French officials like to contrasttheir ownpolicyof equal citizenshipwiththe sloppy communautarisme—rights for specific groups—that some countries, includingmulticulturalBritain, tolerate.
The plan's author, Hidenori Sakanaka, a former Tokyo immigration chief and now head of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, envisages a multicultural Japan in which, he says, reverence for the imperial family is an option rather than a defining trait of Japaneseness.