Japanese As A Japanese Citizen
Article 10 of the Constitution of Japan defines the term Japanese based on the Japanese Nationality. Indeed, Japan accepts a steady flow of 15,000 new Japanese citizens by naturalization (帰化) per year. The concept of the ethnic groups by the Japanese statistics is different from the ethnicity census of North American or some Western European statistics. For example, the United Kingdom Census asks ethnic or racial background which composites the population of the United Kingdom, regardless of their nationalities. The Japanese Statistics Bureau, however, does not have this question. Since the Japanese population census asks the people's nationality rather than their ethnic background, naturalized Japanese citizens and Japanese nationals with multi-ethnic background are considered to be ethnically Japanese in the population census of Japan. Thus, in spite of the widespread belief that Japan is ethnically homogeneous, it is probably more accurate to describe it as a multiethnic society.
As a result, the word kei (系, can be translated roughly as lineage or origin) is used when the Japanese citizen describe their origin of ancestors other than the Japanese archipelago. For example, Tanya Ishii, a former Japanese member to the Japanese Diet referred herself as a "Russian Japanese" (ロシア系日本人, Roshiakeinihonjin?), since she had Russian roots from her maternal lineage.
Read more about this topic: Japanese People
Famous quotes containing the words japanese and/or citizen:
“In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese people are ... simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.”
—Oscar Wilde (18541900)
“The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (17891851)