974 S. K. ISHII have remained understudied. This topic, which has been left in limbo from earlier studies, is the focus of this research. The law and the clock Whereas most studies on citizenship and statelessness examine the ambiguity, complexity, and fluidity of diverse statuses between full citizen and statelessness in relation to legal systems (Levin 2018, 31; Sigona 2016, 275), few have examined the ways in which the passage of time determines a legal limbo that finally leads to statelessness. Among scholars who have looked at the experiences of undocumented children (Ball, Butt, and Beazley 2017; Dreby 2015), Gonzales (2016) highlighted how ‘the illegalitybelonging dynamic is profoundly shaped by time’ (Gonzales 2016, 17), focussing on the experiences of Mexican-American children caught in an uncertain legal status. He further argued that they are temporarily protected through childhood (such as being allowed to attend school), then experience a ‘transition to illegality’ in adulthood (Gonzales 2016, 13). This is what Menjívar called the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) (Menjívar 2006, 1012), as mentioned by Gonzales. Through childhood, given their TPS, individuals’ identities and feelings of belonging to the host societies are developed (Gonzales 2016, 7–9). However, as they come of age, their experiences change – time expels them from protected categories and legalisation channels (Gonzales 2016, 18). They dramatically experience increasing legal, and often cruel exclusions (Gonzales 2016, 12). They realise they are excluded from possibilities they believed were theirs while their peers’ lives expand in work, education, autonomy, and relationships as they enter adulthood (Gonzales 2016, 12). Gonzales called this ‘awaking nightmare’ a ‘transition to illegality’ (Gonzales 2016, 13). This framework, symbolised by Gonzales’s phrase ‘the law and the clock’ (Gonzales 2016, 17), is useful for analysing the abandoned children cases herein. The ‘awaking nightmare’ accurately describes the statelessness of abandoned children of Southeast Asian parentage growing up in Japanese orphanages. This is deeply entangled with the ‘lived reality’ (Mahdavi 2016, 15) of child abandonment, which differs from abandoning children outright and happens, instead, gradually through parents’ hesitation, regret, and love. This article shows the different pathways leading to children’s statelessness, exploring (1) the involved actors, (2) the role of state policies, and (3) how societal factors (e.g. gender, racial stigma) influence outcomes. This paper shows how these factors interact, resulting in children’s citizenship slipping through the cracks. Sociological context of migrants and orphans in contemporary Japan Migration and Japan Soon after Japan became economically developed, the female migration stream from the Philippines and Thailand to Japan started, partly as a legacy of the Vietnamese war. Truong discussed that when foreign troops withdrew, the Vietnamese war left what Suzuki (2015) called the ‘stigmatized nightlife industry’ in surrounding Asian countries (Truong 1990, 160). Western European countries and some Asian countries, including Japan, were then target consumers to fulfil the return of international investments for