Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2017/5 at risk of being denied legal recognition and is hence at risk of statelessness upon the family’s return home.9 For this reason, even if the intended parents are identified as the child’s parents on a birth certificate obtained in the country of birth, “incompatible [inter-state] norms complicate or foreclose altogether the recognition of parental statuses on which rights to transmit citizenship…are predicated”10, and it is this legal quandary that places such children at risk of statelessness in Japan. 3. Gestational Surrogacy in Japan In contemporary Japan, an increase in delayed marriage and late-in-life pregnancy have triggered what commentators refer to as “a crisis of ultra-low fertility rates”,11 and these issues create a demand for gestational surrogacy.12 Further, Japanese women endure societal pressures to reproduce for reasons of maintaining the family line, curbing the declining birth rate, and conforming to conservative ideals of parenthood,13 all of which place an undue responsibility on women to procreate. Beyond these pressures, the government fears that the declining birth rate will imperil economic growth and increase the cost of social welfare programs. Some officials have even labelled women as “birth machines”,14 underscoring the outmoded expectations levied at Japanese women from certain corners. Despite these pressures there is a de facto prohibition on gestational surrogacy in Japan, but for those unable to procreate by traditional methods, cross-border surrogacy presents a viable option. Gestational surrogacy is neither legal nor illegal in Japan,15 rather guidelines and legal opinions proffered by professional associations and government have seen the practice of this specific ART forbidden. Beginning in 2003, the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology (JSOG) issued guidelines advising its members not to perform gestational surrogacy at risk of losing their membership and their license to practice medicine. 16 Later that year, both the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Ministry of Justice issued reports calling for the prohibition of surrogacy, with this opinion further supported in 2007 by the Science Council of Japan and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations.17 In 2008, Japan’s ART Review Committee repeated the call to prohibit the practice of gestational surrogacy, and in 2014 the Liberal Democratic Party put forth a proposal calling for the prohibition of surrogacy except for in exceptional circumstances.18 Even so, because 9 yehezkel Margalit, ‘From Baby M to Baby M(anji): Regulating International Surrogacy Agreements’ (2016) 24 Brooklyn Journal of Law and Policy 1; Brittany M. Nichol, ‘A Child Without a Country: Dissolving the Statelessness of Children Born Through Surrogacy’ (2016) 2016 Michigan State Law Review 907. 10 Yasmine Ergas, ‘Babies Without Borders: Human Rights, Human Dignity, and the Regulation of International Commercial Surrogacy’ (2013) 27 Emory International Law Review 117. 11 Genaro Castro-Vázquez, ‘Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Contemporary Japan: Experiences and Perceptions of some Japanese Mothers’ (2015) 19 Gender, Technology and Development 271, 272. 12 Genaro Castro-Vázquez, ‘Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Contemporary Japan: Experiences and Perceptions of some Japanese Mothers’ (2015) 19 Gender, Technology and Development 271; Yuri Hibino, Gestational Surrogacy in Japan, in: E. Scott Sills, Handbook of Gestational Surrogacy: International Clinical Practice and Policy Issues, Cambridge University Press 2016, p. 174-180. 13 Trisha A. Wolf, ‘Why Japan Should Legalize Surrogacy’ (2014) 23 Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal 461. 14 Ibid, 470. 15 Vera Mackie, ‘Science, Society and the Sea of Fertility: New Reproductive Technologies in Japanese Popular Culture’ (2014) 26 Japan Forum 441. 16 Marcelo de Alcantara, ‘Surrogacy in Japan: Legal Implications for Parentage and Citizenship’ (2010) 48 Family Court Review 417; Vera Mackie, Birth Registration and the Right to Have Rights: The Changing Family and the Unchanging Koseki, in: David Chapman and Karl Jakob Krogness, Japan’s Household Registration System and Citizenship: Koseki, Identification, and Documentation, Routledge 2014, p. 203-220. 17 Marcelo de Alcantara, ‘Surrogacy in Japan: Legal Implications for Parentage and Citizenship’ (2010) 48 Family Court Review 417 18 Yuri Hibino, Gestational Surrogacy in Japan, in: E. Scott Sills, Handbook of Gestational Surrogacy: International Clinical Practice and Policy Issues, Cambridge University Press 2016, p. 174-180. 6