A Japanese-born woman lost her Japanese citizenship after naturalizing in the United States. Stranded in Japan during the COVID-19 border closures, she finds herself living in legal limbo and launches a constitutional challenge against Japan’s nationality law and its single-citizenship principle.
SYNOPSIS
This short documentary explores how Japan’s single-nationality principle reverberates through transpacific lives. At its center is Yuri Kondo, a Japanese-born woman who, after living in the United States for over two decades, chose to naturalize as an American citizen—unaware that doing so would automatically cost her Japanese citizenship. When she returned to Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic to shelter in place with her daughter and grandchildren, she entered on her U.S. passport. With Japan’s borders closed, she found herself overstaying her 90-day visa and living in legal limbo in the country of her birth.
Kondo has since launched a constitutional challenge against Article 11 of Japan’s Nationality Law, which revokes citizenship from those who voluntarily naturalize elsewhere. As debates around immigration, citizenship, and national identity intensify in the United States, her story underscores the fragile and often misunderstood nature of belonging in a global age.
Through intimate verité footage and court proceedings, the film examines how legal systems built for another era collide with the realities of transpacific families whose lives span borders. While rooted in Japan, the story raises a broader question: who gets to belong—and who does not—in an era of rigid national boundaries?
Director Statement
As a mixed-race Japanese woman who has held U.S.–Japan dual citizenship since birth, I have long lived in the space between two nations. In Japan, I am often seen as too American; in the United States, too Japanese. That in-between space has shaped not only my identity, but my artistic practice.
For over a decade, I have explored how race, nationality, and belonging intersect in the lives of those who do not fit neatly into singular definitions of nationhood. My first feature documentary, Hafu, examined what it means to grow up mixed-race in Japan and challenged narrow ideas of who gets to be considered fully Japanese. Through that work, I began to understand that identity is not only cultural — it is structured and enforced by law.
This new project moves from questions of representation into questions of power. By centering a Japanese-born woman who lost her citizenship without fully understanding the consequences, the film examines how legal systems regulate belonging and shape the lives of women navigating transnational families. As an AAPI woman filmmaker, I approach this work from lived experience, but also with deep responsibility: to create space for nuance, dignity, and complexity in conversations that are often reduced to policy headlines.
Through intimate storytelling and careful research, I aim to humanize structural injustice and illuminate how nationality laws affect real people, particularly women whose lives cross borders. My work seeks not only to represent those in between, but to question the systems that place them there.
Supporter Statement
"I am half American, half Japanese, and born and raised in Japan. I was inspired by the “Hafu” documentary and have followed Megumi's work since. The citizenship problem always felt like a problem that was untouchable, しょうがない (shouganai), but seeing that Megumi's next work was going to touch on this problem made me very hopeful."
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Megumi Nishikura
Megumi Nishikura is a documentary filmmaker whose work explores identity, belonging, and the cultural intersections between Japan and the world. Her feature documentary "Hafu - the mixed race experience in Japan" screened theatrically throughout Japan and aired on PBS and NipponTV. She produced "Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides", which aired globally on BBC World News, and in 2019 directed "Minidoka" a short film about the Japanese American internment experience during WWII, published by TIME magazine. When not making her own films, she works as a producer on docuseries for major streaming platforms.
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