Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the concept of descent appears in the national society overlapping with the concepts of nationality and ethnicity, by considering the problems in Japanese law concerning the citizenship of the people of Japanese descent born abroad in the history of Japanese migration.

Paper long abstract:

Since 1960s it is well recognized and referred that the concepts of nationality, ethnicity and descent have the same aspect as a membership rule based on the reiteration of parent-child relation. But there have been few discussion on this topic itself, especially within the empirical studies about migration or ethnic groups in national societies. In this presentation I analyze the legal problems over the nationality of the Japanese descendants outside of Japan, so as to examine how these concepts of collective identity are overlapping and branching off in the social reality.

When the second-generation Japanese appeared in such countries as the US or Brazil, their status of double citizenship was thought to cause diplomatic problems, and the Japanese government had to mediate between the two opposed principles: jus sanguinis and jus soli. This paper deals with the literature on the amendment of the Nationality law (1924) and the new immigration law (1990) in Japan, to consider how the law manages the continuity and distinction between the Japanese nationals and their descendants born abroad, and what meaning their shared descent has in legal system of the nation state. Through this inquiry I will approach the subject of interpenetration of nationality and kinship in the historical process, following Brackette Williams's works on this issue. This will be an attempt to connect kinship studies in civil societies and migration studies in Anthropology from the case of the Japanese descent.