Japan city drops plan to recognize foreigners as local citizens after opposition - The Mainichi - The Mainichi

Kumamoto municipal officials announce that a passage to include foreign residents as citizens of the city has been dropped from draft amendments to the city's basic ordinance, at Kumamoto City Hall on July 25, 2023. (Mainichi/Sonoko Nakamura)

KUMAMOTO -- The city government here announced on July 25 that it plans to delete the phrase "including foreign nationals" from its definition of "citizen" after public opposition.

According to the Kumamoto Municipal Government, it included a passage recognizing foreign residents -- whose number is expected to grow -- as citizens in proposed amendments to its basic municipal ordinance unveiled in December 2022. The move was intended to facilitate the participation of a broad range of residents in local community building. Had it been enacted, the amendment would have been the first of its kind among Japan's government-designated major cities.

However, when the city sought public input on the draft amendment from December 2022 to January 2023, some 90% of the 1,888 opinions submitted (457 from city residents, and 1,019 from outside its borders) were against categorizing foreigners as municipal citizens. A city official explained that many of these were based on misunderstandings, including that the ordinance would allow foreigners to vote in local elections and accept immigrants.

Following this response, city officials explained that the citizenship recognition passage would be dropped from the proposed amendments to avoid causing misconceptions and anxiety among Japanese residents. The city will submit a new draft amendment to the regular city assembly meeting in September.

"We do not believe that not specifying 'foreign nationals' as citizens (in the ordinance) will exclude them from being local citizens," one official overseeing the issue said.

The city's decision is "very unfortunate, because it deferred to opposition stemming from a misunderstanding," said Yasuko Iwashita, associate professor of multicultural coexistence at Hiroshima Bunkyo University. "Foreign residents will have a negative impression (of Kumamoto), seeing it as exclusionary. The city should have explained the point of the amendment in a responsible and detailed way."

According to the city, Kumamoto had 7,272 foreign residents as of the end of 2022. In Japan, the smaller municipalities of Komoro, Nagano Prefecture, and Shimanto, Kochi Prefecture, include foreign nationals in their definition of citizens.

(Japanese original by Sonoko Nakamura, Kumamoto Bureau, and Yuki Kurisu, Kyushu News Department)

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