Japanese-Filipino children’s painful quests for filial recognition and citizenship

This post is part of Global Voices’ July 2026 Spotlight series, “Statelessness.” This series offers insight into the issue of statelessness and how it hinders people’s freedom of movement, educational opportunities, political access, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.
Japanese-Filipino Children (JFCs) have historically been in a difficult position in Japanese society, as many of them are born out of wedlock, with a Filipino mother and a Japanese father who fails to legally register their paternal relationship with the children, leaving them effectively stateless.
Over 10,000 JFCs are considered stateless due to Japan’s importation of foreign “entertainers” and strict citizenship laws.
Driven by the 1980s asset bubble and the expansion of nightlife and hostess clubs, the Japanese government introduced an Entertainer (Kōgyō) Visa to import tens of thousands of performers from low-income Asian countries, most notably the Philippines, as its economy relies heavily on remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
By the early 1990s, Japan had imported about 64,000 entertainers and about 36,000 Filipino women migrated to Japan as dancers, singers, and hostesses in bars and clubs. Against such a backdrop, most JFCs were born outside of traditional marriages.
Although under the Philippines citizenship law, anyone born to at least one parent who is a Filipino citizen is automatically a natural-born citizen, yet quite often the JFCs’ mothers refuse to register their births at the Philippines Embassy, as Japan does not accept dual citizenship and, upon registration, both the mothers and the children would likely be deported back to the Philippines, where they would suffer from discrimination.
By 2009, about 200,000 JFCs were thus classified legally as Filipino citizens or left stateless. Living under the stigma of illegitimate children without social and financial support, most of them grew up in severe poverty both in Japan and the Philippines.
While the Japanese government amended its Nationality Act in December 2008 to remove the rule that required the parents to marry for the child to gain citizenship after birth, the law still requires the Japanese father to recognize biological paternity through proper registration.
However, it is often very difficult for JFCs to locate their fathers given their lack of local knowledge and Japan’s very strict privacy laws. Despite a number of Japanese NGOs, such as the Citizens’ Network for Japanese-Filipino Children (JFC Network) in Tokyo and its Manila branch, sometimes the Japanese fathers and family members refuse to recognize the children; and those who insist the quests for their fathers have to suffer the pain of “endless waiting,” frustrations and anxieties, as highlighted by JFC Network’s campaign to protect human rights for JFCs:
If you are abandoned by your father, if you are forsaken by your home country, you may lose your roots, which you should hold on to in this world, or you may lose self-belief, which is most precious in your heart, wondering, ‘Why do I live?’ ‘Who am I?’ We regret to say that a lot of Japanese-Filipino children are struggling with such anxiety today.
Below is a news feature produced by ABS-CBN News in the Philippines regarding the financial difficulties and social stigma JFCs face in the Philippines and their quests for reunion with their Japanese fathers:
In Japan, once a JFC obtains a legal status, either through a long-term visa or through their Japanese fathers’ paternity recognition, they can access local education and welfare protection. Yet, many of them are living in a single-parent household, and are forced to give up their education early to release their mothers from financial or familal burden.
Even if they manage to have a school life, many face the challenge of picking up an utterly different language and racial discrimination on a day-to-day basis. A recent news feature published on the local news outlet, Mainichi Japan, addressed the racial discrimination JFCs faced in schools under the impact of the right-wing political slogan, “Japanese comes first.”
Global Voices talked to a JFC, JS, who hasn’t been legally recognized by his Japanese father but has managed to obtain a university student visa with the support of a scholarship, about the information gap that he faced growing up in Japanese society:
制度を知らなかったことで損をしたことはあります。高校から家計のためにバイトをはじめたんですが、稼いだ額が一定額を超えると基礎控除から外れて補助金から引かれることを知らなくて、逆に家計を苦しめてしまったことがありました。[…] 役所のほうからどんなサポートがあるかPRしてくれないけど、それは国からしたら当たり前のことだと思う。
I once suffered losses because I didn’t know the system. When I started working part-time for improving my family’s finances in high school, I didn’t know that once my earnings exceeded a certain threshold, I would have my subsidies cut — which actually put a heavier burden on our household […] The local government doesn’t proactively publicize what kind of support is available, but I suppose that’s just how the government works.
Throughout the interview, JS expressed deep gratitude for the institutional support he received, as he knew that he was one of the few lucky ones who could obtain a scholarship without paternity recognition by a Japanese father.
Currently, JS is considering naturalization to get Japanese nationality. For him, aiming for a career in the global market, a Japanese passport is an essential tool that he desperately wants to secure. Upon graduating from the university and getting employed, JS will no longer be a child, and he could likely meet Japan’s standard naturalization requirements as a regular foreign applicant, regardless of his father's paternity recognition.