MANILA – An 82-year-old man of Japanese descent from the Philippines has had his request for Japanese nationality rejected by the Tokyo Family Court, a Japan-based group supporting him said Friday.
Jose Takei, who was among those left behind in the Philippines at the end of World War II and rendered stateless, visited Japan in August on a government-funded trip as part of Japan’s broader effort to help such people obtain citizenship eight decades on.
Takei was born to a Japanese man, a railway engineer who lived in Luzon, the Philippines’ main island, and a Filipino woman. His father disappeared while his mother was still pregnant and eventually returned to Japan after the war.
There are no records that his parents were married.
The court, in a decision dated Sept. 10, said the law applicable in Takei’s case calls for a “legal father” in order to give him Japanese nationality, but it recognized no father-son relationship with a Japanese man given he had not been registered at birth, even as an illegitimate child.
Following the court’s rejection, Takei’s side appealed the decision to the Tokyo High Court.
“We submitted a DNA analysis to prove the blood relationship with a Japanese relative, but it was completely ignored,” said Norihiro Inomata, head of the Philippine Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center.
The word “Nikkei-jin” refers to people of Japanese descent living outside their ancestral homeland. Many were unable to obtain either Japanese or Philippine citizenship because their birth records were lost during World War II.
Three other people of Japanese descent from the Philippines are seeking similar recourse with the Naha Family Court in Okinawa. Their cases are pending, according to the supporters group.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with Takei in April, when the Japanese leader visited Manila and pledged to support descendants left behind in the Philippines.
AloJapan.com