The article is about Naomi Osaka, a
tennis super-star who is a citizen of both Japan and the U.S.A. She usually
represents Japan, and will likely do so in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. However, a
Meiji-era law prohibits dual nationality past the age of 22—the age that Osaka
will turn this year in October. Thus, the fact that Japan could lose its “brightest
sports star” due to outdated legislation has sparked a discussion about
nationality and racism. The story is important because it is the aforementioned
gateway to these topics of discussion. As a nation steeped in tradition and
history, it is natural that Japan would be proud of its culture and people. However,
in this instance, Japan’s intense nationalism may actually end with a lower “amount
of national pride” (if that sort of thing can be quantified) by losing out on
their Olympic champion.
What
does it mean to be Japanese? The country may have to reevaluate its answer to
this question in the face of the Osaka issue. There seem to be lots of grey
areas involved in this issue which leave room for regressive thinking. I would
imagine that many Japanese dual nationals are multiracial. This law, then,
implicitly discriminates against Japanese citizens who are not purely
ethnically Japanese. As the article anecdotally states, some racial
identifications are seen as positive, and some as negative in Japan.
In
a separate article, Yasuhiro Okuda, a law professor specializing in the Nationality
Law was paraphrased as saying that “the failure to choose citizenship is closer
to a breach of contract than an outright illegal act” (Baird and Murakami). In fact,
according to the Justice Ministry, no one has ever lost their citizenship as a
result of being a dual national. This made me wonder a few things: How exactly
does nationalism factor into Japanese government and policy-making? Is it more
for show in certain areas, like this one, rather than actually informing policy-making?
How popular is it—is there enough of an even split that the country doesn’t
swing one way or the other?
In looking into peripheral sources, I found
interestingly, that current prime minister Shinzo Abe was one of the leaders of
the historical revisionism movement (Saaler). In recent years, conservative
politicians have backed the writing of more books advocating for revising
history to paint wartime Japan in a more favorable light. While somewhat
tangential to the topic, I nonetheless found this fascinating, and think that it
also reflects nationalism in an insidious way.
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