TOKYO -- They cry and gurgle like dozens of other children in Tokyo's Red Cross Orphanage, but already four of the tiniest toddlers are starting to look crucially different. Their eyes are a bit rounder, their hair is a little curlier, their skin is a bit darker.
In a country that has long celebrated the purity of its race, these distinctions are dooming evidence that the children are not pure-bred Japanese.
The consequences are beyond any child's ability to understand.
They have neither family nor country. They exist in limbo.
Along with 36 others in Tokyo orphanages, hundreds if not tens of thousands of these stateless children are believed to be hidden throughout the country.
They are the progeny of more than 300,000 illegal aliens, women from poorer Asian countries, mainly the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and China, who slipped through immigration with visas for tourists or as professional "entertainers," which has become a shorthand for prostitutes.
The children of these women "have no right to live in Japan. They have no rights at all," says Akemi Sasaki of Japan's Ministry of Justice.
Health care, education, a driver's license, even the basic identity card needed for a job or housing, will not be their right. They cannot even get a passport, so while they're not supposed to be here, neither can they go somewhere else. Like the debate over the rights of illegal aliens that arouses powerful passions in the United States, the existence of these children raises profound questions about the obligations and the values of a nation.
But here the issue is more vivid, if far less discussed, because these aliens never immigrated, they simply emerged, and one of their parents -- the father -- is probably Japanese.
Unlike in the United States and many other countries, Japanese citizenship rests on a theory of common descent from the mythical sun goddess, and an entrenched desire to protect the country and its gene pool from what is feared to be outside contamination.
"Blood is the only thing the Japanese government recognizes," says Mizuho Fukushima, an immigration lawyer. And blood must be proved by either the explicit, pre-birth recognition of a Japanese father or, under laws that have been loosened in recent years, the existence of a Japanese mother.
There are exceptions, but the government is determined to keep it that way.
Ironically, it has taken an American missionary couple who have lived here for many years to break through the system.
In a case that will be heard today by Japan's Supreme Court, William Rees and his wife, Roberta, are trying to get citizenship for Andrew, a child they adopted three years ago after he was abandoned in a hospital by his mother, who was thought to be a Filipino prostitute.
Working against authorities with a determination few Japanese would think of, the Reeses are using an obscure 19th-century law permitting citizenship application for children who have no known parents -- emphasis on the "no known."
Emphasis also on the right to apply for citizenship.
The Reeses' petition for Andrew's citizenship was first approved by the Tokyo district court, but later was overturned by a higher court holding that the parent was known, and more to the point, known to be not-Japanese, even if her whereabouts cannot be determined.
This is not the first case for the Reeses. Earlier they won citizenship for another adopted child, Annette, who is now 6.
The Reeses rescued Annette from a hospital where she was born prematurely to a Thai prostitute and abandoned while still in an incubator. They endured misinformation, opposition and other obstructions as they worked to get Japanese citizenship for Annette by naturalization.
Naturalization is a difficult recourse nominally available to persons who have lived in Japan for more than three years. It is rarely used, because hardly anyone is allowed to stay here legally that long if it seems they might have any interest in becoming Japanese citizens.
For more than a year, the government delayed while they conducted a background investigation that included research on whether she had a criminal record. At the time, she had yet to turn 4.
Andrew, who is almost 4 now, has attracted tremendous media attention and support, with television crews often accompanying the Rees family to court. Andrew himself has charmed much of the country with his succinct, beguiling commentary, confiding to a camera crew, "I like Japan, I like the Japanese."
"Every child deserves the right to be a citizen at birth," says Mr. Rees. "We are [trying] . . . to open doors for other stateless children."
Why does it take a foreigner to challenge the system? "I don't think you would find a Japanese person who would do it," says Mr. Rees. "They won't insist like we do."
If Andrew wins, other cases are expected to be filed immediately. The results will be "epochal", said Kenshi Nishida, an attorney working on a number of citizenship-related cases.
Yet he, like others aware of the case, acknowledges that its impact may be more symbolic than sweeping, touching only the most egregious aspects of Japan's restrictive citizenship laws. The Japanese Supreme Court does not have the clout of its U.S. counterpart.
Lawyers say a decision is more likely to focus on the burden of proof for what constitutes a "known" parent," giving more latitude to a child's position.
But most of the stateless children living in Japan, including many in orphanages, have a mother who has been clearly identified. The vast majority of nationless children continue to live with their mothers.
Yet they will continue to live in a nether world, and there are thousands upon thousands of them.
Locked away in tiny apartments in the poorer sections of small Japanese towns, they live cramped, lonely existences, prisoners from birth.
Mayumi Kawabata, a Tokyo social worker, says that in the case of one family she recently tried to help, three small children spent their nights, and most of their days, in a small, single room behind the bar where their mother works.
Too poor to afford medical treatment and unable, because of their status, to enroll in the country's vaunted national health care, the children are seriously malnourished.
Under a special waiver of the rules, says Ms. Kawabata, they were finally admitted in a children's home for care -- a step officials were reluctant to permit because of the prospect of creating a precedent that could entice other illegal aliens.
Not far from the Komoro-shi bar where Andrew's mother worked, a family of four lives in a tiny second floor flat. The family consists of a baby named Ai (Japanese for love), her parents and a grandmother. As circumstances go, they have it pretty good. There is a wide screen television, a stereo, and much warmth.
Ai's mother refuses to be named, for she certainly would be deported. She left Thailand almost three years ago at the age of 16 with her mother who was 32 at the time. The tickets came from a broker who promised good jobs in Japan. Upon arrival, each carried a three month tourist visa, and a $50,000 debt. To pay it off, they were provided with a new vocation: Prostitution.
Ai's father is Japanese, with a good job working for a utility. He met the mother in a bar. Already, $10,000 of the debt had been paid off and he borrowed from a bank to settle the rest.
Marriage, though, has been blocked by the mother's illegal status and that status, plus a lack of intimate knowledge of the law, resulted in the failure of the parents to follow complicated, pre-birth recognition requirements for citizenship.
Now, it's too late for the "easy way" to obtain citizenship. The hard way, involving petitions and lawyers, is overwhelming.
Rina, another newborn child, faces a more common situation, bleaker than Ai's, but still better than some. There is no father in her life. Her mother arrived in Japan six years ago on a tourist visa, worked off her $50,000 debt to a broker first as a prostitute, then as a manager of a brothel. Now, she runs a small restaurant.
"The child is totally illegal," said Takashi Yokota, a Japanese man who spent a number of years in Thailand as a Buddhist monk and now works with Thai families in Japan. "She doesn't go out, she doesn't go anywhere. She doesn't associate with anyone in the neighborhood to ensure word doesn't get out about her existence."
Mr. Yokota says he personally knows as many as 50, such children. The life they face is lonely and furtive. Language development is stymied because the only exchanges are with the mother. Social skills don't develop. Early education is limited to whatever the mother can handle between work and sleep. Even if these problems are surmounted, others loom. Ai's parents know that.
As a mixed race couple they've been turned down for several places to live. In a decade, the father thinks he will have to leave Japan because Ai will never be truly accepted by society, even if citizenship is ultimately granted.
"This kind of discrimination," he said, "comes naturally in Japan."
Most of the nationless children from southeast Asia are still too young to present the far more vexing difficulties that emerge when they are old enough to go out of the home.
Surveys of Tokyo orphanages only began to reveal new stateless children in 1990. There were six then and the number has steadily increased -- a trend no one seems to dispute is likely being quietly paralleled to a far greater extent through out the rest of the country.
"As long as illegal workers come into Japan, this problem will remain," says Dr. Takashi Sakata, head of the Red Cross Orphanage, as he helps put on the pants of a small boy.
For some time he has been involved in serious discussions with three of the most powerful government ministries, Health and Welfare, Justice, and Foreign Affairs. There is pressure to produce a broader plan quickly. All of the children in the orphanages are currently 4-years-old or younger. Soon, they must leave. No one knows where they will go.
Dr. Sakata thinks citizenship may be extended to the orphans currently in homes. The cases would be resolved quietly. This would avoid a comprehensive plan, the alternative the government fears most.
A broader settlement would almost certainly change notions of what it means to be Japanese that pre-date the country's laws, and perhaps even its memories.
In practical terms, Japan would likely have to abandon regulations that effectively bar all but those clearly born to Japanese parents.