## Court Case 3 [Evaluation of the disposition of no permission to change the status of residence as the guardian of a minor for the child of a deceased Japanese husband]

As plaintiff A merely supervised and raised plaintiff B who was not her biological child for a short period of time in Japan, it is not recognized on humanitarian or other grounds that she can be identified as the person “who is raising the child between her and a Japanese national …,” given the fact that plaintiff A is the guardian of the minor plaintiff B.

(...) The plaintiffs contend that each of the dispositions in this case (i.e., disposition of no permission to change the status of residence of plaintiff A to "Long-Term Resident") is substantially unreasonable on humanitarian grounds, on the grounds that it is highly likely that the plaintiff B will also have to migrate to China together with plaintiff A and the disposition is inconsistent with the judgment of the family court that appointed plaintiff A as the guardian of the minor plaintiff B. However, the fact that plaintiff A can no longer stay in Japan does not directly mean that plaintiff B will not be able to stay in Japan either. Moreover, it cannot be said that the disposition in this case is not reasonable on humanitarian grounds, as the guardian of the minor is not the one and only person, and another appropriate person can be appointed as such.

(…) Although the plaintiffs contend that the Director-General of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau issued the subject disposition without taking every measure to conduct investigations, the Minister of Justice and other officials who received the application for change of the status of residence can only grant permission when there are reasonable grounds sufficient to approve change of the status of residence based on the documents submitted by the foreign applicants concerned. If there are any inadequacies in those documents, they should not be required to conduct supplemental investigations. Setting this aside, it is as illustrated earlier that plaintiff A does not satisfy the requirements for change of the status of residence from “Spouse or Child of Japanese National” to “Long-Term Resident”, and she would not have satisfied the requirements for a change of the status of residence even if the Director-General of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau had conducted investigations.

[Tokyo District Court Judgment on July 4, 2012]

## Court Case 4 [Relationship between the effectiveness of examination of violations not using an interpreter and the reasonableness of the contents of statements]

The appellant states in the immigration officer C’s examination of violations how he entered Japan using a different person’s passport, that he did not want to return to the Philippines, that his place of birth was “Mountain City,” and that he wanted to return to the Philippines after receiving a refund of the tax that had been withheld from his salary by the company for which he had worked for while staying in Japan. Given that there is nothing unnatural found in those statements, and that there is no misunderstanding or anything suspiciously untrue found, it can be said that the facts that the examination of violations by the plaintiff was conducted without the use of an interpreter and that the announcement of the right to demand a hearing was not made in his mother tongue do not constitute defects in the procedure for the plaintiff to waive the right to demand a hearing.

(...) The appellant contends that it is the basic rule to make an interpreter available in the violation examination procedure against a foreign national, and there are no special circumstances in which it is exceptionally allowed for a violation examination procedure to proceed in the absence of an interpreter