A Study of the Japanese Family Registration System: Gatekeeping Normative Notions of Family and Creation of the Unregistered

Abstract

The unregistered people termed as mukosekisha in Japanese refers to individuals whose identity are not recorded and are excluded from Japans household family registry, the koseki. An analysis of the phenomenon of the mukosekisha and the groups exclusion from the koseki points at the ideological functionality of the koseki in Japan. Analyzing the exclusion of the mukosekisha from the koseki as part of a series of omissions done on various levels associated to the family registration system, this thesis aims to argue and illustrate how the koseki has been utilized as a gatekeeping tool to preserve normative notions of family in Japan. The exclusion of the mukosekisha could be attributed to Articles 772 and 733 of the Japanese Civil Code pertaining to divorce and remarriage and hence the existence of this group points at a lack of harmony with long-held social values pertaining to family. The lack of alignment of the profile of the mukosekisha from the idealized norms that the state seeks to propagate resulted in the group being pushed to the liminal margins of Japanese society as well as being othered and disparate from the us whose profile allows them to be registered into the koseki and be part of the system.