Justice Minister Okiharu Yasuoka granted a special residency permit Tuesday to a 39-year-old Chinese man and his family who arrived in Japan in 1994 and passed themselves off as the blood relatives of a Japanese "war orphan."
The man, identified as Tao Zheng, of Ageo, Saitama Prefecture, his wife and two children were granted residency permits so they could take care of his 87-year-old foster mother, Junko Yoshihara, sources said.
Tao was allowed to enter Japan with his family in 1994 because he claimed to be Yoshihara's son. Three years later, immigration authorities found that he was not Yoshihara's son but the child of Yoshihara's Chinese husband and his former wife.