Legally, administratively and socially, citizenship adapts to the challenges of not only shifting geopolitics but to new infectious diseases that do not readily submit to the rule of nation-states. This essay looks at citizenship in Japan among other countries against the backdrop of the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic and the newer COVID-19, from the abject figure of the stigmatized homosexual in the former to quarantined foreigners aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess in the latter. I conclude with the role of passports in Japanese writers, such as Tawada Yōko (1960-), who do not so much remap citizenship as question its utility.