Yesterday Masako and I went to our city hall to apply for the Certificate of Acceptance of Registration of Birth (Shussei todoke). We need this document from our city as one piece of ID to apply for the Certificate of Canadian Citizenship (CCC). We figured there would be no problem, and boy were we wrong. When Masako and I got married I encouraged her to use her maiden name Kubota as a middle name, but since the Japanese government does not recognize middle names she had to appear in front of a judge and change her last name to Kubota Hegge to give the feeling of a middle name but would officially be a last name on Japanese documents. While filling out the documents yesterday we had to state Frances's full name, Frances Shiori Hegge. When our case worker got to the name he let out a big sucking noise from between his teeth and an "eeeee kono myoji deha dame desu" (sorry but she can not have this last name). Turns out that since Japanese documents list Masako's last name as Kubota Hegge our daughter has to have the same last name. Well of course being her father my last name would naturally be used right? Wrong.

Japan has two systems of paper chase, the "Family Registry" (koseki touhon), and the "Residence Form" ( juuminhyou), which establish and clarify a Japanese's status re citizenship and domicile. When two Japanese marry, they alter their koseki . When they move, they register at their new address, and get a juuminhyou locally. With me so far?

However, if you are not a citizen, by law you are not accorded the right to have a koseki . This may sound like par for the course, but keep in mind that as a foreigner, you are put down on your spouse's koseki not as a married couple, under the heading "wife" or "husband" like any Japanese, but as a "remark" ( bikou) on the form. The marriage is treated differently--as a footnote--which is by definition discriminatory. debito.org

Since Masako's name is at the top of the Koseki her last name is used and mine is not even considered seeing that her Koseki reads as if she were single and my daughter fatherless. To have our daughter's last name change back to its proper form Masako needs to go back to the courts to have her name changed yet again to Hegge and drop the Kubota, and this may take up to 3 months for a decision. To add to the list of pointless paperwork we, or shall I say my wife needs to complete is a form that, get this, proves Frances is spelled F-R-A-N-C-E-S, because when writing Japanese in Roman characters everything is phonetic, so Frances would then be spelled Furanshisu... We need to show ID for her that shows the correct spelling or the Japanese government will not accept Frances and make us use Furanshisu.

Which brings us back to our original objective, which was to obtain the Certificate of Canadian Citizenship, (this can be used as proof of her names spelling). Hope you can see the catch 22 here.

I feel like locking the Canadian and Japanese governments in a room and telling them that they can not come out until they decide on a solution to the problem they created. To me it feels like all this is set up to keep Japanese Japanese and Foreign Foreign. For example while filling out one of the 30 forms yesterday Masako entered her birthday and mine using the standard Emperor year format (the Emperor year format is used for all official government documents, 1978=53 in Emperor year format) As he crossed out my birth year our case worker told us that because I am not Japanese I have to use 1978 for my birth year and not the Emperor year of 53. Now who makes up a rule like that? Some 90 year old official with a bit of an agenda I think.

With Masako, Frances and I planning to visit my Family in Canada sometime in October or November we hope we can get everything in order and we all have names that are acceptable to the Japanese government, just wait till they find out I have 2 middle names! I might be deported for that.

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