Gursewak Singh composed his first letter to Japan's justice minister when he was 10 years old. Almost seven years later, he is still writing. In all, he has written more than 50 letters.

He has yet to get a reply.

The letters, all written in Japanese, have become more eloquent as Gursewak has grown up. But the message is unchanged — a plea to the Japanese authorities to recognize him and his family as residents in a country where he and his younger twin siblings were born and his parents, natives of India, have lived since the 1990s.