On Japanese-Filipino Children

So I am sitting in my room on a Friday night while the music from the baranguay Christmas party is blasting. You would think that Friday night is the best time to go to a party and I do know a few that are going on but honestly since I have become a de facto seven days a week volunteer I don't have the same notions of weekends that I had before I came here. That doesn't stop me from going out almost every night but this is one of those rare occasions where I decided to stay in. Probably it's because of how my hangover from last night made work today almost unbearable. Out of respect for my students that are coming to my Japanese class tomorrow I think I should recuperate so I can have some energy for once. Running on an average of six hours of sleep a night eventually takes it toll.

Anyway, I wanted to write about the Japanese-Filipino children (JFC) and what the exactly are the services that my NGO offers them. I have written about my NGO before and what we do but to summarize we offer free legal support for Filipino mothers to fight for legal recognition, child support, and occasionally Japanese nationality for their children. My actual role usually ends up being translating boring documents from Japanese to English and sometimes the reverse but one aspect of my volunteering that I really enjoy is going to the houses of our clients and actually seeing how they live.

So what can I say about the condition of the JFC? You can read some scholarly articles from journals of sociology describing their trials and tribulations but academia has a way of taking interesting topics and somehow finding a way to make it boring. The JFC are not fundamentally different from other mixed race people around the world but they have issues which are unique to them. Academics love to dwell in their supposed 'identity crisis'. Since their father is Japanese than they must have an inherent cultural connection to Japan which is frustrated by their inability to leave the Philippines right? Yeah I bet that some JFC feel this way but speaking in generalities as vulgar as this is good for forum discussion at leading universities but does not apply to the real world. I have to be honest, the vast majority of JFC I have met have been clients of Maligaya House and so they all come from broken families. I translate so many case profiles detailing the misdeeds and irresponsibility of these Japanese fathers that I have constructed a very negative image of mixed Japanese-Filipino couples. I have become so biased with my preconceived notions of the intentions of Japanese guys who date or marry Filipinas that when I actually met a Japanese-Filipino girl who's parents actually stayed together and they live happily in Japan I was shocked. I thought it didn't exist but it helped me come to the conclusion that my understanding of the JFC is very limited due to the specialization of my NGO. That girl looks very Filipino but since she grew up in Japan since she was ten her mannerisms, personality, etc. were spot on Japanese. If I had talked to her on the phone I would have thought she was pure Japanese. I am sure there are plenty examples of happy Japanese-Filipino couples but obviously they would never come to Maligaya House. I also know JFC here who look completely Japanese but do not speak Japanese and act just like Filipinos. For me this undermines the argument that heritage and race powerful contributing factors to the development of one's identity.

Take myself for example. My family is completely European; a combination of French, Swiss, and English. My extended family are all Europeans except for my cousins in Washington but I feel that they have retained more of their French heritage than I have. I grew up in America and although my blood is European I feel no connection to that place. Don't get me wrong, I love and respect my family living there but I can't say that I feel at home in France, Switzerland, or England. They are foreign places for me and I feel at heart like an American. Most of the JFC I meet seem to have similar notions of themselves. Some of them are interested in Japanese culture and language but regardless of their father being Japanese I believe most of them view Japan as a foreign place; completely different from the Philippines. Which it is.

The major difference between me and the JFC is that the European governments easily awarded me citizenship from their countries. For the JFC it's a completely different story. For the majority of the ones I've met, the Japanese government does not consider them to be Japanese at all. This is mainly due to an overly strict and little known law in the Japan family law that says that all people with Japanese parentage born outside of Japan must contact the closet Japanese embassy within three months of the birth to acquire Japanese citizenship. Almost all of our clients had no idea about this law and only when they are ten years too late do they realize what the rules are. Nationality and citizenship are apart of identity. Being denied rights that owed to you by the Japanese government just because your mother did not know there was a three month time limit is not an easy pill to swallow. The cruel and callous silence of the Japanese bureaucracy only adds salt to the wounds. It doesn't help that only until recently could Filipinos even enter the Japanese embassy to ask about this. I heard from a client that ten years ago or so non-Japanese were not even allowed into the embassy. So even if a Filipina marries a Japanese man and has a child she still is treated like a complete outsider to the Japanese establishment. One of my good friends who volunteered at Maligaya House worked hard to collect videos and letters from the JFC because according to her JFC are not viewed nicely in Japan. From birth the chips are stacked against them. The JFC that come to Maligaya House grow up without a father, have a cultural heritage that the Japanese government works hard to deny, and perhaps harbor feelings of alienation from local Filipinos because of their mixed race. I have met some JFC who complained that they feel different and are treated differently from other Filipinos but the Philippines is such a warm and accepting society that I would not put too much weight on this issue.

On a side note this is one accept of the Philippines which I find fascinating. The general acceptance of all kinds of people strikes me. The Philippines is a strongly Catholic country but I see gays and transsexuals walk openly in the street and I don't get any impression that they are discriminated against. Devout Muslims go to the same malls as Christians and there is even national holidays for Islam as well as Christianity. I think this is also fits well with the Filipino tendency to always be on vacation. Filipinos also seem very accepting of foreigners and almost everyday somebody stops me to say hello, ask where I'm from, and welcome me to the Philippines. This actually gets kind of annoying but I appreciate the gesture. So all of this to say I really don't think JFC have a hard time assimilating with Filipino society.

The Japanese side is more complicated. I believe there are two major forces working against the JFC. #1: The Japanese have strong sense of nationalism and cultural identity which I have a lot of respect for but occasionally cause them to lack flexibility in accepting a JFC as being really Japanese. #2 For those JFC that have been cruelly abandoned or forgotten about by their father's, in the cases of bi-racial children the Japanese family court is well-known for ruling in favor of the Japanese. This definitely provides plenty of obstacles for Maligaya House but our Tokyo Office and team of volunteer Japanese lawyers have devised a way overcome this challenge. I know up until this point I have painted a very negative image of Japan and for those that know me and my love of Japanese culture it may seem strange but this is the reality of the Japanese government. Japan is a democratic and free nation however with is slowly adapting to the modern world. Maligaya House contributed to winning one major lawsuit several years ago that made it a lot easier for illegitimate JFC to ascertain Japanese nationality. Interestingly, right now it is easier to attain Japanese citizenship if the JFC was born illegitimately but we are now working on another case next month that will hopefully adjust the law to help those JFC that were born while their parents were actually married. The government of Japan is slowly but steadily opening its doors for foreigner workers such as the JFC to come to Japan. This is actually extremely important for the Japanese economy seeing as their stringent immigration policy makes it very difficult for foreigners to find work there and in about 20 years over a third of the Japanese will be retired. They will be desperate for young workers from abroad. Some of the JFC I've met do have dreams about working in Japan. I am not sure how realistic this is since it is necessary to be fluent in speaking and reading Japanese and I know by experience that this is no easy task.

A lot of the JFC do want Japanese citizenship but not necessarily to work in Japan. It is really tragic that Filipinos are forced to find work all over different parts of the world because of how much love there is in Filipino families. A lot of people I meet gave up aspirations to get better jobs out a desire to live with their parents and maintain their bond. This concept is completely foreign to me but I can appreciate it. The one thing that has consistently surprised me is that a lot of the JFC really just want the citizenship or a visa just for a chance to meet their father. I talked to a JFC my age who told me he does not care about working in Japan or getting any money from his father. He just wants to see him. Some of the mothers are understandably bitter towards their past Japanese husbands but quite a few of them tell me that they always reinforce in their children minds that they should always respect their father even if he never came back or gave any recognition to even having a child in the first place. I believe these family values are apart of the Filipino culture. I don't know how the Japanese guys view their past affairs with Filipinas and their children and I bet there is a lot of variation on how they deal with it but I think it's tragic in a way that these kids grow up, sometimes in poverty, with their mothers working hard to prevent their children from harboring resentment towards their father that has abandoned them. At the end of day every JFC has a different story and I can't give a definitive analysis of the condition of the JFC but I think that's a good thing because those kind of categorical analysises only belong in text books and term papers.

And so I will go back to what I was doing before: reading about 'Kurdistan'.