BEHIND THE PAPER SCREEN/Different visions of citizenship

Sawa Kurotani, Jun. 15, 2006

Here in the United States, immigration and citizenship have been the focus of intense public debate and massive demonstrations for a few months. An estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants live and work in the country, contributing nearly 10 percent of the gross national product.

Particularly in southern California, where I live, immigration issues are part of everyday life. Most of us know someone--family members, friends, coworkers--who are undocumented immigrants, if we aren't ourselves.

Even if we don't know anyone in particular, we all benefit from the hard labor that undocumented immigrants perform. What is at stake here is not, however, the future of these 12 million people alone. It is a national struggle over the notion of "citizenship" itself: what it means to be a "citizen," what entitlement comes with it, who gets to have it, and how.

As I watched demonstrations on TV, I was also struck by how many children and teens were marching along with adults in support of immigrants' rights, whose experience is a stark contrast to my own childhood in Japan, where I hardly, if ever, used or heard words like kokuseki (nationality) or shiminken (citizenship).

It was in my early adulthood when I finally began to realize that citizenship was to some people a very complicated matter. One of my college friends was approaching the age of 21 when she had to choose between her two citizenships. To her, that was an immanent reality that she had been dealing with all her life; to me, choosing citizenship was a shockingly novel idea.

Another friend of mine was a "resident Korean," who was born and raised in Japan, was only one-quarter Korean by family heritage, had never even been to the Korean Peninsula for a visit. Yet, he was a "foreigner" in the only country that he called home.

Despite some significant changes in citizenship definition and the legal status of resident Koreans in Japan, it appears that Japanese citizenship remains reserved primarily for "Japanese" people, who were born to Japanese parents, grow up as Japanese, and spend most, if not all, of their lives in Japan. Sociologist Kosaku Yoshino calls the Japanese national identity based on the notion of cultural uniqueness "cultural nationalism." Japanese citizenship has been the embodiment of this cultural-nationalistic thinking: To be a citizen of Japan, one must be "Japanese" in every conceivable way, not only legally, but also culturally and, most importantly, biologically.

Japanese self-analysis of their national character is widely known as nihonjinron (literally, discussion or theory about the Japanese), which centers on the unique characteristics shared among the Japanese that are the product of both biology and culture. The essence of Japanese identity is passed down through the "blood," and is nurtured through the early process of socialization to make one truly "Japanese," so the theory goes. This is why so many Japanese stubbornly refuse to accept a non-Japanese who attains near-native fluency in Japanese or who are able to grasp subtle cultural nuances: How can a gaijin (foreigner) without blood ties or proper upbringing possibly understand anything Japanese?

The same notion of Japaneseness is also at the root of prejudice against kikoku shijo, or "returnee" Japanese children who spend many years of their early lives abroad, which makes their upbringing less than perfectly Japanese.

While socialization is an important component of Japaneseness, "Japanese blood" is seen as ultimately the most consistently reliable source of Japanese character, the substance that makes one inexplicably and indelibly Japanese regardless of social and cultural influences. When Japan began to admit a large number of foreign workers into the country in the 1980s, the overwhelming preference was given to descendants of Japanese who emigrated to Brazil and Peru. Japanese seemed to believe that their Japanese blood made them "Japanese," despite their socialization as Brazilians and Peruvians, and they were truly surprised when they later found out otherwise. This instance gives us a sense of how powerful the belief in "Japanese blood" is.

There are many problems in such a notion of Japaneseness. Technically speaking, learned characteristics cannot be genetically transmitted. Historical analysis also suggests that what we may consider "Japanese" is, for the most part, modern invention. But as long as this biologically and culturally produced Japaneseness continues to be the basis of Japanese citizenship, the mobility between citizen and noncitizen categories will be minimal.

Cultural anthropologist Aihwa Ong argues that the notion and practice of citizenship are changing rapidly with globalization and are becoming "flexible," which allows people to move across national borders with ease, build transnational networks, and take advantage of global economic activities.

In the world of flexible citizenship, we can no longer assume that people should, and would, stick with one citizenship given by the country of their origin throughout their lifetime. Instead, the majority of people would have more than one citizenship and residence, belong to multiple nation-states and cultures, and feel no contradiction in living their lives transnationally and multiculturally. It may seem far-fetched to some, but it is already a reality to many around the world.

Japan is now one of the few developed countries that do not allow dual citizenship. This is not a major problem in the world of "one citizenship per person per lifetime," which is, perhaps, the world in which the majority of my compatriots still live. But, it is about time that we acknowledge that the myth of "homogeneous society" is just a myth, and that an increasing number of Japanese nationals are experiencing transnational/multicultural lives outside Japan, while more and more non-Japanese are choosing to live and work in Japan.

It is critical to remember that the question of citizenship is really the question of the line that Japan-as-a-nation intends to draw around itself: Will Japan be able to open up its borders and accept "flexible citizens" as its own? Will it ever become a country where a variety of ties--family heritage, residency, contribution to society, etc.--are all recognized, and different ways of being Japanese are equally welcome?

As in the United States, the stakes are high in Japan. It is a major factor that determines Japan's relationship to the ever-more interconnected world.

Kurotani is an assistant professor of anthropology and director of Asian studies at the University of Redlands in California.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/language/20060615TDY13001.htm