since they have not actually lived in the United States, their children, if born outside the United States, will not qualify for U.S. nationality. (2) If they continue to be domiciled in Japan (which is most likely), and if maintaining their U.S. passports becomes too much trouble for any reason (bureaucratic or political), then they should simply forget that they are also U.S. nationals -- either positively renounce their U.S. nationality, or start using their Japanese passports when entering and leaving the United States.

See Dual nationality in Japan: Not forbidden, unpreventable, and tacitly permitted for further details about how my children, and tens of thousands of Japanese, are legally able to remain dual nationals.

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Wetherall-Sugiyama family

Children of William Owen Wetherall and Sugiyama Etsuko

0. Bill and Etsuko married on 19 March 1971 in Minato-ku, Tokyo. They divorced on 19 March 1992 in Nagareyama, Chiba prefecture.
   1. Under Japanese law, Etsuko's name remained Sugiyama Etsuko. During two periods of residence in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, she used the names Etsuko Wetherall and Etsuko Sugiyama Wetherall.
   2. Bill became a Japanese national on 11 June 2012. His Japanese name, which he informallly established in 1970, and legally registered in 1975, is Uezarooru Uiriamu, and his Japanese passport name is Wetherall William. His U.S. passport name remains William Owen Wetherall.
   3. Saori's name as a Japanese national is Sugiyama Tsuyoshi. Her name as a U.S. citizen is Saori Orene Wetherall.
13. 1980 pregnancy terminated in 4th month after Etsuko's hospitalization in Kashiwa in Chiba prefecture on 15 December 1980 because of continuing hemorrhaging. Bill filed a "Still born notification" (Shizan-todoke 死産届) at Kashima city hall immediately after termination of the pregnancy on the evening of 30 December 1980, and at the same time he obtained a permit to cremate the remains. He brought the remains back to his home in Nagareyama that night, and to a Kashiwa crematorium the following morning of 31 December 1980, from which he brought the ashes directly to the home of Etsuko's parents in Maebashi in Gunma prefecture, where he spent the night of New Years Eve. On the morning of New Years Day, he and his father-in-law deposited the ashes as a "Mizuko" (水子) or "water child" -- this being the general name for an unborn child -- in the vault of the Sugiyama family tomb at Ryūzōji (龍蔵寺) temple in Maebashi, after which he returned to Nagareyama.
2. Tsuyoshi's name as a Japanese national is Sugiyama Tsuyoshi. His name as a U.S. citizen is Tsuyoshi Owen Wetherall. His DJ handle is DJ Family.

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Legal Issues

Statelessness v. sexual discrimination, and dual nationality

The problem of Hanako's statelessness, or rather the variety of ways it could have been resolved under Japanese law, raised in my mind a number of interesting questions about national law. While statelessness was the most immediate practical issue in the eyes of Hanako's parents, who wanted her to have a nationality, it was irrelevant for my children, were were not stateless. My children, as plaintiffs, were contending they should qualify for Japanese nationality the same as children born to a foreign or stateless mother married to their Japanese father -- that the Nationality Law permitted nationality through fathers but not mothers, and thus discriminated against Japanese women married to foreigners. The law was matrilineal for children born to unmarried Japanese women, who thus became Japanese even if their father was not Japanese.

However, it is my contention that Hanako's her statelessness per se turned out to be irrelevant to her case, which mainly argued that Japan's Nationality Law was unconstitutional on account of its patrilineal bias. The Constitution does not guarantee a right to nationality, hence it would have been difficult to mount a law suit contending that the Nationality Law discriminated against statelessness. In fact, it didn't. Paragraph 3 of Article 3 of the 1950 Nationality Law, like Article 3 of the 1899 Nationality Law, clearly provided that a child would Japanese if its father was either unknown or stateless.

Hanako's father, Jacob Shapiro, wasn't stateless, and neither was I. We were both U.S. Citizens. The problem was, while he wasn't de jure stateless, he was de facto stateless -- i.e., his nationality could not be transmitted to a child born outside the United States because he had not satisfied minimum residency requires in the United States.

If focussing on Hanako's statelessness, the Shapiro's make two claims -- (1) Japan's Nationality Law discriminated against children to a Japanese woman married to a de facto stateless alien -- or (2) the law discriminated against all children with born to a Japanese woman married to an alien father who had a nationality.

If the law was revised only to address (1), Article 3 could have been amended to include both de jure and de facto stateless fathers. Such a revision would have left the patrilineal bias but plugged the statelessness hole.

If, however, the law was revised to address (2), Then Article 3 would have to be revised to make the law both patrilineal and ambilineal. This would plug the statelessness hole in law, but more than double the rate of dual nationality. Under the patrilineal provision, children became Japanese through their Japanese father, but might also aquire their mother's nationality if her nationality was transmissible.

Because more than half of all mixed-nationality marriages in Japan involved foreign fathers, making Japan's law ambilineal would greatly increase cases of dual nationality. And as the percentage of mixed-nationality marriages was increasing, dual nationality through birth would inevitably accelerate.

Hanako's mother not a plaintiff

I did not ask Kaji Chizuko why she did not include Hanako's mother as a plaintiff in Shapiro v. State. I was, of course, very curious about the Shapiros, who did not want publicity and remained out of public sight. And I didn't want to put our attorneys in the position to politely say that they were not in a position to comment about the Shapiros' intentions, or more bluntly tell me their intentions were none of my business.

Shapiro v. State, however, became my business, to the extent that I was asked and agreed to pay half the costs for the expert opinion Kaji had submitted to the court on its behalf, so she could submit the same testimony in Sugiyama v. State. This, and other matters that I understood about the Shapiro case, made it clear that the Shapiros, as Hanako's parents, were also arguing that Japan's Nationality Law was unconstitutional on account of its patrilineal bias in the acquisition of Japanese nationality by a child born to Japanese woman married to a non-Japanese man. In other words, Shapiro v. State, like Sugiyama v. State, focused on the law's discrimination against Japanese women married to foreigners -- not on statelessness per se.

This, however, made the absence of Hanako's mother as a plaintiff puzzling -- for didn't patrilineality essentially discriminate against women? Ergo, shouldn't she have asserted her rights as a Japanese woman to be treated on a par with a Japanese man in the transmissibility of her nationality to her children, regardless of her marital status or the father's nationality?

"Transmission" is not inheritance. Nationality is not something that parents own and pass on to their children -- though it may seem this way, and for sure most people talk as though this is what happens. But no -- children acquire nationality from the state, if the conditions of their birth meet the state's criteria for acquiring its nationality. In other words, children may acquire the same nationality as a parent, if the conditions of the child's birth, and the quality of the parent's nationality, meet the state's criteria for acquisition.

Qualifications for U.S. nationality

Children born in the United States generally become U.S. citizens regardless of their parents' nationalities. In otherwords, there no "inheritance" of nationality from their parents. U.S. birthright nationality is based entirely on the Constitutional right to nationality of born in the United States (except for statue laws that extend such rights to children born in the District of Columbia and other non-Union U.S. territories). Federal statutes -- not the Constitution -- determine the eligibility to U.S. nationality of children born overseas to a U.S. citizen or national parent. In which case, the quality of the parent's U.S. nationality becomes an issue.

We are not talking here about "citizenship" -- concerning rights and duties of citizens -- but only nationality, a purely civil status that denotes affiliation with or belonging to a state. Note that, at one time, even U.S. citizens born in the United States could lose their U.S. nationality if they resided abroad for a long period of time without notifying a U.S. consulate of their intention to retain their U.S. status (i.e., remain a U.S. citizen or national) while residing overseas. U.S. citizens who moved overseas, or were born overseas, and continued to reside abroad, were subject to a variety of nationality retention requirements, until 1968 for some and 1986 for others, depending on the conditions of their birth. And those who failed to qualify for retention found themselves subject to expatriation.

Such is the premium that the United States places on residency in the United States as validation of citizenship. Since there are not no "retention requirements" for 1st generation U.S. citizens born overseas, my children continue to be U.S. citizens. However, they are subject to "transmission requirements" like those that applied to Hanako's father.

Transition requirements

U.S. nationality qualifications speak of "transition requirements" -- meaning the criteria which an American parent of a child born overseas must meet in order for the child to qualify for birthright U.S. citizenship. There are many contingencies for different conditions, but most require some degree of compliance with minimum residency rules.

Residence rules for transmission of U.S. nationality have changed over time. From 13 January 1941 to 13 November 1986, which includes the time of Shapiro v. State and Sugiyama v. State, the basic transition requirement was that the U.S. citizen parent of a child born overseas had resided in the United States within 10 years before the child's birth, and for at least 5 years after the age of 14. From 14 November 1986, however, the requirement was relaxed to residence in the United States within 5 years prior to the child's birth, at least 2 years of which were after turning 14.

Both of my children were born in Japan and have both U.S. and Japanese nationality through right-of-blood. And neither has resided in the United States. They have visited the United States many times, but only for a month more-or-less at a time. Their longest stay, in 1986, when very young, was for about eight months. Neither has fulfilled the present requirement that they live in the United States for 2 years after turning 14. Consequently, my daughter's children, born in Japan, have only Japanese nationality, as my daughter's U.S. nationality does not qualify them for right-of-blood U.S. citizenship.

Jacob Shapiro had naturalized into U.S. nationality, and in order to validate his nationality, he was expected to live in the United States for 5 years -- which he failed to do. The residential requirement is intended to discourage the succession of U.S. nationality overseas for convenience. In other words, because U.S. citizenship is fundamentally acquired through right-of-soil -- i.e., birth within the United States -- the United States does not wish to encourage the perpetration of U.S. nationality through right-of-blood in other countries. Hence right-of-blood acquisition becomes possible only if the U.S. parent -- even if born in the United States -- has satisfied minimum U.S. residence requirements.

Hanako's statelessness

Hanako's statelessness would have been the focus of her case, only if she argued, through her attorneys, that while Japan had the right to adopt patrilineality as a nationality standard in her case, it was obliged to make matrilineal contingencies in the event her non-Japanese father was either de jure stateless (he had no nationality), or de facto stateless (he had a nationality, but the residential quality of his nationality disqualified her from becoming a U.S. citizen through right-of-blood).

To argue on the one hand that Hanako should be able to acquire Japanese nationality through birth because the patrilineal law discriminated against women -- and to argue on the other hand that Hanako deserved to be protected from statelessness by making matrilineal contingencies in a patrilineal law in the event a foreign father was de jure or de facto stateless -- were conflicting arguments. The Nationality law either was, or was not, unconstitutional on account of its patrilineal bias. If unconstitutional, then statelessness per se was not an issue. If statelessness was the issue, then the patrilineality bias was not itself an issue -- i.e., patrilineality was fine, so long as there were contingencies to prevent statelessness, pursuant to the so-called "right to have a nationality" principle. This principle, however, was then -- and is still today -- a matter of "human rights" advocacy in international private law, not an abosolute obligation of domestic nationality laws.

In fact, Hanako would have become Japanese had her father been de jure stateless (1950 Nationality Law, Article 2, Paragraph 3; 1899 Nationality Law, Paragraph 3). So her stateless hinged entirely on the facts that (1) her father was not de jure stateless but had a nationality, and (2) Japan's law had no contingency for de facto statelessness -- which appears to be the major reason that statelessness occurred in Japan under the 1950 Nationality Law before its revision in 1984 (effective from 1985).

But think about the implications of Paragraph 3 of Article 2 in the patrilineal Nationality Law. It had provision for de jure stateness. To add a provision for de facto statelessness would have been tantamount to making the law simultaneously materilineal. And that is why it made more legal sense for the Shapiro case to confront patrilineality issue, for a solution to Hanako's statelessness was to make the law also matrilineal.

The courts, of course, balked at making patrilineality a constitutional issue, and ruled that how Japan defined qualifications for its nationality was a legislative issue. There were many ways to ensure that no one was stateless, some of which would increase dual nationality. And there were many ways deal with dual nationality if it was regarded a problem. The courts, though, did not have the authority to dictate solutions to such problems.

By then, the Diet had already begun to discuss problems of statelessness and dual nationality. As it turned out, the Diet opted to make the Nationality Law also matrilineal. This plugged the hole of statelessness, but increased dual nationality among children born to a Japanese parent married to an alien with an acquirable nationality. To discourge and partly reduce (but not eliminate) dual nationality, the revised law included provisions for validating one's Japanese nationality by formally declaring one's intentions to retain Japanese nationality by one's 22nd birthday (1950 Nationality Law, as revised from 1985, Article 14).

Article 14 also applied to people such as myself, who acquired Japanese nationality through naturalization while still retaining my foreign nationality. I was required to file a "Notification of nationality choice" within 2 years of naturalizing. I filed the notifaction at the same time I filed the "Notification of permission to naturalize". Each notification consisted of a single one-page form submitted at the same counter at the municipal hall of the city where I had been a legal resident as an alien, and would continue to reside as a Japanese.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Registration The most essential proof of your legal existence today, when pressed to prove that you are a human being from Earth, is a birth certificates signed by someone who witnessed that, at a certain place, date, and time, you were issued from the womb of a certain woman, and appeared to be a male or female. Depending on where you were born, and the nationality of your mother and/or father, the laws of one or more countries may recognize you as a national of the country. Whether you acquire the nationality of any country, however, will depend on the actions taken by your parents or others competent to act on your behalf and comply with nationality acquisition procedures. But before you can exist as a national of any country, your must exist in the eyes of the law. And legal exist will depend on whether someone registers your birth certificate with local authorities. RESUME There was a time when an individual's carnal existence in this world was based entirely on awareness of being alive, visible or otherwise tangible, to oneself or others. Existence became more complicated when leaders of communities deemed it necessary to record households -- doors and mouths -- residences and residents. In Japan, from its earliest historical times, household registration has been intimately linked with the parcels of land on which residential dwellings are located. Over the centuries, record keeping varied from place to place, but in principle people belonged to the communities in which their existence was acknowledged in some sort of local record, possibly maintained by a local temple, if not by a village office. In 1868, Japan set out on a mission to nationalize all provinces and domains within its borders. And in 1871, it promulgated a Family Registser Law, according to which, from 1872, all local governments would register their affiliated Japanese population -- "people" (jinmin 人民) or "subjects" (shinmin 臣民) or "nationals" (kokumin 国民) of Japan -- by household. At the time, aliens were restricted to living in extraterritorial "foreign settlements" in treaty ports. Household registration laws and procedures have evolved over the years. Today family registers are managed by computers, and some national and prefectural agencies have access to some elements of local registers. But municipalities -- villages, towns, cities, and wards -- continue to have primary jurisdiction over both (1) principle domicile records (honseki, koseki) of Japanese nationals, and (2) residence registers (jūminhyō) of Japanese and aliens alike who live in the municipality, regardless of the location of their principle domicile. Note that (1) the principle domicile of a Japanese resident might be in another municipality in Japan, and (2) the principle domicile of an alien resident is deemed to be the alien's country of nationality, or no country if the alien is stateless.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Statelessness

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Sexual discrimination

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Dual nationality

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Nationality choice Making the Nationality Law ambilineal was expected to roughly double the rate of dual nationality among children born between Japanese and aliens. Fairly early in judicial committee and Diet deliberations, legal bureaucrats and parliamentary lawmakers began considering the idea of requiring dual nationals to formally choose Japanese nationality and relinquish their foreign nationalities when they came of age. The idea of mandatory choice of nationality, and the age by which a choice should be made, was also debated in mass media. Opinion ran the length of the spectrum -- from critics who considered ambilineality itself a mistake, to people who saw multiple nationality as a right. On 13 April 1984, Sugiyama Etsuko voiced opposition to the proposed nationality selection system, in a one-page formal statement she sent to the heads of both houses of the Diet. The statement appealed to lawmakers to abolish publicized plans to introduce a nationality selection system in conjunction with partial revisions of the Nationality Law and the Family Register Law. The statement argued that a Japanese child with one foreign parent will be influenced by both countries, and will form an identity that cannot be divided. It also argued that a child who has obtained the nationalities of both parents should have the right to keep these nationalities for life, if that is their wish. The statement saw no problem with the existing principle of freedom to renounce nationality, which accommodates dual nationals who wish from the standpoint of personal freedom to chose their nationality. However, to require Japanese with other nationalities to chose between Japanese nationality and their other nationalities would physically inconvenience and emotionally harm such dual nationals -- especially those whose lives involve family visitations if not also residence, study, and work in both countries. I wrote part of the statement, and it was floated around a bit before it was sent -- as I recall by registered mail, though I can find no receipts. In my personal statements here and there in the press, I pointed out that, even if the older idea of having only one nationality was somehow reasonable, compelling a choice within 2 years after becoming an adult at 20 years of age was unreasonable, given the fact that many people in their 20s are still trying to figure out where they want to work and live, and dual nationals should be allowed to keep their options open. As it turned out, the "Nationality Choice Notification" -- which amounts to a declaration that one wishes to retain one's Japanese nationality, relinquishes (waives) one's other nationalities, and vows to endeavor to renounce them -- in not a few cases does not actually result in a loss of the other nationalities. Moreover, Japan's Common Rules Law" -- a law of laws consisting of rules for determining applicable law in international private matters -- provides rules for determining which of two or more nationalities will be recognized in cases of conflict. At the end of day, dual nationals are generally not allowed to invoke more than one nationality at a time. They can have a suitcase full of passports, but if they enter a country on passport X, they will be treated as a national of X, and it may be illegal for them to invoke the nationality of another country when it becomes more convenient than X nationality. Dual Japanese-foreign nationals who enter Japan on their Japanese passport are Japanese only, while in Japan. Expediently invoking their foreign nationality to take advantage of benefits intended for non-Japanese is fraudulent. As Japanese, they are supposed to leave Japan on their Japanese passport. If then they enter another country on another passport, they will generally not be able to obtain diplomatic protection from a Japanese legation.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Permanent residence applications, 1982-1983 Apart from the court case, I had my own life to lead, including my teaching, editing, and translation work, my reseach and writing, the completion and submission of my doctoral dissertation on suicide in Japan, and my application for permanent residence. The following timeline focuses on my permanent residence application, which on the whole was straight forward -- except for having to run an obstacle course created by my civil disobediance -- a summary court conviction for not registering my children as aliens, an administrative office of the Alien Registration Law. The bureau apparently discussed, but in the end did not accept, my argument that complying with the law required me to regard my children as aliens, which I couldn't do because the whole point of their nationality lawsuits was to confirm that they were Japanese, not foreigners. The funny things is, in my testimony on 19 November 1979 before 3 Tokyo District Court judges, and Ministry of Justice representatives of the State in Sugiyama v. State, I admitted that I had not registered my daughter (my son had not yet been born), and explained why -- and no one batted an eye. Permanent residence applications, 1982-1983 10 February 1982 Initial consultation I (Bill Wetherall) consulted with the Immigration Bureau about permanent residence and was told what documents to prepare. 8 March 1982 東 P-51 1st medical exam results and filing of application I picked up my negative syphilis test results at a public health center in Tokyo. A doctor confirmed that my hearing, speech, and vision were not impaired (good thing I wasn't stammering that day). He also confirmed that I was not mentally ill, was not a carrier of an infectious disease, and was not addicted to the usual list of drugs. I added the results to the one-centimeter-thick pile of other documents I had gathered, and filed my application for permanent residence. The leg work was equivalent to that required for naturalization. My application was duly accepted -- stamped, dated, and assigned an application number -- 東 P-51 -- signifying "East [Division of Immigration Bureau] Permanent residence application 51". 17 September - 16 October 1982 California trip During this period, I made a trip to California, flying China Airlines between Haneda Airport in Tokyo and San Francisco International Airport. CAL, a Republic of China carrier, continued to use Haneda after Narita opened and became the port of People's Republic of China carriers. I spent half my time in the Bay Area, centered on Berkeley, and the other half with my parents in Grass Valley. The main purpose of the trip was to file my doctoral dissertation -- Following-in-death in early Japan -- at the University of California at Berkeley. School regulations required me to be registered as a student the semester I filed, for which I needed a local address. I used the Oakland hills address of my chief dissertation advisor, George A. De Vos, with whom I stayed a couple of days. I also stayed a night or two with other Berkeley and Bay Area friends. So during the fall semester of 1982, I had two legal residences -- one in Japan and the other in California -- three, in fact, since my California driver's license registration was in Grass Valley. While on campus, I took advantage of my student registration card and graduate student library privileges to do some research in the stacks of Doe and other campus libraries. And also spent a couple of days scrounging around Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco used bookstores. 3 March 1983 Immigration Bureau calls about children The Immigration Bureau called to ask why I had not registered my children as aliens. The question was odd because I had included court documents with the application to explain, in the application, why I hadn't registered them. 23 March 1983 Notification of disapproval The Immigration Bureau informed me that my petition for permanent residence had not been approved. The date stamp happened to be my forty-second birthday. Given the delays, and the phone call about why I hadn't registered the children, I was not entirely surprised by the non-approval. What irritated me was the terseness of the notice -- no reason was given (see image). I understood the meaning of discretionary authority, and I understood the case-by-case approach to vetting and approving applications for permanent residence. I also understood that bureaucrats are not known for their readiness to volunteer reasons without probing. So I wrote a short and polite letter to the Chief of the Immigration Bureau requesting a reason, but got no reply. What happened next, however, answered my question. 30 June 1983 Certifications of birth abroad and passports I had obtained a Certification of Birth Abroad for Saori at the U.S. Consulate of the American Embassy in Tokyo on 27 December 1978, a month after her birth, so she already had U.S. nationality. However, I had not yet registered Tsuyoshi's birth with the consulate, so he was neither a U.S. citizen nor stateless. Legally, neither Saori nor Tsuyoshi existed in Japan, for the Maebashi city hall had rejected birth notifications claiming they were Japanese. I could have registered Saori as an alien, because I had documents certifying that she was an America, but I couldn't have registered Tsuyoshi as an alien without similar documents. So I obtained consular birth certificate for Tsuyoshi, and while at the consulate I applied for U.S. passports for both children. Tsuyoshi's consular birth certificate, and their passports, were made and issued on the spot -- on 30 June 1983. 8 July 1983 Children registered as aliens Our attorneys were not happy to hear that the Immigration Bureau had called me about my reasons for not registering the children. I feel the attorneys -- and probably also bureau officials -- understood my reasoning. I argued that to insist that I treat my own children as aliens, before we had exhausted all appeals, was tantamount to hanging a death-row convict while waiting for a ruling in an appeal to stay the execution. The attorneys, though, were officers of the law, and it didn't look good if their client was flaunting it with their knowledge. Perhaps they thought it made them look like accessories. I thought it a bit odd, however, that the attorneys were worrying about my civil disobedience this late. They knew from the start that, after the city hall rebuffed our attemt to file Saori's birth notification as a Japanese, we hadn't refiled the notification as an American. The attempt to file the notification as a Japanese, and be rebuffed, was part of the strategy of going to court. After getting the formal statement citing the reason the notification wasn't accepted, my wife and I could, of course, have rolled over and refiled the birth notification showing that Saori was an American, hence an alien. But I balked at doing this for what to me were obvious reasons. The attorneys seemed to think that alien registration was another matter. They frowned on my non-compliance with the Alien Registration Law, as they felt such willful civil disobedience would jeopardize the case. They felt that to register the children as aliens would not affect the court rulings -- which may have been so. But I was already on record -- in my oral testimony, before 3 judges and several Ministry of Justice legal bureaucrates -- regarding my non-compliance with the law and my reasoning -- that it made no sense to request the court to confirm that Saori was Japanese if I registered her as an alien. In any event, the attorneys urged me to comply with the law, as contradictory as may seem, and register my children as aliens. Their mother didn't seem to have an opinion either way about their alien registration. She had no reason to have any experience with alien registration, and was not knowledgeable about the workings of immigration and residence laws. For that matter, she was not familiar with the ins and outs of the Nationality Law either. She understood that patrilineality violated the letter and spirit of the equality clause in Article 14 of the Constitution, and that was enough. Interestingly, though, only I -- and not my wife -- was fined for failure to register our children as aliens. Did officials think that they were more my children than hers? In any event, I got Etsuko to do the registration dirty work -- and on 8 July 1983, she duly registered the children as aliens -- or thought she had (see next). An explanation for the delay in my first application for permanent residence, and why the bureau decided not to approve it, I later learned from Ishida Reiko. Apparently, there has been a division of opinion within the Immigration Bureau as to whether my failure to register my children as aliens should be a reason for not granting me a permanent residence permit. Alas, bureau officials are also responsible for enforcing the law, and they couldn't very well grant permanent residence to an alien who was violating the law. The moment I complied with the law, and paid the fines that were levied against me for what was regarded an administrative misdemeanor, I was permitted to reside permanently in Japan. My civil disobedience was not held against me. 9 July 1983 Notice from Nagareyama mayor The mayor of Nagareyama city in Chiba prefecture, where I legally resided, notified me and Sugiyama in writing that while we (she as a my proxy) had filed an application to register our children as aliens 8 July 1983, notifications of their births had not been filed, and urged us to promptly file them. Birth notifications need to be made within 14 days of birth in Japan. The forms include a birth certificate, completed by the doctor or other person who witnessed the birth and could certify the time and place of birth, the name of the mother, and particulars about the condition of the child. The notice from the mayor listed our children by their nationality (Beikoku), their address in the city, and their names as Americans -- "Wetherall Saori Orene" and "Wetherall Tsuyoshi Owen". I was listed first as "Father (Chichi 父) ""William Owen Wetherall", while Sugiyama was listed second as "Mother (Haha 母) "杉山悦子" (Sugiyama Etsuko) My Name came first -- the compound is "Fubo" (父母) meaning "father / mother". My name also came first on court documents listing us as parent-guardian co-litigants. On court documents, however, my name was written in katakana, hence "ウィリアム・オーウェン・ウェザロール" (Uiriamu Ooen Uezarooru" while Etsuko's name was written in kanji. As I and the children were aliens, alien registration records, hence city records, showed our names in alphabetic script as they were written on identification papers. Since the form on the mayor's notice specified "shimei" (氏名) for the children, their names were written family name (shi 氏) first. 5 August 1983 東 344 Second permanent residence application I applied a second time for permanent residence. I was allowed to resubmit the same documents -- except I had to take another physical, as more than six months had passed since the first examination. Perhaps I had picked up a sexual transmitted disease, or gone crazy. But my serum again tested negative for syphilis. And a different psychiatrist found me still sane enough to live in Japan. He came to this conclusion after talking to me about the weather for only two minutes -- one minute faster than the first psychiatrist, who had been a slower speaker. A page in my passport was stamped "永住 / 申請 APPLICATION / AUG-5 1983 / 東 344", which would show officials at ports of entry that a petition to permanently reside in Japan has been accepted and a decision was pending. 15 August 1983 Summary court finds me guilty I was found guilty by a summary court for violating the Alien Registration Law by not registering my two children as aliens within two-weeks after their birth. A two-page judgment dated 15 August 1983 came by ordinary mail, informing me that I had been fined 5,000 yen for the administration offense, plus 60 yen -- the cost of the postage to send the court's decision. The prosecutor's office sent me a postcard notification for the same amount. I paid the fine by mail with cash sent in an ordinary envelope, which is against the law, but the court mailed me a receipt. I was never charged with the mailing misdemeanor, which I confess to now because the statute of limitations has passed. I do not know exactly how the case originated. I was never notified that I was being prosecuted and did not bother to pursue the matter. From the content of the judgment notification, it would guess that Nagareyama City Hall, following routine procedures for late registration, notified the prosecutor's office after Sugiyama filed notifications for alien registration on 8 July 1963. When doing so, she submitted a statement, addressed to the Minister of Justice, as the children's legal parent representative, explaining the reasons for the late registration. She signed the statement as the children's legal parent representative, as they were the principals in the Sugiyama v. State cases. Nagareyama city then mailed a formal notification, dated 9 July 1963, to my children, and to me and Sugiyama as those responsible for their registration, acknowledging receipt of the alien registration notifications but informing us that, in order to effect them, we would have to properly file notifications of birth and attach certificates of birth to the alien registration notification (see above). In other words, up to this point, the children's births had remained unregistered -- as we had taken their cases to court on the strength of the written refusals of Maebashi City Hall to accept their birth notifications as we had submitted them, claiming that, as their mother was Japanese, they too were Japanese. The attorneys suggested that Sugiyama submit to birth notification procedures -- an obligation of all parents whose children are born in Japan -- simply to avoid more legal hassles -- even though doing so would mean that the children would not be recorded in her family register except in the remarks column, where it would be stated that they were aliens of American nationality. She immediately did so, and Nagareyama City Hall issued each child an Alien Registration Certificate (booklet) showing that their registrations were effective from 8 July 1983, i.e., the date the notifications were filed. The judgment from the Matsudo Summary Court was dated 15 August 1983, so it appears that it took about one month for the legal machinery to decide how to deal with the violation of administrative procedures related to alien registration. Legally, both parents of a child who does not qualify for Japanese nationality are responsible for registering the child as an alien. However, the summary court decision was directed only at me. It made no reference whatever to Sugiyama. Neither I nor Sugiyama were prosecuted for violating birth notification procedures -- presumably because it was clear that we had, in fact, made the required legal attempts to register the children's births within 14 days as required by law. Maebashi City Hall refused to accept the birth notifications as written, and its formal written grounds for why it couldn't accept them -- citing the Nationality Law -- became our cause for taking legal action against the State. 29 October 1983 東 344 Permanent residence granted. The grant of permission to permanently reside in Japan came a month or so after I paid the Alien Registration Law violation fine. A page a large stamp was placed on a page in my passport reading 番号 No. (東) 344 / 許可年月日 Date of Permit OCT 29 1983 / 日本国法務大臣 / Minister of Justice Japan". The stamp was validated with a "Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau" seal with the same date.

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Media follies

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Racialist stereotypes We are talking here about "racialist" -- not "racial" or "racist" -- stereotypes. A "racial" stereotype is an erroneous characterization of a "race" -- whatever "race" might mean. Say there is a population of people who are classifiable as "green" according to certain criteria, including racialist beliefs. And say someone says "Green people are lazy." If true that all "green" people are lazy, then the statement is not a stereotype but a fact. But if even one "green" person is not lazy, then the statement is false. The statement becomes a stereotype -- at best a generalization that ignores exceptions or complications for the sake of making a simple one-size-fits-all rule -- at worst an outright falsehood with no foundation even as a generalization. A "racist" stereotype is a "racial" or "racialist" stereotype with malace. A racial or racialist stereotype is innocent of malace if it is merely a byproduct of ignorance or carelessness -- the result of not actually knowing through close observation, but of repeating something heard of expressing something imagined or believed, without checking facts. A stereotype becomes malicious if it is embraced with feelings of disparagment toward one putative "race" out of conviction that another putative "race" is superior. A "racialist" stereotype, however, is the characterization of a category of people as a "race". Take, for example, "Americans". Some people use this term to refer to all people who live in the Americas -- north, central, and south -- regardless of their nationality. Others use it to refer to citizens or nationals of the United States of America. For the sake of an example, say someone "racializes" Americans defined U.S. citizens/nationals as "white" or "European" or "Western" or whatever. Even if true that the majority of "Americans" were people in the habit of classifying themsleves as "White" on U.S. federal census sheets, to characterize Americans as "White" would be false -- as plainly Americans come in all manner of putative races. Out of ignorance (usually more than malicious ideology), however, some people will say things like "Mormons and other whites" and "Mexican-Americans and other whites" and "Jews and other whites" -- and even "blacks, Jews, and other whites" -- never mind that all such statements are false if referring to the real world. If those who talk like this are lucky, someone will inform them that none of these so-called groups are mutually exclusive of each other -- except possibly Mormans and Jews, who will be religiously different even when sharing the same black, brown, white, or yellow skin. No, being an American is not about race, because civil nationality -- possession of which makes one an American citizen or national -- has been free of racioethnic limitations since the middle of the 20th century. So what about Japan?not been based on race for a long time. when inhabiting . Mormons, Mexican-Americans, Jews, even blacks -- can all be "thies"-- . actually and the falsity would be result of In either case, "Americans" represent all possible races, however defined, so long as "nationality" is not based on race. And in fact, in all American states today, from Canada to Chile, "nationality" is a matter of being born in an American territory, or being born elsewhere to an American defined as someone who possesses the nationality of an American state regardless of their racioethnicity.

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Shapiro v. State (1977 gyo-u 360) Tokyo District Court law suit filed 19 December 1977 Right 20 December 1977 report on Shapiro lawsuit in Mainichi Shinbun, morning editon, page 18 Headlines What is my nationality? "Patrilineality is unconstitutional" Mixed-blood baby sues state This is one several articles in Japanese newspapers reporting the filing of Shapiro v. State in Tokyo District Court on 19 December 1977. When clipping the article shown here, I underscored the unconstitutionality claim, and circled the characterization of the plaintiff as a "mixed-blood child" (konketsuji 混血児) and the name of the plantiff's lead attorney, Kaji Chizuko (鍛冶千鶴子 1923-2018). See Click on article to enlarge Yosha Bunko scan English reports on stateless "mixed-blood kids" in Okinawa Nationality Sought For Mixed-Blood Kids Daily Yomirui, 26 January 1978, page 2 National Law Change Is Sought The Japan Times, 26 January 1978, page 2 'Mixed-Blood Kids Need Nationality Daily Mainichi News, 27 January 1978, page 12 Blatant misreporting The misreporting in the Japanese-language press, but even more so in English media in Japan, was painful to experience, as I knew the gullibility of most readers to believe that Japan was a racist and ethnocentric country, so of course it's Nationality Law must be racist and ethnocentric. Few people seemed to understand that "blood" in the "right of blood" principles in Japan's law -- patrilineal nationality for married Japanese men, and matrilinal nationality for unmarried Japanese women -- has nothing to do with race or ethnicity, but only with personal father-child and mother-child biological lineage. The law was "right of soil" for children born in Japan to unknown or stateless parents. Race or ethnicity have never been matters law in Japan. The three articles shown here, though edited somewhat differently, appear to have been similarly sourced, probably from a Kyodo News wire report. For starters, read the lines I underscored in red when clipping the articles. Note how they differ, but note also that all invest Japan's Nationality Law with the authority to determine that the nationality of a child with a foreign father will be the foreign father's nationality. Such authority is similarly implied in the recommendation that Japan's law be revised to "enable" a child to choose his or her foreign father's nationality after a certain age. Japan's Nationality Law concerns only criteria for acquiring Japanese nationality. It does not -- and can not -- determine the acquisistion or loss of another country's nationality. The claim in the last paragraph -- that International Social Assitance Okinawa (ISAO) was handling over half the "cases involving mixed-blood children" a year -- is groundless. Click on articles to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Shapiro and Wetherall letters to editors J.S. [Jacob Shapiro], Tokyo Nationality of Mixed-Blood Child Daily Mainichi News, Readers' Forum 4 February 1979, page 2 J.S. [Jacob Shapiro], Tokyo Nationality Laws The Japan Times, Readers in Council 5 February 1979, page 12 William Wetherall, Nagareyama, Chiba Pref. Nationality Laws The Japan Times, Readers in Council 2 March 1979, page 14 Jacob Shapiro, within a week of the late January reports on the nationality needs of some stateless children in Okinawa, fired off carefully worded letters to at least two papers criticizing the racialization of the children and their nationality problem. Shapiro correctly stressed that "blood" didn't matter, that the only problem was the Nationality Law's discrimination against the children of Japanese women married to foreigners. All people are "mixtures" of the "bloods" of their parents I (William Wetherall) took a month to write a letter that supported Shapiro's position and expand on his points about the lawsuits being about sexism in the law, not race or ethnicity, which were not matters of law. In this letter, I publicly voiced -- as I recall for the first time -- my position that "all people are 'mixtures' of the 'bloods' of their parents". Click on articles to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Konketsuji mondai "mixed-blood problem" Nothing alarms me more than misreporting. As a writer, I have no misgivings about the credibility of news reports and academic papers. Practically everything published -- no matter the "fact checking" or "peer reviewing" -- is strewn with false or misleading statements and misinformation that checkers and reviewers because their sources or understandings are faulty. Also as a write this, I am aware of the times I've looked back at things I've written and gasped at the errors of commission and omission in my own writing in both English and Japanese. I did not always know what I think I now know about nationality as a civil status, whether in the United States where I was born, or in Japan, my adopted country. People are born totally unprogrammed, and have no choice in the nature of the beliefs they are infused with or absorb in the course of growing up. Some beliefs are more easily displaced by understandings that come with later education and experience. Some beliefs, however, are so deep that only the shock of disillusionnment and alienation can catalize their replacement by newer, radically different views. Born and raised in the United States, I was programed to think of myself as an American "citizen" on account of the "citizenship" that came with my birth in the United States. In social science and civics classes, I learned that immigrants became American citizens by naturalizing. The term "nationality" in America generally referred to "ethnicity" or "ethnic ancestry" or "national origin" as a matter of ancestry -- not a civil status in domestic and international law. Most Americans have no need to understand U.S. naturalization (nationality) laws. And their understanding of birthright "citizenship" is generally limited to birth in the United States. Only Americans who have children overseas learn -- some the hard way -- that U.S. birthright "citizenship" becomes a matter of "right of blood" in the case of births outside U.S. territory, and requires registration of such births at a U.S. consulate. In American race box logic, "Japanese" is a race. And practically every native speaker of Americanese uses "Japanese" as a racial label. They also tend to think of "American" as racially other than "Japanese", so a child of American and Japanese parents is called "half Japanese", following the convention of stating the quantum of "minority" or "non-American" blood. The opposite circumstances prevail in Japan. Japanese generally have no reason to know anything about Japan's Nationality Law. Very few Japanese personally experience how the law operates in the case of a child of a Japanese married or unmarried to a foreigner. And the prevailing notion of "being Japanese" is one of having "Japanese blood" -- hence such a child is "haafu" meaning "haafu foreign" by blood. One thing U.S. and Japanese passports have in common -- as a matter of international law and agreements -- is that they declare the bearer to possess the "nationality" of respectively the United States of America and Japan. U.S. passports to not certify the bearer as a "citizen" of the United States. The identification page speaks only of "nationality", not citizenship. The diplomatic pages refers to the bearer as a "citizen/national" of the United States -- but the passport does not state whether the bearer is a "citizen" or a "national" -- which have specific meanings in U.S. domestic law. The diplomatic page on Japan's passports speak of the bearer as a "national" of Japan -- again, using this term in reference to Japanese domestic law. In fact, neither Japan's Constitution nor other domestic laws define "citizen" or "citizenship". Japanese nationals have rights and duties that are comparable to (but not the same) as the rights and duties of U.S. citizens. But the two terms derive their partular meanings from domestic, not international, stands. To put it somewhat differentlyy -- "nationality" is a civil status having nothing to do with rights and duties. It is something one has or does not have. People who have Japan's nationality are Japanese nationals, hence Japanese. Those who have U.S. nationality are either U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals, hence Americans. Rights and duties, however, vary with a number of legal statuses, including nationality, residence, and compentency. The later is limited by age, a court recognized physical or mental condition, or whether one is presently serving a prison term for an offense that that n felonies. Compentency was once limited by sex and tax status. So "citizenship" is a personal variable, while "nationality" is a Japan's Nationality Law defines only "nationality" -- not "citizenship". , as a measure of the "minority" blood thinks considers "Japanaese" a race. of "nationality" as a racioethnic And practically everyone thinks of "Japanese" as a race or "ethnic nationality". Even "black" or "African American" can be understood as reply to the the question "What is your nationalitiy"? in American vernacular. I also learned to check "Male", "Caucasian" or "White", and "Protestant" in the sex, race, and religion boxes on official forms. In my own Sunset District neighborhood in San Francisco, there were Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, and "ethnic nationalities" like Irish, Italian, Greek, German, and Chinese. I assumed there were reasons for classifying people this way, and took the meanings of the classifications for granted -- until much later, when I realized the implications of especially the race boxes. Shapiro v. State (1977 gyo-u 360) Tokyo District Court law suit filed 19 December 1977 Right 20 December 1977 report on Shapiro lawsuit in Mainichi Shinbun, morning editon, page 18 Headlines What is my nationality? "Patrilineality is unconstitutional" Mixed-blood baby sues state Article reports that "A-san (49) and his wife (28)" filed a lawsuit claiming that patrilineal criterion for nationality in the case children born to a Japanese woman married to an alien was unconstitutional, and therefore their 4-month old daughter, born in August, possessed Japanese nationality, as the daughter of a Japanese woman married to an American man. The "baby" (赤ちゃん) was the plaintiff, and her parents filed the suit on her behalf as legal representatives with parental rights. English reports on stateless "mixed-blood kids" in Okinawa Nationality Sought For Mixed-Blood Kids Daily Yomirui, 26 January 1978, page 2 National Law Change Is Sought The Japan Times, 26 January 1978, page 2 'Mixed-Blood Kids Need Nationality Daily Mainichi News, 27 January 1978, page 12 Blatant misreporting The misreporting in the Japanese-language press, but even more so in English media in Japan, was painful to experience, as I knew the gullibility of most readers to believe that Japan was a racist and ethnocentric country, so of course it's Nationality Law must be racist and ethnocentric. Few people seemed to understand that "blood" in the "right of blood" principles in Japan's law -- patrilineal nationality for married Japanese men, and matrilinal nationality for unmarried Japanese women -- has nothing to do with race or ethnicity, but only with personal father-child and mother-child biological lineage. The law was "right of soil" for children born in Japan to unknown or stateless parents. Race or ethnicity have never been matters law in Japan. The three articles shown here, though edited somewhat differently, appear to have been similarly sourced, probably from a Kyodo News wire report. For starters, read the lines I underscored in red when clipping the articles. Note how they differ, but note also that all invest Japan's Nationality Law with the authority to determine that the nationality of a child with a foreign father will be the foreign father's nationality. Such authority is similarly implied in the recommendation that Japan's law be revised to "enable" a child to choose his or her foreign father's nationality after a certain age. Japan's Nationality Law concerns only criteria for acquiring Japanese nationality. It does not -- and can not -- determine the acquisistion or loss of another country's nationality. The claim in the last paragraph -- that International Social Assitance Okinawa (ISAO) was handling over half the "cases involving mixed-blood children" a year -- is groundless. Shapiro and Wetherall letters to editors J.S. [Jacob Shapiro], Tokyo Nationality of Mixed-Blood Child Daily Mainichi News, Readers' Forum 4 February 1979, page 2 J.S. [Jacob Shapiro], Tokyo Nationality Laws The Japan Times, Readers in Council 5 February 1979, page 12 William Wetherall, Nagareyama, Chiba Pref. Nationality Laws The Japan Times, Readers in Council 2 March 1979, page 14 Jacob Shapiro, within a week of the late January reports on the nationality needs of some stateless children in Okinawa, fired off carefully worded letters to at least two papers criticizing the racialization of the children and their nationality problem. Shapiro correctly stressed that "blood" didn't matter, that the only problem was the Nationality Law's discrimination against the children of Japanese women married to foreigners. All people are "mixtures" of the "bloods" of their parents I (William Wetherall) took a month to write a letter that supported Shapiro's position and expand on his points about the lawsuits being about sexism in the law, not race or ethnicity, which were not matters of law. In this letter, I publicly voiced -- as I recall for the first time -- my position that "all people are 'mixtures' of the 'bloods' of their parents".

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Kokusaika "internationalization"

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Nijū-kokuseki "dual-nationality"

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Diet committee deliberations

The Nationality Law has been the subject of discussion and debate in many sessions of the Diet, and in numerous sessions of House of Representatives and House of Councilors committees and subcommittees. Here I will introduce only a few of the highlights, using both published copies of proceedings and electronic versions posted by the government of Japan.

In addition to the Japan Socialist Party, which publicized a fairly simple draft of a possible revision bill early in the movement to revamp the Nationality Law, As it became clearer what the government was considering, a number of citizen groups submitted formal proposals or suggestions (提言 teigen) they hoped would influence deliberations in standing government councils and Diet committees and finally on the Diet floor. I will also introduce, and comment on, these documents in this section.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1977-03-12 Upper House Budget Committee (JSP Doi) 12 March 1977 80th Session of National Diet Budget Committee of House of Councilors Discussants Doi Takako (b1928), member of House of Representatives, Japan Socialist Part Fukuda Hajime (福田一 1902-1997), Minister of Justice Kagawa Yasukazu (香川保一 b1921), Director-General, Civil Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Justice This meeting took place 5 months before Hanako Shapiro was born, and 3 years before Japan would sign the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Doi Takako, a House of Representatives parliamentarian and member of the Japan Socialist Party, raises the issue of sexual discrimination in the Nationality Law and Immigration Control Law. Doi prefaced her remarks with comments about 1975 having been International Women's Year, and that the government of Japan had already initiated a domestic action plan to study what laws it would have to revise in order to comply with the convention on eliminating discrimination against women, which was then being drafted by the United Nations. Doi begins with references to Articles 14 and 24 of the Constitution, which provide that there shall be no discrimination under law because of sex (Article 14), and that laws will be enacted with the dignity of the individual and the essential equality of sexes in mind (Article 24). She wonders what the Fukuda Hajime, the Minister of Justice, thinks about this in view of the need to revise Japan's laws. And Fukuda, acknowledging that, fallings (陥落 kanraku) [through holes] between the Constitution and actuality are not a good thing, and that [we in the government] have to endeavor to correct them as determined by the Constitution as amended after Japan's defeat in the war. (Page 29 in the published proceedings of the 12 March 1977 meeting, machine copy provided by Ishida Reiko circa 1979). Doi briefly overviews the differential treatment accorded Japanese men and women under the Nationality, in terms of the preferential treatment of the children of Japanese men and alien women when it comes to Japanese nationality. She also mentioned the preferential treatment given alien wives of Japanese men in the Immigration Control Law and in the naturalization requirements of the Nationality Law. Doi said that, generally, there are two status principles, one based on the principle of territorial affiliation (属地主義 zokuchi shugi), the other based on the principle of demographic affiliation (属人主義 zokujin shugi). Japan follows neither principle, she said. In Japan, status is based on male-ism (男子主義 danshi shugi), hence Japan's Nationality Law is not simply jus sanguinis (血統主義 kettō shugi), but is patrilineal jus sanguinis (父系血統主義 fukei kettō shugi). This goes back to the feudal male-centrism (男子中心主義 danshi chūshin shugi) that was codified in the old [1899] Nationality Law. Doi thought the domestic action plan was a good thing, and hoped that the Minister of Justice would consider the revisions that needed to be made in the Nationality Law and other laws. He said he would to do so. Doi then exchanges views with Kagawa Yasuke, Director-General of the Justice Ministry's Civil Affairs Bureau, which oversees the Nationality Law. With him she gets more specific about how the law operates to discriminates against Japanese women married to aliens by considering their children unqualified for Japan's nationality. And, if living in Japan, the children are disadvantaged when it comes to school admission and employment. Sagawa's reply comes down to the government's need to prevent dual nationality, and this is best achieved when one spouse takes the nationality of the other and the children acquire the same nationality. You can can take either the father or the mother as the standard, and Japan has chosen the former. Adoption of a matrilineal principle would engender difficult problems. And adoption of an ambilineal principle would result in dual nationality and its problems. Doi argues that children should be allowed to choose their nationality. Change the law so that children can acquire Japan's nationality if either their father or mother has Japan's nationality. Sagawa replies that a child's alien nationality is determined by another state, and Japan can't say anything about it. In other words, an individual's nationality is a matter between the individual and the state governing the nationality. When nationality is determined by the husband's home country law, regarding the choice of nationality of a child born between with an alien, if it can be made through agreement between the wife who is an alien, and the husband who is a person of the country, then the sort of choice that she was proposing would would be possible -- but as of that time, there was no country that recognized such choice. So does he think, Doi wonders, that the laws of Japan are to follow the law of other countries? She's of the opinion that Japanese laws are to follow the Constitution of Japan. And didn't the Ministry of Justice, just a while ago, say that the domestic action plan is geared to abiding by the sexual equality provision of Japan's Constitution? Justice Minister Fukuda jumps back into the discussion by reiterating his previous agreement to consider everything that Doi has pointed out. And Doi closes with a strong reiteration of the need to revise the Nationality Law in accordance with principle of essential equality of the sexes. At no time in this discussion does Doi refer to stateless children, much less to Okinawa. They are not yet on her political horizon.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1978-04-01 Upper House Budget Committee (JSP Tanaka Sumiko) 1 April 1978 84th Session of National Diet 1st Subcommittee of Budget Committee of House of Councilors Tanaka Sumiko (田中寿美子 1909-1995), a House of Councilors member affiliated with the Japan Socialist Party, brought up the issue of sexual inequality in the Nationality Law in the House of Councilors (upper house) Budget Committee. During the session, she referred to the Shapiro case particulars but no by name of the plaintiff or her parents. She uses this case to appeal to the need to revise the law in order to provide the children of Japanese women married to foreigners the same access to Japanese nationality at time of birth as the children born out of wedlock to Japanese women, become Japanese because their father is not known. Tanaka also raises the issue of naturalization, citing the case of guitarist Claude Ciari (クロード・チアリ b1944), as reported in the as in 8 March 1978 issue of the evening edition of Asahi shinbun, who had difficulty meeting the continuous residence requirement. The alien wife of a Japanese man can apply for naturalization immediately, but the alien husband of a Japanese woman has to meet a 3-year continuous residency requirement. Ciari, as a performer, could not get the sort of visa that would allow him to meet the residential requirement. Tanaka mentions that he and Ciari and his wife had a child, but does not relate that they delayed their 1975 until after the child was born in order for it to became Japanese through matrilineality. Ciari would naturalize in 1985 as Chiari Kurōdo (智有蔵上人). Tanaka's opponent in the discussion was the incumbent Minister of Justice Setoyama (瀬戸山三男 1904-1997), whose role of course was to defend the intent of the law to prevent multiple nationality. During the exchange, Kagawa Yasukazu (香川保一 b1921), later a judge, then the Director-General of MOJ's Civil Affairs Bureau, which oversees nationality matters, spoke at length on the ministry's concerns about dual nationality, referring particularly to the sort of difficulties which would arise for children who -- were Japan to replace patrilineality with ambilineality as the primary criterion for acquiring Japanese nationality at birth -- would acquire Japanese nationality (日本国籍 Nihon kokuseki) in addition to Kankoku (ROK) nationality (韓国国籍 Kankoku kokuseki) or Chōsen register status (朝鮮籍 Chōsen-seki). Note Kagawa's careful distinction between "nationality" (国籍 kokuseki) and "register status" (籍 seki). Japan and the Republic Korea (ROK) are states with nationalities. "Chōsen" refers to the former territory of Chōsen, which Japan formally lost under the terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. It is not a specific nationality, but refers to a territorial status derived from having a household register in Chōsen -- i.e., in the territory Japan released from its sovereignty, which became divided into ROK, which Japan recognized in 1965, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea DPRK), which as this writing in 2014 Japan has yet to recognize. Tanaka Sumiko was originally a bureaucrat in the Women's and Minor's Bureau of the Ministry of Labor. Her husband was Tanaka Toshio (田中稔男 1902-1993), a Japan Socialist Party parliamentarian in the House of Representatives known for his social activism, especially in connection with the buraku liberation movement, the most radical faction of which was supported by the Japan Socialist Party. After retiring from politics, she wrote articles, translated books on feminist issues, and was active in movements concerning a number of women's issues, including opposition to war and equality in employment.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1979-03-16 Lower House Foreign Affairs Committee (JSP Doi) Forthcoming.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1984-04-20 Lower House Judicial Committee (Doi) Forthcoming

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1984-05-15 Upper House Judicial Committee (Ikehara Sueo, Tanaka Hiroshi, Ito Sumiko) The 15 May 1984 session of the Judicial Committee of the House of Councilors was devoted to the Nationality Law revision bill on the eve of its enactment on 25 May 1984. It was the final opportunity for concerned legalists and scholars to express their opinions about the bill. Attending the session, in addition to its usual members, were the 3 following "witnesses" (参考人 sankōnin). 参考人 上智大学教授 池原 季雄君 国籍法改正につ いて提言する市 民グループ会員 愛知県立大学教授 田中 宏君 弁 　　護　 　士　伊東すみ子君 Witnesses (Testifiers) Sophia University professor Ikehara Sueo Members of citizens group making proposal concerning Nationality Law revision Aichi University professor Tanaka Hiroshi Attorney Ito Sumiko Ikehara Sueo (池原季雄 1919-2000) was serving as the Chairman of the Nationality Law Subcommittee (国籍法部会 Kokusekihō bukai) of the Legislative Council (法政審議会 Hōsei shingikai) of the Ministry of Justice at the time revisions of he law were being deliberated in the Diet. Ikehara was a specialist in international private law, which includes nationality law. At the time, Ikehara was known as the author of a general introduction to international law, 国際私法 (総論) (Kokusai shihō (Sōron) [International private law (General theory)], first published in 1973, together with Egawa Hidefumi's and Yamada Ryōichi's 国籍 (Kokuseki) [Nationality law], an equally seminal work, in a 2-in-1 boxed volume. Later editions of both books were separately published. Ikehara is known for a Grand Bench Supreme Court ruling (最高裁判所大法廷判決) made on 25 March 1964 in Supreme Court 1961 (O) Case No. 449 (最高裁判所 昭和37(オ)449) concerning a request for divorce (離婚請求 rikon seikyū). The court adopted the views Ikehara expressed in a paper called "Jurisdiction and nationalities of principals in international private law" (国際私法における裁判管轄権と当事者の国籍). The case involved a divorce between a woman who had once been a national of Japan and a Chosenese man, who had married in Shanghai in 1940, gone to Korea in 1945, and divorced in 1946, after which the woman returned to Japan but experienced difficulty getting her status of divorce recognized. The court held that, in a divorce between aliens, if circumstances in which the plaintiff has been deserted, or in circumstances in which the whereabouts of the defendant are unknown, or in circumstance tantamount to these, even if the defendant's address is not in Japan, when the plaintiffs address is in Japan, a court in Japan will have international jurisdiction. The relatively brief decision is available in a pdf file from 裁判所 (Courts in Japan). It is also Saikō Saibansho minji hanrei shū (最高裁判所民事判例集) or "Supreme Court civil matters decisions", which is usually abbreviated Minshō (民集 第18巻3号486頁民集).

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Proposals and bills

Forthcoming.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1979-02-27 Ishida on Nationality Law issues Forthcoming

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1980-03-12 JSP press conference on revision proposal On Wednesday, 12 March 1980, members of a human rights research and advocacy group headed by Ishida Reiko held a press conference at which they publicized Nationality Law amendments being proposed by Doi Takako, a member of the House of Representatives and the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). The group was closely associated with Doi, the principal champion of human rights in a party that championed human rights. Under Ishida, the group supported the party's positions on human rights, particularly of other Asians in Japan. It also helped individuals and families in need of legal and other forms of support in dealing with immigration and nationality problems.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1979-1980 Lower House Judicial Committee (JSP bills) On 27 February 1979, about 3 weeks after the first hearing in Sugiyama v. State, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) submitted to the Judicial Council (JC) of the Ministry Justice (MOJ) a draft of a simple bill to revise the 1950 Nationality Law in order to eliminate sexual discrimination from the law. This appears to be the first formal movement to revise the, shortly after our case joined the Shapiro v. State case -- and, unlike the Shapiro case, sought and got publicity. JSP re-submitted the same draft bill to MOJ's Judicial Council on On 18 February 1980. The background information supplied by the press kits in 1979 and 1980 were somewhat different. JSP also prepared English versions of the proposal along with background information including brief descriptions of the contained less information than the Japanese JSP hooked its 1979 and 1980 proposals to the 1979 International Year of the Child, which was perfectly timed for the Shapiro and Sugiyama cases. JSP reiterated Principle 3 of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly in 1959, which holds as follows. RESUME CONVENTION ON CERTAIN QUESTIONS RELATING TO THE CONFLICT OF NATIONALITY LAWS THE HAGUE - 12 APRIL 1930 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child Principle 3 The child shall be entitled from his birth to a name and a nationality. This principle was inspired by Article 15 of the 1945 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 15 (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. But the 1979 and 1980 proposals were also hooked to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The convention had not yet been formally adopted, much less opened for signing or signed, but it had been drafted, and adoption and signing were immanent. Hence JSP literature also cited parts of Article 9 of CEDAW, which makes the provisions (underscoring and boxed comments mine). Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Article 9 1. States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men to acquire, change or retain their nationality. They shall ensure in particular that neither marriage to an alien nor change of nationality by the husband during marriage shall automatically change the nationality of the wife, render her stateless or force upon her the nationality of the husband. Japan's 1950 Nationality Law was clear on this score. The 1899 Nationality Law, like practically all nationality laws in the world well into the 20th century, regarded nationality as a male preserve, in that a wife was expected to follow her husband's nationality, and children expected to follow their father's nationality. However, Japan's 1947 Constitution extolled the dignity of the individual and the essential quality of the sexes, and in accordance with these constitutional principles, the 1950 Nationality Law ended all forms of nationality passively acquired and lost through marriage. 2. States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children. Well and good, but technically the nationality of a child is not regarded as a "right" of either parent, but as a prerogative of the state, which is free to define its nationality any way it wishes. The above item merely means that, if nationality is anyway based on lineality, then a patrilineal rule obliges also a matrilineal rule. Having said this, however, the rule could be "ambilineal" (either parent) or "bilineal" (both parents) and the requirement that law not discriminate between a mother or father of the same nationality would be satisfied. . The proposal put forth a year before the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was available for signing. But the Japanese government had already begun moving in that direction. The United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in December 1979. The convention opened for signing in March 1980, and Japan signed in July 1980. However, the Japanese government had been studying how to eliminate sexual discrimination in its laws since the first drafts of CEDAW were publicized at the World Conference on Women held in Mexico City in 1975, the International Women's Year, which marked the Decade of Women (1975-1985). Japan, signing in 1980, committed itself to revising its laws in accordance with the convention by 1985, when it would ratify the convention. By the late 1970s, however, Japan was already studying how to revise the Nationality Law. The proposal called for the following revisions to the 1950 Nationality Law (slightly edited version of English copy released at press conference, underscoring and (parentheses) in original, [bracketed] comments mine). A Proposal for Amendment of the Nationality Law Article 2   A child shall, in any of the following cases, be a Japanese National: When at the time of birth, the father or the mother is a Japanese national; No change [ child is Japanese if father who died before its birth was Japanese ] Eliminate and replace with article (4) [ rendered redundant by revision of (1) ] Article 3   No change Article 4   No change in Items 1-6, but add the following item to the article: (7) An alien of the age of 18 and over, the husband of a Japanese woman or an alien of the age of 16 and over, the wife of a Japanese man who [sic] has twelve consecutive months of residence in Japan can be allowed naturalization even though requires of Sections 1 and 2 are not met. Article 5   Eliminate item (1) and renumber [ rendered redundant by Article 2 revisions ] Article 6   Eliminate item (1) and renumber [ rendered redundant by article 2 revisions ]

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1982-11-12 Asia Human Rights Center proposal (Ariyoshi et al) Forthcoming

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1983-02-01 MOJ Civil Affairs Bureau draft bill in Judicial Council Forthcoming

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1983-05 Nationality Law Revision Citizens Group (Ishida et al) Proposal regarding interrim bill concerning Nationality Law revisions Forthcoming

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan 1984-04-13 Sugiyama Etsuko's request to Diet to abolish introduction of nationality choice system Forthcoming

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Related publications

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Ishida Reiko Forthcoming.

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Pages 00b Pages 00a Pages 17b Page1a Above Expert opinion by Yamada Ryōichi, Hayata Yoshirō, and Sawaki Takao Face pages 00a and 00b, and first (1a) and last (17b), of Experit opinion dated 23 May 1979 as submitted in Shapiro v. State (Hanako) Renumbered for submission on 30 May 1979 in Sugiyama v. State (Saori) 山田鐐一、早田芳郎、澤木敬朗 鑑定書：出生による日本国籍取得要件としての血統主義と日本国憲法 Yamada Ryōichi, Hayata Yoshirō, Sawaki Takao Kanteisho: Shussei ni yoru Nihon kokuseki shutoku yōken to shite no kettō shugi to Nihonkoku Kenpō [Expert opinion: Jus sanguinis as a requisite for acquiring Japanese nationality through birth and the Constitution of Japan] Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Below English translation of Yamada et al's expert opinion "The Acquisition of Japanese Nationality: Jure sanguinis and the Constitution" The Japanese Annual of International Law (The International Law Association of Japan) No. 24, 1981, pages 12-22 Pages 12-13 Pages 14-15 Pages 16-17 Pages 18-19 Pages 20-21 Pages 22 Yamada et al 1981 Jure sanguinis and the Constitution 山田遼一、早田芳郎、澤木敬郎 鑑定書 昭和五四年五月二十三日 東京地方裁判所 昭和五二年（行ウ）第三六〇号 国籍確認請求事件 Ryoichi Yamada, Yoshiro Hayata, and Takao Sawaki The Acquisition of Japanese Nationality: Jure sanguinis and the Constitution The Japanese Annual of International Law (The International Law Association of Japan) No. 24, 1981, pages 12-22 A footnote on the title states "The expert opinion reported, on May 30, 1979, to Tokyo District Court (Case No. 360 (gyo-u, administrative) of 1977) (page 12). The case number is that of Shapiro v. State. The expert opinion (kantei 鑑定) is dated 23 May 1979. The same opinion was was submitted to the Tokyo District Court in Sugiyama v. State (Case No. 175 (gyo-u of 1978). In the final note in the article, the authors acknowledge "We are grateful to Mr. M. Ninomiya, a postgraduate student of Tokyo University, for providing the materials concerning foreign nationality laws" (page 22). 山田遼一 出生による日本国籍取得要件としての血統主義と日本国憲法： 国籍親孝行存在確認請求事件判決 1981年10月

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Sawaki 1981-08-07 Worship and exclusion of the outside Forthcoming.

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Ryoichi Yamada, Yoshiro Hayata, and Takao Sawaki The Acquisition of Japanese Nationality: Jure sanguinis and the Constitution The Japanese Annual of International Law (The International Law Association of Japan) No. 24, 1981, pages 12-22 Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Pages 422-423 Pages 400-401 Pages 426-427 Pages 424-425 Yamada 1981-10 Blood-line-ism and the Constitution 山田鐐一 出生による日本国籍取得要件としての血統主義と日本国憲法 (国籍存在確認請求事件裁判) 法制論集 (名古屋大学) 第八十八号（一九八一年十月刊）抜刷 ページ 400-427 Yamada Ryōichi Shussei ni yoru Nihon kokuseki shutoku yōken to shite no kettō shugi to Nihonkoku Kenpō (Kokuseki sonzai kakunin seikyū jiken saiban) [ Blood-line-ism as a requisite for acquiring Japan nationality through birth, and the Constitution of Japan ] [ (Nationality existence confirmation request case court) ] Hosei-ron-shū (Nagoya Daigaku) [ Collection of views on on legal system (Nagoya University) ] No. 88 (October 1981 published) offprint Pages 400-427 Forthcoming.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Ninomiya 1983 Male/female equality in nationality law Forthcoming.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Doi 1984 Considering "nationality" Forthcoming.

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Supporters and distorters

The Sugiyama v. State cases generated a lot of publicity, mainly because we were willing to talk reporters and otherwise publicize our cause. This posed three problems.

The 1st problem was that reporters often misrepresented the case because they made stereotypic assumptions about what Japanese nationality signified. Many newspaper and magazine reports in Japanese and English, went off on tangents that had nothing to do with the Nationality Law or the claims in our lawsuits. And not a few TV reports featured showed racialized caricatures to represent "international" couples and children -- which deepened the misconception that Japanese nationality is somehow based on race or ethnicity. somehow a matter of race or ethnicity.

The 2nd problem was that media coverage, whether accurate or inaccurate, attracted the attention of interest groups that wanted to link up with our cases, but had other agendas that were incompatible with our focus on the unconstitutionality of patrilineality. I decided early on, that while we would lend an ear to what various movement groups had to say about our case, and even talk before them, I would not accept support from or join other groups -- except perhaps to get their newsletters for information purposes.

The 3rd problem is that publicity attracted not only would-be supporters who mean well but have different interests, of have difficulty understanding the issues and unwittingly distort them -- but also distractors and dissenters who disliked what we were doing, and criticized movements to revise the Nationality Law.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Kokusai kekkon o kangaeru kai "Kokusai kekkon o kangaeru kai" (国際結婚を考える会) -- meaning "Society for considering international marriage" -- formed in Tokyo in early 1980. Its first newsletter, dated 7 May 1980, reported the proceedings of its 7th meeting, which had convened on 20 April with 29 people in attendance. The newsletter was titled Kokusai kekkon kangaeru kai nyuusu (国際結婚・考える会・ニュース. Its 16th newsletter, dated August 1981, was the first to be printed back-to-back on B5 paper. Earlier newsletters were hand written on B4 paper, copies of which were folded into folios of two B5 pages. Most early news letters ran from 8 to 12 pages (4 to 6 folios). Printed newsletters were of similar length, but because fonts were half the size of hand-printed graphs, and the text was printed on both sides of sheet of paper, they contained twice as much information on half the amount of paper, The newsletter was published in Japanese, as practically all members were Japanese-speaking women. In English publicity, the group generally referred to itself as "Kokusai Kekkon o Kangaeru Kai", hence I have called it KKKK. Later in its incarnation its stationery showed "A group of Japanese women married to non-Japanese" below 国際結婚を考える会. Sugiyama and I became members from 25 August 1980. Her name is listed in the new member roll published in the 1 October 1980 issue of the newsletter (No. 5). Sugiyama attended a couple of meetings, including one that featured her talk about Sugiyama v. State. I attended only that meeting. A couple of years later, I paid the membership and changed the membership name to me, and when I moved after Sugiyama and I separated, I changed the mailing address to my new address, and remained a member through the July 1995 issue (No. 170), which was published by the group's Kyōto. From The April 1995 issue (No. 167), KKKK had changed its name "Association for Multi-Cultural Families" and its newsletter -- while still titled Kokusai kekkon kangaeru kai nyuusu -- its banner read "AMF / Association for Multi-Cultural Families". From its first year, KKKK had branches in Kantō and Kansai. by the 1990s, it had branches in Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, and Fukuoka, and they alternated in putting out the newsletter.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Okinawa publicists In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were lots of stories in the media about stateless children in Okinawa. These children were the legitimate offspring of Japanese women and U.S. servicemen. In some instances the father had disappeared. Many writers failed to mention that the legal origins of Hanako's statelessness were identical to those of most of the stateless children in Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan, and in other jus sanguinis countries. Publicists for Okinawa's stateless children liked to link their lack of nationality with the presence of U.S. military bases, the struggles of women who meet and marry U.S. servicemen, and racial discrimination. Statelessness, however, was a purely legal problem, not a political, social, or racial one. A legal problem requires a legal solution. You have to separate the issues if you want to get anywhere in courts, for courts deal with law, not political ideology. Hanako, and the children in Okinawa, had became stateless by falling through the same holes between Japan's Nationality Law and the U.S. Nationality Act. Neither law was solely responsible. Both equally contributed to the inability of a child to obtain a nationality. For years before Shapiro v. State, cries for help on behalf of Okinawa's stateless children were directed mostly at the United States government. No one in Okinawa had seen any reason to sue the Japanese government. "kokusaiji" It is worth nothing that the most common word used by Okinawa publicists was "kokusaiji" -- "international child" -- by which they meant a somehow racially-mixed child. This included children with, children without, a nationality. Such children without a nationality they called "mukokusekiji" -- and tended to use this expression to imply an "international [mixed-blood] child" without nationality. Never mind that the Nationality Law was not predicated on racial distinctions. Never mind that stateless was not ever a consequence of racial mixture. Okinawa publicists were convinced, as most people (even scholars) were convinced (and still are convinced), that Japanese nationality has been based on race. See the next section of this article for more about what I call the "bait and switch" debate over "kokusaiji" versus "konketsuji". Tellingly, the term "kokusaiji" has come to have a certain currency today, thirty years later.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Kita Katsuji's "konketsuji mondai" Kita Katsuji (b1936), a TV Asahi employee at the time, who had worked at TV Asahi's Naha bureau in 1969-1970, wrote the following article for Asahi Journal, the Asahi group's weekly opinion magazine. 喜多勝二 日本帰化への道遠い沖縄の"無国籍児" 朝日ジャーナル 1980・5・23 第22巻第21号通巻1110号 ページ123-126 Kita Katsuji Nihon kika e no michi tooi Okinawa no "mukokusekiji" [ The long road to naturalization in Japan for Okinawa's "stateless children" ] Asahi Journal 23 May 1980, Volume 22, Number 21, Issue 1110 Pages 123-126 Yours truly, two years into Saori's law suit and two years before Tsuyoshi's suit, fired up his pen and wrote the following letter to AJ's editor. ウェザロール・ウィリアム 日本の国籍問題を"混血児問題"を呼ぶな 朝日ジャーナル 1980・6・20、第22巻第25号通巻1114号 ページ108 Wezarooru Wiriamu Nihon no kokuseki mondai o "konketsuji mondai" o yobu na [ Don't call Japan's nationality problem a "mixed-blood-child problem" ] Asahi Journal 20 June 1980, Volume 22, Number 25, Issue 1114 Pages 108 To which Kita fired off the following rebuttal. 喜多勝二 ウイリアム氏に反論 Wiriamu shi ni hanron [ Rebuttal to Mr. William ] 朝日ジャーナル 1980・7・4、第22巻第27号通巻1116号 ページ115-116 Kita Katsuji Wiriamu shi ni hanron [　Rebuttal to Mr. William　] Asahi Journal 4 July 1980, Volume 22, Number 27, Issue 1116 Pages 115-116 "kokusaiji" versus "konketsuji" Kita began his article with this paragraph (structural translation mine). 「国際児」という新しい言葉を、沖縄のジャーナリストたちは使い始めている。異民族間に生まれた子供たちを、われわれはほとんど抵抗感なしに「混血児」と呼ぶが、その語感の中に日本純血主義特有の差別意識を見る沖縄の人たちは、「国際化する新しい時代により適応し得る資質の子供たちであれ」との願いをこめて、「国際児」という言葉を創った。もちろん、違う言葉を使ってからといって、物事のありようが変わるわけではない。むしろ、本質を見にくくしてしまう場合さえある。私があえて「混血児」と書くのも、現在の日本ではその方がはっきりと問題を把握してもらえるだろうと思うからである。しかし、沖縄が混血児の呼称にこだわり、新しい造語を必要とした事実は、混血児の存在が沖縄にとって無視できない問題となっていることを示している。 Journalists in Okinawa are beginning to use the new word "kokusaiji" (国際児) ["international child"]. We practically without a sense of resistance call children born between different minzoku (民族) ["races", "ethnoraces", "ethnoracial nations"] "konketsuji" (混血児) ["mixed-blood children"]; but people of Okinawa -- who see in its verbal sense [nuances] the discriminatory consciousness peculiar to Japan-pure-blood-ism (Nihon junketsu shugi 日本純血主義) -- created the word "kokusaiji" with the hope that [they] "be children of a quality that can adapt in accordance with the new internationalizing age". Of course, it's not that the manner-of-being [condition] of things will change [simply] because [one] uses a different word. There will even be cases in which, instead, [people] have [more] difficulty seeing the true character [essence] [of the problem]. That I venture to write "konketsuji" [in this article], is because I think that, in Japan at present (today), that way (using "konketsuji") will more likely get [readers] to clearly grasp the problem. However, the fact that Okinawa is particular [sensitive] about the appellation of konketsuji, and [considers] a new coinage necessary, indicates that the existence of konketsuji is for Okinawa a problem which cannot be ignored. Kita was of course right that coining a new word for an existing word does not solve the problems associated with the existing the word. And, as promised, he used "konketsuji" where most Okinawan publicists would have used "kokusaiji". He also, as his title suggests he will, talk about naturalization and statelessness. But he presents on case in which "race" by any definition is a barrier to naturalization or causes statelessness. As it turns out, it really wouldn't have mattered which term Kita used -- "kokusaiji" or "konketsuji" -- because, either way, he would have proceeded to deepen the popular misconception that "race" had anything to do with naturalization or statelessness. He did not recognize that principles of family law, especially gender distinctions, had engendered most cases of statelessness involving children of Japanese women -- that procedural standards, not race, made naturalization difficult for some applicants. Like practically all journalists at the time, Kita failed to understand the meaning of "nationality" in Japanese law, as a purely civil (raceless) status designating state affiliation -- as the term must be in international law. In my letter, I took Kita to task for racializing the nationality problem. I argued that there was nothing "racial" about the nationality law or the problems in the case of my non-stateless daughter (my son was not yet even conceived) and the stateless daughter of another couple represented by the same group of attorneys. There was no race in the law, and it needed revision only to (1) enable children born to a Japanese woman married to an alien to obtain Japanese nationality, according to the same standard by which a child born to alien woman married to a Japanese man could obtain nationality at time of birth; and (2) prevent statelessness in all cases. And I have yet to find, since the early stages of my research in the late 1970s, a single case in which race had been a legal barrier to Japanese nationality at time of birth or later in life. Yet Kita was convinced -- as Okinawa publicists were convinced -- as the vast majority of reporters, commentators, and academics I met at the time were convinced -- as the vast majority of journalists and scholars I meet today are convinced -- that putative "race" or "racioethnicity" have figured in Japan's Nationality Law has been somehow "racist" or predicated on "racioethnic" purity. Kita, in his rebuttal, stuck to his guns. He found, in my arguments, many points that were nothing but "misunderstandings" and "dogma". Names Speaking of "kokusaika" (internationalization) -- the newspaper, Asahi Shinbun, in articles and letters I had written in Japanese in the late 1970s, usually reversed my katakana family and personal names and inserted a dot between them. At least the magazine, Asahi Journal, accepted the order in which I customarily wrote my name in katakana -- family name first -- the way my name has been legally registered in Japan. But alas, the magazine followed its style sheet in putting a dot where I use only a space between my names. The dot is not part of my name -- and most publishers have the way I write my by-line in Japanese. Tellingly, Kita did exactly what most people do with my name. He assumed, without confirmation, that ウィリアム (Wiriamu) was my family name. I cannot blame him for harboring this stereotype. If I were to have to bet a million yen on the order of a katakana name like mine, knowing nothing about the name or the person, I too would put my money on family name last. Yet as a journalist and scholar, I have learned -- sometimes the hard way (i.e., by making a mistake) -- that names need to be confirmed. I must count my blessings, though. At least Kita did not call me ウィリアムズ (Wiriamuzu) [Williams]. Or maybe he did and editors at the magazine corrected it to ウィリアム (Wiriamu) -- which would have meant they, too, has thought that was my family name. Not a few people have actually tried to correct me -- by insisting on calling me ウィリアムズ (Wiriamuzu) [Williams] -- apparently convinced that surely I had made a mistake on my own business card. I have always only smiled at such incidents. It doesn't pay to get upset. And it hasn't paid a whole lot to write about the obsession in Japan with reversing customary name order in Japan, when alphabetizing names, as a mark of what -- modernization? westernization? euroamericanization? americanization? internationalization? globalization? vanity? Few people have understood why I should want to "Japanize" the order of my name when writing in Japanese. I myself sometimes wonder why I bother with what must rank among the most trivial of the world's non-problems. Perhaps I insist on the order I prefer because I want others to know that it's my choice, not theirs. Of course, when filling out forms, I need to conform to the order required on the form. But practically all forms in Japan -- and not a few forms in the United States and other countries -- solicit family name first. And my legal name, since becoming Japanese, is clearly family-name first.

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Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Discussion with Satō Kinko (1981) Eigo_tenbo_1981-07_00_Sakoku_no_eigo_yb_150.jpg Eigo_tenbo_1981-07_01_Sakoku_no_eigo_yb_150.jpg Eigo_tenbo_1981-07_17_Wetherall_Sato_nationality_yb_150.jpg ウェザロール・ウィリアム、佐藤欣子 特集：“鎖国の英語”をこえて 国籍法は鎖国の異物か (法意識から見た日本人とアメリカ人) 英語展望（ELEC Bulletin) 第74号、夏、1981年 ページ17-22, 30 Wetherall William, Satō Kinko "Tokushū "Sakoku no Eigo" o koete [ Special feature: Transcending "closed-country English" ] "Kokusekihō wa sakoku no ibutsu ka (Hō-ishiki kara mita Nihonjin to Amerikajin) [ Is the Nationality Law a vestige of the "closed-country"? ] [ Japanese and Americans seen from (their] law-awareness ] Eigo tenbō [ English outlook ] (ELEC Bulletin) No. 74, Summer 1981, pages 17-22, 30 COMMENT ON TITLING Thanks partly to the nationality cases, and the increasing number of articles I was writing for English and Japanese newspapers and magazines, I was asked now and then to participate in one or another panel discussion or symposium on and the status and treatment of foreigners in Japan, the nationality law, suicide, and language education -- among other topics I was known to have an opinion about. My reflextive response was to deline. I didn't like participating in anything which smacked of "kokusaika" or "bunka kōryū -- "internationalization" or "cultural exchange" -- unless I thought I might be able to upset these familiar apple carts. I also shied away from any event in which it seemed that I would be cast as a "token gaijin" -- a "foreign" face or name to legitimize an organization's "international" or "cultural" mission -- like employing someone who can't bake, but could pass for a French baker, to assist the Japanese bakers in the bakery section of a department store food bazaar. ELEC When asked by the editor of Eigo tenbō (英語展望) ["English outlook"] to join Satō Kinko (佐藤欣子 1934-2008) in a discussion of Japan's Nationality Law and attitudes toward nationality, I immediately said yes. I knew that Eigo tenbō was also known as "ELEC Bulletin", was the quarterly organ of The English Language Education Council (Eigo Kyōiku Kyōgi Kai 英語教育協議会) ["English language education deliberation society"]. ELEC was a Ministry of Education recognized non-profit foundation of the "zaidan hōjin" (財団法人) or "foundational legal person". As a non-govermental organization sanctioned by a government agency, it's mission was to promote English language education and international understanding. ELEC was in fact a somewhat smaller, younger rival of my employer -- IEC, or International Education Center (Kokusai Kyōiku Shinkōkai 国際教育振興会) ["international educuation promotion society"]. IEC had the same foundational status, and I was a full-time instructor at its flagship school, Nichibei Kaiwa Gakuin (日米会話学院) < Japanese American Conversation Institute > (JACI), which like ELEC's English school provided courses for government and company employees as well as the general public. Satō Kinko I also had a pigeonhole for Satō Kinko. I had read something she written and was aware that she was an attorney, a former prosector, and a legal scholar, as well as a critic. And I also knew that her husband was Satō Seisaburō" (佐藤誠三郎 1932-1999), a conservative political scientist who was known as one of Nakasone Yasuhiro's closest academic "brains". So I figured that, if nothing else, a talk with Satō would be fun. I tend to be surrounded by people who to some extent agree with my positions on nationality. I am also aware that most people who think they support my position have not actually thought through the legal and other issues. As a writer and occasional conversant or speaker, object is to change -- not confirm -- made-up minds. And I find conversations with intelligent opponents more interesting than those who appear to share my point-of-view but possibly for ideological reasons. When talking with the former, I don't have to switch sides to create a confrontation that might spark some new ideas. With the latter, I have to switch sides to get them to reveal the quality of their sympathy with my position -- which may turn out to be more ideological than reasoned. Heated but civil discussion As I recall, Satō and I sat at a table at ELEC's headquarters and talked into microphones to facilitate tape recording. There was no audience other than the editor and a couple of other staff members and recording technicians. The discussion was long, and a few parts were edited out of the published version -- which as it was was long -- a bit over 6 pages in the magazine, which would fill at least twice as many pages in a book. The discussion remained civil even when -- after talking about the Tokyo District Court's decision in Saori's case -- we ventured into social issues that generated a lot of heat. In other words, we actually agreed on many points of law. But about other issues, she said a few things that I strongly rebutted, and I said a few things that provoked equally strong rebuttals from her. The structure of the article The published edit of the discussion is divided into the following 7 subtitled sections (my English translations). As I recall, both I and Satō were shown drafts of the edit for our approval. I may have had something to do with subtitling, as I consider subtitles important guides to organization. 日本との出会いから裁判まで From encounter (meeting) with Japan to court The editor introduced Saori's court case and the Tokyo High Court's recent decision, then asked me to start off my introducing myself and describing how I came to be interested in Japan, and what brought me to resort to litigation to confirm that Saori was Japanese. Satō jumped in as an interviewer, asking questions to clarify what I reported. 「日本的解決」の例として An example of a "Japanesque resolution (solution)" In this section, Satō takes the lead and unfolds her argument why -- contrary to her own principled opinion that a child's nationality should be based on it's mother's nationality -- the court's decision was both rational and appropriate, considering the reality of dual nationality and the need to put practical considerations ahead of constitutional principles. See below for a detailed summary of her argument and my response. 法律嫌いの日本人 Law-disliking Japanese 国籍法における国家と個人 State and individual in the Nationality Law 男性裁判官は母性の敵か Are male judges enemies of motherhood? I deeply offended Satō by stating that the Tokyo District Court decision might have been in our favor had the judges been women. I had no reason to believe this, and of course it came across as being straight out of a hardcore feminist manifesto, if not simply flippant. I failed to signal that my intent was to be provocative, but she assumed I that I really believed that. Perhaps I half believed it. In those days, I said and wrote many things that, looking back, were silly. 国語と母国語 National language and mother-country language 帰属意識とは何か？ What is an awareness of belonging? Essential matrilineality Yet Satō also said something that diametrically opposed the government's defense of patrilineality with an argument for matrilineality. Satō admitted that she had not studied the Sugiyama v. State cases involving my daughter, but had just read about Saori's case in newspapers (and possibly also a couple of law journals) -- and was familiar with the Tokyo District Court's decision, which had been handed down and reported on 30 March 1981, shortly before out talk. Satō said she found the ruling odd because, for her, patrilineality clearly discriminated between men and women on account of their sex, in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution. She then pointed out that Article 24 uses the words "ryōsei no honshitsuteki byōdō 両性の本質的平等) <essential equality of the sexes>. However, men and women are different from the start. So laws concerning family, marriage, and inheritance and the like had to be brought into line with the essential equality of the sexes principle. What about when when the nationality of the father and mother are different? she asks. If you ask which should be recognized as the child's nationality, she would say that making it in accordance with the mother's nationality would be the most in line with with essential equality of the sexes principle. Why? Because the woman, the mother, bears the child. Determining the child's nationality on the mother's nationality would also be discrimination. And fathers would claim that they were being discriminated against. But, she says, such discrimination, favoring the mother's nationality, would be discriminating in accordance with the principle of essential equality. Even when the identity of a child's father is not clear, it's mother is clearly the woman who bears the child. Hence determining the child's nationality on its mother's nationality is the most rational, she feels. Practicality over principle Satō then points out that the court's decision recognized the reasonableness of minimizing dual nationality by continuing to adopt the patrilineality in the 1899 law in the 1950 law. And she said most Japanese would probably agree with this position. More important than the question of constitutionaity, was the question of how to prevent dual nationality, given the international legal environment in which Japan's Nationality Law had to operate. She pointed out that the court did not declare that patrilineality was the only solution, and specifically said it was up to the National Diet to revise the law as it saw fit, in consideration of how other countries are dealing with nationality issues. When the dust of her "reckless" argument for essential materilinality had settled, she saw the district court's decision as generally rational and appropriate. I myself had nothing to say to refute Satō's appraisal of the decision, as I myself didn't expect the court to rule against the patrilineal principle. I understood that courts in Japan avoided declaring national laws as unconstitutional on principle, prefering instead to recognize that the Diet puts practical needs ahead of principles for their own sake. In this sense, laws and courts in Japan tend to be "realistic" when it comes to arguing the finer points of the Constitution. RESUME EDIT contemporay international national law developments. s the most rational determination. Why? Beause the woman gives birth the child. nationality to should be the child's nationality, Which should be the child's nationanlity, nationality of the father, or the nationality of the mother?nationality should be recognized as that of the child? The father's nationality or the mother's nationality? when it comes to the ? Which nationality should be recognized as that of a child born between themIn her opinion, which she warns might be called reckless, a child's nationality ought to be that of its mother, that this would be most rational resolution to the question of which nationality should be recognized . In face, however, menandwomen ", which holds that the two sexes are essentially equal, they had to bis odd because, in fact, men and women are different, hence their different treatment in . a few I think I generally out debated Satō, who perhaps knew less about me than I knew about her. She definitely was not prepared to talk about the vast majority of foreigners in Japan who were native speakers of Japanese. Her confusion of But a couple of times I said things that really irritated her -- and which later irritated even me, as I reflected on my ability then to spout remarks that stemmed from radical ideology rather than reasoned thoughts based on emperical evidence. I left not knowing whether Satō was intentionally baiting me simply to keep the discussion hot -- as I myself will do when interviewing people -- the Devil's Advocate ploy. Someone said she was probably a Ministry of Justice plant trying to provoke me to say something that baiting me or truly believed some of the things she was saying to me. I did not take her for a Ministry of Justice plant to poison my critical well, but rather saw in he The long discussion was edited down to 喜多勝二 Kita Katsuji 日本帰化への道遠い沖縄の"無国籍児" Nihon kika e no michi tooi Okinawa no "mukokusekiji" [The long road to naturalization in Japan for Okinawa's "stateless children"] 朝日ジャーナル Asahi Journal 1980・5・23 (第22巻第21号通巻1110号) 23 May 1980 (Volume 22, Number 21, Issue 1110) Pages 123-126 Yours truly, two years into Saori's law suit and two years before Tsuyoshi's suit, fired up his pen and wrote the following letter to AJ's editor. ウェザロール・ウィリアム Wezarooru Wiriamu 日本の国籍問題を"混血児問題"を呼ぶな Nihon no kokuseki mondai o "konketsuji mondai" o yobu na [Don't call Japan's nationality problem a "mixed-blood-child problem"] 朝日ジャーナル Asahi Journal 1980・6・20 (第22巻第25号通巻1114号) 20 June 1980 (Volume 22, Number 25, Issue 1114) Pages 108 To which Kita fired off the following rebuttal. 喜多勝二 Kita Katsuji ウイリアム氏に反論 Wiriamu shi ni hanron [Rebuttal to Mr. William] 朝日ジャーナル Asahi Journal 1980・7・4 (第22巻第27号通巻1116号) 4 July 1980 (Volume 22, Number 27, Issue 1116) Pages 115-116 "kokusaiji" versus "konketsuji"

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Fan mail We got letters and cards from all manner of people -- most of them supportive. I will introduce the most interesting 2 letters here. The 1st is a supporting letter arrived shortly after news reports of the filing of the Saori's case with the Tokyo District Court on 20 December 1978. It was posted by Tazuko Okuda from California, where she was residing with her husband Karl K. [Kaoru] Okuda and their children. The Okudas, from Japan, had lived in America, where their 1st daughter was born, then in Japan, where their 2nd daughter was born. They returned to America, and settled there, partly on account of misgivings they had about how the oldest daughter had been treated under Japan's Nationality Law. The 2nd letter arrived shortly after media reports of the Tokyo District Court decision Saori's case, handed down on 30 March 1981. It was posted by Wakui Takashi from the Tokyo Detention Center in Tokyo, where he was being held as a defendant against undisclosed charges for an offense that apparently warranted his detention. He found the ruling odd -- not because he didn't support our cause, but because he had personal reasons to question why there was need for litigation. Top   1st daughter American, 2nd daughter Japanese Japanese parents discover that Japanese nationality is not automatic Click on envelope to enlarge Tazuko Okada's letter to Etsuko Sugiyama Postmarked INDUSTRY, CA / 27 DEC / 1978 Yosha Bunko scan Possibly by the end of 1978, but no later than the 1st week of 1979, a letter arrived from the United States, addressed to "Mrs. Etsuko Sugiyama / Chiba-ken / JAPAN" in English. An abbreviated form of our address in Japanese, as reported in most newspapers in Japan, was written to the side to facilitate delivery. The address in Japanese specified not only the prefecture (Chiba-ken), but the city (Nagareyama-shi) and the banchi (Nonoshita 830) -- which is shared by the entire neighborhood. Missing was the number of house, but the postman knows who's who on his route. And he quickly got used to a lot of mail coming to us with incomplete addresses due to the way our address was being reported in newspapers all over Japan. A 31-cent airmail stamp, attached to a small airmail envelope, was postmarked "INDUSTRY, CA / PM / 27 DEC / 1978". The return address, however, was in Baldwin Park, roughly 10 miles (15 minutes by car) north of Industry. Baldwin is a residential neighborhood. Industry is the economic heart of the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles. A thousand or plants and offices are concentrated in the city, but only a few hundred people live there. The street address on the envelope is 13534 Rockway Dr. Information on the Internet suggests that the 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom, 1677-square-foot home built in 1961 is still in the Karl K. and Tazuko Okuda family trust. The letter writer, Tazuko Okuda, was born in Japan in June (or January) 1935. She was 43 when she dated the letter 26 December 1978 West Coast time -- a week after the filing of Saori's nationality confirmation lawsuit on 20 December 1978 Japan times was first reported. If alive as of this writing (July 2023), Tazuko would be about 93. Structural translation The 3-page, neatly written letter speaks for itself. I have taken the liberty here to publicly reveal images of Okuda's letter and my structural translation with comments as follows. In the translation, parentheses in the letter are shown as <angle brackets>. Clarifications in [brackets] and (parentheses) are mine. The the notes following the translation for comments on highlighted text. Click on pages to enlarge Letter from Tazuko Okada to Etsuko Sugiyama Written 26 December 1978 Yosha Bunko scans -1- Salutation omitted -- please pardon [me] Reading the article [about your case] in Tokyo shinbun, I could not but prepare a brush [take up a pen and write you]. Please forgive me. [Our situation] may be somewhat different from you[rs], but 16 years ago we were unable to get Japan nationality of (for) [our] daughter (musume no Nihon kokuseki 娘の日本国籍). [Both] my husband and I [are] Japanese [have] Japan nationality (Nihonjin Nihon kokuseki 日本人日本国籍), and enroute on (to) a South America work transfer [I] gave birth at this place (tōchi 当地) (in the United States). A child born in America, regardless of the nationality of [the, its] parents, is an America citizen (Amerika shimin アメリカ市民). After giving birth, [I contacted] the Japanese consulate] by telephone, and requested [them] [to consider] the matter that, my husband could not return from South America if not a month later (for another month), and as for me, [my] recovery (hidachi 日立) [from the delivery] was bad and [I] could not go to [the consulate]. <It was a matter of the matter that, within 2 weeks the father is to notify [the consulate] [of the birth of a child (in order to reserve the child's Japan nationality)].> As soon as my husband returned <one month after our daughter's birth>, [he] went to the Japan consulate to notify [her birth] but was refused. After that, every time of a work transfer of my husband, [we] felt the inconvenience that we (my husband and I) [had] passports of Japan (Nihon no pasupooto 日本のパスポート), [while] [our] daughter [had] an America passport (Bei pasupooto 米パスポート). -2- There was also the matter (We also had the experience of), when [we] returned to [our] country to work in Japan, [our daughter] was unable to enter a ward [public municipal] school, and for half a year we let her play [without going to school]. Because [our] lower (younger, 2nd) daughter (shita no musume 下の娘) was born in Japan, we notified the [local] government (municipal) office [of her birth] as [our] 2nd daugther (jijo 次女), but the [municipal office] did not recognize [her as such] and recorded her [in our family register] as [our 1st daughter (chōjo 長女). Becasue related to work [we] live in outside localities (places outside Japan) (gaichi 外地) more often [than in Japan], the other day (senjitsu 先日) my husband took a test and became an America citizen (Beikoku shimin 米国市民), and I too am now totally used to this place (tōchi 当地) (the United States). But [we] were [very] sad when [we] were refused Japan nationality 16 years ago. [And we are very sad] when [we] think of things like when [our] 1st daughter asks why only her own name is not written on [official] copies of [our] family register (koseki tōhon 戸籍謄本). The noisy (pesky) regulatons of the country (Japan) cannot be but angering (irritating). [I've] lived in South America and [other] countries there and here, but now [I've] come to live with pride as a Japanese. But this summer, returning to [my] village (home, Japan) after (the first time in) 7 years, [it] seemed [to me] as though the country of Japan was forgetting [its] own country, and [I] was made [by this awareness] to have an unpleasant feeling. -3- [Everything] from toys of (for) children to candies and clothing [is] full of horizontal letters (alphabetic text, writing) [and] [they, Japanese] don't know of what country the things are of (from), [but] if [the writing] is correct English, French, Spanish et cetera, [they] forgive (allow) [this], but [ . . . ] [ . . . ] [they] allow putting horizontal letters full of mistakes on products of Japan and selling [them]. [I] cannot understand the country's (Japan's) way of doing things. Why does [it] not give [its] nationality (kokuseki 国籍) to people who truely love the country of Japan (Nihon no kuni 日本の国) and want to be nationals of Japan (Nihon no kokumin 日本の国民)? Please keep at it (Ganbatte kudasai がんばって下さいませ) I pray that [you] will get Japan nationality of (for) your daughter (o-jō-sama no Nihon kokuseki お嬢様の日本国籍) very quickly. The cold attitude of the people at the Japan consulate 16 years ago [I] remember like yesterday, [and I] well understand your feelings. While knowing [it's] impolite (discourteous, rude), I could not not take a brush (I had to write). Please forgive me. 12th month 16th day [To] Wetherall husband-wife (Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall) (the Wetheralls) Okuda Tazuko Comments on expressions in Tazuko's letter Japan nationality of (for) [our] daughter (musume no Nihon kokuseki 娘の日本国籍) Tazuko's use of "no" (の) to associate her "daughter" with "Japan nationality" reflects the most common way of thinking about nationality as a personal possession. The use of "no" is often fuzzy with respect to actual or imaginary possession. The Okudas obviously filed Mika's birth notification thinking that she was (because she would be regarded as) a national of Japan. Hence the inclusion of "for" along with "of" in the semantic range of "no". Later in the letter, Tazuko wrote of my daughter's nationality using the same possessive "no". See related note below for further comments on the possible implications of "no" as a marker of intimate relationship. The underlying legal problem here is that no child can be said to possess Japan's nationality before a birth notification is (1) submitted to a competent official, who (2) vets the accuracy of the information on the notification, (3) deems that the child qualifies as a national of Japan through birth in accordance with the National Law, (4) accepts the notification, and (5) registers the child in a family register. In such a case, the date of the child's acquisition of Japan's nationality -- whether through right-of-blood or place-of-birth -- will be retroactive to the time of its birth. Prior to this bureaucratic process, a parent may presume that an unregistered child possesses Japan's nationality -- which could be called the child's "presumed nationality" or abstractly referred to as a "presumptive nationality" as opposed to a "confirmed nationality". See Nationality never automatic below these notes for other comments. Japanese [and have] Japan nationality (Nihonjin Nihon kokuseki 日本人日本国籍) Of interest here is whether Takuzko intended "Nihonjin Nihon kokuseki" to mean that she and her husband WERE "Japanese" AND possessed "Japan's nationality" -- or whether they were "Japanese" BECAUSE they possessed "Japan's nationality". The differences hinges on whether she was using "Nihonjin" in its popular racioethnic sense, or in the strictly civil (raceless, non-ethnic) sense in which it was used in the 1899 Nationality Law in effect at the time she and her husband were born -- which became "Nihon kokumin" in the 1950 Nationality Law in effect when she wrote the letter in 1978 and still in effect as I write this in 2023. To understand what someone means when they say "Nihonjin" or "Japanese" requires sufficient context, which is lacking in Tazuko's letter. Her later statement that she feels pride as a Japanese would imply a racioethnic understanding if, at the time, she had naturalized in the United States and lost her Japan nationality, and hence -- like her husband -- was no longer Japanese. But at the time she wrote the letter, she was still Japanese. America citizen (Amerika shimin アメリカ市民) Tazuko uses "shimin" -- which means "city affiliate" or "denizen" -- as translationes for "citizen". The word is used in Japanese laws in two instances -- but not as label for Japanese in reference to their possession of Japan's nationality. The 1st and least important use of "shimin" in Japanese law is when listing, such as in the Exit-enter-country Control Law (erroneously dubbed "Immigration Control Law" in English), the Japanese translations of various words in the domestic laws of different countries -- "subject", "national", and "citizen" -- which correspond to "nationality" in international law and Japanese law. Japan refers to its own people, as possessors of it nationality, as "nationals" -- not "citizens". No domestic laws in Japan refer to "citizen" or "citizenship" as a matter of "nationality". The 2nd and most meaningful use of "shimin" in Japan is as a catchall term for affiliations (-min 〜民) of several kinds of municipal bodies collectively called "ku-shi-chō-son" (区市町村) -- wards, cities, towns, villages. The term "ku-shi-chō-son-min" (区市町村民) is abbreviated "shimin" (city affiliate), which is then used generically to include also "kumin" (ward affiliate), "dhōmin" (town affiliate), and "sonmin" (village affiliate). "Shimin-ken" -- "city-affiliate-rights" is sometimes used as a translation for "citizenship" in reference to rights associated with possession of "nationality" in countries that use "citizen" in their domestic nationality laws. However, in reference to Japan, "shimin-ken" generally implies the rights of everyone -- Japanese and foreigners alike -- who are legally residing in, hence affiliated with, a municipality (and therefore also a prefecture) of Japan. Note that while Japan's nationality is regulated through a national law, it is umbilically linked with household registers, which are territorially linked with municipalities. A family register represents a specific address within the municipality that has jurisdiction over the address. Japan's nationality is thus essentially territorial. Japan's nationality exists only as an artifact of a household register's territorial affiliation with a municipality that is part of Japan's sovereign dominion. Should the municipality be part of a territorial succession to another country, people in its household registers would lose Japan's nationality -- unless legal provisions were made for people in ceded localities to transfer their registers to a locality that remained in Japan. No such provisions were made for Taiwanese and Chosenese when Japan accepted the loss of Taiwan and Chō -- provisionally from 2 September 1945 when Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers -- and finally from 28 April 1952 when the territorial terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect. Concomitant with the treaty-determined separation of Taiwan and Chōsen from Japan, Taiwanese and Chosenese were separated from Japan's nationality. Karafuto had become a part of Japan's prefectural Interior, and when invaded and captured by the Soviet Union at the end of the war, its registers were evacuated to villages, towns, or cities in Hokkaido, where Karafutoan evacuees remained or migrated to municipalities in other prefectures. recovery (hidachi 日立) Tazuko writes 日立 (hitachi), the name coined for the company of this name, meaning "sun rising", to mean 肥立ち (hidachi) -- growth or development over time -- such as of a baby during the days immediately after its birth. Here the expression "hidachi ga waruku" (日立が悪く) refers to the course of Tazuko's recovery from the delivery. within 2 weeks the father is to notify [the consulate] The 14-day notification rule has applied to births and deaths from no later than the early Meiji period. Marriages and divorces become effective from the date a marriage or divorce notification is filed. While fathers are first listed among persons authorized to file a birth notification, mothers may also them, and other relatives or concerned parties may file them if for any reason the parents cannot. The 14-day rule applied to all births in Japan, regardless of the nationalities of the parents. It also applied to all births of children outside Japan to a Japanese parent or parents. The notification window for children born in Japan is still 2 weeks. Japanese parents living outside Japan now have 3 months (90 days) to file a birth notification for a child born outside Japan. Failure to notify municipal registrars within the allocated period, of the birth of a child in Japan, means that the child does not legally exist in the eyes of Japanese law. And a child who stood to acquire Japan's nationality through birth, through one or both parents, might end up being registered under an alien parent's nationality or as a stateless alien. Many late notification cases are resolved in family courts, which consider the family circumstances that resulted in delays in notification -- sometimes months, sometimes years, even decades. My impression is that courts are reluctant to blame the children for the failure of their parent or parents to notify their births. Parental failure to notify a Japanese consulate, in a timely manner, of the birth of a child overseas, is much more likely to result in the failure of a child to acquire Japan's nationality through birth. However, consulates are empowered to consider mitigating circumstances that prevent a parent or parents from filing a notification within the required period. See Nationality never automatic below these notes for comments on what the Okudas might have done to faciliate Mika's acquisition of Japan's nationality. the [ward hall] did not recognize [her as such] and recorded her [in our family register] as [our 1st daughter (chōjo 長女) Since their older daughter Mika, born in California in 1962, had not aquired Japan nationality, and so she could not be entered in the Okuda family register, which therefore showed no children prior to Mari, who was born in Japan in 1970. From the standpoin of her status in the Okuda family register, Mari thus became their only child, and as a girl she was described in the register as "chōjo". In other words, in the eyes of Japanese law, Mika existed only as an alien, not as a member of the Japanese family comprised of her father, mother, and younger "older sister" Mari. When enrolling a child in a school in Japan, parents have to submit documents certifying the child's legal status. The documents most commonly used for this purpose are a copy of a family register and/or a resident certificate. Today, both Japanese and aliens are subject to resident registration. But at the time Tazoku was writing, aliens were subject to alien registration in lieu of resident registration. In other words, for residence purposes, there were two registers -- one for Japanese, the other for aliens. Because Mika was an alien, the Okuda's had to register her as an alien resident in the municipality where they were residing. When required to show proof of their own (or Mari's) residental status, they would obtain a resident certificate. As proof of Mika's legal status, they would have submitted a certificate of completion of alien registration to the school. Note that, since 1 March 1995, the "Relationship to head of household" (Setai-nushi to no tsudzukigara 世帯主との続柄) box on a resident certificate has shown simply "ko" (子) or "child" in lieu of sibling sex and order nomenclature, or "yōshi" (養子), meaning "adopted child". The head of household a child's register is usually the father because women who marry typically migrate to their husband's register. But the head could be the mother -- if not a grandparent, in which case "mago" (孫) or "grandchild" would be used. The labeling of relationships continues to be contentious as legalists and human rightists sort out issues of status discrimination and status privacy. And on 9 July 2012, municipal "alien registration" system was replaced by an "[alien] residence management system" under the control of "Immigration Bureau", which now issues legal aliens an "[Alien] Residence Card". Aliens with such cards are now registered by the municipality in which they reside on a par with Japanese who legally reside in the locality. And so, as proof of residence, registered aliens are now issued the same resident certifcate as Japanese. While aliens do not have household registers, their registration records include family relationships with Japanese. outside localities (places outside Japan) (gaichi 外地) "Gaichi" (外地), meaning "outside territory" or "exterior", is an interesting linguistic fossil that Tazuko seems to have unwittingly misused -- a word she heard while growing up in Japan before, during, and after the Pacific War. Historically, "gaichi" referred to localities intimately related to Japan, outside the prefectural Interior of Japan (Naichi 内地). The term referred especially to Taiwan, Karafuto, and Chōsen when they were parts of the sovereign dominion of the Empire of Japan -- and other territories that were not part of the sovereign dominion, but were under some degree of Japanese control and jurisdiction, such as the South Sea Islands (a mandate territory) and Kwantung Province (a leasehold in Manchuria then a part of Manchoukuo). The Americas, and other places that were not part of the Empire of Japan were not usually referred to as "gaichi". Brazil and the United States would have been called -- as they are called today -- "kaigai" (海外) -- "beyond the sea", i.e., "overseas" or "abroad" -- if not simply "gaikoku" (外国), meaning "other (foreign) country" the other day (senjitsu 先日) my husband took a test and became an America citizen (Beikoku shimin 米国市民) In point of fact -- Tazuko's husband, Kaoru Okuda, filed a "Petition for Naturalization" on 27 November 1977. Upon passing the usual background checks and citizenship tests, he took an Oath of Allegiance, and was issued a Certifcate of Citizenship as Karl Kaoru Okuda, on 27 October 1978, just 2 months before Tazuko wrote the letter. The Okuda's older daughter, Mari Okuda, born in Japan in 1970, petitioned for US citizenship on 25 October 1990 and was granted citizenship on 27 November 1990 as Mari Cailyn Okuda. I do not yet have evidence that Tazuko Okuda, born in Japan in 1935, naturalized. While most Japanese who settle in the United States eventually become US citizens, some remain Japanese the rest of their life. Consider 2 cases. Tazuko's older sister Shigeko Morohashi, born in Japan in 1934, entered the United States in 1956, became Shigeko Morohashi Stites when she married 3 years later in 1959, and naturalized as Shigeko Morohashi Stites in 1963 -- the year after Mika Okada's birth in the United States. However, Haruo Aoki, born in Chōsen in 1930, entered the United States in 1953, married an American woman in 1958, and taught me Japanese at the University of California at Berkeley in the late 1960s and early 1970s, continued to reside near Berkeley the rest of his life, and died at his home in 2022 at age 91 -- still a national of Japan. He simply didn't want to change his nationality. the country of Japan was forgetting [its] own country This is an interesting example of personification, in which Japan is portrayed as forgetting its own country -- i.e., forgetting that it is Japan, with a language and culture (or languages and cultures) of its own. Tazuko's depiction of Japan's embrace of the "horizontal writing" of other languages, with a double standard about correctness, appears to be an example of how Japan has forgotten itself. Japan nationality of (for) your daughter (o-jō-sama no Nihon kokuseki お嬢様の日本国籍) Here, again, we see the use of "no" to associate my daughter Saori with a nationality she did not then possess. The psychological effect of "no" as a possessive marker has the effect of claiming possession even when legal reality is otherwise. In the course of the litigation on behalf of my daughter and son, I consistently regarded them as Japanese, and spoke and acted as though they were Japanese, by refusing to register them as aliens. Their lawsuits sought to confirm that they "were" Japanese, as ought to be registered as Japanese, because the sexual discrimination in the Nationality Law was unconstitutional. I suspect Tazuko felt the same way about Mika's nationality, hence spoke of it as though it was hers because she believed it ought to have would be Japanese if not for sexual discrimination in the Nationality Law, which ought to be they "should be" JapaneseI, also, consistenly spoke of my daughter and son, Top   Nationality never automatic The Okudas were not the first Japanese couple to discover that a child born to them overseas did not automatically become Japanese. In fact, no nationality law in any country recognizes automatic nationality through birth. All countries have bureaucratic procedures for recognition or denial of acquisition of their nationality at time of birth. In principle, Japan's Nationality Law "operates automatically" at time of birth -- under principles stiputated in the law, without the permission of an official excercising discretionary authority -- only for those who satisfy the law's objective conditions for acquiring Japan's nationality through birth -- whether through right-of-blood or place-of-birth. However, the law cannot operate until it is applied. And it cannot be applied until a Birth Notification is filed. The catch is that, as Tazuko noted in her letter, a birth had to be notified within 14 days, whether born in Japan or in another country. The notification window for children born in Japan, whether to Japanese or foreign parents, is still 2 weeks. Japanese living outside Japan now have 3 months (90 days) to file a Birth Notification for a child born outside Japan. However, even in 1962, when Tazuko's oldest daughter Mika was born in California, consuls were authorized to recognize circumstances that prevented a Japanese parent from notifying the birth of a child overseas within the 14-day limit. Evidence of good faith -- intent and effort to comply with the law under extenuating circumstances -- could mitigate strict enforcement of deadlines that served little more than bureaucratic and statistical purposes. If, as Tazuko wrote, she called a Japanese consulate to inform an official of the impossibility of her husband and the difficult of she herself submitting Mika's Birth Notification in a timely manner, why did the consulate not give her the benefit of doubt? I am also wondering why -- if the Okudas felt so strongly that they had been wronged by heartless consular officials, they did not petition the Ministry of Justice or a court to review Mika's case and rule that they had acted in good faith, and that their tardiness in filing her birth notification was justified by their circumstances. Consuls are Ministry of Foreign Affairs employees. They are merely conduits between Japanese nationals outside Japan and their local governments in Japan. Consuls have the authority to issue or cancel Japanese passports, but ultimate authority over the enforcement of the Nationality Law, Family Register Law, and Civil Code rests with the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) -- and justices in matters brought before the courts. Family registers are under the control and judisdiction of municipal governments. And municpal registrars have the authority to apply relevant laws and regulations to the administration of Birth Notifications, including the handling of late notifications in case of domestic births. Registrars may direct questions about legal and procedural matters to MOJ officials responsible for advising municipal officials who act as law enforcers. MOJ may also issue directives and guidelines, and publish administrative precedents, by way of informing and educating local registrars. Courts deal with grievances raised by any concerned party. However, few people with grievances resort to legal action, which requires committment, financing, and attorneys. Family courts, though -- which deal with many issues related to family law like divorce settlements, child custody, child adoption and fostering, family and personal name changes, and late Birth Notifications -- are fairly easy to navigate without attorneys and with very nominal petition fees. I suspect that the Okudas -- like many people who find themselves frustrated by senseless regulations in the hands of rigid bureaucrats -- were simply too preoccupied with day-to-day survival to dedicate time and money to getting Mika the nationality they felt she deserved as their daughter. As fate would have it, though, Mika ended up with the right nationality -- of the country where she was born, mostly raised, and still lives. Her father and possibly her mother, and her sister, would give up being Japanese to become Americans like her. Top   Implications naturalization The Okudas eventually made a choice to permanently settle in the United States, signified by the naturalization of Tazuka's husband in 1978. They appearto have spent a lot of time in Brazil before settling in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles, where Tazuka's older sister, Shigeko, also settled after marrying an American man. Tazuko and Shigeko even ran a business together, and were otherwise very close, according to Shigeko's obituary. Naturalization in another country, especially when it results in loss of one's original nationality, is not something that most people will do on a whim. Most naturalization, I suspect, including my own in Japan, is undertaken for practical, not patriotic reasons -- this is where I live, this is where I expect to live the rest of my life, this is where I expect to die and be buried -- ergo, this is where I want to feel legally most secure. Yet naturalization decisions are rarely simple. Some Japanese will find a US greencard and a Japanese passport adequate for their purposes -- as did Haruo Aoki (1930-2022), who taught me Japanese in college. The Okudas -- at least Tazuka's husband and their Japan-born 2nd daughter -- decided that being Americans, and losing their Japanese nationality, was better for them. My own experiences in Japan have been similar. I became a permanent resident in 1983, and the combination of permanent residence in Japan and a US passport served my purposes. I could visit my family in California for up to a year with the right to return to Japan. Having decided that I would stay the rest of my life in Japan, I first applied for naturalization in Japan in 1999. But after collecting most of the required documents, I withdrew my application when Japan changed its re-entry permit system to allow aliens with permanent or long-term statuses to reside outside of Japan for up to three years. I reasoned that, if I had to go back to California to care of my parents, having a US passport with a Japanese Permanent Residence Permit stamp trumped having a Japanese passport but possibly losing my US citizenship, thus having to negotiate life in California as a non-immigrant alien. Proof of US citizenship In Japan, proof of nationality is a certified copy of a household register -- or a Japanese passport, which can be issued only to someone with a household register in Japan. In America, proof of citizenship is ultimately a birth certificate showing that one was born in the United States, or was born overseas to American parents who registered one's birth a US consulate, or a certificate of naturalization -- or a US passport, which can be issued only to someone who can document their possession of US nationality through birth or naturalization. proof of citizenship became an issue for Barrack Obama when running for president and even during his incumbency. Some people claimed that he was not a "natural born citizen" and hence he should be constitutionally barred from the office of president. Eventually a certified copy of a long-form "Certificate of Live Birth" issued in Hawaii satisfied all but a few die-hard members of the "birther" movement that wanted him gone. The larger, more citizenship issue in the United States concerns the legitimacy of demands for "documentary proof of citizenship" (DPOC) for voter registration purposes in some states, while other states -- and general Federal guidelines -- require only that people registering to vote swear under oath that they meet a list of requirements for voting in Federal elections, which include possession of U.S. citizenship. When DOC . Sufficient DPRC documents include the following. Certificate of birth in the United States Consular report of birth abroad Certificate of naturalization Certificate of citizenship US passport or copy of ID pages from a US passport Driver's license showing one's citizenship status Federal or state agency ID showing one's citizenship status Bureau of Indian Affairs card number, tribal treaty card number, or tribal enrollment number Top   Yosha Bunko scan Yosha Bunko scan Shigeko (Motohashi) Stites Tazuko (Motohashi) Okuda's sister, Shigeko, arrived in Honolulu on 29 March 1956 as a 1st class passenger aboard the S.S. President Wilson (V/60-E), bound for San Francisco, where she arrived on 5 April 1956, having sailed from Yokohama on 24 March 1956. She was the only Japanese national among 48 passengers on the 1st-class manifest. which included 3 from China [ROC], 2 from Australia, and 1 each of British and Swiss nationality. The largest contingent of passengers, most of them Japanese, were traveling 3rd class. Shigeko is pictured as a foreign student in the 1958 edition of The Legend, the yearbook of San Diego Junior College, later renamed San Diego City College. Her obituary states "She immigrated to the United States in 1956 to study fine arts at San Diego State University" (www.legacy.com. This remark may reflect the sort of embellishing that is common to family stories generally and obituaries in particular. San Diego State College existed at the time but did not become a University until 1972. A newspaper announcement of Shigeko's marriage to William Clay Stites on 12 September 1959 states only that she had been residing with a family in San Diego for "the past four [sic] years", while observing that her husband was a student at "California state college [in San Diego]" (San Angelo Weekly Standard Friday, 2 October 1959, page 3). An obituary states that Shigeko was a "devoted mother and buisiness owner" in addition to a community volunteer (www.legacy.com, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, viewed 30 July 2023). Along with her sister Tazuko Okuda, she ran a dress making business in Baldwin Park for over 20 years. Together they designed and made everything from wedding dresses, formal gowns, band and drill team uniforms to costumes for chorus lines. The obituary includes Okuda and her daughters among immediate-family survivors as follows. She is survived by her husband William Clay Stites, three sons Mike and his wife Monica, John and Jamie, three grandsons, her sister Tazuko Okuda and two nieces Mika and Mari who are in a sense her daughters. Shigeko Motohashi Stites, according to her Petition to Naturalize, filed on 6 August 1963, granted 6 September 1963, was born in Nerima-ku in Tokyo on 2 November 1936. On the petition, she stated that she was admitted to permanent residence on 4 June 1960, about 4 years after her arrival in America and a year after she married. Her name as a permanent resident was Shigeko Motohashi Stites, reflecting the common practice of adopting one's natal family name as a middle name when assuming another family name through marriage. Shigeko died on 29 November 2004 at age 68 in Baldwin Park, and was bured on 3 December 2004 at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, a short drive northeast of Baldwin Park. Her husband, William Clay Stites, born 1 July 1934 in San Antonio, Texas, died on 26 April 2019 at age 84, and is also buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park. Top   Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Cause of litigation misconstrued Jailed man wants to tell his nationality story to our attorneys One of the more curious letters came from a Wakui Takashi (涌井孝), who gave his address as　Tokyo-to Katsushika-ku Kosuge 1-35-1 A (東京都葛飾区小菅一の三五の一Ａ). The letter was dated 3 April 1981 and we replied on 12 April. Wakui began his letter by acknowledging that he was presently "in such a place" as a defendant. He wanted to talk to our attorneys about the court case, which he considered "strange" (hen da へんだ). When showing the letter to our attorneys, they immediately pointed out that the return address was Block A at Tokyo Detention Center (Tōkyō Kōchisho 東京拘置所). As I write this over 40 years later, the detention center is still at the same address. Wakui wrote the letter in reference to the Tokyo District Court decision in Saori's case, which was handed down on 30 March 1981 and reported in papers that evening and the following morning. In the letter, he found the case itself "odd" for the following reason (my transcription and translation) 実は私の母は、貴方と同じ日本人で、外国人と結婚をして其の外国人との間に子供が四人生まれました。この四人の子供は全部日本の母の戸籍に入って居ますと云う事は日本国籍になって居ると云う事です 又二重国籍なの。 Actually my mother, a Japanese like you, married a foreigner and bore 4 children bewtween [herself and ] that foreigner. As for the matter (As for the fact) that these 4 children are all in the household register of [their] Japan mother, [this] is a matter (this means) that [they] have become Japan nationality[.] Also [they are of] dual nationality. Wakui wanted to meet our attorneys -- especially Kaji Chizuko -- in order to tell them everything about his mother's case. The 2 pages of the main letter were followed by a full-page postscript reiterating the sameness of his mother's situation to Sugiyama's situation and his wish to reveal the details, though not all were clear, to especially Kaji, who he was hoping to hear from. Kaji and the other attorneys were not impressed. They advised us to ignore the letter, as it was obviously a ploy to get attention. I, however, was curious. Why would someone make all that up just to get attention? Perhaps it was partly true. Perhaps Wakui was the offspring of a mixed union of some sort -- believed stories he had been told -- but didn't have documentary evidence -- and was fishing around for legal help. The attorneys said it was up to us, but they had no interest in Wakui and would not entertain his wishes to either meet them or correspond with them. Since the letter was to Sugiyama, I got her to reply with questions intended to confirm whether Wakui's understandings of his mother's (and apparently his own) situation were correct. He did not directly say in the letter that he was one of the 4 children his mother gave birth to in her alleged marriage with a foreigner, but I assumed he meant to include himself. Whatever his own situation, I wanted to tease more information out of him -- on the possibility that his mother actually did have 4 children in a relationship with a foreigner. I do not have a copy of our reply. But his reply, dated 24 April, repeats what appear to be the two questions I asked him, by way of trying to confirm the factually of his understandings. In his reply, he stated that he received our reply on 14 April. He said that our response was based on only the surface of his first letter, that some points were not yet clear. In any event, he reiterated what appear to have been our questions -- (1) "Have your parents filed a notification of marriage?" -- and (2) "Are [your] siblings, begining with me [sic = you], all [of] dual nationality? In response to these 2 questions, he wrote as follows (my transcription and translation). (1) 当然婚姻届は出されて居ると思いますよ (2) この事は役所で戸籍の事また色々と調べて見なくては解りませんが二重国籍かも？私生児ではないと云う事だけははっきりと云えます。 (1) Of course [my parents] filed a notification of marriage (2) この事は役所で戸籍の事、また色々と調べて見なくては解りませんが二重国籍かも？私生児ではないと云う事だけははっきりと云えます。 Of course [my parents] filed a notification of marriage, and (2) As for this matter [dual nationality], without investigating matters of the family register, and various [things] at the municipal office I don't know, but probably [I have] dual nationality? I can clearly say only that I am not a privately born child (shiseiji 私生児) ["child born out of wedlock"]. I have been contacted by many people who, having read something I've written about nationality, run their personal stories by me to get my opinion on whether they are Japanese, of have a legitimate claim to Japanese nationality. Most people who write have not seen a family register or other such primary documents, but have only heard stories. Parents are known to tell their children stories that are less than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about whether they were born out of wedlock, or fathered by another man or born to another woman, or adopted. On the surface of Wakui's letters, I have no reason to doubt that his mother was Japanese and his father was a foreigner. He seems to be sure that his parents legally married and that he was not born out of wedlock. He thinks me "may" have another nationality but doesn't know for sure. Keep in mind that the two "certainties" -- his parents married, and he was not born out of wedlock -- have nothing to do with whether he is, or is not, a Japanese national, or possibly even a dual national. What he wants to believe is entirely possible -- given specific circumstances and documents to substantiate them.

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Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Hate mail Though not all letters were optimistic, most were supportive and encouraging. Only one qualifies as "hate mail" on the basis of its language. The mail was a postcard with a woodcut of a landscape in China by Teng Fu-chueh (�ｹ福覚 PY Deng Fujue). The description of the work is written in Chinese graphs followed by English. The graphs are of the kind used in the People's Republic of China, which suggests that the card was printed there for export. The card is postmarked 23 December 1978, 8-12 AM, in Omori, presumably in ōta ward in Tokyo. The card is addressed to "杉山悦子" and "W. Wezarol" without the usual respectful "-sama" suffix or "Mr." prefix. The card was postmarked 2 days after newspaper reports on 21 December 1978 of the filing of Saori's case in Tokyo District Court on 20 December. Most newspaper reports included our Chiba prefecture, Nagarayama city, Nonoshita address up to its 830 banchi -- which, while not a complete number, was sufficient for postal delivery. "W. Wezarol" is the sender's attempt to romanize ウィリアム・ウェザロール, as my name appeared on court documents and in newspaper reports. At press conferences and in interviews, and when writing, I went by ウェザロール・ウィリアム -- then my registered legal name as an alien, and now my legal name as a Japanese. Over the years, I have received correspondence from many people in Japan, and most write my name as I write it -- ウェザロール・ウィリアム. Some, however, reverse it as ウィリアム・ウェザロール, apparently thinking my family name should come last, while a few attempt to romanize my name -- as though I might not understand it in Japanese script. Some of the variations have been amusing. "Wezarol" is actually a fairly close transliteration of ウェザロール (Wezarooru, Uezarooru). The message reads as follows. My transcription and structural translation. The words underlined in red in the message are highlighted in rose. Words written in katakana (except "Amerika") are highlighted in yellow. 戦後日本人は我儘すぎる。アナタの訴は却下されるだろ・・・・何故ならばこの様な事が廻れば世の中は困らんする[。]いくらブス女でも斜陽のアメリカ男と結婚すれば朝鮮人と同じ時代必ず来る！外人を夫に持てば・・・・アナタはその位のるは考慮しなかったのか・・・・だから日本女は白人にコビを売り馬鹿にされる！日本は今や世界一。ミニクイ混血児は将来多難必至・・・之からはアナタもしっかり眼を開いてみること・・・それ共夫子供と共に外国で苦労してみては？如何・・・日本ほど良い処はありませんよ！・・・ Postwar Japanese are too selfish. Your suit will probably be rejected. . . . The why [reason] being [Because] should something like this [your demands] come about society will be in trouble. Should a woman however ugly marry a-setting-sun-America (an-America-in-delcine) man a period (era) the same as [that of] Chosenese will certainly come. Having an alien for a husband .... did you not consider that much? .... Therefore women of Japan who sell flattery to whites are made out to be fools! Japan is now [number] one in the world. As for ugly mixed-blood children [their] futures inevitably have many difficulties ... From now you [should] try to fully open your eyes ... Or how about trying to struggle in a foreign country with [your] husband and child ... There is no place as good as Japan! ... While the calligraphy is not elegant, and at times even a bit crude, the prose is simple and clear. The older ways of graphing some words (kore 之, tokoro 処), and the ways of cursively abbreviating some graphs (葉、何、事、世、本、多), suggests the writer was educated before or during the war. The writer, probably a man, signed in a practiced alphabetic cursive hand what appears read "Mo Lihuei" -- the writer's real name? A penname reflecting the writer's Republic of China (ROC) or People's Republic of China (PRC) nationality? The penname of a Japanese writer who has a personal reason to be interested in China? If taken at face value, "Mo Lihuei" could be graphed as the family name "Mo" (莫), and the personal name "Lihuei" or "Lihui", consisting of "Li" (立、礼、理、利) and "huei" or "hui" (慧、惠、輝、絵). Most combinations of these names are female. Some, however, can be male, and a few could be either.

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In tribute

The following are expressions of my feelings about a few individuals -- among many others -- who stand out in my memory of the "trial" years that spanned the first decade of my daughter's life and the first 5 years of my son's life. Among these individuals, I knew only Wagatsuma fairly well. Among the others, one I never met (Doi Takako), most I met only once or twice, and none for long conversations, except Tanaka Hiroshi, who I interviewed for a journal article. Yet something about them -- their understanding of the focus of our litigation and the sincerity of their support -- have continued to inspire me. Most have passed away, and the rest will follow, but all are remembered.

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Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Doi Takako Forthcoming.

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Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Ishida Reiko Forthcoming.

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Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Ninomiya Masato Forthcoming.

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Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Jacob Shapiro Forthcoming.

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Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Tanaka Hiroshi Forthcoming.

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Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Hiroshi Wagatsuma Shortly before I returned to Japan in 1975, while a graduate student at Berkeley, I met and befriended Hiroshi Wagatsuma (我妻洋 1927-1985), a Japanese anthropologist who had settled in the United States and was then at UCLA. In 1978, when I found myself an expecting father, I asked Wagatsuma if he knew where I might find an attorney to represent me and my family in a nationality law suit. I knew that Wagatsuma's father, Wagatsuma Sakae (我妻栄 1897-1973), had been an expert on family law and was instrumental in revising Japan's Civil Code after World War II. And Wagatsuma, on his way to becoming a anthropologist in America who specialized in minority groups and social deviancy, had worked with delinquents in juvenile courts, which was where he became familiar with cases involving mixed-blood, Korean, and buraku neighborhood youth. To be continued.

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Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans Yamada Ryoichi Yamada Ryōichi (山田鐐一 1922-2008) was the junior author, with Egawa Hidebumi (江川英文 1898-1966), of the then and still most generally authoritative book on Japan's Nationality Law. Egawa, an authority on international private law, which includes nationality law, had passed away before the 1st edition of the book was published. Yamada continued to carry the torch with help of Hayata Yoshirō (早田芳郎), who joined the byline in the 2nd and 3rd editions of the book, as follows. Egawa and Yamada 1973 (1st edition) 江川英文、山田鐐一 (著) 国籍法 東京：有斐閣、1973年7月発行 289ページ Egawa Hidebumi, Yamada Ryōichi (authors) Kokusekihō Tokyo: Yūhikaku, July 1973 289 pages Egawa, Yamada, and Hayata 1989 (2nd edition) 江川英文、山田鐐一、早田芳郎 (著) 国籍法 新版 法律学全集 59-2 東京：有斐閣、1989年4月発行 xxxページ Egawa Hidebumi, Yamada Ryōichi, Hayata Yoshirō (authors) Kokusekihō [Nationality Law] Shinpan [New (2nd) edition] Tokyo: Yūhikaku, April 1989 xxx pages The 2nd edition addresses the 1984 revisions effective from 1985. Its 3 parts cover the following topics (translations mine) 第１編   総論（国籍の概念および機能；国籍法の原則；国籍の抵触；国籍法上の先決問題；国籍法上の法源） Part 1   General theory (Concept and function of nationality; principles of nationality law; Conflict of nationality; First questions from viewpoint of international private law; Sources of law from viewpoint of nationality law) 第２編   国内立法による国籍の取得および喪失（国籍の取得；国籍の喪失；補説） Part 2   Acquisition and loss of nationality based on domestic statutes (Acquisition of nationality; Loss of nationality: Supplementary explanations) 第３編   国際法的原因による国籍の変更（樺太・千島交換条約による国籍の変更；下関条約による国籍の変更；ポーツマス条約による国籍の変更；日韓併合条約による国籍の変更；対日平和条約による領土の変更と国籍問題） Part 3   Nationality based on international law causes (Changes of nationality based on Karafuto-Chishima exchange treaty; Change of nationality based on Shimonoseki Treaty; Changes of nationality based on Portsmouth Treaty; Changes of nationality based on Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty: Changes of territory and national problems based on Peace Treaty with Japan) Egawa, Yamada, and Hayata 1997 (3rd edition) 江川英文、山田鐐一、早田芳郎 (著) 国籍法 第3版 法律学全集 59-2 東京：有斐閣、平成9年7月 xxxページ Egawa Hidebumi, Yamada Ryōichi, Hayata Yoshirō (authors) Kokusekihō [Nationality Law] Dai-3-han [2rd edition] Tokyo: Yūhikaku, July 1997 xxx pages The 3rd edition covers minor revisions promulgated on 12 November 1993 (Law No. 89), related to effects of the new Administrative Procedures Law (行政手続法 Gyōsei tetsuzuki hō) promulgated on 20 November 1992 (Law No. 88), effective from 1 October 1994. This edition also examines theoretical foundations of nationality law with reference to academic opinion and legal precedents since the 2nd edition. Yamada and Hayata were the first listed of the three legalists who coauthored an expert opinion submitted to the Tokyo District Court by the team of attorneys representing the Shapiro and Sugiyama nationality cases in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Attached to the opinion was a Japanese translation of a German precedent. As the brief was used in both cases, Shapiro and I shared the payment of a gratuity to the translator. The brief has been published in Japanese and English (see Shapiro timeline above for particulars). 江川英文、山田鐐一 (著) 国籍法 東京：有斐閣、1973年7月発行 289ページ Egawa Hidebumi, Yamada Ryōichi (authors) Kokusekihō Tokyo: Yūhikaku, July 1973 289 pages Yamada attended one of the hearings in my daughter's case, the only time I met him that I can vaguely recall, I believe before the 30 March 1981 District Court or 23 June 1982 High Court rulings. After the Diet-enacted revisions were promulgated, on 25 May 1984 (Law No. 45), and shortly before they would go into effect on 1 January 1985, he co-authored a simple guidebook to the "New Nationality Law" and related matters with Tsuchiya Fumiaki (土屋文昭). 山田鐐一、土屋文昭 (著) わかりやすい新国籍法 有斐閣リブレ 7 東京：有斐閣、1984年10月31日発行 79ページ、単行本 Yamada Ryōichi, Tsuchiya Fumiaki Wakariyasui Shin Kokusekihō [Easily-understood New Nationality Law] Yōhi ribure < Yuhikaku Livret > Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 31 October 1984 79 pages, paperback pamphlet While the 1950 law was heavily revised, it was not really a "new" law as such. Some people, though, referred to the pre-revision version of the 1950 law as the "old Nationality Law" (旧国籍法 kyū Kokusekihō) and to the 1899 law as the "old old Nationality Law" (旧旧国籍法 kyō-kyō Kokusekihō). In any event, a new edition (新版 shinpan) of the guidebook, retitled simply Wakariyasui Kokusekihō (わかりやすい国籍法), was published in 1993, and 3rd edition (3版 sanhan) came out in 1999. A somewhat less timely English version of the 1984 edition of the Japanese pamphlet was published a year later. Ryoichi Yamada and Fumiaki Tsuchiya Translated by J.C. Yamanaka An Easy Guide to the New Nationality Law (Answers to 20 Questions on New Bilineal System, Naturalization, Dual Nationality and Family Register) Tokyo: The Japan Times, August 1985 71 pages, paperback pamphlet Note that the characterization of the new system as "bilineal" was technically incorrect. The system is "ambilineal" -- meaning that a child can become Japanese if either its father or its mother is Japanese. A literally "bilineal" criterion would require that both of the child's parents be Japanese.

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John Yamanaka John Yamanaka writes about himself in October-December 1994 issue of Japan Quarterly Click on pages to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans John Yamanaka A year or two after the publication of the English version of Wakariyasui Shin Kokusekihō, I had the honor and pleasure of meeting its translator, J.C. Yamanaka, a veteran journalist who, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, had been the managing editor and in turn the executive editor of The Japan Times. He was still an executive at the newspaper and would later become its auditor. John Chushi Yamanaka (1923-2011) was born in the United Kingdom in 1923, the son of Chushi Yamanaka and Winifred Mary Cornell, who had married in the UK in 1920. He was "John Yamanaka" when not "J.C. Yamanaka" in British guise, but as a dual UK-Japanese national, he was "Yamanaka Chushi" in the Japanese Imperial Navy during World War II. I introduced to John in a corner of the Japan Times editorial office when I happened to be there for a conference with the then managing editor Shimada Shigeo. That would have been in the fall or so of 1986, when I translated crucial parts of prime minister Nakasone Yasuhiro's Karuizawa talk, from which were extracted, distorted and out of context by mass media, his now famous comments about social intelligence and blacks, Hispanics, and Puerto Ricans in the United States. I vague recall meeting him on another occasion at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, to which I did not belong and rarely went. I say "honor" because John was a living legend. I had heard about him -- his birth in Britain to a Japanese father and English mother, his coming to Japan 1941 (the year I was born) a bit before Pearl Harbor (which came several months after my birth). I'd heard he'd served in the Japanese Imperial Navy during the war, then left Japan for a few years before returning to the country and becoming a news editor. A "pleasure" I say because he was a very interesting and humorous person and made me feel totally at ease in his company. I told him I could think of no one more appropriate than him -- a dual national from birth -- as the translator of a book on the ambilineal revisions in the Nationality Law. He talked from experience about dual nationality being something you may wish you didn't have when your countries of nationality are at war with each other, as Japan and the UK were when he was a young man. He smiled when I reminded him that, according to popular opinion, dual nationality is supposed to be impossible in Japan. It's really impossible everywhere, though, since generally you can only wear one nationality at a time. The problem is that others will question your loyalty. John was a living example of the impossibility of a lot fictions that pass for truth in both journalistic and academic writing about Japan and people like him -- and my children. He would not have become a dual national under Japan's law at the time he was born had his mother been a Japanese woman married to a British subject. What I most realized when talking with John, though, was how lucky we were -- the plaintiffs in the Shapiro and Sugiyama law suits -- that the executive editor of the Japan Times at the time was someone who understood what nationality was -- and knew exactly the importance of children of international couples to have access to the nationalities of both of their parents -- even if at times it can be inconvenient.

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Constitution v. Nationality Law

2007 introduction to 1981 article

A lot was happening in the spring of 1981 when the Tokyo District Court handed down its decisions in Shapiro v. State and Sugiyama v. State. Personally I was committed to finishing a doctoral dissertation by the fall of 1982. I had missed the first deadline in 1980, and its writing had taken a back seat to a translation of a book on suicide, and to Sugiyama's hospitalization and loss of a fetus that would have been Saori's first brother (Tsuyoshi was not born until 1982, the year I finished the dissertation).

Still, I had time to write -- and polish -- a long, three-part article on the nationality cases and the first decision. I wrote the article in English and parts were translated into Japanese.

I had started making a final draft of the dissertation on a CPT dinosaur that could store a whopping 256 kilobytes on a double-side, single-density 8-inch floppy disk, just acquired by the school that employed me. But I wrote this nationality article at home, on a Praxis electric typewriter that ran a bit sluggish on 100-volts at 50-cycles.

The copy I have is a machine copy of a typescript. The copy shows white-out and other corrections that had been made on the original, and white-out and other corrections made directly on the copy. It was, evidently, my master correction copy.

Self-spiked manuscripts

I recall that I wrote the article for serial publication in The Japan Times. I was constantly meeting media people, and knew several people at The Japan Times, including Kiyoaki Murata, then the executive editor. If memory serves me correctly, though, I had not talked with anyone about the article -- and, after going to all the trouble to write it, decided that it was not what I really wanted to say.

Attached to my correction copy of the English version is the original copy of a partial Japanese translation in Sugiyama's hand. Only the first part and the first paragraphs of the second part were translated, in blue and black ballpoint. My heavy-handed red ballpoint corrections, in Japanese, end after the first page.

I was probably already vacillating and, realizing my mind was not yet sufficiently clear and settled, told myself it wasn't the time to write at such length about the case. When something I am writing doesn't set well with me, I tend to put it aside. I have several binders full of self-spiked manuscripts like this.

Impressions today

Reading the article today -- a quarter of a century later (sounds longer than "25 years later") -- several things strike me as having not changed in my attitude.

1. The cases were about "nationality" and not "citizenship" -- though elements of citizenship are obviously affected by nationality status.

2. The cases were about gender, not racioethnic, discrimination.

3. The cases exposed the incompatibility of family registers, as national registers, with the needs of multinational families.

Certain other aspects of my approach and viewpoint at the time are somewhat different today. Today I understand a bit more about how nationality laws work generally. I also understand more about how judges in Japan approach cases generally, and how they argue points of contention in constitutional cases involving major national laws particularly.

I was, at the time, deeply involved in a study of suicide and funeral sacrifice in early Japan. My academic training encouraged me to view present-day social issues in a dynamic historical perspective that was anthropological in the broadest sense of the word.

The critical bite to the article's academic stiffness reflects its op-ed pretensions. One of its aims was to document the case for the benefit of the media, and to clarify what it meant for me, Saori, Sugiyama (Tsuyoshi, it seems, had just been conceived).

Practically everyone, who had written or broadcast about the case, had distorted both the personal particulars and the legal issues. Yours truly was determined to set the record straight. He still is -- but in his own mind first.

In any event, here are my thoughts at the time -- not a word changed.

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Constitution v. Nationality Law (Part 1)

Patrilineality: Maternal Bods Inferior?

By William Wetherall

8 May 1981 (Corrected and revised 16 May 1981)

Caution This article is posted for historical purposes only. Its description of nationality acquisition, dual nationality, naturalization, alien registration, and other matters reflect conditions in the early 1980s. See more recent features for details on present-day conditions.

Most societies in the world have been both patrilocal and patrilineal. That is, the woman who marries is usually expected to move into her husband's family, while the children become his -- not hers -- and are identified with his family. In such a marriage system, the woman may be little more than a domestic servant who, in addition to doing the housework, bears and raises her master's children.

There are, of course, a number of exceptions. In early Japan, for example, some aristocratic families were duolocal if not matrilocal, and there have been cases of matrilineal succession in the imperial family. Duolocality was found among the families of certain remote villages in Japan as late as the early Meiji period, while matrilocality continues today in cases where a man is adopted into his wife's family. In general, however, the Japanese family system has been more of the corporate than consanguineous type, although blood ties have also been strong.

Naming customs have also varied. But the family system today continues to requires that all members in the same family bear the same family name. The name is that of the family, thus when an individual moves from one family to another, one's family name must change. The fact that most women move into their husband's family and take his family name is a matter of custom, not law. By law, the man may become a member of his wife's family and assume her family name.

Japan's patrilineal Nationality Law and patrilocal Immigration Control Law, however, discrimination against the internationally married Japanese woman, her foreign husband, and their children. Moreover, according to the Family Registration Law, while the fact of her marriage to a foreign husband must be recorded in her family register, neither spouse can adopt the other's name, and the births of their children cannot be recorded in their Japanese mother's register. From the point of view of all three laws, maternal bonds are considered inferior.

The Nationality Law in effect gives the internationally married Japanese man the right to transmit his nationality to his children, and likewise gives his children the right to acquire his nationality through birth. But these reciprocal rights are denied the internationally married Japanese woman and her children. Moreover, the law discriminates against the Japanese woman by making naturalization more difficult for her foreign husband than for the foreign wife of a Japanese man.

The Immigration Control Law -- or more correctly the administrative guidelines that Immigration Bureau officials apply to visa applications -- discriminates against the internationally married Japanese woman by not relaxing residence requirements as much for her foreign husband as for the foreign wife of a Japanese man. There is no spouse visa for either sex of foreigner married to a Japanese national, but the female foreign spouse is accorded what amounts to special status as the wife of a Japanese man, and it is comparatively easy for her to get a permanent residence visa.

Such practices of sexual discrimination exist in Japan despite the fact that the Constitution unreservedly guarantees that all Japanese nationals shall be equal under the law regardless of sex. As the Constitution is the highest law of the land, one would think that either the Nationality Law is unconstitutional -- or the Constitution has no meaning. Unfortunately, it appears to be the latter.

My wife and our daughter have explicitly challenged the constitutionality of the Nationality Law -- and implicitly questioned the legality of immigration and family registration practices. My wife -- a Japanese national -- believes that she has the right to transmit her nationality to our daughter through birth, and that our daughter has the reciprocal right to acquire Japanese nationality through birth. We both feel that our daughter has been Japanese from the moment she came into this world, and we have always acted on this assumption.

Our daughter has a right to my American nationality, and her birth as an American national and her birth as an American national has been registered at the American Embassy in Tokyo. But we also regard her a Japanese national and thus have not registered her as a foreign national in accordance with the Alien Registration Law. Her acquisition of American nationality through birth is of no concern to the Japanese government so long as she is also a Japanese national. As a dual national, Japanese law would recognize her as Japanese.

Believing that our daughter is Japanese, we attempted to register her birth at a certain city hall and have her name recorded in my wife's family register. The clerk refused to comply with our requests, however, and cited the patrilineal criterion of the Nationality Law as the reason. We requested and received a formally written statement of the reason for refusal, and with this and the rejected birth certificate as evidence of the act of sexual discrimination under the law, we filed suit against the Japanese government in late December 1978. Thus my wife and our daughter became co-plaintiffs in Sugiyama v. Japan.

The first trial, in the Tokyo District Court, lasted two years and three months. It would have run over three years for us had not another couple -- through the same attorneys -- filed a similar suit a year earlier. In this other case -- Shapiro v. Japan -- only the child, a stateless girl, became the plaintiff. But as the objectives and arguments were essentially the same, we were able to use similar briefs and supporting documents. Moreover, as our case was given to the same bench, we quickly caught up until both cases were parallel. And thus the decisions, though separate, were handed down on the same day in late March 1981.

The judgment was unfavorable -- something which we half expected. Japanese courts have ruled company policies unconstitutional because they discriminated against women. But generally speaking, judges have gone out of their way to avoid finding national laws unconstitutional.

This is precisely what happened in our case. The court observed that while patrilineality sexually discriminates, the discrimination is not "unreasonable" or "irrational" (fugōriteki) and therefore is not unconstitutional. The three judges found the discrimination "justifiable" for two reasons: (1) it is important that multiple nationality be prevented; and considering Japan's social traditions, domestic circumstances, and international relations, patrilineality has been the most effective means of minimizing its occurrence; and (2) to compensate for the discrimination engendered by patrilineality, naturalization criteria are relaxed for the children of Japanese women married for foreigners, thus making it easy for them to naturalize; and as naturalized Japanese they are legally equal to those become Japanese through birth.

The judges also expressed the opinion that, from humanitarian considerations, it is more important to prevent statelessness than to prevent multiple nationality, and that the present law should be revised with the aim of making it possible for the children of Japanese women married to foreigners to acquire Japanese nationality through birth. But the decision ruled that there were not sufficient grounds to regard either the transmission or the acquisition of Japanese nationality as a "right" (kenri).

My first impulse is to feel that the decision reflects the thinking of judges who politically sympathize with the Ministry of Justice and Diet, and who do not view human rights as something "guaranteed" by the Constitution. While I have no doubt in my mind that the decision was to some extent influenced by the fact that the judges are all males who have received conservative legal educations, it is more important to stress that their decision is grossly misinformed. The multiple nationality issue is merely a red herring, while naturalization is neither easy nor equal.

[to be continued in next issue]  

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Constitution v. Nationality Law (Part 2)

Multinationality: A False Concern

By William Wetherall

8 May 1981 (Corrected and revised 16 May 1981)

Caution This article is posted for historical purposes only. It's description of nationality acquisition, dual nationality, naturalization, alien registration, and other matters reflect the status quo as of the early 1980s. See more recent features for details on present-day conditions.

Japan's Nationality Law is the most common kind of such law in the world. Modeled after those of Western Europe, it is a jus sanguinis or "right-of-blood" law which adopts a patrilineal principle as its primary criterion. That is, a child becomes Japanese through birth if its father is Japanese at the time of birth. The law adopts a matrilineal principle when a child is born to a Japanese woman legally married under Japanese law to a stateless man, or when its father is unknown (as when its Japanese mother is not legally married to its father). Finally, the law applies a place-of-birth criterion in the case of a child born in Japan to stateless parents, or to unknown parents (as when it is found abandoned).

Only a few countries, mainly the British Commonwealth and American hemisphere states, have jus soli or "right-of-soil" (place-of-birth) laws. These laws are generally backed up by secondary right-of-blood laws, which are applicable in the case of a child born to a national residing in a foreign country. In the past, these back-up laws tended to be patrilineal when such a national was internationally married.

But thanks to a recent landmark decision in the Federal Republic of Germany -- in which FRG's patrilineal nationality law was ruled unconstitutional because it discriminated against internationally married FRG women -- the major Western European states have made their nationality laws egalitarian. Moreover, most of the back-up right-of-blood laws of the place-of-birth states are also today egalitarian. And the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women -- which Japan formally signed in 1980 -- requires that party states grant their women "equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children." The convention cannot be ratified, however, until the Diet makes the Nationality Law egalitarian.

So long as a married couple are of the same nationality, their children will usually be able to acquire their nationality regardless of the kind of nationality law adopted by their country of nationality. Most -- but not all -- problems arise when the parents bear different nationalities in what is popularly called an "international marriage" but which is better understood as a "multinational family" -- that is, a family which as a dingle social organization bears two or more nationalities.

Until recently, the nationality laws of many countries provided that the female national who married a national of another country automatically lost her won nationality if she acquired his through marriage, and the same countries usually conferred their nationality on foreign women who married male nationals. However, most countries no longer follow this "unity-of-nationality" principle and thus permit multinational families. The mononational family, however, continues to be the standard when one parent naturalizes in the country of the other parent, for if the children are of the same nationality as the naturalizing parent then they are usually naturalized with the parent.

National differences in nationality laws have inevitably resulted in a certain number of cases of multiple nationality. But as multinational families have increased, and as more states have become unwilling to prevent multinationality at the expense of basic human rights, the number of multinational individuals has also been rising.

This trend is viewed with some alarm by legalists who conservatively maintain that multiple nationality constitutes a threat to national security as well as a source of "positive conflict" for the individual and for the countries of which the individual is a national or resident. But the tendency is strong -- at least in the Euro-American states -- to accept a higher incidence of multinationality as a fact of life in a modern humanistic and global society, and to try to prevent or minimize the conflict that may arise from multinationality rather than the multinationality.

It is now widely recognized that the traditional ways of controlling multinationality have infringed upon the basic human rights of the internationally married woman and her children, and have socially handicapped the multinational family. The trend is thus to view multinationality in the individual as something that is not necessarily a disadvantage to the State, and may be beneficial to both the individual and the family.

Moreover, it has become a contradiction to permit multinational families in which parents bear different nationalities, but not to permit the children of such families to become multinationals through birth. It is thus becoming the standard to permit multinational offspring to remain multinationals at least until which time they become adults -- or otherwise encounter positive conflicts like tax or military obligations to two or more countries, or situations in which their multinationality makes it difficult to determine which nation's laws should apply to a personal legal problem.

The Tokyo District Court argued that some states do not allow their nationals to freely renounce their nationality. But practically all the countries whose citizens Japanese are most likely to marry -- Korea, China, America, and the vast majority of the others -- permit their multinational citizens to wilfully discard their nationality at which time they encounter positive conflicts they wish to avoid through renunciation. Article 22 of the Japanese Constitution, of course, gives Japanese the right to renounce their nationality.

For the individual born into a multinational family, the risk of positive conflict is extremely small compared to the great legal -- not to mention social and psychological -- advantages of being able to identify with and move freely between the countries of both parents. In focusing on multiple nationality as a legal problem, and in failing to stress the fact that multinationality does and should play a valuable role in the life of the individual born into a multinational family, the Tokyo District Court judges diverted the public's attention from the issue of patrilineality as a direct violation of the constitutional guarantee of sexual equality under the law.

The court decision also gave the impression that the Nationality Law has been effective in preventing multiple nationality. In fact, however, the Ministry of Justice has been interested in preventing multiple nationality only among the offspring of Japanese women married to foreigners.

Over the past decade alone, tens of thousands of children born to Japanese parents residing in place-of-birth states have become multinationals through birth. Thousands more have been born into the families of Japanese men married to nationals of states with either primary or secondary egalitarian right-of-blood laws. The sum of these two major sources of multinational Japanese -- which the Ministry of Justice has never attempted to prevent -- may equal or exceed the number of cases of multiple nationality that the government has argued it prevents through patrilineality.

The honne (true intention) behind the government's tatemae (pretense) is to prevent the offspring of Japanese women married to Korean and Chinese men, in particular, from become dual nationals -- a sexist as well as ethnocentric bias in the "insular politics" of Japan's Nationality Law. The Korean and Chinese laws are also patrilineal, so the government reasons that Japan has no choice but to discriminate against Japanese women married to foreigners.

That the Tokyo District Court judges in effect accepted the government's political arguments against egalitarianism in the Nationality Law suggests that they share the same conservative legal tradition out of which especially the "Japan-resident Korean" problem has evolved in the postwar period. In any event, the judges have left themselves open to the charge that they have taken textbooks on nationality theory too seriously. For apart from its highly politicized aspects, multinationality has never been a genuine legal problem in Japan.

[to be concluded in next issue]  

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Constitution v. Nationality Law (Part 3)

Naturalization: A Discriminatory Procedure

By William Wetherall

8 May 1981 (Corrected and revised 16 May 1981)

Caution This article is posted for historical purposes only. It's description of nationality acquisition, dual nationality, naturalization, alien registration, and other matters reflect the status quo as of the early 1980s. See more recent features for details on present-day conditions.

While my surname is Wetherall, my wife's family name is Sugiyama -- at least under Japanese law. We are often asked why, for practically everyone assumes that the legal family name of a married couple should be the same. The problem is that our marital relationship, though legal under Japanese law, does not warrant us the status of a family. There is no provision in the Family Registration Law for treating the foreign spouse of an internationally married Japanese national of either sex as a member of the national's family. The reason for this is that only Japanese nationals can be members of a family register -- for the family register also serves as a national register.

A family register is essentially a record of vital events that occur within the family -- whether the "family" consists of one or several members. These include events of association through birth, marriage, and adoption, and events of disassociation through death, divorce, and branching. But the family register also serves as a national register -- that is, as a register of Japanese nationals -- and hence all members of a registered family must be Japanese. In other words, being a member of a registered family is tantamount to being a Japanese national. As a national register, association may also occur through the acquisition of Japanese nationality through naturalization, while disassociation may occur through renunciation.

The name of a foreign spouse of a Japanese national is entered in the national's family register for information purposes only, when the fact of the national's marriage is recorded. In the case of a Japanese man married to a foreign woman, however, the couple's children are recognized as Japanese -- even when they also acquire their mother's nationality -- and thus their names are entered in their father's family register as members of his family.

But when a child is born to a Japanese woman legally married under Japanese law to a foreigner who is not himself stateless, not even the fact of the child's birth is recorded in the mother's family register. The birth will not be recorded in her register even when (1) the father, though he has a nationality, is functionally stateless because he cannot transmit his nationality to the child, or (2) the woman's foreign husband has been missing many years but cannot be proven dead or reached to secure a divorce, and the woman -- bearing a child fathered by another man (who may be a Japanese national) -- is functionally (though not legally) single.

As already stated, a child born to a Japanese woman who is not legally married under Japanese law can be registered in its mother's family register even if its father is a foreigner with whom its mother is cohabiting at the time of its birth. Moreover, the child will remain Japanese and a member of its mother's family register even if its parents later marry under Japanese law. Depending on the nationality laws of its father's country of nationality, and of the country in which it is born, the child may become multinational.

Such problems are in no way limited to the "non-families" of Japanese women married to foreign men. No one becomes Japanese automatically -- even when both of their parents are Japanese and they are born in the Imperial Palace. Unless a child's birth is registered within two weeks following delivery, the child may become stateless.

When a child is born to a Japanese couple residing in a country with a right-of-blood nationality law like Japan's, the child will usually become stateless if the birth is not registered at a Japanese consulate within two weeks. If born in a place-of-birth country, the child will acquire that country's nationality -- but not Japanese nationality unless the birth is registered within two weeks.

A few Japanese couples have found this out the hard way. One such couple did not know that their child, born in America, was not Japanese until they returned to Japan and were going through immigration procedures at the airport. They tried to get the child registered in their family register, but could not -- and thus found themselves the biological parents of a child that the Japanese government considered a foreigner. While in Japan they had a second daughter, which they promptly registered -- only to discover that the child was regarded as their first daughter. According to the family register system -- which doubles as a national register system -- their first daughter did not exist in their family. And hence their second daughter had to be registered as their first and only daughter. The couple thus became the parents of two first daughters -- the older an American who did not exist in their family register, the younger a Japanese who did.

Many other examples could be cited to show the essential impracticality and outright irrationality of Japan's family-register cum nationality-register system. Such a dualistic system clearly fails to accommodate the needs of an increasingly mobile world community in which not only more Japanese nationals are marrying internationally, but more Japanese parents are bearing and raising their children in other countries.

The couple in the above case were so distressed by the treatment they received under the outmoded laws of their own country that they immigrated to America, naturalized there, and renounced their Japanese nationality (which they had to do as a condition of naturalization). Their alienation is comparable to that of the Japanese woman who is told by a court in her own country that the discrimination in the Nationality Law is "reasonable" and thus not unconstitutional -- that if she really wants her child to be Japanese, she will have to recognize it as a foreigner, and then naturalize it and adopt it into her family register.

The internationally married Japanese woman has every reason to feel that she is being treated as a second-class citizen in her own country, and that the patrilineal criterion of the Nationality Law excludes her from "All of the people" clause in Article 14 and other relevant articles of the Constitution. For judging from the "reasoning" of the Tokyo District Court's decision, it appears that the Constitution was not really meant to guarantee equal rights under the law to the internationally married Japanese woman, much less her children.

Contrary to what the decision maintained, naturalization does not result in equal status much less treatment under the law. The very process of naturalization is discriminatory -- for the children of Japanese men married to foreign women do not have to naturalize in order to become Japanese. Moreover, those who become dual nationals through their mother's foreign nationality are not required to renounce this nationality as a condition for retaining their Japanese nationality. But were our daughter to be naturalized, she would have to give up her right to my American nationality. Moreover, there is no guarantee that her petition for naturalization would be accepted unless I also naturalize.

Throughout the naturalization procedure, our daughter would be treated as a foreign national -- and my wife would be symbolically regarded as a non-Japanese. Should our daughter's petition be accepted and she acquire Japanese nationality, the fact of acquisition would be entered in my wife's family register in the course of registering our daughter as a member of the register. But this entry would be essentially different from the entry made in the case of the child who acquires Japanese nationality through birth. Indeed, the entry would always identify our daughter as a "naturalized citizen" and invite many forms of social discrimination, particularly in employment and marriage.

The District Court judges entirely overlooked such important factors -- evidence to me that they have little firsthand knowledge of sexual and social discrimination in Japanese society. Hopefully, the High Court and Supreme Court judges will be more experienced and better informed, but most importantly -- more humanistic.

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