Naomi Osaka To Choose Between Japanese Citizenship And American, Given Deadline

TOKYO — If anyone can stir Japanese national pride at the
moment, it is Naomi Osaka.

The world’s No. 1-ranked player in women’s tennis, Ms. Osaka is
among the biggest stars in Japan, splashed across television
programs and advertisements for Nissan cars and Citizen watches. As
a mixed-race person, she has also helped prompt a discussion about
how Japanese see their country.

But a looming deadline — Ms. Osaka’s 22nd birthday in October —
has raised the question of whether she can continue to represent
Japan on the international tennis circuit, where she has given the
country bragging rights on the world sports stage.

Ms. Osaka, whose mother is Japanese and father is
Haitian-American, has citizenship in both Japan and the United
States. Under Japanese law, dual citizens must choose between the
two nationalities by the time they turn 22.

That legal clause has left fans and commentators trying to guess
whether Ms. Osaka will pick citizenship in Japan, the country of
her birth, or the United States, where she has lived since she was
a young child.

The choice facing Ms. Osaka comes as Japan is under pressure to
loosen its entrenched insularity. Japan has long prized racial
purity, seeing a largely homogeneous population as crucial to
social cohesion. But with the country’s population declining and
employers increasingly desperate for workers, its legislature
passed a law in December to admit more guest workers, starting this
month.

Ms. Osaka’s case, along with the new influx of foreigners, could
exert new pressure on the government to begin to bring Japanese
citizenship laws in line with those in the roughly three-quarters
of countries, including the United States, that allow dual
citizenship.

For now, though, Ms. Osaka has a decision to make. When asked by
reporters which nationality she intended to choose, she responded
with trademark feistiness.

“I’m pretty sure it’s obvious,” she said at a news conference
following the China Open in October. “I’m playing for Japan. Not to
be disrespectful or anything, but I don’t really get where the
conclusion that it’s a hard choice for me or anything comes
from.”

Still, it might be hard to imagine Ms. Osaka giving up her
American citizenship to keep playing under the Japanese flag. And
in reality, she may not have to. Legal experts say the Japanese
government rarely enforces the law requiring citizens to choose
between nationalities.

The Justice Ministry estimates that about 890,000 Japanese
citizens may also hold foreign passports, and the government has
never revoked Japanese citizenship from anyone who, like Ms. Osaka,
was granted citizenship at birth. (Japanese citizens who
voluntarily naturalize in another country automatically lose their
Japanese citizenship.)

But some analysts warn that because of Ms. Osaka’s celebrity, it
would be difficult for the government to quietly give her a pass on
dual citizenship.

“I think for the government it is a problem if she openly
carries on having two passports,” said Sachiko Horiguchi, associate
professor of anthropology at Temple University’s Tokyo campus.
“Because that means the public would know that the law isn’t really
enforced. I don’t think the government wants to admit that or the
public to know that.”

Three years ago, when Renho Murata, whose father is from Taiwan,
ran as the first woman to lead the opposition Democratic Party,
right-wing critics attacked her because she had not formally
relinquished her Taiwanese citizenship.

Partly in response to the frenzy over Ms. Murata, Kimi Onoda, a
member of Parliament from the governing Liberal Democratic Party
who was born in the United States to an American father and a
Japanese mother, formally renounced her American citizenship.

Ms. Osaka’s multicultural background has challenged Japan’s
notions of national identity, and she has become the most prominent
mixed-race and mixed-nationality figure in a country where only one
in 50 children born each year has a foreign parent. Though she is
not fluent in Japanese, she has captivated the country with her
whimsical remarks to the news media, as well as her humility in
victory.

Her parents decided when she was young that she and her sister,
who also played, would represent Japan, partly because the American
tennis federation showed them little attention.

Anticipating Ms. Osaka’s citizenship choice, Michio Ushioda, a
former columnist for The Mainichi Shimbun, a daily newspaper, and a
professor at Teikyo University in Tokyo, said on Twitter that Japan
would fall into a national funk if she elected American citizenship
over Japanese.

“The disappointment of the Japanese at that time would be
great,” Mr. Ushioda wrote in a tweet that only select followers
could view, even suggesting that Japan’s current administration
would collapse if Ms. Osaka competed for the United States in the
Olympics.

Under International Olympic Committee rules, competitors must be
nationals of the countries they represent. Similarly, under
International Tennis Federation rules, Ms. Osaka could not play for
Japan if she gave up her Japanese citizenship.

Legal experts say Japanese law provides a loophole through which
dual citizens can effectively retain both nationalities. The law
requires only that a Japanese citizen “endeavor to renounce”
foreign nationality, a phrase that can provide just enough wiggle
room for citizens to hold on to an extra passport.

“Many people misunderstand the law and feel threatened that they
have to choose a nationality,” said Yasuhiro Okuda, a law professor
at Chuo University.

Until 1985, Japan granted citizenship only to children whose
fathers were Japanese. When it changed the law — a move it made
under pressure from international critics who said the rules
discriminated against women — the government added the clause
stipulating that children with dual citizenship would have to
choose between their passports by the time they turned 22.

Analysts say Japan’s law makes little sense in a modern world
filled with multicultural citizens like Ms. Osaka.

“It goes against Japan’s efforts to recruit and retain global
talent,” said Erin Chung, a professor of East Asian politics at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “If you basically maintain
the spirit of the current nationality act, that will be a huge
deterrent for athletes and other members of what’s called the
global talent pool to stay in Japan.”

For older generations, opening Japan to a pool of newly
naturalized citizens could generate a considerable political
backlash.

But younger Japanese are growing more accustomed to living and
working with international neighbors and colleagues.

“Young people in their 20s now are much more familiar with
foreigners or so-called ‘hafu,’” said Satoko Takeda, a visiting
researcher at Osaka University of Economics and Law, using the
Japanese term, from the English word “half,” to describe those of
mixed-race descent like Ms. Osaka. “They are different from
previous generations. I think there is hope.”

Makiko Inoue contributed reporting.

Culled from .nytimes