Taiwan’s inclusion in Japan’s family registry system was the result of years of discreet efforts by Taiwanese diplomats and Taiwan-friendly Japanese lawmakers, former representative to Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said yesterday.
The Nikkei on Monday reported that from May, Tokyo is to allow Taiwanese married to Japanese citizens to list their place of origin as “Taiwan” in the official family record database.
Previously, applicants had to select “China.”
Photo: Lin Tsuei-yi, Taipei Times
Hsieh, who was Taiwan’s representative to Japan from 2016 to last year, said on Facebook that numerous under-the-radar efforts by Taiwanese diplomats, with assistance from Japanese lawmakers, had made the change possible.
The rule that led to Taiwanese being listed as being from China has been in place since 1964, before which the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) had diplomatic ties with Tokyo, Nikkei reported.
In 1972, Japan switched diplomatic recognition from the ROC to the People’s Republic of China.
The option in the family registry for Taiwanese was not changed from “China,” the newspaper reported
Hsieh said that after taking office in May 2016, he received complaints from Taiwanese living in Japan who had been forced to select “China.”
He was asked to push the Japanese government to change the rule.
Hsieh said that he had thought the arrangement was “unreasonable” and that the residence registry, a separate system, has a “Taiwan” option for nationality.
However, he was told that the only way to make the change was to amend the Japanese Family Register Act, Hsieh said.
His office believed that it was unlikely Japan’s Diet would change the law solely to cater to the needs of Taiwanese living in the country, and that any attempt to do so would lead to protests and pushback from Beijing and China-friendly Diet members.
However, two Japanese congressmen’s wives were from Taiwan while he was in office, Hsieh said.
One of the two congressmen told him that Japan was expected to amend the act to require the inclusion of phonetic readings of personal names, he said.
The congressman promised to look into the family registry issue, Hsieh said.
The congressman asked Taipei to keep the issue low-profile while he rallied support, Hsieh said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday thanked all those who had helped facilitate the change, which is expected to take effect on May 26.
Two Taiwanese married to Japanese said that they were excited about the change and would register as being from Taiwan as soon as possible.
According to the new rules, a Taiwanese registered as being from China would be able to change their nationality to Taiwan.
One said that although the change does not mean Japan recognizes Taiwan as a country, it is still a positive step forward.
The most important thing is that we can identify as Taiwanese and Japan understands the importance of that, she added.
The Japanese Ministry of Justice told Japanese-language media on Monday that the change is “a sign of greater consideration for identity.”
Although the Japanese government says the change is technical, it still drew a protest from Beijing.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) on Monday said that “the question of Taiwan is purely an internal affair of China, which brooks no foreign interference.”
“We urge Japan to stop making a sideshow on the question of Taiwan and stop sending conflicting or wrong messages,” Guo was quoted as saying by an English-language Kyodo News report.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS