2003 JAPAN LAW: MIXED NATIONALITY FAMILIES.
Keywords: Nationality, Immigration Law, Family Law, Family Register, Child Support, Foreigners
Copyright 2004. All rights reserved Attorney Roderick H. Seeman
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It is extremely important in Japan that a child’s name is registered in the family register. Certainly having such a registration would help when one of the parents is not a Japanese national. Yet many Japanese who have children with a foreign national adopt the strategy that refusing such a registration will help to solve a problem because the child will usually have to leave the country with the foreign parent, usually the mother. In this day and age, technologically it is certainly possible to determine parentage. And although courts will often order financial support, usually minimal, it is very difficult to get the police to enforce the judgment if they refuse to pay. The courts appear to be powerless or extremely unwilling, to force the parent to register the child in the family register.

Although this does not quite qualify as a case of mixed nationality, one Japanese couple is certainly facing a modern day dilemma. They are the parents to young twins. However, in reality they went to a fertility clinic in California where they obtained the egg of an Asian-American and implanted it in another American woman who was the surrogate mother. The husband’s sperm was used to fertilize the egg. The twins received California birth certificates and presently have US citizenship, but are living in Japan with their “parents” who took the birth certificates to the Japanese consulate for registration. The consulate refused to accept the application (in the US they reject an application, but in Japan they refuse to accept an application). The consulate cited regulations that such registrations by women over 50 years of age, as in this case, needed to be confirmed. So they were verifying with the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice said that they could not accept such birth registrations where it was not the Japanese women who had given birth. They recommended that the couple adopt the children and have them become naturalized citizens.