INTRODUCTION Where this report fits in As mentioned in the preface, this report was designed as the third volume of the two earlier reports, Kohki Abe’s “Overview of statelessness: International and Japanese Context” (hereinafter the Abe Report) and Osamu Arakaki’s “Statelessness Conventions and Japanese laws: Convergence and Divergence” (hereinafter the Arakaki Report). This report is also meant to present the outcome of a study funded by the Japan Law Foundation, Study No. 111: “Study on Statelessness in Japan: Understanding the situations of stateless persons and the legal framework relating to protection of stateless persons.” The 2010 Abe Report clarifies the definition of statelessness under international law, explains its causes and trends of statelessness, and provides an overview of statelessness and where it fits in within the context of Japan. It also analyses some groups of stateless (or possibly stateless) persons from the standpoint of prevention of statelessness and treatment of stateless persons. The subsequent 2015 Arakaki Report analyses how Japan has historically handled issues of statelessness and discusses the consistency between the two statelessness conventions (the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, hereinafter “the 1954 Convention” and “the 1961 Convention”) and domestic laws as well as their practice in Japan, a State not yet a signatory to the two conventions. Particularly, the report points out that the lack of a definition of statelessness under Japan’s domestic legislation leads to a crucial gap between domestic law and the two statelessness conventions, revealing the legislative and policy challenges to be addressed for accession to the two statelessness conventions. In order to build on these two earlier studies on statelessness issues in Japan, this report referred to groups of stateless or potentially stateless persons which the Abe Report examined, as well as the points raised in the Arakaki Report, as issues to be explored further in relation to Japanese law. The authors then conducted a new “mapping” in the sense that they re-identified general categories of stateless persons and persons at risk of statelessness in Japan as broadly as possible in order to gain an overview of the cases in Japan. 11