Saturday Tangent: Kyodo: GOJ survey indicates 70% of J disabled feel discriminated against. Nice they, unlike NJ, even got asked.

Posted on June 12, 2010June 12, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. As a Saturday tangent, let me take up an interesting case of how a different minority that feels discriminated against in Japan gets surveyed and reported upon — positively, because they happen to be Japanese.

Consider this:

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Japan Times, Friday, June 11, 2010
Discrimination felt by 70% of disabled: report
Kyodo News, Courtesy of RC

Nearly seven out of every 10 people with disabilities said they have faced discrimination or biased treatment, an annual government report showed Friday.

The fiscal 2010 white paper on measures for disabled people, released by the Cabinet Office, says 68.0 percent of those surveyed said they have experienced discrimination or biased treatment because of their disabilities.

The office surveyed 2,178 people with disabilities between December 2009 and January 2010.

The report also says 11.4 percent of the respondents always feel they are discriminated against and 50.9 percent feel discrimination occurs sometimes.

The findings indicate many disabled people continue to be discriminated against at a time when Japan is considering ratifying the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, officials said…

Rest of the article at:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100611x3.html

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COMMENT: Okay, I’m sure many if not most people with disabilities feel disadvantaged and discriminated against in Japan. Fine. This is not to minimize that.

However, look at how much positive spin they are given both in terms of survey and media coverage.

For example, look at the last sentence of the Kyodo excerpt above:

“The findings indicate many disabled people continue to be discriminated against at a time when Japan is considering ratifying the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, officials said…”

No, the findings indicate many disabled people FEEL they continue to be discriminated against. Not that this indicates something factual, that they ARE. That is an important semantic distinction, but “officials” are citing this as a reason to ratify a treaty to protect them.

Fine. I’m all for it. But they’d never do that for NJ. The GOJ won’t even survey NJ in specific, or phrase the questions as if they are being discriminated against at all. Citing an article I wrote about two and a half years ago:

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Japan Times Community Page October 23, 2007

Human rights survey stinks
Government effort riddled with bias, bad science (excerpt)

… [Consider] how the remaining questions are phrased against foreigners.

For example, Q5 asked, “Which of the following human rights issues are you concerned about?”

Discrimination against “foreigners” came in 14th at 12.5%, behind “handicapped”, “elderly”, “children”, “Internet abuse victims”, “North Korean kidnap victims”, “women”, “crime victims”, “HIV sufferers”, “leprosy victims”, “homeless”, “Burakumin”, “ex-convicts”, and “human trafficking”.

Worthy causes in themselves, of course. But foreigners enjoying such low regard is unsurprising. The next series of questions deliberately diminish their stature in society and their right to equal treatment.

Q6 through Q19 asked for comment about “human rights problems”. Each question covered specific sectors of society, with conveniently leading options to choose from:

Women (choices of “human rights violations” included porno and scantily-clad women in advertising), children (including adults being overopinionated about their children’s activities), elderly (including lack of respect for their opinions), handicapped (including being stared at), Burakumin, HIV patients, crime victims, Internet victims, homeless, homosexuals, and Ainu.

Nice for the government to acknowledge (even overdo) several examples of discrimination. But in its two questions about discrimination against foreigners, no conveniently leading options are provided.

Instead, Q12 says, “It is said [sic] that foreigners living in Japan face discrimination in their daily lives”. Then asks if they deserve the same rights as Japanese.

Er… is there doubt about the existence of discrimination against foreigners in Japan? Even our courts have officially acknowledged it in several lawsuits–the Ana Bortz and the Otaru Onsens cases being but two famous examples.

And no similar question of doubt or qualification is raised towards any other group.

Q13 even kindly proffers possible justifications for foreigners’ “disadvantageous treatment”. Out of six choices, half say “nothing can be done” to improve things because a) “foreigners have trouble getting used to Japanese situations”, b) “differences in customs, culture, and economic standing” (which got the most votes, 33.7%). And–better sit down for this one–the tautological c) “because they are foreigners, they get disadvantageous treatment”.

When a human rights survey from even the highest levels of government allows for the possibility of human rights being optional (or worse yet, justifiably deniable based on nationality), we have a deep and profound problem.

Full article at https://www.debito.org/japantimes102307.html

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In sum, this to me is another example of the GOJ manufacturing consent to sway the public to accept a policy position. Fortunately, it’s for protecting people, not hurting them. But wouldn’t it be nice if the GOJ had somehow stepped in during all the nasty debates re NJ PR suffrage and curbed the hate speech, or even ask NJ sometime in a Cabinet Survey if THEY feel discriminated against? After all, we’ve already signed a Convention designed to protect them — nearly fifteen years ago in 1996, so there should be no disinclination. But no, NJ don’t deserve the same attention. After all, they aren’t Japanese. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Toyoko Inn opens “exclusively Chinese” hotel in Susukino Sapporo, refuses Japanese and other NJ; media ignores questionable legality

Posted on June 10, 2010June 10, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Dovetailing with the recent Debito.org posts showing China’s increasing domestic influence over Japan’s economics (here and here), below we have some newspaper articles (Japanese, couldn’t find English anywhere) noting that Toyoko Inn has opened a new hotel complex in Sapporo Susukino that caters exclusively to Chinese. The Nikkei and the Yomiuri call it “Chuugokujin sen’you hoteru” below, smacking of the “Nihonjin Sen’you Ten” wording used for signs in Russian excluding all foreigners entry from businesses in Monbetsu, Hokkaido (i.e. only Chinese are allowed to stay in this hotel). Local Doshin only mildly mentions they are “Chuugokujin muke” (catering to Chinese).

I’m pretty torn by this development. On one hand, here is an unusually progressive business initiative in hiring and catering to NJ (with nary a mention of all the “different culture resulting in the inevitable frictions” that was a undercurrent of much domestic reporting about, say, Australians investing in Niseko). Supply and demand, you might say, who cares if the money is from Chinese. Fine.

On the other hand, however, we have the Balkanization of the hotel industry, with NJ being assigned their own special gated community (in violation of Japanese law; choosing customers by nationality is unlawful under the Hotel Management Law), with again nary a question about the legality.

And again, this is the Toyoko Inn, with its history of special policies for racial profiling and declining hotel rooms (or threatening to) to “foreigners”, including residents and naturalized citizens, who do not show their Gaijin Cards. Not to mention embezzling GOJ funds earmarked for handicapped facilities.

In short, I smell a rat. Yet more opportunism and questionable legal practices by Toyoko Inn. I’d recommend you not patronize them, but then again, unless you’re a Chinese reading this, you probably can’t stay at the hotel in question anyway. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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東横イン、札幌に中国人専用ホテル　来月開業　：日本経済新聞
http://www.nikkei.com/news/local/article/g=96958A9C93819491E0E4E2E2E38DE0E4E2E7E0E2E3E29EE6E3E2E2E2

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– 中国人客専用ホテル…札幌にきょう開業 –

開業を前に接客の練習をする中国人スタッフら（３１日午後、札幌市中央区で）＝三浦邦彦撮影
（2010年6月1日読売新聞）

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/e-japan/hokkaido/news/20100601-OYT8T00026.htm

ビジネスホテルチェーンの東横イン（東京）は、道内で増加している中国人観光客に対応するため、札幌市中央区南６東２にある「札幌すすきの南」を１日、中国人客専用の「東横ＩＮＮ札幌薄野南」として改装オープンする。フロント係やレストランのスタッフに中国人を採用したほか、施設内の案内表示を中国語に変え、全客室で中国のテレビ番組が見られるようにした。

札幌市内の５店舗を含め、国内などで約２２０店舗を展開する同社で初の試み。

道内を訪れる中国人観光客は、道のまとめで０８年度が４万７４００人と、９８年度の１９００人の約２５倍と大幅に増えている。今年７月には、個人観光ビザの発給要件が緩和され、さらに中国からの団体ツアーなどの増加が見込めるため、集中的に受け入れサービスの充実を図る。

客室は家族連れらを見越し、既存のトリプル（２室）以外はツインに統一し、朝食に中華がゆも提供する。今後は支配人に中国人が就き、銀聯(ぎんれん)カードでの決済も検討していく。

３１日はオープンを控え、フロントに新規採用された男女４人の中国人従業員が、チェックイン時の応対などについて、日本人従業員から指導を受けた。１日は、既に団体ツアーの予約が入っているという。

ENDS

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東横イン　札幌に「中国人向け」６月開業　接客、食事に工夫（05/28 06:40）
http://www.hokkaido-np.co.jp/news/economic/233803.html

ビジネスホテル運営の東横イン（東京）は６月１日、中国人観光客に照準を合わせたホテルを札幌市内に開業する。増加傾向にある中国人客の受け入れ態勢を整備するとともに、中国語対応の人材や設備を一つのホテルに集約して経費削減を目指す。

ビジネスホテルとして現在運営している札幌すすきの南店（中央区南６東２）を改装。４人の中国人従業員を配置するほか、約２００の全客室で中国国営放送を視聴できるようにし、朝食に中華がゆも用意する。

東横インは札幌市内に５ホテルを展開。各ホテルに分宿している中国人客をすすきの南店に集める。中国人客向けの施設整備や中国人従業員の配置を集約でき、経費節減効果も期待できる。

昨年の中国人の道内宿泊者数は前年比７割増の１８万３千人で、今年２月の春節（中国の旧正月）以降、増加傾向に加速が付いている。７月から個人観光ビザ発給対象が中間層まで拡大される予定のため、中国人来道者の増加期待が高まっている。
ENDS
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UPDATE JUNE 10 4:15 PM

I called Toyoko Inn Susukino Minami at 011-551-1045 and got a very friendly female clerk. Our conversation went something like this:

“Hi there. I heard about your place in the newspaper. Just wanted to ask: Does your hotel accept only Chinese guests?”

“That’s correct. Only Chinese.”

“You mean Japanese customers are refused too?”

“That’s right.”

“And all other foreigners other than Chinese are not allowed to stay?”

“That’s right.”

“Er, isn’t that against the Hotel Management Law?”

“Yes, it probably is.”

We started laughing, and I said, “This is the first hotel I’ve heard of in Japan where even Japanese guests are refused.”

“Yes, quite. It’s a funny situation, isn’t it.”

I appreciated the candor, but the question still remains: What the hell is going on, and why is nobody calling Toyoko Inn on the unlawfulness of the situation? Instead, we have newspapers promoting them as such without any analysis?

What a bent hotel chain the Toyoko Inn Group is.
ENDS

Reuters: Showings of Oscar-winning documentary The Cove cancelled in Japan due to threat of protest

Posted on June 8, 2010June 8, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Here we go again. Something critical of Japan becomes derided as “anti-Japanese” and is threatened if it gets shown in Japan. This society has to learn that criticism of Japan is actually good for Japan, and that bully boys who want to suppress healthy debate about an issue should be ignored or criticized themselves as unhealthy and unconstitutional. Yet protests by The Left go ignored because they probably won’t get violent, while protests by The Right just might, and the police won’t prosecute if they do. Hence the incentive to become violent is there for the bullies, and they get even more power through intimidation. Canceling showings of a controversial movie like this just strengthens the bullies and helps them proliferate. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

PS: Do what another Debito.org Reader suggested yesterday: Get a copy of The Cove and show it to your friends and students. Amazon.co.jp has had no problem selling right-wing and racist literature in Japanese, so why not? (Now, if only they would get around to putting up a version in Japanese. Here’s information on The Cove in Japanese from the directors.)

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Dolphin hunt film screenings cancelled in Tokyo

Scientific American/Reuters June 5, 2010 Courtesy of Ken’ichi

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dolphin-hunt-film-screenings

TOKYO (Reuters) – Tokyo screenings of “The Cove,” an Oscar-winning documentary about a grisly annual dolphin hunt have been canceled over planned protests by conservatives who say the film is anti-Japanese, the distributor said on Saturday.

The film, which picked up an Oscar for best documentary feature this year, follows a group of activists who struggle with Japanese police and fishermen to gain access to a secluded cove in Taiji, southern Japan, where dolphins are hunted.

Directed by former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos and featuring Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer from the “Flipper” television series, “The Cove” has prompted activists to threaten street demonstrations.

Planned showings of the film at two cinemas in Tokyo this month have been canceled because of fears the protests might inconvenience movie-goers and others, according to Unplugged, the Japan distributor.

Screenings at one Osaka theater have also been called off, but Unplugged is still in negotiations to show the movie at 23 venues around the country this summer, said a spokeswoman for the company, who asked not to be named.

Unplugged has received threatening phone calls and protesters have gathered outside its offices, she said.

“‘The Cove’ is absolutely not an anti-Japanese film,” Takeshi Kato of Unplugged said in a faxed statement. “I believe a deep and constructive debate is needed about the content of the film.”

O’Barry, who is set to visit Japan from June 8, said Japanese film-goers should be allowed to see the documentary.

“It’s not right that a small minority of extremists could take this right away from them,” he said in a statement. “To do so is a clear threat to democracy.”

The film was shown at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year, but has yet to be made widely available to the public.

Japan’s government says the hunting of dolphins and whales is an important cultural tradition.

New Zealander Pete Bethune is currently on trial in Tokyo for boarding a Japanese vessel in an attempt to stop the annual whale hunt in the Antarctic.

(Writing by Isabel Reynolds; editing by Ron Popeski)
ENDS

Tangent: Japan Times exposes dissent amidst scientist claims that eating dolphin is not dangerous

Posted on May 29, 2010May 30, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Putting this up because it’s an important story, and where else are you going to find an expose like this of something so politically hot within the domestic press? Good investigative journalism in the Japan Times regarding the Taiji dolphin culls (the subject of the award-winning movie The Cove), questioning the science behind the public policy of letting people eat unsafe food for political reasons.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen GOJ/public pressure interfere with the scientific community in Japan. Two examples come to mind: 1) Japan‘s Demographic Science making “Immigration” a Taboo Topic, and 2) Apple Imports and the Tanii Suicide Case. Excerpt follows, courtesy of Kevin. Arudou Debito in Sapporo.

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The Japan Times Sunday, May 23, 2010
Experts fear Taiji mercury tests are fatally flawed (excerpt)
By BOYD HARNELL
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fe20100523a1.html

PHOTO CAPTION: Award-winning U.S. neurologist Dr. David Permutter: “Serving dolphin meat is tantamount to poisoning people; they may as well serve them arsenic …”

PHOTO CAPTION: Dr. Pal Wiehe, Chief Physician, Dept. of Occupational Medicine, Public Health in the Faroe Islands: “Without doubt, (Taiji dolphin meat) is dangerous to consumers …”

On May 10, in a front-page lead story headlined “Taiji locals test high for mercury,” The Japan Times reported the results of tests by the National Institute of Minamata Disease (NIMD) that found “extremely high methyl-mercury (MeHg) concentrations in the hair of some residents of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, where people have a tradition of eating whale and dolphin.”

Specifically, the tests of 1,137 Taiji residents last year revealed that average MeHg levels were 11.00 parts per million (ppm) for men and 6.63 ppm for women — compared with an average of 2.47 ppm for men and 1,64 ppm for women at 14 other locations in Japan.

However, the May 10 report stated that “experts were at a loss to explain why none of Taiji’s residents have mercury-related health problems” and that the NIMD would “continue to research” why no symptoms were observed, according to NMID Director General Koji Okamoto.

Such continuing research will perhaps intensify in light of further tests by Masaaki Nakamura, chief of the NIMD’s Clinical Medicine Section, on 182 surveyed Taiji residents having the highest mercury levels. Dr. Nakamura’s results found that 43 residents tested above 50 ppm of MeHg, with one showing a level of 139 ppm.

Nonetheless, all those tested were declared healthy at an NIMD-sponsored press conference in Taiji on May 9, at which the institute didn’t give the 43 residents any dietary advice, with Okamoto noting, according to media reports, that, “It’s important that they decide what they should eat.”…

Meanwhile, commenting on Okamoto’s advice for Taiji residents that it is “important that they decide what they should eat,” Dr. Pal Wiehe, chief physician in the Department of Occupational Medicine, Public Health in the Danish-controlled Faroe Islands, said, “This is inappropriate advice . . . We have seen over a period of time that there were negative impacts at all levels in our neurological, physiological and psychological tests that were irreversible.”…

Commenting on the high concentration of mercury in Taiji dolphin meat in 10 certified lab tests conducted on different dolphin species, which found the highest level, at 14.3 ppm, was almost 36 times over Japan’s advisory level of 0.4 ppm, Wiehe said, ” That to me, without any doubt, is dangerous to consumers’ health . . . our average concentration (in pilot whales, which are oceanic dolphins) is 2 ppm.”

He added, “We don’t consider pilot whale meat proper human food.” In fact, despite some harsh local opposition, on Dec. 1, 2008 Wiehe successfully recommended to the government of the Faroe Islands that residents discontinue the consumption of pilot whale meat…

Just as the researcher said that fears of intimidation (and the withdrawal of research funding) prompted him to request his name be withheld, the Taiji dolphin-cull story and the toxic meat it produces is mostly ignored in Japan’s vernacular media. Indeed, this writer has repeatedly been told by editors that the whole subject is “too sensitive” for them to cover.

Whatever the attempts in Japan to ignore questions surrounding the NIMD’s approval for Japanese citizens to continue eating toxic dolphin, however, one of America’s leading neurologists, Florida-based Dr. David Permutter — a recipient of the prestigious Linus Pauling Functional Medicine Award for his research into brain disease — was far less inhibited….

“These levels (of MeHg) are dramatically elevated. This practice of serving dolphin meat is tantamount to poisoning people; they may as well serve them arsenic, it would be no less harmful! What they’re doing is wrong on every count; it’s the wrong thing to do for the people and the wrong thing to do for the dolphins. No matter how you look at this, it’s perverse — it’s a tragedy and it should be condemned. If the role of government is to protect the people, then they’re failing miserably in their role.”

Full article at http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fe20100523a1.html
ENDS

Economist London column on DPJ woes, passim on how senile Tokyo Gov Ishihara seems to be getting

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Here’s a thought-provoking essay on Japanese politics from The Economist (London). Within it is a vignette on Tokyo Governor Ishihara getting all pissy about how Japanese men are being emasculated, based upon the way they are allegedly being forced to urinate. The other points within the essay are more important, but I find it singularly impressive how a leader of one of the world’s cities could go off on such an irrelevant and unprofessional tangent before a member of the international press (who, charitably, passes it off as the rantings of a grumpy old man). That’s just one more signal to me, however, of how senile Ishihara has become. Only one more year of the man left in office, fortunately. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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Banyan
Things fall apart in Japan
The opposition is a shambles; but since the government is its own worst enemy, who needs one?
Apr 29th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16005298

FOR half a century Japan, dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was a one-party state in multiparty clothes. Last August came a seismic shift, when the general election swept away the once-mighty LDP and installed the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in office. Anyone rooting for an overdue revamp of Japan’s political apparatus hailed the advent of a two-party state. Competition might even produce good policy.

They were too optimistic. A black dog of a depression has settled back over the country’s politics, affecting both main parties. In opposition the LDP has unravelled with impressive speed. In late April the country’s favourite politician, Yoichi Masuzoe, a rare combination in the LDP of ambition and ideas, joined a stream of high-profile defectors forming new parties. He calls for refreshing change: deregulation, decentralisation and—crucially for a country with too many paws on the levers of power—a halving of the number in the Diet (parliament).

For the moment, such groupings have not captured the public imagination. They contain too many lone wolves and grumpy old men, such as the governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, who is responsible for the naming of one notable new party, Tachiagare Nippon!—literally, Stand Up, Japan! When Banyan once called on him, he launched into a tirade about Japanese men cowed by their womenfolk into sitting down when they pee.

If the LDP seems at the end of the line, the bigger surprise is that it lasted so long. It was born of the cold war, free of any ideology save anti-communism. Its business was winning elections and dividing the spoils—and for decades it did that very efficiently. But once the communist threat had gone and economic growth had slowed, the LDP had lost its purpose. Younger reformists lost seats at the last election or are now walking out. The grizzled old guard are at a loss.

For the DPJ government the opposition’s ineptitude has not mattered, so capable has it proved at self-destruction. For a start, both Yukio Hatoyama, prime minister since September, and the DPJ’s secretary-general, Ichiro Ozawa, are under a cloud over the misuse of political funds. On April 27th a judicial panel ordered a review of a February decision not to prosecute Mr Ozawa.

Worse, the prime minister’s early promise to concentrate decision-making powers in the cabinet has come to nought. Along with a flair for airy-fairy waffle, Mr Hatoyama has exhibited breathtaking indecision.

This is most visible over a 2006 plan to move Futenma, the air base on Okinawa for America’s marine expeditionary force. Mr Hatoyama insisted on reopening the agreement—locals objected to building a new heliport on an unspoilt shore—while offering no reasonable alternative. Japan’s relations with its American ally sank to new lows. Expectations among Okinawans (90,000 demonstrated against the move on April 25th) cannot be met. At the end of May Mr Hatoyama may propose a modified version of the original plan. But when Barack Obama in April bluntly asked him whether he had it in him to get a deal, Japanese officials were too shocked to record the question, let alone the answer.

At home a spat about roads undermines all the assurances about cabinet authority. Mr Ozawa wants both to have low tolls and taxpayer funds to go on building unnecessary roads. The transport minister, Seiji Maehara, rightly objects. The cabinet should have ruled. Instead, Mr Hatoyama has passed the matter to the Diet, where members will look out for their own districts. This recalls how the LDP used to act. It bodes ill for a country that needs to tackle rapidly worsening finances and sluggish growth.

The tensions between the DPJ’s modernisers and Mr Ozawa, who undermines the cabinet from outside it, have the potential to tear the party apart. Mr Hatoyama’s popularity, which once soared, plumbs abysmal depths. Japan has gone from a one- to a two-party state, and now to what? A no-party state? A splinter-party state? Is Japan cursed by being terminally ungovernable?

Let’s twist again like we did last summer
The question will be easier to answer, first once it is known how Mr Hatoyama and Mr Ozawa weather the immediate political squalls, and then with the results of elections to be held in July for half of the seats in the Diet’s upper house. In private, the prime minister, for all his indecision, is stubborn on one point. All he wants is to stay in office for longer than another recent prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Like Mr Hatoyama, Mr Abe is the grandson of a notable LDP prime minister and, like him, was put up for the top job by a rich and domineering mother (it is not known what posture the two men adopt for urination). Mr Abe lasted all of a year. This is how low the prime minister has set the bar for himself. But Futenma may bring him down before the election.

Many DPJ reformers want Mr Ozawa to go before then too—the party’s election prospects would be better. This week Mr Hatoyama backed Mr Ozawa, the real power in the DPJ, after the ruling by the prosecutors’ panel. Certainly, Mr Ozawa’s potential to damage the DPJ is immense. For instance, Takao Toshikawa, a political insider, suggests that Mr Ozawa could challenge and replace Mr Hatoyama, call a snap election and then step down as prime minister to run from behind the scenes the kind of “grand coalition”, including with disaffected ex-LDPers, that he attempted once before, in effect creating a new LDP in his own mould.

More likely, the election will force the DPJ to seek the support of smaller groups to form a governing majority. Some of the reformist groups that have splintered from the LDP might spot a chance to wield influence. But continued alliances with anti-reform groups are also possible. Either way, the horse-trading will serve only to alienate voters further from a system that is more responsive to back-room deals than to the national need.

ENDS

Former J employees sue Prada for sexual and power harassment, TV claims “racial discrimination”

Posted on May 19, 2010May 19, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. In an interesting twist to the whole “racial discrimination” issue in Japan, we have Japanese managers suing their former employer, world-famous luxury brand maker Prada, for alleged workplace sexual and power harassment, and “lookism” (i.e. treating people adversely based upon their “looks”). Some excerpts from the Japan Times:

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The Japan Times Saturday, March 20, 2010
Fired Prada manager files suit (excerpt)
By MINORU MATSUTANI Staff writer

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100320a8.html
Former Prada Japan manager Rina Bovrisse filed suit Friday with the Tokyo District Court, seeking compensation for emotional distress from alleged harassment, she and her lawyers said….

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The Japan Times Saturday, April 17, 2010
Ex-Prada exec claims harassment (excerpt)
By MINORU MATSUTANI Staff writer

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100417a6.html
Former Prada Japan senior retail manager Rina Bovrisse, who is suing the company over emotional distress from alleged harassment, said Friday she took the action to support mistreated working women in Japan who don’t feel they have the power to fight their employers.

“I filed the lawsuit against Prada Japan for creating a working environment cruel and unsafe for women,” Bovrisse said at a news conference at the Tokyo District Court. “Prada Japan’s personnel practice is abusive to women.”

The civil trial, in which Bovrisse will argue that the Italian fashion company discriminated against her and other female workers for what the company president called poor appearance, will get under way May 14. She is demanding an apology, compensation and cancellation of her dismissal from the company….

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The Japan Times Saturday, May 15, 2010
Two former managers to file harassment suits against Prada (excerpt)

By MINORU MATSUTANI Staff writer
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100515a9.html

Two former shop managers of Prada Japan will file harassment lawsuits against the company, a move inspired by a former senior retail manager who sued the company for another harassment case, her lawyer said Friday.

Yoshiki Kojima, the lawyer for former senior retail manager Rina Bovrisse, revealed the move when her suit commenced before the Tokyo District Court. Bovrisse is demanding the company apologize, pay compensation for emotional distress and come up with measures to prevent harassment. […]

Bovrisse alleges Prada Japan’s CEO asked her to get rid of shop managers and assistant managers who he described as unattractive last May. After she refused to do so, Prada Japan’s human resources manager gave most of those managers, including the two planning to file suit, transfer orders that amounted to demotions in May and June last year, according to Bovrisse and a shop manager and two assistant shop managers who received the orders.

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不当に解雇されたとして「プラダジャパン」を訴えていた元女性部長が法廷で意見陳述
FNN News May 14, 2010

http://www.fnn-news.com/news/headlines/articles/CONN00177301.html
セクハラやパワハラを受け、不当に解雇されたとして「プラダジャパン」を訴えていた元女性部長が、14日に法廷に立った。対するプラダジャパン側も、全面的に争う姿勢。
白いワンピースにピンクのベルトを着用し、全身シャネルのスタイルで法廷へと向かう、「プラダジャパン」の元部長・ボヴリース里奈さん(36)。
ボヴリースさんは、「『やっときょう(14日)から始まる』という感じで。ただ真っすぐ行くっていう感じで」と話し、東京地裁へと向かった。
ボヴリースさんは、プラダジャパンから一方的に解雇されたとして、解雇の無効と慰謝料を求める訴えを起こしており、その1回目の裁判が14日に行われた。
解雇のいきさつについて、ボヴリースさんは4月に、「やせろ。オペレーション部長としてふさわしくない。ミラノ本社からの訪問者にも絶対に紹介したくないし、見せたくない(と言われた)」と話した。
2009年9月、人事部長から社長の言葉として、「やせろ」、「君の醜さが恥ずかしい」などと言われたため、イタリアの本社に直接報告したところ、部長職を解かれたなどとしている。
労働審判に訴えるも認められず、結局解雇となったため、異議を申し立て民事裁判で争うこととなった。
4月、ボヴリースさんは、「被害を受けた方全員に謝罪をしていただきたいし、やはりこういうことがあったことは認めて、そこからどうやって改善できるかっていうことを考えていただきたいですし」と話した。
提訴を受け、プラダ本社は、「プラダは、プラダに対してなされたそのイメージを傷つけるいかなる非難をも名誉棄損とみなします。プラダの権利を守るために、かつ、プラダの事業が被るすべての重大な損害に対して、会社は必要に応じて決然と対抗します」とコメントしていた。
14日の第1回の審理を前に、ボヴリースさんは、「『真実』という意味があるかなと思って、特に意識しているわけではないですけど、なぜか『白』を必ず選んでしまって。ピンクが好きなので、ハッピーカラーなので。たぶん、最後までピンクと白で通すと思います」と話していた。
午前10時45分に開廷。
ボヴリースさんは、「わたしは、性差別やハラスメントで苦しんでいる、すべての日本人の女性のために、立ち上がるべきだと考えました」と述べ、証言台で、しっかりとした声で意見陳述を行った。
その際、被告側の代理人の方に目を向ける場面が何度か見られた。
ボヴリースさんは閉廷後、「(意見陳述を)読み上げている時にも、怒りが増してきて、『こんな状況を代理するってどういうこと!』ということで、あまりにも感情的になってしまって、見てしまいました。にらみつけてしまいました。(プラダ側の反応は?)もう『無視』って感じなんですけれども、大丈夫です。これから無視できないよう頑張ります」と話した。
一方、プラダジャパン側は、全面的に争う姿勢を示し、ボヴリースさん本人に対し、名誉棄損などで反訴するとしている。
次回公判は、7月2日に予定されている。
(05/14 18:53)

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COMMENT: Good, in the sense that people who are treated badly by employers don’t just take it on the chin as usual. But what makes this a Debito.org issue is the allegation, made by at least one morning Wide Show (“Sukkiri” last Monday, May 17), is that the companies are practicing “racial discrimination” (jinshu sabetsu).

Funny thing, that. If this were a Japanese company being sued for harassment (some examples here), there would be no claim of racial discrimination (as race would not be a factor). But this time it’s not a Japanese company — it’s Prada. Yet when NJ or naturalized Japanese sue for racial discrimination (as they did in the Otaru Onsen Case), the media would NEVER call it “racial discrimination”, merely “cultural misunderstandings” and the like.

Another example of the Japanese media saying racism is only something done TO Japanese, never BY Japanese?

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

FCCJ Press Conference on Ghanian death while being deported, Tues Apr 20

Posted on April 16, 2010May 19, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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PRESS CONFERENCE
[Mr Suraj’s widow], Koichi Kodama and Mayumi Yoshida

Another illegal immigrant in Japan, another death:
The fatal journey of Mr. Suraj

10:00-11:00 Tuesday, April 20, 2010
(The speech and Q & A will be in Japanese with English interpretation)

On March 22, Mr. Abubakar Awudu Suraj, an illegal immigrant who was in the process of being deported to his native country of Ghana, died in Narita.

The circumstances surrounding Mr. Suraj’s death are unknown. What is clear is that the immigration officers used a towel and handcuff to restrain Mr. Suraj as he was boarding an Egypt Air flight. In February, a first attempt to send Mr. Suraj back to Ghana had failed. Since then, he had been subject to confinement. Married since 2006 to [a Japanese national], he had spent the equivalent of 2 years in detention for no other crime than staying illegally.

The death of Mr. Suraj follows the suicide by hanging of a South Korean man a week ago in the Ibaraki detention center. And the self-hanging of a young Brazilian man in Ibaraki again. And a hunger strike by 70 detainees at the Osaka detention center in March.

The appalling conditions Japan is placing illegal immigrants in have been regularly denounced. Immigration authorities in particular, which lack judicial oversight, have the ability to indefinitely detain people, breakup families by deporting one of their members, and so on. More tragedies are to come.

10 days ago, Jorge Bustamante, U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of immigrants, concluded a Japan visit at the end of which he was very critical of Japan.

Come and hear from [the] wife of the late Mr. Suraj, Koichi Kodama, Lawyer and Mayumi Yoshida, Deputy Representative of Asian People’s Friendship Society.

Please reserve in advance, 3211-3161 or http://www.fccj.or.jp/node/5565 (still & TV cameras inclusive). Reservations and cancellations are not complete without confirmation.

Professional Activities Committee

記者会見
児玉晃一、吉田真由美
４月２０日（火）１０：００
（スピーチ日本語：　逐次通訳付）
ENDS

Mutantfrog on Death of Yokoso Japan, plus birth of Welcome to Tokyo

Posted on April 16, 2010October 28, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Japan is rebooting its image for international tourists. According to Adamu at Mutantfrog:

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April 7, 2010
The Japanese government has announced a new international tourism slogan:

“Japan. Endless Discovery.“

Great, at least this time it’s in English! It’s similar to many other simple catch phrases used by other countries: “Malaysia, truly Asia,” “Seoul’s got Soul,” and so on. The Japanese-language slogan is more of more of a mouthful and literally translates as “Japan, a country where you will encounter endless discovery.” There’s also a new logo with a stylish but classy combo of cherry blossoms and the Japanese Rising Sun.

I like “Endless Discovery” because it has a message that happens to be true. As a foreigner living in Japan most days there’s something new to discover. This message could help put new visitors in the right frame of mind to enjoy themselves. Japan’s not a country like Thailand where you can head straight to the resort and not worry about foreign customs. It’s an adventure in many respects – new food, few English speakers, complicated train system, etc. (and the area outside of Tokyo is even harder to navigate), so why not put a positive face on what Japan’s got to offer?

I’d like to give Maehara and his people some credit for picking a slogan that actually makes sense. It’s comforting to think the people in power might actually understand the outside world a little bit. It’s one big, noticeable difference between the parties.

This will replace the old slogan Yokoso! Japan, announced in 2003 to much confusion by most people who had no idea yokoso means “welcome” in Japanese. Well-known Japan commentator Alex Kerr was especially critical, saying it might as well be “blah blah blah Japan.” It’s been a favorite target of mockery among many in the gaijin community and can currently be seen on taxis, buses, posters, and even transport minister Maehara’s lapel pin. You’ll be missed! The “Visit Japan Campaign 2010” site is still up, so you can soak up some of the goodness before it closes. There’s other questionable language on the site, like “Yokoso Bazar” and “Revalue Nippon.”

Rest at http://www.mutantfrog.com/2010/04/07/sayonara-yokoso-japan/

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That’s one thing of interest. Now how about Tokyo’s very expensive reboot? Courtesy of BD:

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April 8, 2010
Debito: Wanted to call your attention to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s new “Welcome to Tokyo” tourism website which features a short anime which [according to the Tokyo Shinbun Dec 20, 2009, link now dead] reportedly cost 50M Yen. That’s my tax dollars at work trying to lure foreigners to a city who’s governor is historically renown for his anti-foreigner rhetoric. Wonder if there’s anything that can be done to call out the points made by UN Rep Bustamante with regards to this site’s obvious ruse.

http://www.tourism.metro.tokyo.jp/english/welcome/

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COMMENT: About the Tokyo promo: Watch the “Honey Anime” in particular. A lot of bald-facedness going on there. I don’t personally watch much Anime (so it might be an issue of genre or style), but I find its eight-year-old-child attitudes towards life a bit cloying, and inappropriate for regular tourists. And you just gotta grimace at the bit where Tokyo-to’s oceanic territory is depicted as a haven for happy whales (never mind the Red Tides or, you know what…). As flash and expensive as the site is, I find the promotion campaign a bit “terrarium in a fishbowl”, with little apparent knowhow of how to appeal to outsiders and what they want after a very expensive plane trip plus hotels (oooh, Tokyo’s got a ZOO!!). And let’s not mention our xenophobic governor…

Charming for some, no doubt. But for me, just weird, and not terribly appealing, having been to Tokyo as a tourist (and guest speaker) my entire life in Japan (that’s right; I’ve never lived in Tokyo). Come to Tokyo and see how clean-line it really isn’t. Like seeing the waxwork dish of lunch outside the restaurant, and coming in to see it’s not at all what it was advertised. But that’s only my impression. What do others think? Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Ghanian dies while being deported March 22, scant media on it

Posted on April 14, 2010April 14, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Here’s something shocking today. I heard about this passim from UN Rep Bustamante on March 23 when he was in town asking about migrant worker issues. I had heard nothing since then. It took a rally the other day for it to make the news. Anyone else see anything in the domestic press? This sort of thing out to be reported much more widely. Wonder where the investigation into this (if any) is going. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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50 rally for investigation of deportee’s death
Compiled from Kyodo, Staff report
The Japan Times, April 13, 2010, Courtesy of GS
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100413a3.html

The Japanese wife of a Ghanaian who died while being deported from Japan last month and some 50 supporters took to the streets Monday in Tokyo to demand a thorough investigation.

Holding a banner that read, “Uncover the truth behind the death of Mr. Suraj during his deportation,” the protesters, including Ghanaians living in Japan, marched through Roppongi shouting “We want justice.”

Although a police autopsy on Abubakar Awudu Suraj, 45, reportedly failed to pin down the cause of death and found no traces of violence, his wife and her supporters believe the death was probably caused by immigration officers.

The officers accompanied Suraj aboard a flight to Cairo from Narita International Airport on March 22 when he was being deported for illegally staying in Japan.

According to the police at the airport, Suraj suddenly turned violent aboard the plane, prompting the Japanese officers to restrain him. He then went limp and died…

Rest of the article at
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100413a3.html

Sunday Tangent: Sumo Suits Controversy in Canada

Posted on April 11, 2010April 11, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. As a Sunday Tangent, here’s something I heard a couple of weeks ago about the banning of “Sumo Suits” at Queens University in Canada. I thought, well, Canada I guess has a lower tolerance for potential “cultural misunderstandings”. While I don’t think “Sumo Suits” are on par with “round glasses and buck teeth” types of Asian stereotyping one has seen in the past in points east (and thankfully mostly put a stop to), it’s an example of how liberal college debates against all types of stereotyping (in this case, anti-“weightism” and “cultural insensitivity”, I would have guessed, but the arguments included “deeply imbedded histories of violent and subversive oppression that a group has faced”) have led to a rather odd, arguably overcompensating decision and a very verbose, OTT self-flagellating statement.

If only this attitude applied to all the Japanese TV shows with their “blond wigs and big noses” tacked on to give anything a “gaijin” feel (and that’s before stretching it to cover wartime histories of violent and subversive oppression…). But expecting that much cultural-sensitivity comity is probably muri for the next generation or two. I have a feeling Trey Parker and Matt Stone are planning a South Park episode on this… Courtesy of DS, who comments below. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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Hi Debito. Greetings from rainy Nagoya. Just ran across this article in my local newspaper from Canada. It concerns the use of so-called “sumo suits”, those big inflatable costumes that you see people wear and then lumber into each other. A university group was using them as part of a fund raiser for a food bank. However, the university Alma Mater Society decided they were offensive and racist, ” a symbol of oppression”, and cancelled the event. They also wrote a long, heartfelt apology letter to those who may have been hurt and/or offended by the horrible event.

Here is the main article:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2740807

and the apology:

http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/posted/archive/2010/03/29/sumo-suit-apology-letter-the-full-text.aspx

I first thought this was an April Fool’s joke, until I saw the article was dated March 29th… DS

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Sumo suits instruments of ‘oppression’: Queen’s [University, Kingston, Ontario] student government
Joseph Brean, National Post (Canada), Courtesy of DS
Published: Monday, March 29, 2010

Queen’s Alma Mater Society on Monday published a two-page apology letter, and cancelled a food-bank fundraiser scheduled for Tuesday, which was to feature two sumo suits such as the ones shown in this …

Sumo suits, the plastic novelties that can transform a skinny sports fan into a comically unstable sphere for the delight of a stadium audience, are racist and dehumanizing instruments of oppression, according to the student government of Queen’s University.

They “appropriate an aspect of Japanese culture,” turn a racial identity into a “costume,” and “devalue an ancient and respected Japanese sport, which is rich in history and cultural tradition.” They also “fail to capture the deeply embedded histories of violent and subversive oppression that a group has faced.”

The Alma Mater Society on Monday published a two-page apology letter, and cancelled a foodbank fundraiser scheduled for Tuesday, which was to feature two sumo suits. The letter scolds the student government’s own executive for “marginalizing members of the Queen’s community” and failing to “critically consider the racist meaning behind [the fundraiser.]”

It also vows to discourage other campus groups from using the suits, owned by the school’s athletic department.

“We recognize racism as the systemic oppression, both intentional and unintentional, of individuals and groups based on racial or ethnic identities,” the letter reads.

Given the quick apology, which came in response to complaints registered on a Facebook page promoting the event, the racism of the Queen’s “SUMO Showdown” seems to have been unintentional, and not an effort to belittle Japanese people.

Brandon Sloan, communications officer for the Alma Mater Society, suggested “white privilege” had blinded the student government, which is largely but not entirely white, to the seriousness of the issue.

Likewise, the owners of the two suits have never imagined they could be considered offensive.

“It’s the first time we’ve heard of [the racist aspects],” Mike Grobe, a spokesman for Queen’s Athletics, which uses the suits at football and basketball games for half-time shows, when people run obstacle courses in them. “They’re just big puffy suits. They’re pink… No one’s complained.”

They come with a helmet shaped like a head with a bun of hair, like a sumo wrestler, but nothing overtly stereotypical. They are new this academic year, and are often loaned out to student groups. They were even loaned out to the Ontario Hockey League for its all-star hockey game.

In the past, professional sumo wrestling in Japan itself has been accused of racism for excluding foreign-born wrestlers, although non-Japanese wrestlers have had notable successes, even rising to highest rank of Yokozuna.

For its part, Queen’s has a proud tradition of inclusivity. It was the first school in Canada to graduate a black man, Robert Sutherland, who became a prominent lawyer. Its student pub, Alfie’s, is named for the son of a runaway slave who became a football mascot. And it continues to receive generous donations of art and real estate from chemist-turned-philanthropist Alfred Bader, a refugee from the Nazis who was turned away from McGill because its Jewish quota was filled.

But Queen’s today has an awkward relationship with political correctness, exacerbated by its reputation for drawing its student body from the privileged neighbourhoods of Toronto and Ottawa.

In a report last week on racism in Ontario universities by the Canadian Federation of Students, one Queen’s student reported that “white privilege” permeates the “walls, books, classrooms and everything that makes Queen’s what it is.”

That aspect of the controversy is mentioned in the apology letter, which says “some of us [AMS leaders] … do not have the lived experience of someone who is oppressed due to their race. We recognize our privilege in this circumstance.” It then vows “a series of discussions” about oppression.

“We would never want to host an event that would offend some members,” Mr. Sloan said.

Last year, in a story that made national headlines, the Queen’s administration appointed six “dialogue facilitators” to promote discussion of social justice, partly by intervening in conversations when they overhear offensive speech. The resulting scandal led to the appointment of an expert panel, including a former head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which cancelled the program as “incompatible with the atmosphere required for free speech.”

The student government was to meet last night to discuss another fun activity as a replacement for the sumo suits, Mr. Sloan said.

Also on Monday, the nomination period closed for the government’s Anti-Oppression Award, given for exceptional achievement in counteracting oppression both in and out of the classroom.

National Post

jbrean@nationalpost.com

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Sumo suit apology letter: the full text
Posted: March 29, 2010, 7:17 PM by Gillian Grace, Courtesy National Post.com

The Queen’s University student government has declared the sumo suit an instrument of ‘oppression’, and cancelled a food-bank fundraiser that was to feature two sumo suits.

The full text of the Alma Mater Society’s apology letter, published on Monday:

Dear AMS members and members of the Queen’s community,

We are writing in regards to an event that was scheduled to take place on Tuesday March 30th, organized and run by a group in the AMS. This event was planned to have students don padded suits, coloured and designed to resemble Japanese sumo wrestlers. The Facebook event created to advertise this event, entitled “SUMO Showdown,” included a picture of two cartoon Japanese wrestlers grappling.

We recognize racism as the systemic oppression, both intentional and unintentional, of individuals and groups based on racial or ethnic identities.

Regrettably, those of us who were aware of the event did not critically consider the racist meaning behind it. Asking students to wear these suits and partake in the activity appropriates an aspect of Japanese culture. This is wrong because it turns a racial identity into a costume; the process of putting-on and taking-off a racial identity is problematic because it dehumanizes those who share that identity and fails to capture the deeply imbedded histories of violent and subversive oppression that a group has faced. The event also devalues an ancient and respected Japanese sport, which is rich in history and cultural tradition.

The decision to hold this event, and the failure of many students who hold senior positions in the AMS to recognize the inherent issues of racism tied-in to the event, marginalized members of the Queen’s community. As an organization and as individuals who allowed this to go on unchallenged, we are deeply sorry for having caused feelings of hurt and not being safe on-campus by planning this event. We are implicated in systems of oppression by not challenging things such as this, and perpetuating racist stereotypes.

Events such as this take place at other institutions and within Queen’s as well; it is imperative that we learn from this experience to ensure that we constantly work towards challenging various forms of oppression. We will also be following-up with other groups at Queen’s who utilize these suits so that we can encourage them to also engage critically with issues of racism and oppression.

While it is important to recognize that by planning this event we marginalized students on-campus, it is also critical to recognize that some of us in the organization who played a role in planning and perpetuating the event do not have the lived experience of someone who is oppressed due to their race. We recognize our privilege in this circumstance, and will work hard to better engage with it and issues of racism and oppression in the future. An integral part of this process is to ensure that those who were implicated in the event in any way come out of this experience with a desire to learn more about how to combat racism and other forms of oppression on a regular basis. It is necessary to facilitate a discussion about how oppression permeates our experiences, and what our role is in challenging forms of oppression that all too often go unchallenged. We will be engaging in a series of discussions – both formal and informal – with all involved parties to ensure that they understand the ways in which this event is both harmful and discriminatory.

Although we are taking active steps as an organization and as individuals to ensure that we are better able to name and challenge racism and oppression, it is clear that this does not in any way negate the damage done in the creation and advertising of this event. We have already alienated individuals from the AMS as a result of this event, but we plan on working towards facilitating the development of a campus climate in which this wrongdoing and others like it are not repeated.

Sincerely,
The Alma Mater Society
ENDS

Debito.org Exclusive: Full UN Rapporteur Bustamante March 31 press conference on Japan’s human rights Mar 31 2010 downloadable here as a podcast

Posted on March 31, 2010April 1, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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BUSTAMANTE PRESS CONFERENCE MARCH 31, 2010, UNITED NATIONS INFORMATION CENTRE
By Arudou Debito, exclusive to Debito.org

(Debito.org) TOKYO MARCH 31, 2010 — Dr Jorge A. Bustamante, United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants, gave an hourlong press conference at United Nations Information Center, United Nations University, Japan.

Dr Jorge Bustamante gives a press conference in Tokyo. Photo by Arudou Debito

Assisted by the International Organization for Migration and Japan’s civil society groups, Dr Bustamante concluded nine days, March 23 to March 30, of a fact-finding mission around Japan, making stops in Tokyo, Yokohama, Hamamatsu, and Toyoda City. He met with representatives of various groups, including Zainichi Koreans, Chinese, Brazilians, Filipinos, women immigrants and their children, “Newcomer” immigrant and migrant Non-Japanese, and veterans of Japan’s Immigration Detention Centers.

He also met with Japanese government representatives, including the ministries of Education, Foreign Affairs, and Justice. He also met with local government officials in Hamamatsu City (including the Hamamatsu “Hello Work “ Unemployment Agency), the mayor of Toyoda City, and others.

He debriefed the Japanese Government today before his press conference.

The press conference can be heard in its entirety, from Dr Bustamante’s entrance to his exit, on the DEBITO.ORG PODCAST MARCH 31, 2010, downloadable from here:

[display_podcast]

Duration: One hour five minutes. Unedited. I ask a question around minute 40.

Dr Bustamante’s official read statement, also audible in the podcast, is available in its entirety on Debito.org in the next blog entry.

Arudou Debito, reporting for Debito.org in Tokyo.
March 31, 2010
ENDS

Sunday Tangent: Japan Times on staggering the Golden Week holidays across the archipelago

Posted on March 28, 2010March 28, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Here’s a neat (in the American sense) proposal bouncing around to stagger Golden Week so that the holidays essentially follow the seasons as they progress up the archipelago. For the record, I think it’s a great idea (I am so fed up of having crappy weather during the GW holidays in Hokkaido; can’t do much outside yet, don’t want to go anywhere and face the crowds; and little money to do so even if I did), and would like to see it put into practice.

I don’t see how anyone would object (except for perhaps the tourist industry itself, which might oddly enough prefer to keep charging peak rates.) That said, when it was first floated on TV’s Toku Da Ne a couple of weeks ago, the (old fart) panel was almost uniformly against it! Some said they don’t take any holiday during that time period anyway (oh, that’s thinking outside of your lifestyle!), and head anchor Ogura even woodenheadedly said, “What would the media call the holiday? I can’t think of a name. So I oppose it.” That’s one reason I don’t bother watching the self-indulgent and intellectually incestuous Toku Da Ne much anymore.

Excerpt follows from the Japan Times on how the plan would work. What do others think? Arudou Debito in Tokyo

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Japan Times Sunday, March 21, 2010
Moves afoot to make Japanese holidays a pleasure not a pain

By TOMOKO OTAKE Staff writer

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100321x3.html

A Japan Tourism Agency panel headed by Vice Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister Kiyomi Tsujimoto is currently discussing ways to divide the nation into five different zones whose Golden Week holidays would be staggered by zone. The panel is also calling for the creation of a five-day holiday in the autumn — a so-called Silver Week — that would again be staggered by region and spread over five different periods.

In one of the two proposals on the table, Golden Week and Silver Week would be spread over five weeks, instead of one week; while the other proposal would, more confusingly, see the five zonal Golden Week and Silver Week periods overlapping each other a little to occupy a total span of 2 1/2 weeks each.

However, the changes — which would require legal amendments to national holiday laws, but which could be introduced as early as 2012 — do not mean Japan’s salaried workers will get more holidays. Instead, some of the existing national holidays would simply be moved to different dates, while keeping the original ones — such as Constitution Day on May 3, Green Day on May 4 and Children’s Day on May 5 — as non-holiday “memorial days.”

The agency’s logic goes like this. If people travel at different times, the yawning gap in travel costs between the peak and off-peak seasons would become smaller, making tourism affordable for more people. Tourists would also likely enjoy their vacations more, as they would experience less frustrating congestion, and so they would feel more inclined to travel more frequently and thus end up pumping more money into the tourism-related sectors of the economy. This would also help to stabilize the employment of people working in these sectors.

Full article at http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100321x3.html

ENDS

Japan Times update on current J child abductions after divorce & Hague Treaty nego: USG still pressuring GOJ

Posted on March 20, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. The following Japan Times article wouldn’t normally be put up on Debito.org yet because the negotiation is ongoing (covering much the same argumentative ground as already reported here), and nothing necessarily decisive has been decided. However, a new development in the USG’s constant-looking pressure on the GOJ to sign the Hague, and do something about its citizens using Japan as a haven for child abductions after divorce, is the fact that somebody official is bothering to answer the GOJ claim that obeying the Hague would mean sending back J children to be endangered by an abusive NJ parent (I’ll take that as a slur, thank you very much). Excerpts from the JT article below. Arudou Debito in Morioka.

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DPJ rule raises Hague treaty-signing hope
‘Left-behind parent’ urges Japan to side with child-abduction pact
By MASAMI ITO
The Japan Times: Thursday, March 18, 2010 (excerpt)
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100318f1.html

… Article 1 of the Hague Convention states that its objective is “to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any Contracting State.” At present, there are 82 signatory states, including Canada, the United States and Great Britain. Of the Group of Eight countries, only Japan and Russia have not signed the treaty.

“There is a part of this convention that is alienated from the Japanese legal system,” the Foreign Ministry said in a written reply to The Japan Times. “In concluding this convention, there are several issues that need to be thoroughly discussed, including the consistency with our country’s judicial system on families.”

Under Japanese law, only one parent gets custody over children after a divorce, whereas rulings on joint custody are often seen in Europe and the United States. But with the number of international marriages on the increase and a rise in divorces as well, Japan faces increasing international pressure to change the current system and sign the convention.

Last month, Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, brought up the issue during his meetings with Japanese officials in Tokyo and even held a special news conference on the topic at the U.S. Embassy.

“The U.S. government places the highest possible priority on the welfare of children who have been victims of international parental child abduction and strongly believes that children should grow up with access to both parents,” Campbell told reporters. […]

One key concern often cited in the Japanese media is cases of domestic violence in which mostly Japanese women are fleeing their abusive husbands and bringing their children to Japan to protect them.

But Article 13 of the convention stipulates that children do not need to be returned if there is a risk that the return “would expose the child to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation.”

[Raymond Baca, the consul general of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, who has a rather unfortunate name,] said: “There is this perception out there, and I believe it’s widely held, that if Japan joined or acceded to the Hague Convention, that Japanese parents here would be required to send their children back to an abusive environment.

“It’s important to point out that there are explicit safeguards against this within the Hague Convention,” he said.

Full article at
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100318f1.html

ENDS

Asahi: Prof pundit on Toyota uses “culture” benkai to explain recall issues

Posted on March 14, 2010March 14, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. As a weekend tangent, here’s more on Toyota and how we try to steer attention away from matters of engineering — by blaming it once again on culture, and getting some university prof to mouth it for legitimacy’s sake. Comments from submitter BT included. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

////////////////////////////////////////////

On Feb 26, 2010, at 11:45 AM, BT wrote:

Greetings and salutations! Just came across this little gem while reading the Asahi Shinbun earlier today. I thought you might be interested (if someone else hasn’t already sent this in): http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201002250455.html

It’s an interview about Toyota recalls in the US, with “Hideo Kobayashi, a visiting professor at Yokohama National University’s Center for Risk Management and Safety Sciences”. I’m talking specifically about these two quotes:

“Q: Wasn’t Toyota’s confidence in product quality one of the factors that led to its sloppy handling of the situation?

A: Can what people in Japan consider “good quality” be also considered good in the United States, which has a more diversified population?

Japanese people generally have high driving skills and similar physical features. But the United States, whose society was more or less built by immigrants, has people with various physical features and behavioral patterns. To get a driver’s license, you don’t need the sort of skills that are required in Japan..”

(The “we’re superior” routine)

And,

“Q: Some say the reaction to Toyota’s problems has an aspect of “Japan bashing” about it. What is your view?

A: With American companies such as General Motors Corp. going under and Toyota doing well in sales, there naturally is an aspect of Japan bashing. But this is something that has to be overcome.”

(The “poor, poor Japan” routine)

Cheers from Tokyo! BT

///////////////////////////////////////////
‘Toyota relied too much on Japanese way’
BY TETSUO KOGURE, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

2010/02/26, Interview with Hideo Kobayashi (THE ASAHI SHIMBUN)

What can companies do to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued Toyota Motor Corp. over its vehicle recalls?

Hideo Kobayashi, a visiting professor at Yokohama National University’s Center for Risk Management and Safety Sciences, says Toyota failed to recognize differences in the way Japanese and Americans perceive recalls.

Kobayashi is an expert on crisis management concerning safety measures and is well-versed in recall matters. Because product problems are bound to crop up, he says companies should deal with them while paying attention to detail.

Following are excerpts of an Asahi Shimbun interview with Kobayashi:

* * *

Question: In the United States, Toyota has come under fire for being tardy in issuing recalls. What is your sense of the whole Toyota issue?

Answer: Trouble always occurs when a carmaker develops, produces and introduces a new vehicle. When problems occur, modifying the vehicle is what every automaker (in the world) does as a matter of course. While the modification is usually carried out on cars to be produced in the future, the system of recalls specifically targets vehicles that have already been manufactured so that they are fixed, too.

I think the biggest problem with Toyota was its failure to recognize the difference in thinking in Japan and the United States over the issues of recalls and safety. It apparently made a typically Japanese judgment.

Japanese companies have a strong tradition of being bound by legal regulations, with a deep-rooted perception that issuing a “recall is evil.”

In the United States and Europe, companies believe that from a crisis management viewpoint, “the sooner a recall is done, the easier it is to contain the damage.” As a result people think: “Because there is a recall (system), we can travel in a car without having any worries.”

Overseas subsidiaries (of car manufacturers) that are aware of these things had better take the lead in coping with recalls. However, faced with rapid market expansion and increased sales, Toyota probably decided that it would be easier for the headquarters (in Japan) to make a judgment.

Q: Some say the reaction to Toyota’s problems has an aspect of “Japan bashing” about it. What is your view?

A: With American companies such as General Motors Corp. going under and Toyota doing well in sales, there naturally is an aspect of Japan bashing. But this is something that has to be overcome.

To survive, many Japanese companies need to go overseas for sales and manufacturing, but they won’t succeed if they force their Japanese style (of doing business). Overseas subsidiaries must hire locally and assimilate.

Q: Wasn’t Toyota’s confidence in product quality one of the factors that led to its sloppy handling of the situation?

A: Can what people in Japan consider “good quality” be also considered good in the United States, which has a more diversified population?

Japanese people generally have high driving skills and similar physical features. But the United States, whose society was more or less built by immigrants, has people with various physical features and behavioral patterns. To get a driver’s license, you don’t need the sort of skills that are required in Japan.

Naturally, there can be various troubles even with cars developed in Japan that are regarded as good in the country. Problems need to be handled with attention to detail.

Q: Toyota has decided to introduce a brake override system that enables a driver to stop the car even if the gas pedal is depressed. Was it a problem that there was no such system previously?

A: It was rather whether (Toyota) had explained to customers the lack of the system and what could happen as a consequence.
ENDS

Kyodo et al. falls for NPA spins once again, headlines NJ “white collar crime” rise despite NJ crime fall overall

Posted on February 27, 2010May 10, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. It’s that time of year again. Time for the National Police Agency (NPA) Spring Offensive and Media Blitz against foreign crime. Article, then comment, then some original Japanese articles, to observe yet again how NJ are being criminalized by Japanese law enforcement and our domestic media:

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No. of white-collar crimes by foreigners up by 31.2% in 2009

Thursday 25th February, 2010 Kyodo News, Courtesy of KG
http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/no-of-white-collar-crimes-by-foreigners-up-by-312

TOKYO — The National Police Agency detected 964 white-collar crimes by visiting foreigners in Japan last year, up 31.2% from the previous year, it said Thursday. The number of visiting foreigners charged with such crimes came to 546, up 7.9%, according to the NPA. It said notable among the crimes was teams using faked credit cards.

The overall number of crimes committed by all foreigners in the reporting year fell 11.1% to 27,790, with 13,282 people, down 4.3%, charged, the NPA said.

ENDS

/////////////////////////////////////////////

COMMENT: Yep. Same old same old. Parrot the NPA: Highlight the NJ crime rises, and play down the fact that NJ crime overall has gone down. And of course no depiction of J “white collar” (whatever that means) crime numbers, nor their ups or downs to give a sense of scale.

NB: I can’t find the Japanese original for the Kyodo English article, only something in Kyodo’s Chinese-language news service (which avails us with the original terminology for “white-collar crime”, as “gaikokujin chinou hanzai” (lit. foreign intellectual crime); again, whatever that means). The structure is the same:

◆09年在日外国人智能犯罪案件骤增
02.25.10 17:36
http://china.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fsStory/index.php?sel_lang=schinese&storyid=78662
【共同社2月25日电】据日本警察厅统计，除永久居住者外，去年赴日外国人犯罪案件中诈骗等“智能犯罪”急剧增加。案件数量较上年增加了31.2%，共964起；涉案人数为546人，增加了7.9%。

其中使用伪造信用卡的多人诈骗团伙发案率明显居高。

警察厅表示，不同国籍的团伙成员在世界各地重复犯罪的“犯罪国际化”对日本的治安也构成了巨大威胁，将重新构筑针对外国人有组织犯罪的调查机制。

从外国人犯罪的整体情况来看，触犯《刑法》及特别法的案件共27,790起，减少了11.1%；涉案人数为13,282人，减少4.3%。（完）
ENDS
======================

The Sankei doesn’t defy its typical anti-NJ bent as it also parrots the NPA:

外国人の知能犯罪が増加　前年比３１・２％増の９６４件　５６４人摘発詐欺グループ目立つ
産經新聞　2010.2.25 10:53
http://sankei.jp.msn.com/affairs/crime/100225/crm1002251055012-n1.htm
昨年警察が摘発した永住者らを除く来日外国人による犯罪のうち、詐欺などの「知能犯」が急増し、件数で対前年比３１・２％増の９６４件、人数で７・９％増の５４６人となったことが２５日、警察庁集計で分かった。
偽造クレジットカードを使った多人数の詐欺グループ摘発が目立つ。
警察庁は、多国籍のメンバーが世界各地で犯行を繰り返す「犯罪のグローバル化」が日本の治安にも大きな脅威になっているとして、外国人組織犯罪への捜査態勢の再構築を打ち出している。
外国人犯罪全体では、刑法犯と特別法犯を合わせ件数が１１・１％減の２万７７９０件、人数が４・３％減の１万３２８２人だった。
ENDS
=======================

Jiji Press takes a different angle, headlining the drop in NJ crime and assigning possible societal causes, but still resorts to pointing out a rise where possible (in types of crime, such as theft and graft):

外国人犯罪、５年連続減少＝「生活苦」で窃盗、強盗増加−警察庁
http://www.jiji.com/jc/c?g=soc_30&k=2010022500269
２００９年に全国の警察が摘発した来日外国人は、前年比６０３人減の１万３２８２人だったことが２５日、警察庁のまとめで分かった。０４年に過去最多の２万１８４２人となった後は５年連続で減少しているが、罪種別で見ると窃盗や強盗、詐欺などが増加。同庁は「生活苦による犯罪が目立つ」としている。
国籍別の割合は、中国が３６％を占めて過去１０年間続けて最多。フィリピンやベトナムが１０年前と比べ激増した。（2010/02/25-10:23）
ENDS

=======================

And in a related note, the NPA is going “global” in its unified crime-fighting efforts:

警察庁：国際犯罪、対応を一元化　部門横断的に「対策室」
毎日新聞 – ‎Feb 22, 2010‎
http://mainichi.jp/select/wadai/news/20100223dde041010004000c.html
国際的な犯罪グループによる事件の続発を受け、警察庁は２３日、犯罪のグローバル化戦略プランをまとめた。警察庁の各部局や各都道府県警察本部間の垣根を低くして情報の一元化と共有を図るため「グローバル対策室」を設置。韓国や中国の捜査当局との連携強化も視野に置きグローバル化する犯罪の解決や解明に乗り出す。【千代崎聖史】

戦略プランの主な柱は（１）ＩＣＰＯ（国際刑事警察機構）の積極活用や、各捜査部門間の壁を取り払い組織横断的な情報収集を強化して、警察庁の情報管理システムに集約（２）海外勤務経験者を活用するなどして通訳・翻訳体制を充実（３）東アジアでの国際協力枠組みを構築し、共同オペレーションの推進。グローバル対策室は警察庁のほか各警察本部にも設置され、まず警察庁で約２０人体制で発足する。

従来の外国人犯罪は、短期間のうちに実行し出国する「ヒット・アンド・アウエー型」が主流だった。しかし、この数年は拠点など犯罪インフラの準備を入念に行うケースも増え、「ピンクパンサー」と呼ばれる国際的強盗団による宝石店強盗▽ナイジェリア人らによる身代金目的邦人誘拐▽多国籍グループによる広域自動車盗事件－－など複数の国にまたがる事件が頻発。日本人が犯行拠点の確保などを支援し、組織の実態解明が困難なケースも多いため、警察庁はこうした犯罪への対策を最重要課題と位置づける。

安藤隆春警察庁長官は同日の担当課長会議で、「全国警察一体で取り組まなければならない治安上の喫緊の課題だ」と訓示した。

◇初動早め情報共有
日本と海外の捜査当局が連携して事件を解決したケースに共通するのは、初動の素早さと情報の共有だ。

「助けて。マレーシアにいるの」。昨年１２月１３日、千葉県に住むフィリピン人女性（３８）の携帯電話に、山梨県で食品工場の工員をしているはずの姉（４４）から電話が入った。入管関係者を名乗る男が電話口に出てきて「薬物の容疑で連行した。釈放してほしければ１万ドルを口座に振り込め」と要求した。１４日、女性は東京のフィリピン大使館に駆け込んで通報した。

警視庁は通訳を派遣し身代金目的誘拐とみて捜査を開始。「金を早く用意しないと殺す」。脅迫の電話や電子メールは計１６回。警察庁はＩＣＰＯを、フィリピン大使館はマレーシアの同大使館をそれぞれ通じてマレーシア国家警察に情報提供を続けた。

これを受けて、日本のフィリピン大使館とマレーシア・セランゴール州警察に対策本部が発足。州警察が携帯電話の発信電波からアジトの団地を割り出して包囲した。１７日に犯人グループが被害女性を解放、ナイジェリア人５人とマレーシア人３人の２１～３５歳の計８人が逮捕された。女性は衰弱していたが無事だった。

捜査関係者によると、犯人グループの男らは英語のチャット上に、欧州のビジネスマンを名乗り「結婚相手を探しています。４０歳以上希望」と書き込み、返信した女性にはハンサムな白人男性の顔写真を添付して送信。誘い出したクアラルンプール国際空港で拉致した。アジトでは別のカザフスタン人の女性（４３）を拉致していたことも判明した。警察幹部は「警察が国境を超えてリアルタイムで情報を共有し、解決できた意義は大きい」と話す。【千代崎聖史】
ENDS

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Japan Times: Foreign press pulling out of Japan in favor of China

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. In a new trend of “Japan Passing” (a play on the old debate-stifling term “Japan Bashing”, except this time it refers to Japan being passed over in importance as the purported “leader of Asia”, in favor of China), we see the ultimate effect of Japan’s closed-door policies towards the outside world (including immigration) — foreign correspondents pulling out and closing up shop, turning fading economic superpower Japan into an international media backwater by degrees. It’s sad to see the FCCJ (who accepted me as an associate member earlier this year, thanks) dwindling this much. But after “two lost decades” of Japan’s economic stagnation and the previous decade criminalizing and excluding immigrants, culminating in a policy push to send them “home” despite all their contributions, it’s just one more chicken coming home to roost. Arudou Debito in Edmonton

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Stop the presses — foreign media pulling out of Japan
With China rising and revenues falling, priorities have changed
By MARIKO KATO, Staff writer
The Japan Times Friday, Jan. 22, 2010 (excerpt)
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100122f1.html

Major foreign media outlets are leaving Japan in droves, a sign of financial difficulties at home as the news industry struggles with falling advertising revenue. But observers note that Japan is also losing its appeal as the most newsworthy country in Asia, with China now the hot spot.

In the latest withdrawal from Japan, the news magazine Time closed its editorial branch in Tokyo earlier this month. Last year, Newsweek shut down its editorial section in Tokyo while the editorial staff of BusinessWeek merged with Bloomberg after the financial news service announced it would buy the magazine last October.

Among newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have been reported to have drastically reduced their forces…

According to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, its foreign members numbered around 250 during the late 1980s and early 1990s when the booming economy provided both interesting news and an attractive home for overseas correspondents. The count was more than 300 if Japanese staff employed by foreign media companies were included.

However, the ranks have since been decreasing steadily, with only 144 foreign members registered as of March 2009.

Rest of the article at
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100122f1.html

ENDS

Kyodo & Mainichi: 14 prefectures now oppose NJ PR suffrage (Debito.org names them)

Posted on February 13, 2010February 13, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Here we have Japan’s version of the US opposition “Tea Parties”, with some prefectural assemblies (most rural and apparently LDP-strongholded) coming out in opposition to giving NJ with PR the vote in local elections. (Debito.org, unsurprisingly, is in favor of granting suffrage; reasons passim here.) The interesting thing is, when has the media granted much attention to what the prefectures think before about national policies? They certainly didn’t when it came to a decade of requests from lots of city governments, after the Hamamatsu Sengen, to make life easier for their NJ residents. Oh, that’s right. It’s not business as usual since the LDP is not in power. Plus it looks like the Cabinet may actually help pass a law to do something nice for foreigners. How dare they!

Anyway, name and shame. These are the prefectures you should write to to say you’re unimpressed by their lack of tolerance:

Akita, Yamagata, Chiba, Ibaraki, Toyama, Ishikawa, Shimane, Kagawa, Oita, Saga, Nagasaki and Kumamoto, plus Saitama and Niigata.

Source in Japanese below. Arudou Debito in Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada

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14 prefectures oppose allowing foreigners to vote in local elections
JapanToday.com/Kyodo News Tuesday 09th February, 07:52 AM JST
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/14-prefectures-oppose-allowing-foreigners-to-vote-in-local-elections
Courtesy of MMT, John in Yokohama, and Cleo

TOKYO — Local assemblies in 14 of Japan’s 47 prefectures have adopted statements in opposition to giving permanent foreign residents in Japan the right to vote in local elections since the Democratic Party of Japan took power last year, a Kyodo News tally showed Monday.

[Those open-minded prefectures are: Akita, Yamagata, Chiba, Ibaraki, Toyama, Ishikawa, Shimane, Kagawa, Oita, Saga, Nagasaki and Kumamoto, plus Saitama and Niigata]

Before the launch last September of the new government under Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama who supports granting local suffrage, 31 prefectural assemblies took an affirmative stance, but six of them have turned against it since then.

The results underscored growing opposition to the government’s policy, with local assembly members, including those belonging to the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, pressing for the adoption of statements of opposition in prefectural assemblies.

The Japanese government is considering formulating a bill that will grant local suffrage to permanent residents in Japan, and DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa has expressed the hope that such a bill will pass through parliament in the current Diet session.

But reservations remain within the DPJ-led coalition government about the idea, with collation partner People’s New Party President Shizuka Kamei reiterating his opposition last week.

Explaining the reason behind the Chiba prefectural assembly’s opposition, Naotoshi Takubo, secretary general of the LDP’s local branch in Chiba, said the change of government made it more likely than before that a law will be enacted to accept local suffrage.

‘‘The political situation has changed and we now have a sense of danger for the Hatoyama administration,’’ he said. The Chiba assembly adopted a supporting statement in 1999 when the coalition government between the LDP and the New Komeito party was launched.

An LDP member of the Ishikawa prefectural assembly expressed a similar view, saying the assembly had been supportive because giving permanent residents the right to vote was not ‘‘realistic’’ before.

The Akita prefectural assembly, which adopted its opposing statement after the change of government, said that ‘‘a national consensus has not been built at all.’‘

The Kagawa prefectural assembly says in its statement that foreign residents should be nationalized [sic] first to obtain the right to vote.

The issue of local suffrage for permanent foreign residents in Japan came under the spotlight in 1995 after the Supreme Court said the Constitution does not ban giving the right to vote to foreign nationals with permanent resident status in local elections.

Since 1998, the DPJ, the New Komeito party and the Japanese Communist Party have submitted local suffrage bills, but their passage was blocked by the then ruling LDP.

Japan does not allow permanent residents with foreign nationality, such as those of Korean descent, to vote in local elections, let alone in national elections, despite strong calls among such residents for the right to vote on the grounds that they pay taxes as local residents.

Residents of Korean descent comprise most of the permanent foreign residents in Japan.

Japan grants special permanent resident status to people from the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan who have lived in the country since the time of Japan’s colonial rule over the areas, and to their descendants.

ENDS
/////////////////////////////////////////////////

＜外国人選挙権＞８県議会が「反対」に転向
2月9日12時38分配信毎日新聞
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20100209-00000047-mai-pol
永住外国人への地方選挙権付与について、昨年９月の民主政権発足以降、４７都道府県議会のうち１４の県議会が反対や、慎重な対応を求める意見書を可決していたことが、全国都道府県議会議長会の調べで分かった。このうち千葉や石川など８県議会は、かつて賛成の立場の意見書を採択しており、政権交代で外国人への選挙権付与が現実味を帯びてきたことに対し、自民系が多数を占める地方議会による反発とみられる。【渡辺暢】

永住外国人への地方選挙権付与は、民主党のマニフェスト（政権公約）の原案となった「０９年政策集」に盛り込まれた。民主が今国会にも新法案を提出する方針を示す一方、亀井静香金融・郵政担当相が反対を明言するなど、足並みはそろっていない。

議長会の調べでは政権交代から昨年末までに、秋田、山形、千葉、茨城、富山、石川、島根、香川、大分、佐賀、長崎、熊本の１２県議会が法制化に反対、埼玉と新潟が慎重な対応を求める意見書を採択した。在日本大韓民国民団の働きかけもあり、参政権に賛成または検討を求める意見書を採択した都道府県は昨年６月までに３４に達していた。しかし、政権交代後、かつて賛成意見書を採択した千葉、茨城、富山、石川、島根、大分、佐賀、長崎が反対に転じた。

自民党千葉県連の田久保尚俊幹事長は「民主党による（法案の）提出が現実味を帯びてきた。選挙で（県議会の）構成メンバーも代わっており、（９９年の賛成意見書とは）別に考えてほしい」と話す。同石川県連の福村章幹事長は昨年１２月の意見書採択を受け「（賛成の意見書を採択した９５年）当時は自社さ政権。状況が変わった」と説明した。

反対意見書の急増について、千葉大の新藤宗幸教授（政治学、行政学）は「極めて政治的なもの。地方議会全体では今も自民系が多く、『地方は反対』という状況を作って政権に亀裂を入れていこうという、自民党中央の考えではないか」と分析する。全国市議会議長会によると、昨年末までに反対の意見書を採択したのは山形県天童市など、少なくとも１３市議会ある。

ENDS

UK journalist seeks interviews with Asian NJ wives in rural Japan

Posted on February 2, 2010February 2, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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Hi All. A UK journalist would like to get in touch with Asian NJ wives in rural Japan. Forwarding the below with permission. Please feel free to contact her directly at helen AT helencroydon DOT com, and to forward this email around. Thanks very much. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Begin forwarded message:

///////////////////////////////////////////////

From: Helen Croydon
Date: February 2, 2010 1:30:48 AM JST
Subject: ASIAN FOREIGN WIVES IN RURAL JAPAN

Hi Arudou Debito. I am a journalist based in the UK and coming to Japan in February/March to research a couple of stories, one of which is the issue of Asian women being encouraged to immigrate into Japan and marry into rural Japanese families.

I want to talk about the problem in farming community of there being a shortage of Japanese-born women because increasingly more are abandoning the countryside for the cities and hence there are many ‘drives’ to get Japanese men in rural communities to marry and produce children.

I wonder if you have any literature/information/past postings on your site about the issue.

More specifically, I want to get the personal stories of some of the Asian wives who have come to Japan to marry into rural families. Would you know any such women that may be willing to talk to me about their experiences (they can keep anonymity of course if they want to).

Also, I would like to find (though this may be harder!) someone who is involved in the so-called ‘marriage brokering agencies’ – either someone who has contact with the agencies who play a role in sending women from Asian countries to Japan or, someone in Japan with a connection to local authorities who may have officially encouraged the practise.

I actually lived in Nagano city in 1995 and then in Yamaguchi in 1999. I studied Japanese at university and spent two years there as a student (though I have totally forgotten everything but the very basic Nihongo now!). I am planning to visit Japan at the end of Feb/beginning of March and so would appreciate any leads on lines of research, or any contact details of relevant contacts and case studies.

I appreciate your help on this. If you would prefer to talk to me, rather than email let me know a telephone number and I will happily give you a call. Best, Helen
………..
Helen Croydon
Freelance Journalist & Producer
Email: helen@helencroydon.com
www.helencroydon.com
ENDS

Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku blocks online campus access to Debito.org. Just like Misawa Air Force Base.

Posted on January 31, 2010January 31, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. As a Sunday article, let me forward two collated emails that I received from a student at Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku. He sent proof that his university blocks campus access to Debito.org.

Can’t imagine why. Maybe they’re confusing my name with Adult Videos? 🙂

Anyway, it’s not the first time I’ve heard of Debito.org being too truthy for some places with internal attitudes to maintain. Such as the American Air Force Base in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture. (I know for a fact they didn’t like me exposing both the “Japanese Only” signs right outside their base and the organized blind-eying both they and the City of Misawa gave it.) So instead of dealing with the problem, they dealt with the messenger, by making sure that anyone on base cannot see what you’re seeing now. It’s to them Non-Operational Information, I guess. Or, as Momoyama seems to indicate, it might give students in Japan too much of an education.

Report from Momoyama student follows, along with his unsuccessful efforts to get it “unblocked”. Arudou Debito, webmaster of the site just too hot for some institutions to handle.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////

January 20 and 28, 2010
Dear Debito San,

I was pretty surprised when I realized that my university blocks www.debito.org. (Screen Capture dated January 27, 2010):

I tried to inquire upon that and got told that “gambling”, “adult” and “blogs” are blocked… they wanted to check if they can whitelist yours. all that happend is that they reported to the kokusai-center who told me that I can apply for temporary access.

a) why filter communication? “Fostering Students of the World” is written at this university’s entrance.

b) shouldn’t I not feel discriminated and humiliated when I ask a question at a certain department and the answer gets wired through other channels?

(break)

As promised some further information about the blocking of debito.org and a clean and hopefully more representative screenshot.

As I were able to find out, it is rather “collateral damage” caused by ignorance and incompetency… I do not want to explicitly extend the applicability of these impression for the rest of the administration and teaching at this university, but it would be surely wrong to avoid such implication. (please excuse the use of sarcasm)

I don’t know what would happen if a professor would request to put debito.org on the white-list… maybe I will try that, though my time here is almost over…

After three members of the computer-center “studied” your site for quite a while, while I was waiting, they told me that BBS are blocked because online crime is originating from them. They seem to combine all kinds of Web2.0-activity and other dynamic content like foren, blogs, etc. as BBS (which is a term derived from the old pre-internet mailbox-systems and seems to be out of use for ages anywhere else in the world…)

Upon my objection that debito.org is not really anything they call BBS they only came up the possibility to ask a professor to suggest this for the white-list…

I asked them if it ever happened that students committed crimes from withing this network, but those cases had never happened…

But, how another exchange-student got lectured the other day, “trust is important”. And I don’t want to enumerate all the cases they betrayed the exchange-students’ trust…

Thank you again!

—————————————————————–

Blocked Websites within the campus of 桃山学院大学

To evaluate the significance of the filter I conducted some experiments: I googled for a ranking of blogs, which took me to technorati.com/blogs/top100, and from those I tried to access the top 50. 7 out of 50, 14% obviously, are blocked. Looking at the top-10 the number of blocked sites is even 5 out of 10, even more obviously 50%. (list at the end of this mail)

I went to the computer center of that university and asked them about the background and criteria… the explanations were as follows: – a “smart filter” is in used. As a source they referred to a company they call “vertex link”. This company, as they say is an American company. A quick search reveals:

www.vertexlink.co.jp is in deed a Japanese company which promotes via their website www.j-smartfilter.com a filter-technology from www.securecomputing.com which belongs to McAfee since 2008 and is famous for its involvement for the NSA.

– The only customization done by the university is the selection of categories (www.j-smartfilter.com/catList.html) and sub-categories to be blocked. Under the category called “communication” are 5 sub-categories listed. The University decided to block three of them, one unblocked sub-category is “email”. Blogs and BBS are blocked. I asked for a copy of that list, a favor that was not granted.

– A white-list for websites is in use. The items of that list are not disclosed. But, as I were told, Professors are allowed to suggest sites to be put on that white-list, which might be put there after evaluation from the board of the computer-department…

– In the end they explained to me, that REAL PEOPLE check all filtered websites and assign the categories. Though had to admit, that they could not tell if those were part-time, students or regular employees.

First impression: They have only little or partial knowledge which is not even enough to understand the concepts they are dealing with. They cannot understand the difference between dynamic-filtering and static-lists… According to my experience, it is highly unlikely, to be quite kind, to rate and categorize the whole internet! At least when telling me that I would have expected a little more understanding or awareness for possible nonsense.

I went on and, out of curiosity, I tried other web-sites… Some were blocked to my surprise and other surprisingly not:

In brief:

Warez/Cracking/Hacking/Passwords…

Some blocked, some not…

E.g. the infamous thepiratebay.org is NOT blocked… furthermore Chinese warez-sites are not blocked but some middle-sized torrent-sites from western countries… Same situation applies for password/cracking-sites.

Adult/Porn…

Mostly blocked… at least the more well known like youporn.com…

Accidentally I stumbled upon a pop-up from a not blocked blog-site with adult-advertisement (pornoloadz.com) which was not blocked either…

This seems to rule out a URL-based filter since “porn” should be most likely filtered but does not trigger the filter in the second URL.

Gambling…

At least official sites from casinos were not blocked but I would assume that this is rather about online-brokering/gambling… but I had no idea what to look for…

When I asked about the filter for the first time, the only mentioned categories were gambling, adult and blogs… that’s why I had that focus on my own brief research… plus the most obvious one, imho, warez… but since everything is different in Japan, I did not check winnie ( was it spelled this way?) 😉

A tendency of the university’s endeavor is obvious, though rather questionable…

While it is understandable that a university does not want to support illegal activities such as gambling or illegal porn, I cannot find any reasonable explanation to go against blogs and communication in general.

The explanation that I got from the computer center that BBS, a term I haven’t heard since the early 1990, are usually the source of online-crimes appears a little odd and short-sighted.

The tolerated collateral damage seems enormous to me. While I am one of the few inhabitants of this planet who would not suffer from inaccessibility of facebook, I certainly disapprove the blocking of a source like debito.org.

According to my observation I want to state that in this case people got their hands on a tool which they do not understand sufficiently enough to justify the outcome of their actions.

—————————————————————–
List of Blog-Ranking
According to:
http://technorati.com/blogs/top100
(here in ascending order from 1 to 50)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com
(blocked) http://www.gizmodo.com
(blocked) http://www.engadget.com
http://mashable.com
(blocked) http://www.techcrunch.com
(blocked) http://www.boingboing.net
http://www.tmz.com
http://corner.nationalreview.com
(blocked) http://www.gawker.com
http://www.thedailybeast.com

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com
http://hotair.com
http://politico.com/blogs/bensmith
http://www.readwriteweb.com
http://thinkprogress.org
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com
http://nymag.com/daily/intel
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/

http://www.lifehacker.com
http://newsbusters.org/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog
http://www.breitbart.tv
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch
(blocked) http://www.kotaku.com
http://michellemalkin.com
http://biggovernment.com
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org
http://www.politicsdaily.com

http://gigaom.com
http://consumerist.com
(blocked) http://jezebel.com
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com
http://www.popeater.com
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
http://www.thrfeed.com

http://www.redstate.com
http://www.gothamist.com
http://thisisnthappiness.com/
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment
http://www.mediaite.com
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com
http://www.dailykos.com
http://www.physorg.com
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com
http://www.businessinsider.com

—————————————————————–
several random tests (some of these not indicative of my personality or places I want to see; rather these are the sites that universities might have reason to block; I do not understand why, in light of these paradigms, Debito.org is blocked):

not blocked:
http://www.rlslog.net/
http://blog.iphone-dev.org/
http://ccc.de/
http://www.hoerbuch.in/blog.php
http://verycd.com/
http://uu.canna.to
https://www.blogger.com/start
http://wordpress.org/
http://www.heise.de/
http://www.heise.de/security/foren/
http://thepiratebay.org/
http://wikileaks.org/
http://nihongo-dekimasu.blogspot.com/
http://fosi.alphasys.nl/
http://www.elcomsoft.com/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx
http://www.pornoloadz.com/
http://blog.fefe.de/
http://www.torrentreactor.net/
http://www.ninjavideo.net/
http://www.sidereel.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.thegunsource.com/
http://www.weaponmasters.com/shopping/home.html
http://www.latex-weaponry.com/

Loan Forgiveness Program | How to, When & How Much Each Month

http://www.spielbank-hamburg.de/sbhh-main/

blocked:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
http://blog.twitter.com/
http://astalavista.box.sk/
http://torrents.sumotorrent.com/
http://isohunt.com/
http://www.torrentz.com/
http://www.serials.ws/index.php
http://fun.sdinet.de/
Tweets by timpritlove
http://twitter.com/
http://forum.torrentreactor.net/
http://youporn.com/
http://www.xnxx.com/
http://freebigmovies.com/
http://xnews.blog2.fc2.com/blog-entry-1765.html

ENDS

Tidy free FCCJ Scholarship up for grabs, deadline Feb 15

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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Hi all. This here’s a free scholarship from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan for people who are interested in journalism and who are undergraduate or graduate students. If any of your students (or you, if you qualify) are interested in applying, details are below, courtesy of Eric Johnston. Spread the word. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Each year, the FCCJ Scholarship Committee awards up to one million yen in scholarship funds to university students who have demonstrated a serious interest in journalism. The fund was originally established by former FCCJ member Swadish DeRoy and is now supported through generous donations from individuals and businesses dedicated to excellence in journalism. Our Committee also conducts student workshops in Tokyo and Kansai that have drawn hundreds of students seeking to understand the basics of our profession.

But the Scholarship Fund is the heart of our committee work and we are anxious to reach as many applicants for this year’s fund as possible. We would thus like to request that you let as many possible applicants as possible know about the fund. Students do not have to be journalism majors. They merely need to be currently enrolled undergraduate or graduate students who have shown a serious interest in pursuing journalism as a career. Both Japanese and non-Japanese may apply.

Details about the fund can be found on the FCCJ website at
http://www.fccj.or.jp/scholarship

But hurry. The deadline for entries is February 15.

If there are any questions, please feel free to contact either myself at
eric.johnston@japantimes.co.jp or Hitoshi Kubo at: kubo@fccj.or.jp or at
03-3211-3161.

Please help us make this year’s Scholarship Awards the best ever.

Sincerely Yours,
Eric Johnston
Co-Chair
FCCJ Scholarship Committee
—————————————————–
ENDS

Japan Times Amy Chavez comes unglued with weird “Japan Lite” column: “How about a gaijin circus in gazelle land?”

Posted on January 20, 2010January 21, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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Hi Blog. One column I’ve always skipped in the Japan Times has been Amy Chavez’s “Japan Lite”. I have never found it interesting, and its attempts at humor are at best cloying if not corn-pone ignorant. Kinda reminds me of the old “Beetle Bailey” or “Hagar the Horrible” cartoons published in my local newspaper that hadn’t been funny for years; I always wondered why they kept printing them. Force of habit, I guess.

But last week’s Chavez column, submitted by alert Debito.org Reader LW, had both LW and me scratching our heads as to what Chavez was smoking when she wrote it. As LW wrote, “I know it’s meant to be taken with a grain of salt, but there are a few underlying preconceptions there that just made me feel uncomfortable.”

I too know it’s supposed to be a “Lite” column (more filler, and no taste!), but even leaving aside its repeated use of a racial epithet in the name of childish play, I’m not sure I understand the premise of this meandering column just in terms of logic. Where gaijin (yes, anyone not Japanese) are descendants of “cavemen” while Japanese come from, er, “gazelles”?? And then we somehow develop that into a metaphor of a “gaijin circus”? Not kidding. Read on.

Seems like living in Japan has somehow broken Chavez’s brain. Then again, I’ve seen it happen before, many times. Doesn’t mean the Japan Times has to print it, however. Force of habit, I guess. But I reckon they could trim this fat from the paper and it would hardly be missed. What do others think? Arudou Debito in Sapporo

////////////////////////////////////////
JAPAN LITE
How about a gaijin circus in gazelle land? (excerpt)
By AMY CHAVEZ
The Japan Times: Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010, Courtesy of LW
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100116cz.html

The other day, my husband bought a shirt at Uniqlo. “Wow, the sleeves are long enough!” he marveled. Clothes in Japan are getting bigger and even now foreigners can almost wear them. But there was still a problem. The arms of the shirt were too tight. This confirms a suspicion I have long had about the Japanese people — they are descendants of gazelles.

Now, this may be contrary to what you have heard, that the original Japanese people were descended from heaven. Hell no.

Consider that gazelles and the Japanese share some striking similarities: They are both fine boned and graceful and the females have pretty little feet with high heels, making them look like they are tip-toeing along. Now, put a cow next to the gazelle and you have us gaijin.

A crowd of Japanese people looks tidy but a crowd of beefy foreigners looks like a stampede. The Japanese, with their long, elegant limbs and quiet demeanor cannot possibly be descendants of the caveman.

Upon some careful research on the habits of gazelles, I found that mountain gazelles eat easily digestible plants and leaves. It’s no wonder that these are the same things you’ll find at a traditional Japanese restaurant: kuwai (arrowhead buds), ginko nuts, mitsuba leaves, shiso leaves, and even chrysanthemum leaves.

But wait, you protest, gazelles are from Africa! Well, why do you think it’s called the Japanese “race”? Because they raced here from Africa during the Jomon Period to escape the hot, dry conditions of the African continent. Once here, they adapted and became mountain dwellers.

Sometimes it seems that we foreigners, descendants of the caveman, are a species unto ourselves. Living in Japan for us can sometimes feel like a circus, with all the attention and curiosity given to our movements…

Rest at

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100116cz.html

On the 15th anniversary of the Kobe Earthquake: My first activism in Japan: Eyewitness essays when I volunteered down there

Posted on January 18, 2010January 25, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. As the Japanese media has been blitzing lately (dovetailing with the events in Haiti, although NHK refuses to put it as top news when there are Center Shikens affecting Japanese students out there), yesterday, January 17, was the fifteenth anniversary of the Kobe/Awajishima Earthquake that claimed over 6000 lives.

The Kobe Quake has special significance for me personally. A third of my life ago, I was so enraged by the GOJ irresponsibility (an NHK program last night from 9PM cataloging the science behind the 15-second temblor still refused to mention how the highway overpasses also collapsed because of shoddy construction work (tenuki kouji); commentators blamed it all on sea sand vs. mountain sand) that I went down to Kobe for a couple of weeks at my own time and expense to help out as a volunteer. I of course wrote the events up, and they are amongst my first essays charting my nascent activism in Japan. Here are links to them all:

Artery site:

https://www.debito.org/activistspage.html#kobequake

Thoughts just after it happened:
https://www.debito.org/kobequakeone.html

My eyewitness account going there:
https://www.debito.org/kobequakenarrative.html

Stupid Economist editorial on the event, with my letter to the editor:
https://www.debito.org/kobequakeeconomisteditorial.jpg
https://www.debito.org/kobequakeeconomistletter.jpg

Letters to the editor both as critical opinion and as eyewitness reports which got sanitized when published in the Hokkaido Shinbun (all at artery site):
https://www.debito.org/activistspage.html#kobequake

Opinions as on the aftermath in the Western media:
https://www.debito.org/kobequakeupdate.html
https://www.debito.org/kobequakeupdate2.html

In sum, the Kobe Quake gave me a major reason to stay in Japan: I found fellow activist types who went down in the freezing cold to help out as best they could, for no other reason than because it gave them an inner glow as human beings. That glow is still with me today, and it brought to an end the previous feelings I had about Japanese society (thanks to a stint as a Japanese businessman), where everyone was an economic animal and nobody cared about anyone else as long as they accrued wealth to themselves. Interpersonally, I was wrong, and Kobe proved it.

But it was also my first taste of media-manufactured consent and control of public opinion. Even fifteen years on, it’s a pity the media is still unwilling to face the truth and expose the people who made it worse through their negligence.

Enjoy the time capsule. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Sunday Tangent: Economist excerpt on being foreign

Posted on January 17, 2010January 17, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. In its Xmas Special of December 19, 2009, The Economist (London) had a long and thoughtful essay on what it’s like to be foreign, and how “it is becoming both easier and more difficult to experience the thrill of being an outsider”.

It opens with:

FOR the first time in history, across much of the world, to be foreign is a perfectly normal condition. It is no more distinctive than being tall, fat or left-handed. Nobody raises an eyebrow at a Frenchman in Berlin, a Zimbabwean in London, a Russian in Paris, a Chinese in New York.

The desire of so many people, given the chance, to live in countries other than their own makes nonsense of a long-established consensus in politics and philosophy that the human animal is best off at home. Philosophers, it is true, have rarely flourished in foreign parts: Kant spent his whole life in the city of Königsberg; Descartes went to Sweden and died of cold. But that is no justification for generalising philosophers’ conservatism to the whole of humanity.

Inter alia, it asserted:

The well-off, the artistic, the bored, the adventurous went abroad. (The broad masses went too, as empires, steamships and railways made travel cheaper and easier.) Foreignness was a means of escape—physical, psychological and moral. In another country you could flee easy categorisation by your education, your work, your class, your family, your accent, your politics. You could reinvent yourself, if only in your own mind. You were not caught up in the mundanities of the place you inhabited, any more than you wanted to be. You did not vote for the government, its problems were not your problems. You were irresponsible. Irresponsibility might seem to moralists an unsatisfactory condition for an adult, but in practice it can be a huge relief.

It even devoted more than a paragraph specifically to Japan’s offer of foreignness:

The most generally satisfying experience of foreignness—complete bafflement, but with no sense of rejection—probably comes still from time spent in Japan. To the foreigner Japan appears as a Disneyland-like nation in which everyone has a well-defined role to play, including the foreigner, whose job it is to be foreign. Everything works to facilitate this role-playing, including a towering language barrier. The Japanese believe their language to be so difficult that it counts as something of an impertinence for a foreigner to speak it. Religion and morality appear to be reassuringly far from the Christian, Islamic or Judaic norms. Worries that Japan might Westernise, culturally as well as economically, have been allayed by the growing influence of China. It is going to get more Asian, not less.

Even in Japan, however, foreigners have ceased to function as objects of veneration, study and occasionally consumption…

What do readers think about this model for “foreignness” in Japan. That everyone has a role and for the NJ it is to be foreign, and we are impertinent to speak it? etc.

The entire article of course is worth a read. See it at:

Being foreign

The others

Dec 17th 2009
From The Economist print edition

It is becoming both easier and more difficult to experience the thrill of being an outsider

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108690

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

NZ publisher perpetuates “Tales of Gaijin”; I have to withdraw submission due to rubric I cannot accept

Posted on January 14, 2010January 14, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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[NB: Original title of this post has been amended]

Hi Blog. I was invited a little over a year ago to submit two stories to a NZ publisher, a new place called Fine Line Press, run by a jolly decent fellow I know (former head of the Tokyo Chapter of JALT) named Graham Bathgate. One story was on the Otaru Onsens Case, the other on the Top Five Things I Like About Japan. I knew the person, was happy to oblige, and we exchanged some story drafts until satisfaction about the submissions were reached on both sides.

However, in August I heard that the book would be published under the rubric of “Foreign Tales from Japan” (actually, they were originally punning on the “Tales of Genji” to make “Tales of Gaijin”. Ick). Alas, I am not a foreigner in Japan, and I said I did not want my stories to be included either under this rubric or within this concept. I have, naturally, very strong feelings about being treated as a foreigner in Japan, and I do not like publishers (and former long-termers in Japan, such as Graham) exporting the binary “Japanese vs. Gaijin” mindset to media overseas. We have enough trouble dealing with it over here without it being propagated in more liberal societies (such as NZ). Graham, IMHO, should know better, and should publish better.

So I protested and asked the rubric to be changed or my writing withdrawn. After several months of silence, I got the final word: The rubric would stand. Okay. Sad to see.

But I’m not one to let things like this go. I feel the publisher led me down a garden path, and then wound up pigeonholing me through imported racist paradigms. Should be known about. Here’s the main correspondence we had, for the record. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

///////////////////////////////////////////

From: graham bathgate
Date: December 26, 2008 11:54:02 AM JST
To: debito@debito.org
Subject: Graham Bathgate here

Dear Debito, A long time ago we connect re JALT stuff, etc. Actually,
I interviewed you in a room at Sophia University (Jan. 28 ’01) and produced
a piece which unfortunately I had no outlet for. That was entitled
“Onsen in hot water won’t come clean”.

Now I wonder if you would be interested and have the time
to craft a story for a book I would like to publish in 2009. It will
be my second book, the first being a slim volume of memoirs
by an old student of mine, now 85 – called “Glimpses of Old Tokyo”.
The second book has the working title of “Tales of Gaijin” and
will be stories derived from the personal experiences of people
who have lived or still live in Japan.
I have taken the liberty of including the brief guidelines straight off
to you, knowing that you are already a very productive writer – I greatly
admired your home page and writings. Must be hugely helpful to
all people, newcomers and old-hands in Japan.
You’ll see below that there’s a limit of 2000 words on a story, but no-one’s
going to quibble about 2,500 or a bit more. The deadline for an idea for
a story is end of January, and for writing something, the end of March ’09…

Hope to hear from you soon. All the best for 2009. Graham
¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶
Guidelines in acronym form (PILLOTS) for your story about Tokyo/Japan:
PILLOTS

P – Personal experience / feelings
I – Images – clear and concrete – of Tokyo and/or Japan
L – Lyrical (The prose should have beauty if not poetic quality)
L – Light (Story ideally shows a light side of life in Japan with serious comment on this …… or vice versa
O – Observation (A clear event described or some thoughts about Tokyo/Japan – contrast/comparison with other places OK)
T – Tokyo-based atmosphere preferred / Japan fine, too
S – Short (Not more than 2,000 words, or two or three very short “stories” adding up to that). There can be exceptions but 5,000 words would be a take-over!
¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶

////////////////////////////////////

We had a few months of drafts bouncing back and forth, arrived at finished product, then I got this update:

////////////////////////////////////

From: graham bathgate
Subject: Invitation to book launch Tokyo
Date: August 8, 2009 7:41:28 AM JST

Dear All, Please have a look at the invitation on the site ….. and tell a friend:

www.finelinepress.co.nz

Iit will be “Foreign Tales from Japan” next year.

My apologies to those of you already received something like this. Cheers, Graham

////////////////////////////////////

I immediately checked things out and sent this reply:

////////////////////////////////////

From: debito@debito.org
Subject: Re: Invitation to book launch Tokyo — I am deeply disappointed by the publisher’s taglines.
Date: August 8, 2009 10:04:27 AM JST
To: Graham Bathgate

Hi Graham. I’ve had a look. I am gravely disappointed by the publisher’s prospectus:

http://www.finelinepress.co.nz/foreign_tales_from_japan.html

=========================================
A colleague at the school we taught at in Tokyo said that everyone has a good story to tell, possibly very true for travellers to the Far East. Recalling this we decided to ask friends there if they would like to write about an experience in Japan. The contributions were sufficient to start work on the next book. It will be published by the end of 2009, a compilation of forty stories by foreigners who live or have lived in Japan.

The basic idea in producing this kind of book was to give a chance to people to tell their Japan experience in well-crafted story form, a tale that deserves to be recounted but perhaps wouldn’t otherwise find its way into print. The working title of the book isTales of Gaijin (after “Tale of Genji”).

It will fascinate anyone interested in how foreigners view Japan and what their unique experiences were. It is hoped that Japanese people will read these stories and reflect on the images and opinions of people who love Japan.

=========================================

Debito continues:

“a compilation of forty stories by foreigners who live or have lived in Japan”, “how foreigners view Japan” etc

I’m not a foreigner.

“Tales of Gaijin (after “Tale of Genji”).”

This had better not be the title of the book.

If this is how the book is shaping up, I want no part of it. I never knew that this would be sold as a book by “foreigners”, worse yet “gaijin” (a racist term in the very title). Either have your publisher make the proper accommodations for long-term residents and citizens or withdraw my story. I will have no part in perpetuating racist stereotypes overseas.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

(cc publisher, which worse yet looks like it’s you. You wrote this??)

////////////////////////////////////

From: Graham Bathgate
Subject: Re: Invitation to book launch Tokyo — I am deeply disappointed by the publisher’s taglines.
Date: August 8, 2009 11:12:34 AM JST
To: debito@debito.org

Dear Debito,
Sorry you feel the book will not shape up and be fair to all, especially to the
Japanese. All the stories have wonderful unique experiences
to tell. There are haiku and tanka, too. It is a fine collection. I would be
sad to lose your story because it gives an edge to the book which is lacking
somewhat, I feel. However, good experiences in an adopted country have
a readership, I am sure, not only among non-Japanese but also I hope
among Japanese.
The working title was the play on title “Tales of Genji”. Not the final title
at all.
What title would you suggest? I am open.
What else would you like changed? Again open.
I hope I can keep your story. It’s one of the best.
Cheers,
Graham

////////////////////////////////////

From: debito@debito.org
Subject: Re: Invitation to book launch Tokyo — I am deeply disappointed by the publisher’s taglines.
Date: August 8, 2009 10:28:32 PM JST
To: Graham Bathgate

Graham, I think you missed my point. You are selling this as a book with the perspectives of foreigners. What about me, then? I am not a foreigner. Can you not see the disconnect?

Titling: “Foreign Tales from Japan”, okay, but again, what about me? Not foreign. If you say it’s foreign perspectives, I’m out.

Moreover, if you use the word “gaijin” in the title, my essay is off limits. I am not a gaijin, or a gaikokujin, and I will not be associated with any work which imports and uses that binary rubric to view the world. I am a Japanese. Full stop.

Do you at least see the problem I’m talking about? I’m not talking about “fairness to all, especially to the Japanese”. I’m talking about accuracy. Calling me a foreigner is inaccurate. With me so far? If so, email back and we’ll continue this discussion.

PS: Again, did you write the book blurb below?

////////////////////////////////////

I received no answer until January 12, as in two days ago.

////////////////////////////////////

From: Graham Bathgate
Subject: Re: Launch ……. I am deeply disappointed…..
Date: January 12, 2010 6:47:17 PM JST
To: debito@debito.org

Omedetoh,
Sorry such a late reply, but Xmas or something.
Many other writers were happy as “gaijin”, so I would like to
save your “Onsen”, if I may, for another publication.

I’ll be sure to let you know about the launch of “Forty Stories of Japan”, probably
beginning of November in Tokyo, but should be out here in March.
All the best for Tiger,

Graham
============================

On 14/12/2009, at 7:32 PM, Arudou Debito wrote:

Hellooooo Graham? What’s happening with my writing, please? Debito

============================

Begin forwarded message:

From: Arudou Debito
Date: August 13, 2009 9:55:43 PM JST
To: Graham Bathgate
Subject: RESEND: Invitation to book launch Tokyo — I am deeply disappointed by the publisher’s taglines.

Graham, did you get this? Debito

============================

Begin forwarded message:

From: Arudou Debito
Date: August 8, 2009 10:28:32 PM JST
To: graham bathgate
Subject: Re: Invitation to book launch Tokyo — I am deeply disappointed by the publisher’s taglines.

Graham, I think you missed my point. You are selling this as a book with the perspectives of foreigners. What about me, then? I am not a foreigner. Can you not see the disconnect? … [rest of forwarded message deleted]

ENDS

Asahi Shinbun Jan 8 “Japan edges closer to signing Hague Convention” on Child Abductions issue, still mentions NJ “DV concerns”

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. New article in the Asahi re the GOJ and the Child Abductions Issue re signing the Hague Convention. As submitter PT comments:

“Note the Red Herring of Domestic Violence thrown out by Justice Minister Chiba in the last sentence. Interesting how the Japanese Government refuses to involve their justice ministry in talks with the US, yet they are quick to put forward a quote from the Justice Minister when pushing back on reasons against signing the Hague.”

Article follows. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

======================================

Japan edges closer to signing Hague Convention
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
2010/1/8, Courtesy of PT
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY201001080120.html

Criticism of Japan over its handling of international child abduction disputes has prompted the Foreign Ministry to look closely at signing a convention designed to protect children caught in the middle.

The Hague Convention on international child abduction stipulates that if a parent from a broken international marriage takes a child out of his or her country of residence without the other’s consent, the child must be returned to that country.

The ministry established a task force on child custody last month and will shortly hold talks about the issue with the United States–the country with which Japan has the most disputes on this issue.

Critics in some countries say Japan has become a haven for “child abductors,” usually Japanese women who bring their children to this country and deny their spouses further custodial access.

In a high-profile case, an American father was arrested in Fukuoka Prefecture last September for trying to snatch back his two children, whom his Japanese ex-wife had brought to Japan without his consent. His arrest drew criticism from within the United States, a signatory to the Hague Convention.

As international marriages and divorces have increased, so, too, has the number of child abduction disputes.

Eighty-one countries are signatories to the 1980 convention. Japan is the only Group of Seven member that is not.

Signatory nations have urged Japan to join to resolve those disputes, and the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended in 2004 that Japan ratify it.

Soon after he assumed the office in September, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada made clear his intention to study Japan’s participation “in a positive manner.”

The Division for Issues Related to Child Custody, the task force of nine officials who specialize in treaty and regional matters, addresses specific disputes while studying whether Japan should sign it.

Also in December, the ministry held the first meeting of the Japan-France consultative committee in Tokyo. The French delegation presented a list of 35 disputes, including eight “serious” cases.

In one case, a Japanese woman who brought her offspring to Japan refuses contact with her French ex-husband. Japanese officials have promised to extend liaison and other help, officials said.

According to the division, the United States had informed Japan of 73 “child abduction” cases, Canada 36 and Britain 33 as of last October.

There are hurdles to clear, however, before Japan can sign the convention. Specifically, officials want to ensure there will be protection for mothers and children who flee abusive ex-husbands.

“Victims of domestic violence have concerns,” said Justice Minister Keiko Chiba.

ENDS

Discussion: KFC Australia’s “racist” CM vs McD Japan’s “Mr James”

Posted on January 9, 2010January 9, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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Hi Blog. This has been bubbling a bit these past couple of days in the Comments Section of a few blog entries, so let’s bring it to the fore and get a discussion going.

KFC (aka Kentucky Fried Chicken) has been accused of racism, according to various media sources, thanks to a recent advertisement it ran in Australia. Here it is:

The Guardian UK writes:
========================================
KFC accused of racism over Australian advertisement
KFC advert showing Australian cricket fan placating West Indies supporters with chicken has caused anger in America
Andrew Clark guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 January 2010 16.32 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/06/kfc-advertisement-accused-of-racism

The Australian arm of the fast-food chain KFC has been accused of racial insensitivity over a television commercial showing an outnumbered white cricket fan handing out pieces of fried chicken to appease a dancing, drumming and singing group of black West Indian supporters.

Aired as part of a series called “KFC’s cricket survival guide”, the 30-second clip depicts an uncomfortable looking man named Mick wearing a green and yellow Australian cricket shirt, surrounded on all sides in a cricket stand by high spirited Caribbean fans.

“Need a tip when you’re stuck in an awkward situation?” Mick asks. He then passes round a bucket of KFC chicken, the drumming stops and he remarks: “Too easy.”

Although intended only for an Antipodean audience, the clip has quickly found its way around the world on the internet, prompting stinging criticism in the US where fried chicken remains closely associated with age-old racist stereotypes about black people in the once segregated south.

A writer at one US newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, questioned whether the ad was a spoof, remarking: “If it is a genuine KFC advertisement, it could be seen as racially insensitive.”

Another on-line commentator, Jack Shepherd of BuzzFeed, asks: “What’s a white guy to do when he finds himself in a crowd full of black folks? KFC has the answer.”

KFC Australia has come out fighting, saying that the commercial was a “light-hearted reference to the West Indian cricket team” that had been “misinterpreted by a segment of people in the US.”

The company said: “The ad was reproduced online in the US without KFC’s permission, where we are told a culturally-based stereotype exists, leading to the incorrect assertion of racism.

“We unequivocally condemn discrimination of any type and have a proud history as one of the world’s leading employers for diversity.”

In the Australian media, the reaction has been mixed, with some commentators accusing Americans of “insularity”. Brendon O’Connor, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, told 9 Network News that the association between fried chicken and ethnic minorities was a distinctly US issue: “They have a tendency to think that their history is more important than that of other countries.”

The flare-up comes three months after another racial controversy between Australia and the US in which the American singer Harry Connick Jr, appearing as a judge on an Australian television talent show, reacted strongly to a skit in which a group of singers appeared with blacked up faces to emulate the Jackson Five.

On the show, called “Hey, Hey It’s Saturday“, Connick gave the group zero points and demanded an apology from the broadcaster, remarking: “If they turned up looking like that in the United States, it would be like ‘hey, hey, there’s no more show’.”

GUARDIAN ARTICLE ENDS
////////////////////////////////////////////////

Then this happens:

KFC advertisement in Australia sparks race row
By Nick Bryant BBC News, Sydney
Friday, 8 January 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8447457.stm

The Australian arm of the fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken has had to withdraw an advertisement after accusations of racial insensitivity.

It showed a white cricket fan trying to pacify a group of rowdy West Indian fans by handing around fried chicken.

When the advertisement reached America via the internet there were complaints.

It was accused of reinforcing a derogatory racial stereotype linking black people in the American deep south with a love of fried food.

The advertisement from Kentucky Fried Chicken features a white cricket fan dressed in the green and gold of the Australian team surrounded by a group of West Indian supporters, who are dancing and singing to a calypso beat.

He decides to quieten them down by handing around a bucket of fried chicken.
Picked up by the American media, the advertisement immediately stirred controversy, because it was alleged to have perpetuated the racial stereotype that black people eat a lot of fried chicken.

The fast food chain’s head office in America said it was withdrawing the advertisement, and apologised for what it called “any misrepresentation” which might have caused offence.

It is the second time in three months that something broadcast in Australia has caused a racial stir in America.

The last flare-up was over an entertainment show on the Australian network Channel Nine in which a group of singers appeared with blacked-up faces to impersonate the Jackson Five.
ENDS
/////////////////////////////////////

COMMENT: Funny thing, this. We get KFC Australia doing a hasty retreat from its controversial commercial days after it goes viral on YouTube, and pulling it pretty quickly.

Now contrast with the ad campaign by another American-origin fast-food multinational, McDonalds. For those who don’t know, between August and November of last year McDonald’s Japan had that White gaijin stereotype “Mr James” speaking katakana and portraying NJ as touristy outsiders who never fit in. More on what I found wrong with that ad campaign here.

Yet the “Mr James” ad campaign never got pulled — and the debate we offered with McDonalds Japan was rebuffed (they refused to answer in Japanese for the Japanese media). In fact, the reaction of some Asians in the US was, “Karma’s a bitch“, as in White people in Japan deserve this sort of treatment because of all the bad treatment they’ve foisted on Asians overseas in the past. Still others argue that we can’t expect Japan to understand the history of other countries, or how they feel about certain sentiments found overseas, and one shouldn’t foist their cultural values onto other cultures (this argument usually pops up when one sees minstrel blackface shows etc in Japan). This argument was also made in comments to this blog as well.

But KFC pulls the ad, in contrast to “Mr James”, where people rushed to defend it in the name of cultural relativism. Why the difference?

I’m not saying I have the answer to this question. So I bring it up for discussion here on Debito.org. What do readers think?

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

GAIJIN HANZAI Magazine becomes a “Taboo” topic in a 2007 magazine, victimizing J publisher

Posted on January 8, 2010January 8, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Here’s something that’s been sitting on my server since September 2007 (!!) and I’ve finally decided to put up now. (Didn’t want to encourage sales of something like this by attracting attention to it until long after the fact.)

A magazine on “Taboos”, sent to me more than two years ago by MS, tells the story of the reactionary gaijin who took the “Gaijin Hanzai Ura File” mook to task for the lies and hate speech it was spreading on convenience store newsstands nationwide (substantiation of that all here). And portrays that pitifully misunderstod publisher, Eichi Shuppan Inc., which went bankrupt within two months of releasing that mook, as victim.

It has quotes from me (even of me laughing) that it never garnered through any interviews (they apparently talked to Eichi, but I received no communication from this publication), and shows me as some sort of fearsome activist (thanks, I guess). It of course offers no counterarguments to Eichi’s spurious published assertions, for example about the rise of NJ crime (I would have given those counterarguments if they’d only asked), accepting their assertions at face value. And of course we have no real debate on whether or not the book was actually telling the truth or not (obviously, as I argued in many venues, it wasn’t). For all the research they did pulling my written quotes out of context, they didn’t cite my questions of the veracity of the portrayals that assiduously at all.

In other words, it’s a debate that once again favors and victimizes Team Japan. Those poor victimized convenience stores responding to public pressure (yeah, like that worked for “Mr James”; McDonald’s basically ignored us). It couldn’t just be that the stores carrying the mook were convinced by our arguments about its exaggerated and errant claims and hateful tone now, could it? Naw, Japanese lost to the foreigners, therefore the foreigners didn’t fight fair. And now because of that, we have yet another “taboo” that hurts We Japaneses’ Freedom of Speech.

Hardly a “taboo” here. You overdid it, and lost the debate. That’s all. And if you spread lies and hate speech in public again like this, you should be called on it again and debated against. And if you lose the debate (moreover your company after your risky business decisions), don’t put it down to sour grapes and blame the other side for your losing. Take responsibility for your actions like an adult, and put it down to publishing stupid things that were trying to defame and hurt people, particularly Japan’s NJ residents. You lost. Live with it. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

(Click on any image to expand in your browser)

ENDS

Fukushima Prefectural Tourist Information website advertises that now 318 of its hotels refuse NJ clients

Posted on January 5, 2010January 5, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Now back to business. While doing research over the new year, I got quite a shock when I was doing some followup on a case of exclusionary practices. I reported on Debito.org in September 2007 that Fukushima Prefecture’s Tourist Information website was advertising 35 hotels that refused NJ clients. This is one of the few business sectors that actually has explicit laws preventing refusals of customers based upon nationality alone (thanks to the Hotel Management Law, see below), so when a government agency is even promoting “Japanese Only” hotels, you know something is rum indeed.

What’s even more rum is that even after I advised the Tourist Information Agency that what they were doing is unlawful, and they promised in writing to stop doing it, now two years later the same website is now promoting 318 (!!) hotels that refuse NJ clients (in other words, about half of the total). You can’t help but get the feeling that you have been lied to, and by government bureaucrats.

A brief write up, with links to sources, follows. At the very bottom are screen captures of the FTIA website evidencing the exclusionary practices. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

/////////////////////////////////////////

Place: Fukushima Prefecture (35 hotels, now 318 hotels)[1]

Background: In September 2007, the author was advised that the Fukushima Prefecture’s Tourist Information website[2] in English listed and advertised 35 hotels in the region that officially refused NJ clients.

Action taken by observers/activists: In September 2007, the author contacted the Fukushima Tourist Information Agency, and advised them this practice of refusing NJ is unlawful under the Hotel Management Law (Hotel Management Law (ryokan gyouhou), Article 5[1], which says that hotels may not refuse customers unless 1) rooms are full, 2) there is a threat of contagious disease, or 3) there is a threat to “public morals” (fuuki)). A FTIA bureaucrat who contacted all 35 hotels responded in October, stating, “Most of the answers were, ‘We do not explicitly refuse NJ’,” as they had never had a NJ client. However, eight hotels of the 32 they were able to contact stated they would continue to refuse NJ, because they did “not have staff who spoke English”, therefore “they could not positively (sekkyoku teki ni) receive NJ”. The FTIA said they advised them of the unlawfulness of this practice, and would be clarifying their website questions in future.

Current status (as of this writing): A January 2010 search of the Japanese website[3] using search terms “gaikokujin no ukeire: fuka” revealed 318 lodgings refusing NJ lodgers, and amending the search terms revealed 335 places accepting NJ. It would appear that the prefectural tourist agency officially offering the option to refuse NJ lodgers enables businesses to refuse. This would appear to be within character: The GOJ reported, in an October 2008 nationwide survey of 7068 responding hotels, that 27% of all hoteliers did not want NJ clients[4].

[1] Primary source information at https://www.debito.org/?p=1941

[1] https://www.debito.org/whattodoif.html#refusedhotel

[2] http://www.tif.ne.jp/

[3] http://www.tif.ne.jp/jp/spot/cat_search.php, enter 外国人の受入：不可 into the キーワード section.

[4] “No room at inn for foreigners”, CNN October 9, 2008, and 「外国人泊めたくない」ホテル・旅館３割　０７年国調査」朝日新聞2008年10月9日, both archived at https://www.debito.org/?p=1940

——————————-

Here are some evidentiary screen captures from the FTIA website as of January 3, 2010 (click on image to expand in your browser)
First, the site with search terms that indicate that 318 hotels refuse NJ clients:

Example of one hotel that explicitly says it refuses NJ clients:

Screen capture with different search terms, indicating 335 hotels of the total allow in NJ:

Example of one hotel that allows in NJ clients:

ENDS

祝「ダーリンは外国人」の映画化、「トニー」についてパロディーマンガ

Posted on December 31, 2009January 2, 2010 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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皆様こんばんは。有道　出人です。大晦日として、大栗さおりさんの大成功したシリーズ「ダーリンは外国人」の映画化を祝いたいと思います。おめでとうございます。４月ロードショーとなりますので、どうぞ皆様お楽しみに。

ちなみに、メインキャラクターの「トニーラズロ」(Tony Laszlo）の描写と実物のことは色々違いがあるように気にしてならなりません。なので、このマンガはパロディーとして載せさせていただきたいと思います。どうぞ宜しくお願い致します。良いお年を！

（イメージをクリックすると拡大されます）

Oguri’s “Darling wa Gaikokujin” becomes a movie, with parody cartoon about the “Darling Dream” being sold by all this

Posted on December 31, 2009December 31, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. I want to offer my congratulations to Oguri Saori, very successful author of the “Darling wa Gaikokujin” series (translated as “My Darling is a Foreigner”, but officially subtitled “My Darling is Ambidextrous”), for the news just out this month that the first book in the series will be made into a live-action movie (starring Inoue Mao and Jonathan Share as Saori and Tonii respectively). The empire built upon the dream being sold to Japanese women for marrying a white foreigner keeps on gathering strength. See the movie trailer here.

More interesting to me is the mutation of the Tonii character. It’s apparently based upon Tony Laszlo, one-time unicyclist, “journalist”, “activist” and self-proclaimed leader of unregistered NGO “Issho Kikaku” (a long-defunct group — you can’t even find their once-copious archives on the Wayback Machine because they have been blocked by the site owner — see what’s left of it at Issho.org), and now happy multimillionaire thanks to his partnership with and characterization by his very talented wife.

Although portrayed in the movie by the very handsome and disarming Jonathan as a “grass-eating man”, Tonii in real life is not as he is cartooned. Laszlo is a big fan of putting his funds into threatening lawsuits, for one thing. And of deleting internet archives. And more.

It just so happens I found a cartoon parodying this phenomenon of the contrasts. As the last post on Debito.org for this decade, enjoy.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo, wishing everyone a happy new year. For Oguri Saori, it looks to be a fine one indeed, so, again, congratulations.

(click on image to expand in your browser)

ENDS

Book review of “Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me” (Pubs Simon and Schuster). Yes, that is the title.

Posted on December 28, 2009December 28, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Another holiday tangent. Enjoy. Debito in Monbetsu

=====================================

REVIEW OF BOOK “JAPAN TOOK THE J.A.P. OUT OF ME”

By Lisa Fineberg Cook. Published by Simon and Schuster Inc 2009

Reviewed by Arudou Debito

Simon and Schuster sent me this book this month for review, and I know not why. I am probably the last person to whom you’d send a “Chick Lit” book (defined by some as a genre where the protagonist is a young female trying to make it in the modern world, dealing with issues that women face, whether it be learning how to stand on their own two feet, or just about them being passionate about career, style, personal appearance, shopping…). But I did sit down and get through it. I agree with the reviews on Amazon.com — it’s “an easy read”. That’s not much of a compliment, however: If the most positive thing you can say about a literary work is that you got through it quickly, that’s damning with faint praise indeed.

So let’s get through this review and make it a quick read too. Start with the obvious: J.A.P. Having a racial epithet cloaked as an ethnic slur (I hail from Cornell University, so am plenty aware of “Jewish American Princesses”) in the very title already puts me off — as very culturally insensitive. What were you thinking, S&S?

In fact, insensitivity is the recurring theme in this tome: The first-person narrator is so self-absorbed that there is no space for anyone else. There are a few friends here and there (or one stellar Japanese student enlightened by the protagonist’s poetic guidance) that slot in at whim, but no particular impression is made on the reader. In fact, aside of course from our narrator, we know more about her best friend overseas than anyone else who glides in and out of the work. Even her newlywed husband is an undeveloped glyph who drops in occasionally, offering improbably perfect and concise bon mots designed to confirm or destroy her preconceptions. But never mind. The book is all about our J.A.P. girl empowering herself, moreover in a land where women apparently have no power of their own, and it’s her task to enlighten them. You go girl, for all of us! Feh.

Reviews are supposed to give a plot synopsis, so let’s get through that quickly too: California Jewish girl follows her American husband to Nagoya (she even makes a “goy” joke about that) where they both teach English for one year. She gets her comeuppance in quirky ways, as there is apparently no Starbucks in Nagoya (in 1999? There is no date given but I place it then, since she mentions the US debut of TV show The Sopranos.), little English spoken, and few of the material or cultural creature comforts that satisfy her spoiled-girl whims. She starts off, by design, as an unsympathetic character (hence the titled comeuppance). However, like any newcomer in a predictable Hollywood flick, she not only learns to cope well enough (despite the natives) to stay in Japan and grow, but also to recommend to everyone (in a self-important interview in the back of the book) they try living overseas (I agree, of course, but one year abroad hardly makes one an authority on world travel).

After solipsistic battles with things like a washing machine and public transport, she finally takes us outside for some sightseeing in Japan (Hiroshima and shopping trips in Nagoya are highlights, of a kind). But in the end the reader gets little impression of Japan beyond the stares, the crowds, some undeveloped allegations of anti-Semitism, and sundry interactions between her and some Westerners that could have taken place anywhere in the world. Again, this character is so insensitive to anything beyond her sphere (she doesn’t even try to learn the language) that there’s no room left for Japan. She and hubby leave after one year and return to the US to raise a family. End of slide show.

In sum, the best I can say about the book is that the one character who counts in this book (guess who) is very well developed (if not overly so), and she has a very clear writing voice. Hooray. So why is she writing about Japan? Because she has to get published by writing about something? Hokay. But this book is hardly something that can be advertised as a “memoir”. Memoirs are generally an autobiography — something that give us some idea of the world people live in. This barely gives us the world that one this one person briefly dwelled. Japan is a difficult and time-consuming place to get to know, even when you have an interest in what’s going on around you. Moreover even when you understand the language. Neither happens in this book. One year abroad — and as a functional illiterate at that — does not justify a “memoir” about a country published by one of the world’s largest publishing houses.

Good for Ms. Cook for putting one over on them. You go, girl! Now let’s hope S&S give some space to some more serious and knowledgeable writers about Japan. There are plenty of them over here, trust me. Ferret us out, Simon and Schuster. We’ll give you something much more empowering.

— Arudou Debito, author, “JAPANESE ONLY, The Otaru Onsens Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan”, and “Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants” (Akashi Shoten Inc., editions 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 respectively); columnist, The Japan Times, and Sapporo Source.

ENDS

Holiday Tangent: My Movie Review of AVATAR in 3D

Posted on December 26, 2009December 26, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Since it’s the holidays and I want to do a few things a bit more tangental, let me talk about the movie I saw today to get my mind off spending Xmas in Japan (which I have always hated doing, quite honestly, and this is about my 23rd time):

MOVIE REVIEW OF “AVATAR”

I saw AVATAR today, director James Cameron’s follow-up to his box office phenomenon TITANIC more than a decade ago. I made sure to attend a showing in 3D, because I wanted Cameron to give me his hot dog with all the toppings (so what if I had to shell out 300 extra yen for the funny glasses we couldn’t keep, and all told including concessions I dropped about 3000 yen for the experience). Here’s my review:

Plot summary (skip if you dislike Movie Spoilers): AVATAR, as you’ve no doubt heard, is about a handicapped grunt who becomes a replacement footsoldier of sorts on a faraway planet that human beings, still all concerned about maximizing shareholder value while mining some Maguffin mineral resource there, are exploiting a good 150 years in the future. The problem is some native humanoids living on the planet already aren’t happy with having their homeworld and lifestyles disrupted. They really begin fighting for their rights when the humans become unreasonable, and decide to use their superior technology against the natives’ stone-age (but highly spiritual) weaponry. Our protagonist, who spends his waking hours remotely inhabiting a human-cloned version of the natives (hence the “Avatar”), is sent out into the woods to infiltrate, where he increasingly becomes incorporated into the tribe, and realizes they represent the true warrior spirit he wishes he could recapture as a human. He “goes native” himself, and for three hours we have the story arc going in predictable directions all the way to a happy ending.

Critique: The biggest criticism I’ve seen of the movie is that it is “by the numbers”, with few surprises. I agree. But nobody’s going to see this flick for the story. We’ve heard that there are some envelope-pushing special effects. As in the 3D.

Well, how about that 3D? Good and bad. Good in that it is better than the old red and blue lenses we got back in childhood (and my favorite 3D movie before AVATAR was FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH PART THREE IN 3D, with introduced me to polarized-glass 3D cardboard specs (which I still have) and lots of things leaping out at you — including popcorn, yo-yos, a spear from a harpoon gun, and an eyeball that pops at you when Jason crushes somebody’s head). AVATAR, however, doesn’t stoop to cheap novelties — it offers some very clear scenarios that would look normal even without the funny glasses, and after awhile you forget that you’re wearing them (Cameron seems to learn midway to slow down the action a bit at times because it blurs in 3D).

Bad is that the 3D dims the color palette. The computer-generated natives (all bright blue, tall, and more expressive than I’ve ever seen in any other computer-generated movie) and their world is darkened by the 3D glasses, and sometimes I found myself popping them up to take in some of the more phosphorescent scenes. AVATAR is a gorgeous movie to look at (and I would expect nothing less from master storyteller James Cameron, who gave us TERMINATOR 2, ALIENS, THE ABYSS, and of course the best disaster-movie-cum-love-story ever TITANIC — all envelope pushers in terms of storytelling and special effects), but I am still waiting for 3D to catch up with the amount of information being put forth on the screen. Again, the 3D technology right now blurs and muddies things at times, even gets in the way when the action becomes split-second reaction.

The best part of the movie for me was the environment of the planet Pandora. Cameron (who also wrote the script) obviously put a lot of work into creating the alien civilization, making its quirky flora and fauna look genuinely alien. There are of course essences of Vietnam and the American Indian (the soundtrack echoes that most clearly), and he resists the temptation to give us a Late Sixties or Early Seventies ending (alas, downers of a movie don’t put as many people in seats as modern-blockbuster Hollywood endings, as a rule). As in ALIENS, Cameron is clearly in love with exoskeletons, and his weaponry and technology is utterly convincing. As is his heartfelt need to make us emote with the natives, and we root for them to prevail over the destructive humans. In terms of escapism and sending us to another world, Cameron does better than even George Lucas (who never really slows down enough for us to have a look around the worlds he so fastidiously creates — you have to get the spin-off comic books or animated clone wars, or worse yet shell out to see the STAR WARS movies again if you want to suck on the scenery). Cameron delivers on his promise to make the moviegoing experience an actual drama and not just an amusement park ride.

But in terms of what lingers after AVATAR is all over, it’s not the environmental lesson, or the good versus business/military ethics, or even the 3D. It’s the planet of Pandora, and how lovely it must be to see it in all it’s glory without the goddamn glasses on. I hope someone who cares as much as James Cameron about movie craft comes along and makes the 3D technology something that gives us the focus and color as vibrantly as without. Next time. Thanks for the good college try, Mr Cameron. You haven’t lost your touch. Grade: B-.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Saturday Tangent 2: EU Observer: “Racism at shocking levels” in European Union

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. As another Saturday tangent, here is some news from the other side of the pond (or from where we sit, the other side of the Asian land mass) regarding how widespread racism is in the European Union. Wish we could get some reportage like this in the J media about domestic discrimination. Oh wait, we don’t even use the word “racial discrimination” as a term of the debate here. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

////////////////////////////////////////

Racism at ‘shocking’ levels in EU, landmark report says
LEIGH PHILLIPS EU Observer.com, 09.12.2009 (excerpt) Courtesy of AWK
http://euobserver.com/22/29122

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Whether looking for a job, buying something from a shop or visiting the doctor, minorities in Europe commonly face discrimination, the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency has said.

Using language rarely found in the dry reports of EU agencies, the FRA described as “shocking” the rampantly racist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic experiences of minorities as they go about their daily lives.

The agency’s first-ever report, published on Wednesday (8 December), attempts to map the contours of discrimination across the bloc in a comprehensive, 276-page survey of over 23,000 individuals. It reveals that over a fifth (22 percent) of sub-Saharan Africans have been discriminated against at least once in the last year while looking for work, 17 percent of Roma say they have experienced similar incidents while being seen by a doctor or nurse and 11 percent of North Africans are subjected to racism when in or simply trying to enter a shop.

The original continent of emigration is now one of the world’s most popular destinations for immigration and in many countries amongst some sections of the native population, this change is unwelcome. As the economic crisis bites, discrimination is expected to intensify as people and political organisations look for outsiders to blame for the problem.

But the precise extent of racism and other forms of ethnic discrimination are often unknown, particularly in government data – no similar official effort had previously been mounted on an EU-wide basis.

Rather than simply asking who felt discriminated against, the survey used a stringent metric of exploring discrimination in nine different areas of everyday life: when looking for work or at work, when looking for a house or apartment to rent or buy, by healthcare and social services, by schools, at a café, restaurant, bar or nightclub and at shops, as well as discrimination when trying to open a bank account or obtain a loan.

The survey found that while minorities are commonly accused of criminal activity, they are in fact frequently the victims of crimes themselves: Roughly a quarter (24 percent) had been the object of a crime at least once in the last 12 months.

Rest of the article at http://euobserver.com/22/29122

ENDS

Saturday Tangent: Word from Copenhagen Summit, Eric Johnston blog

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. A reporter I really respect, Eric Johnston of the Japan Times, is currently over in Copenhagen covering the COP15 UN Conference on Climate Change. He is maintaining a daily blog on what it’s like to be a scribe in the thick of it. Interesting reading (especially the entry on a day in the life — I’d burn out at that pace long before the conference ended). A nice diversion on a Saturday morning, have a read. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

http://blog.japantimes.co.jp/cop15/category/behind-the-scenes/

Michael Moore lambastes GOJ for being fingerprinted at border during his first Japan trip

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. What follows is an excerpt of a transcript of Michael Moore’s press conference at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, dated November 30, 2009. He too doesn’t like being fingerprinted at the border. Fortunately, he speaks up about it, unlike most celebrities that want to bask in the lucrative glow of celebrity in Japan. I make no claims about some of the other stuff he says, of course. Text follows, courtesy of Philip Brasor. (NB: The transcript does not include the questions, only the answers Mike gave.) FYI. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

==================================

MICHAEL MOORE:

-This is my first day ever in Japan. I’ve always wanted to come here, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to do that. I’d hoped for many years that the island of Japan would float a little closer to America so that it wouldn’t be such a long trip, but that didn’t happen so I decided to finally come here.

-Can I explain why I’m dressed this way? The airline lost my luggage. It’s one of the two Japanese airlines, I don’t want to mention any names. OK. It begins with J and ends with L. I essentially decided to wear pajamas on the plane to sleep, and I got here with no clothes. So where in Japan am I going to find clothes that fit me? Anyway, they took to a place where sumo wrestlers buy their clothes, so i’m dressed partly in my pajamas and partly in sumo clothing. My apologies. I usually don’t look that much better anyway, so you won’t tell the difference.

-They asked me if I would share some of my impressions of my first 24 hours in Japan. The people are very friendly and nice. Well, actually, I landed at the airport and the customs people asked me for my fingerprints. I’m 55 years old and I’ve never been fingerprinted in my life, partly because I’ve never figured out the right kind of crime to commit, and partly because there’s no reason to fingerprint me. So I stepped up to the counter and they said please put your fingers here. And I said, Why? I didn’t refuse, I just asked why. And they immediately called in a supervisor and took me away. They told me, You have to be fingerprinted. And I said, I’ve never been fingerprinted. I have privacy rights, this is a democracy, right? They said, OK, so you want to be deported to the United States. I said, No, so they took me into a room and brought in another supervisor, even higher, and he said I could either voluntarily give my fingerprints and enter the country or they would forceably put me back on a plane back the US. So it’s a lose-lose situation, I said, and he said, But you do this in the United States, when we visit the United States. And I said, Well, that’s wrong. You have a passport, you took my picture, you X-rayed me. I don’t understand the fingerprint. It’s like, if no one stands up and says every now and then, we have rights as individuals. This is a privacy issue. I’ve not committed any crime, so therefore you’re not deserving of my fingerprints. So we went back and forth and they read me my rights, which I brought along. They had me read in English. I read that. My wife had already gone through the line and my friends were waiting, so I reluctantly gave in, but I gave them a different finger than my index one. I was allowed in the country at that point.

-No need to make any apologies about immigration. It was all comedy. We’re not robots, we’re human beings. I didn’t expect it to happen in Tokyo. I would expect it in Washington D.C.

-I’ve tried to film many times at the New York stock exchange, including inside the stock exchange for this film. And large news organizations in the states have requested that I be allowed there so that they can interview me on the stock exchange floor. And they’ve all been refused. So when they said to me this morning that we were going over to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Nikkei, I thought it was a joke. And we walked right in. No fingerprinting. I’m grateful, and thank you for allowing me in here to discuss “Capitalism” and business and the global economy. So you’ve seen me outside the New York stock exchange in the movie. I’ll tell you a funny story. At the end of the movie when I’m wrapping the stock exchange in crime scene tape, I was very afraid that I might be arrested–and fingerprinted. And sure enough, I see the police coming toward me, and I think: this is it, they’re coming to arrest me. And then I see the police officer and I said, I’ll be out of here in a minute. I promise to clean all this up and be out of your way. I won’t be any trouble. And the officer says to me, That’s OK Mike. The guys in this building have lost a billion dollars of the New York City Police pension fund. You take all the time you want. So that’s how I shot that scene.

-Generally, someone who holds some power, if they see me coming they don’t want to talk to me, and it just makes it harder. On the other hand, because so many of the people in the US see me as somebody who has not been bought by the establishment, and I’m going to do what I think is the honest and right thing to do, it’s easier for me to get the stories because the stories come to me. At the beginning of the movie, with the family that’s being evicted, and the police show up to bang in the door? The family filmed that themselves, and they sent me the videotape. So one day I just got this package in the mail and opened it up and there was a tape. Because they thought I might show what happened to them. There was one place where they could send it and perhaps someone would see what has happened to them. So in some ways it’s easier for me because I’m seen as someone who stands up to power, so people send me documents from work and things like that. But I have to say it’s not an enjoyable place to be public enemy number one for the Republicans or the conservatives or the business establishment, because it creates a lot of turmoil and hatred toward me. It’s not easy. I wouldn’t apply for this job if I had to do it over again.

-I’ve often spoken admiringly of Japan in my books and my movies. I believe that there are many things you do that are right. I know that if I lived here I would find many things that are wrong, but I don’t live here. For some strange reason you believe that if someone in Japan gets sick that person should be able to see a doctor without worrying about losing their savings or their home. Why do you do that? I’m guessing it’s because you’re all Japanese and you’re all in the same boat, and if you let some people fall out of the boat then what’s the purpose of the boat if people are drowning? An American family is evicted from their home once every seven and a half seconds. The number one cause of people losing their homes, the number one cause of bankruptcies are medical bills. People get sick and don’t have health insurance, or the right kind of health insurance, and they lose everything, including their home. The total number of Japanese who were kicked out of their homes last year because they couldn’t pay the doctor? None. Zero. Why not? Why have you decided to treat each other that way, to help each other, when you get sick, or lose your job? You’ve built a safety net. Why have you done that, and why don’t we do that? This is the eternal question in all my films, because I love the US. I love being an American. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. So the question I’m constantly posing to my fellow Americans is: Why do we treat each other this way, when no other civilized country that I’ve seen believes that we should punish you because you get sick, or we should punish you when your factory goes out of business. Why is that? You’re not better than us. We’re all human beings, right? Why have you structured your society in such a way that this is not allowed to happen? Why don’t you kill each other? Oh, I know, you think the murder rate has gone up, but there have been years in the past when you had zero handgun murders. You have just a few gun murders each year, compared to what we have in the US. In some years we have 15,000 murders with guns and then another 15,000 suicides with guns. So why don’t you kill each other? Because you’re better than us? I don’t think so. But in the last 20 years you started to change, because you had a series of conservative prime ministers, starting around the time of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Kohl in Germany, Mulrooney in Canada, and a series of prime ministers here all through the Elvis impersonator. No disrespect. So now you’re getting more of the problems we have in America. There is more crime now. More murders. When people lose their jobs… I remember as a young man, the thing about Japan was that it was shameful for a company to lay people off. Is that correct? That’s the way it used to be. So your conservative governments started to cut away at the social safety net that you created for your people. Cut money for health care. Cut money for education. Throw people out of work. Make life harder for people who don’t make as much money. Punish them for being poor. So the more you’ve done it the American way, what have you ended up with? More crime. Less educated young people, who don’t know as much as they used to know, right? So to answer your question, as much as I love America, quit being like us. Be the Japan you created after 1945, a Japan that valued education, a Japan that would not throw you out of work. A Japan that would never invade another country, and which would not support a country that would invade another country. And let me tell you, when you supported George W. Bush in his endeavors, you gave him legitimacy, because he was able to say to the American people, The Japanese, they’re with me. Prime Minister Elvis-san is with me. Tony Blair is with me. The Italians are with me. Even the Danish. It’s a legitimate war. If the Japanese prime minister, and the British prime minister, and the Italian and the Spanish and the Danish had all refused to give him his cover, I don’t know that he would have gotten away with it. So the responsibility that these countries shared by supporting anything that George W. Bush did, it made it not only difficult for people in the US, but for people who suffer in this world as a result of the foreign policies of that individual. I’m so sorry to put it this way. Please don’t take personal offense, but you asked me what would I say to the Japanese people, a society I think highly of, a society structured on peace and respect, and you’ve started to go down the other road. And my humble plea is to get off that road with your new prime minister and return to the road you used to be on.

[…]

-My father is 88 years old and I told him I was coming to Japan. He was in the first marine division in the South Pacific in WWII and fortunately survived and had me. When I told him I was coming here he was very happy. He said to me when we were discussing the wars last year, the reason Bush got us into these wars is because he’s never known war. If he had known war he would never have wanted war again. He spent part of the war on Okinawa and I said I might go there to lay some flowers for all who died there, Japanese and Americans. His brother, my uncle, was killed in the Philippines during the war. And my dad has such a loving heart–you saw him in the movie. His best friend at church is a Japanese man. And both of them, 88 years old, go to the gym together every morning and work out together. As sad and difficult as this world can be, it does eventually get better. And I have always been filled with enormous hope and optimism that we will know war no more. Tomorrow evening Pres. Obama will announce if he will expand the war in Afghanistan, and I have passed on to him a personal request from my father and his Japanese friend: Mr. Obama, you do not know war. People who know war want it no more. I’m honored to share this message of peace with you, the people of Japan, who have been beacons of peace for the past 60-plus years.
ENDS

Way cool Coldwell Banker SAPPORO SOURCE advertisement offering assistance with NJ apartment searches

Posted on December 2, 2009December 7, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Sapporo’s free international magazine SAPPORO SOURCE came out on Sunday, and I saw this highly positive advertisement on the back cover (click to expand in browser). Comment afterwards.

COMMENT: Way cool. This should be how real estate agents serve people in Japan, and let’s encourage this as a template by giving it more exposure. I hope Coldwell Bankers nationwide are this open-minded, but even if not, I suggest people in the Sapporo area give this place a try. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Scotchneat on Fuji TV show laying blind biological claims to intellectual Asian kids abroad

Posted on November 21, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Guest writing an essay for Debito.org is Scotchneat, regarding how some Japanese media editorial policies bring in tribal tendencies no matter how tenuous the link to the tribe. Read and consider. Arudou Debito in Shizuoka
——————–
Re: Sho Timothy Yano
By Scotchneat

Yano siblings show what’s right with America and what’s wrong with Japan (Comment on Echika no Kagami Kokoro ni Kiku TV aired on Nov. 1, 2009 21:30-22:24エチカの鏡ココロにキクTV 2009/11/ 1(日) 21:30～22:24)

There was a show on Sho Timothy Yano and his sister Sayuri on November 1. on Fuji TV. The two are child prodigies (http://www.facebook.com/l/aa682;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sho_Yano) . The story of children of a multi-cultural family being free to achieve their goals in a supportive environment shows the positive side of America. However, the spin that show put on the story is very indicative about Japan.

The focus of the story was a mother pushing her children to succeed with much detail of the early childhood education and dietary regime of the two children. The show also put great emphasis on the prejudice that the two were subject to in America based on their Asian heritage, although it seems that the “prejudice” amounted to teasing by their fellow students, and it was unclear whether that was due to Asian heritage or the fact of the great age difference with their peers. The show claimed that Japanese and Koreans often face prejudice in the US, although no real examples were given other than a dramatization showing poor Sho being picked on by some big white bullies.

It is always strange that Japanese will point out the prejudice that exists in America while completely ignoring or being ignorant of the situation in their own country. Here we have two children with a Japanese father and Korean mother. One can only the imagine the prejudice that they would face in Japan. Although any form of prejudice is wrong, it is clear that the Yano siblings are not facing institutionalized prejudice in work and educational opportunities that they would face in Japan. Perhaps this why the show tread so lightly on the subject. One is reminded of the classic, “And you are lynching Negroes” response to the criticisms of the old Soviet Union.

Ironically, it seems that the Japanese, based on my impressions from watching the TV show, would like to claim the Yano siblings as their own. They get to be “Japanese”, despite being born, raised and educated in the US and having a Korean mother (normally any of these factors would raise suspicions of not being properly Japanese) and not speaking Japanese (considered mandatory for citizenship).

Moreover, child prodigies in Japan are not allowed to enter university (aside from a few small experiments), ostensibly because they lack “maturity”. Anyone familiar with Japanese university students will find that quite ironic. However, as often is the case, appeals to logic and common sense are useless in the face of entrenched prejudicial thinking. Basically, allowing two children to attend university (even for purposes of auditing) goes against an engrained dislike of breaking with conformity in Japan.

Perhaps, if the Japanese could get past looking at diet and over ambitious teaching regimes for toddlers, they might see the value of respecting diversity and breaking out of insular thinking.
——————–

ENDS

Watch Obama in Japan tonight (speech schedule enclosed)

Posted on November 13, 2009November 13, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Courtesy of Paul Toland. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

By the way, For those of you who are following President Obama’s trip to Japan, here
are the two most important times to be watching:

1. 13 November, 7 PM (Japan Time), 5 AM (Eastern Standard Time) – President
Obama’s meeting with Prime Minister Hatoyama, to be followed by a Joint
Press Conference. I don’t know the exact time of the press conference, but
I’m assuming it will be about an hour or so after their meeting. I’ll be
watching for that tomorrow morning.

2. 14 November, 10 AM (Japan Time), 13 Nov 8 PM (Eastern Standard Time) –
President Obama will be making a speech at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, in which
he will discuss his view of U.S. engagement in Asia and reaffirm the
strength of Washington’s alliance with Japan.

While I doubt he will address the child abduction issue at the Speech at
Suntory Hall, I am hoping he does mention the issue at the Joint Press
Conference, or if he does not mention it, I am hoping the press will ask
about it during the Q&A. Unfortunately, the Q&A is usually only about 3
questions from each country’s press (3 Questions from Japanese press, 3
questions from American Press). There’s almost no chance that the Japanese
press will raise it, so let’s hope the US press will raise it within the
context of their 3 allowed questions.

The latest on the schedule (all times are Japan times):

6:50PM THE PRESIDENT and Prime Minister Hatoyama of Japan hold bilateral
meeting

7:10PM THE PRESIDENT and Prime Minister Hatoyama hold expanded bilateral
meeting

8:20PM THE PRESIDENT and Prime Minister Hatoyama hold joint press conference

8:45PM THE PRESIDENT and Prime Minister Hatoyama have dinner

That means the Press Conference will be held at 6:20 AM Eastern Standard
Time in the United States. Paul

ENDS

TODAY show (USA) on Savoie Child Abduction Case: father Chris’s treatment by J police, return to US, aftermath

Posted on November 12, 2009November 12, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. The Today Show (USA) has an update on the Savoie Child Abduction Case from the perspective of left-behind father Christopher, notably his treatment in Japanese police custody and how he is, in his words, “dead to my kids”. FYI. Debito

///////////////////////////////////////////////
Dad in Japan custody case: I’m dead to my kids
Christopher Savoie describes prison ordeal after he tried to recover children

By Michael Inbar
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 10:00 a.m. ET Nov. 9, 2009, Courtesy of Paul Wong
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/33788543/ns/today-parenting_and_family/?ns=today-parenting_and_family

American Christopher Savoie is back on U.S. soil after spending a harrowing 18 days in a Japanese jail for trying to wrest his children away from his ex-wife. But the joy of being reunited with his current wife, Amy, is muted by the heartbreak of having to leave his son and daughter behind.

Savoie, 38, was locked in a bitter custody battle with his former wife, Noriko, when she fled to her native Japan with the couple’s 8-year-old son, Isaac, and 6-year-old daughter, Rebecca, on Aug. 13. On Sept. 28, Savoie flew to Japan to reclaim his children — but as he headed up the steps of the U.S. Embassy in Fukuoka with Isaac and Rebecca in tow, he was promptly arrested by Japanese police.

Appearing live in his first interview since being released on Oct. 15, Savoie, accompanied by Amy, told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira that being a free man is a hollow victory without his children beside him.

“It’s absolutely horrible; there are no words for it,” he told Vieira. “Basically, I’m dead to my children.”

Troubled relations

At issue is the sticky state of U.S.-Japan relations regarding custody of young children whose parents have gone their separate ways. According to the International Association for Parent-Child Reunion, there have been some 125 cases of American children who have been abducted by a parent to Japan. To date, not one child has ever been returned to the U.S.

Part of it is legal: Japan is the sole G7 nation not adhering to the 1980 Hague Convention calling for the return of children abducted across international borders. And part of it is cultural: According to Japanese tradition, children of divorce are given to one parent, almost always the mother, and the other parent is basically written out of their lives.

While U.S. officials try to pressure Japan to acquiesce to Hague Convention standards, Savoie is seen as a maverick who tried to take the law into his own hands in getting his kids back. But Savoie told Vieira he believes he had solid legal standing, even by Japanese law, in traveling to Japan to reclaim Isaac and Rebecca.

Savoie and Noriko were married in Japan in 1995, and he still carries a Japanese passport from his time as a student and working for a pharmaceutical company there. The couple split in 2007, and when Savoie moved back to the U.S. in 2008 for a job with a biotech company, Noriko followed a year later so the pair could both spend time with their children.

But the arrangement never worked well, Savoie told Vieira. He claims Noriko was antagonistic toward his new wife, Amy, and often threatened to take the children back to Japan with her. Savoie sought a restraining order in his adopted hometown of Franklin, Tenn., to keep Noriko from fleeing with the children, but it wasn’t granted.

‘Big shock’
On Aug. 13, Savoie was notified that Isaac and Rebecca were not present at what was supposed to be their first day of school. Savoie told Vieira that initially, he imagined even worse scenarios than the notion that Noriko had taken off with them.

“Horrible thoughts went through my mind,” he said. “The first thought wasn’t that they might have been abducted; I was worried that something might have happened to them, something horrible.”

Savoie finally reached his former father-in-law in Japan, who told him the children were safe and sound and with their mother. Savoie began plotting a course of action that led to his Sept. 28 trip to Japan and subsequent imprisonment — but he insisted to Vieira it wasn’t unlawful.

“I actually still have, and had at that time, legal custody in Japan — fifty-fifty custody,” Savoie said.

Savoie met up with Noriko as she walked the children to school, wrested them away from her, put them in a car and made a mad dash for the embassy. Noriko told police she was bruised from the scuffle between the pair as Savoie spirited the children away.

But Savoie told Vieira: “Picking my kids up, hugging them and putting them in the car — I hardly thought that would be considered criminal. So it was a big shock to me that police actually took it in that manner.”

Savoie insists he was not planning to put Isaac and Rebecca on the next plane home. “My intention was to go to the consulate and then have a discussion if the police wanted to ask about it,” he told Vieira. “I had all the custody documents with me. If they had said, ‘Please stay in Japan, and have a family court decide the custody first,’ I would have done that.”

‘Horrible’ conditions
Instead, Savoie found himself behind bars for 18 days, under conditions he said were “pretty horrible”.

“I think it is well known by the United Nations that Japan’s pre-indictment jail conditions are horrendous,” he said. “They’re quite infamous. Almost 18 days of 12 hours a day of interrogation without a lawyer; lights on all the time at night, so sleep deprivation. Really terrible sanitary conditions — it’s just too horrible to recall.”

Still, Japanese authorities released Savoie without indicting him. They say charges are still pending, but Savoie believes he is unlikely to face any charges. “I assume if they had enough evidence to indict with the crime, they would have done so.”

He also says his ex-wife’s claims that he injured her were unfounded. “There wasn’t much of a struggle,” he said. “All of these reports that there was bruising, that never was proven. And that was part of the reason I was released.”

Still, there is no short-term prospect of the dad’s being reunited with Isaac and Rebecca. Savoie’s best hope is that Japan changes its policies — and on that front, there may be a little progress. In a statement to CNN, Japan Foreign Ministry spokesman Yasuhisa Kawamura said the government is considering becoming part of the Hague treaty.

“Japanese government is … considering seriously to conclude this treaty on the grounds that this treaty would provide one of the most effective measures to protect the children after their parents divorce,” Kawamura said.

ENDS

Speaking tomorrow, Thurs Nov 5, Sapporo Gakuin Dai 「法の下の平等と在住外国人」

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito
Hi Blog. Speaking in Japanese tomorrow, FYI, at Sapporo Gakuin.
Thursday November 5, 2009 1PM. 札幌学院大学法学部公開講座リレー講義「人権・共生・人間の尊重　あらためてその理念と現実を考える」第７回「法の下の平等と在住外国人」。札幌学院大学D202教室にて。
http://www.sgu.ac.jp/other/do050b0000000bdm-att/j09tjo0000000aes.pdf

Powerpoint here.
https://www.debito.org/sgu110509.ppt

Have a look! Or come see. Debito

NHK’s lingering bias favoring the opposition LDP. Anyone else noticing this?

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Just a short essay for today. Has anyone noticed how NHK still reports as if the LDP is in power?

It’s been a month and a half since the DPJ assumed office, the first real bona fide party in Japan’s modern, developed, postwar history to actually offer a change of perspective and an alternative opposition. They keep surprising me with both their proposals and their competence so far.

But you wouldn’t get that impression from watching NHK. Yesterday morning’s 7AM news (Nov 2, 2009) had a smidge on the DPJ’s latest policy move, but then had a citation from former cabinet member (who nearly was booted out this election from my local electorate, Ebetsu, and had to be brought back in as a Proportional Representation “Zombie” Dietmember) Machimura Nobutaka, mentioned by name, offering a counterargument seemingly nearly as long as the airtime given the LDP. Who is he to comment and why should anyone, particularly NHK, care?

I’ve seen this time and time again on NHK, supposedly neutral — or at least pro-government. Which means it should be promoting the DPJ’s view now that it is the government. But that’s not happening. NHK, to me, seems to be treating our current government as if it’s an aberration, a lull or momentary lapse of reason before the LDP gets back in.

I’m not alone in this view. Christopher Johnson, writing for the FCCJ’s Number One Shimbun of October 2007, commented (excerpt):

THE ELECTION : Two – Is NHK still in bed with the LDP?

State-funded network still airing views of defeated politicians

After booting them from power in a landslide vote, many Japanese were hoping to forget about the Liberal Democratic Party and its 55 years of rule, at least for now.

But not NHK.

The night of the election, when the opposition Democratic Party of Japan trounced the ruling party by a 3:1 margin, NHK paid special attention to the victory of young LDP candidate Shinjiro Koizumi, the son of former LDP leader Junichiro Koizumi.

The day after the election, when Japanese were experiencing real democratic change for perhaps the first time, NHK news featured an all-party discussion, where it allowed LDP Secretary-General Hiroyuki Hosoda to browbeat the victorious Katsuya Okada and criticize the DPJ’s plans to reward the public with free roadways and education.

It’s as if the public had never spoken, had never fired Hosoda and the LDP. NHK, which has grown accustomed to propagating the views of the almighty LDP, was apparently the last to get the message that Japanese citizens have had enough of old-guard politicians.

It’s hard to imagine CNN, after Obama’s historic victory, allowing John McCain to shoot the air out of the Democrats, or the BBC hosting a forum to gang up on a party just given a massive mandate to rule.

NHK didn’t stop there. All week, the network played up the race for the LDP leadership, as if anyone cares. It also ridiculed rookie DPJ lawmakers in their 20s and 30s, suggesting they wouldn’t know how to carry out their duties.

And then, moments after the Diet selected Yukio Hatoyama as Japan’s new prime minister, NHK focused yet again on LDP golden boy Koizumi, as if he, and not the DPJ, is the future hope of Japan…

… overall, NHK, as well as many elements of the Japanese and foreign media, has failed to realize that Japan’s election is nothing short of a social revolution, and a blow to the old-boys’ network nationwide… NHK continues to grant the LDP more air time than it ever gave opposition parties in the past.

Rest of the article at:

http://www.fccj.or.jp/node/5001

Anyone else noticing this? Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Fallout from “The Cove”: TV’s “South Park” takes on Japan’s dolphin slaughters and whale hunts

Posted on October 31, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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This is making the rounds of the blogoverse. South Park takes on the Japanese dolphin culls and whale hunts, thanks to the publicity from “The Cove“. It’s worth seeing. As a South Park fan, I must say this is all within character for the show… and it as usual ties the issue up into large intellectual knots, and pushes the frontiers of “taboo humor”. Enjoy, I guess. Debito in Sapporo

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/251888/

Tangent: Microsoft apologizes for photoshopping out black man from its Poland advertising. Contrast with McDonald’s Japan “Mr James”

Posted on October 28, 2009October 31, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Bit of a tangent but not really. Here’s what happens when another multinational apparently caters to “regional sensibilities” — this time Microsoft photoshopping out an African-American in one of its ads to cater to a Polish audience.

Contrast with “Mr James“. We see none of the cultural relativity that the whole McDonald’s Japan “Mr James” issue got (or even claims of “just-deserts” from certain parties). And Microsoft even apologizes — something McDonald’s Japan has steadfastly refused to do (and still runs the “Mr James” campaign to this day; fortunately it finishes shortly). Any theories behind the difference?

(One that comes to mind is that people are loath to criticize an apparently more esoteric and impenetrable culture, but I can poke holes in that one pretty easily — even the report below claims “Poland is ethnically homogeneous”.)

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Original source:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/microsoft-apologizes-for-changing-race-in-photo/article1265096/

(site is now pay-only)

Archived at http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/business/2009/aug/Microsoft-Photoshops-Out-Diversity-for-Polish-Ad–Sparking-Race-Controversy.html

========================================

Microsoft Photoshops Out Diversity for Polish Ad, Sparking Race Controversy

The Globe and Mail, August 27, 2009 06:00 PM

by Jill Marcellus

Microsoft has apologized for replacing a black man’s head with that of a white man in a promotional photo on its Polish Web site, but concerns linger over diversity in advertising.

RACE RETOUCHED

Sitting together and smiling over the slogan, “Empower your people with the IT tools they need,” an Asian man, an African-American man and a white woman harmoniously appear in a promotional photo on Microsoft’s U.S. Web site. When that same trio smiled over a translated slogan on the company’s Polish Web site, however, the black man’s head had been digitally exchanged for a younger white man’s face, reported BBC News.

Visual courtesy

http://mashable.com/2009/08/26/microsoft-photoshop-trainwreck/

The picture’s poor editing made the gaffe more embarrassing for Microsoft, since the white man’s head was simply perched atop the original African American’s body, with his distinctly black hand still intact.

Microsoft has already apologized and removed the offending photo, and a spokeswoman in Poland insisted that, “We are a multiracial company and there isn’t a chance any of us are racist,” according to The Times of London. She claimed that the photo’s editors had already left the company before the uproar arose.

While controversy often crops up when race meets Photoshop, other recent snafus have caught advertisers overplaying, not whitewashing, diversity. Researchers at Augsburg College found, Inside Higher Ed reported last year, that “more than 75 percent of colleges appeared to overrepresent black students in viewbooks,” sometimes with the help of Photoshop. Similarly, the official Toronto Fun Guide made headlines earlier this summer for itsdigitally diversified cover, which replaced a Latino father with a black man in a family picture, according to Allison Hanes of the Canadian paper National Post. Toronto officials insisted that it was an “inclusive” act, obeying a 2008 policy to “show diversity” in city publications.

These incidents fit into a larger movement toward “visual diversity” in advertising. By juxtaposing different racial groups in ads, advertisers hope to appeal to multiple audiences at once, MSNBC explained, while also “conveying a message that corporate America is not just ‘in touch,’ racially speaking, but inclusive.” According to Melanie Shreffler, editor of advertising newsletter Marketing to the Emerging Majorities, America’s shifting demographics dictate this trend. Shreffler told MSNBC that advertisers “aren’t turning out multicultural ads for the good of society,” but rather they “recognize there is money involved” in marketing to America’s rapidly expanding minority groups.

Microsoft’s blunder, rather than contradicting Shreffler’s analysis, may confirm it. Unlike America, where Microsoft displayed the multicultural photo intact, Poland is ethnically homogenous, with almost 97 percent of its people identifying as Polish, according to the C.I.A. World Factbook.

BACKGROUND: AD INDUSTRY’S HISTORY OF DISCRIMINATION ISSUES

Sources in this Story

Earlier this month, BMW’s advertiser sparked its own racially-driven controversy when it excluded “urban” radio, traditionally associated with African-American audiences, as a market for its Mini Cooper advertisements, findingDulcinea reported. “No urban dictates,” defined by The Washington Times as a policy “issued by companies who associate urban listeners with a lifestyle that they are trying to avoid,” have been banned by the Federal Communications Commission.

Although the company apologized, the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters insisted that the incident “raises the uncomfortable specter of a corporate culture that condones discriminatory practices.”

They are not the only ones to accuse the ad industry of a discriminatory culture, despite industry initiatives to promote diversity. The Madison Avenue Project, a collaboration launched earlier this year between the NAACP and civil rights law firm Mehri & Skalet, found that African Americans earn 20 percent less than whites in advertising, and that the gap between black and white employment in the ad industry is 38 percent greater than in the overall labor market.

ENDS

Tokyo International Players present “Honiefaith” Nov 6-7-8 in Shibuya’s OUR SPACE Theater

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito
BY POPULAR DEMAND, TOKYO INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS PRESENTS A SECOND PRODUCTION OF “HONIEFAITH”

Written and directed by Monty DiPietro

With:
Percival Florendo Bugayong as Victor Balmori
Arlene Dinglasan as Cora Diaz
Elena Yankova as Nadya Karsavina
Ken Suzuki as Inspector Yutaro Mukaide
Ken-Stephano Medrano Endo as Daisuke Sakamoto
Jun Takahashi as Sakamoto Sr.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=157036074791

When a Filipino hostess’ dismembered body is discovered in a Tokyo coin locker, Manila newspaper reporter Victor Balmori is dispatched to Japan. Balmori is looking for a story, he finds a nightmare.

NB from DEBITO: More about the Honiefaith case here.

Written by Monty DiPietro, “Honiefaith” is a three-act play based on real events. The premiere of “Honiefaith” opened Tokyo International Players’ “Second Stage” series in June, playing to full houses at a ‘black box’ theater in Hatagaya. The November production is being directed by the author, and features Filipino television and film actor Percival Florendo Bugayong in the lead role. The play is in English, and runs about two hours with intermission.

November 6-7-8, 2009 at Our Space Theater:
Fri. Nov. 6 – 7:00 pm
Sat. Nov. 7 – 2:00 pm
Sat. Nov. 7 – 7:00 pm
Sun. Nov. 8 – 2:00 pm
Sun. Nov. 8 – 7:00 pm

Our Space is located off the north side of Koshu Kaido street, a three-minute walk from Hatagaya Station, or a five-minute taxi from Shinjuku Station’s south exit.
Our Space
Toei Shopping Center 101
Hatagaya 2-1-1 #101
Shibuya-ku
Map: http://www.tokyoplayers.org/?lang=1&page=16

Our Space has a limited capacity, and so reservations are strongly recommended. (Advance ticket sales for the June production were so strong that the box office closed a week before opening night. So be sure and buy your tickets early.)

Tickets and information:
http://www.tokyoplayers.org/?lang=1&page=58&mode=detail&event=28
Prepaid tickets cost 2,000, available at Our Space, or through the TIP website (200 yen PayPal service charge applies).
Reserved tickets / Pay at the door are 2,200 yen.
Admission price includes one drink.

Some scenes in “Honiefaith” may not be suitable for small children.

FLYER:

ENDS

Sunday Tangent: Eric Johnston on getting freelance reporting jobs in Japan

Posted on October 25, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Went out mountain cycling yesterday and became a cropper: went over my handlebars on a steep trail (good thing I was wearing a helmet — my bike came down right on my head) and bent my fingers right back on my right hand. Will go easy on the typing today.

I attended the Japan Writers’ Conference last weekend in Kyoto (even presented, handout here). A very good time with some very good presentations, one of which was Eric Johnston’s excellent presentation on how to find freelance journalist jobs in Japan. There was so much information in his powerpoint that I asked if I could blog it here for wider consumption. Yeppers, he said, so here are some excerpts. Download the whole powerpoint below for the full story. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

===========================
REPORTING OPPORTUNITIES IN JAPAN:
A Practical Guide
By Eric Johnston
Deputy Editor
The Japan Times
Osaka bureau

Japan Writers Conference
October 18th, 2009
EXCERPT:

This presentation assumes. . .
You have an interest in straight reporting and writing news features on a wide variety of timely events, as opposed to writing a personal opinion column, doing book, music, art, or restaurant reviews, or writing up interview pieces.

You have a love of, and preference for, traditional print and broadcast media and appreciate the traditional editorial methods they embrace.

THE BASICS

Getting Started: What All Successful Freelance News Reporters in Japan Usually Have

1) Bilingual business cards
2) A Web page with their articles
3) A bilingual PC
4) A cell phone capable of international calls
5) Easy access to a host of basic facts and figures about Japan, including major on-line daily news stories
6) A decent digital camera
7) Receipt books and notebooks for accounting purposes
8) A local Japanese person who serves as your “fixer’’, either paid or volunteer

PART I
MAKING CONTACT WITH JAPAN-BASED NEWS MEDIA

How Much Experience Do I Need Before I Can Realistically Expect To Be Considered for a Job?

You Need To Have Been Published in a Similar Media Form Previously.
You Need To Demonstrate You Know How To Pitch A News Story To The News Editors, and Understand Their Concerns.
Personal References Are Helpful, But It’s No Substitute for a Decent Portfolio.

=========================

FULL PRESENTATION AT
https://www.debito.org/johnston101809.ppt
ends

Asahi Shinbun EDITORIAL: Child abduction in Japan English Translation

Posted on October 22, 2009October 22, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Official English translation of the Asahi Editorial on the Child Abduction issue, with Japanese in previous entry today. There are some tweaks within, to eliminate “culture” as a factor in some places, while other places add it (as in, the lack of a “culture” of joint custody? Isn’t that a legal issue?). And how about the literal translation of Japan signing the Hague Convention now could be “as ineffective as grafting a shoot onto a different kind of tree” (I’m glad the original Japanese didn’t use an expression involving breeding dogs or something). Again, the need to “protect our own from NJ” is still too strong; the argument should be how everyone in Japan benefits regardless of nationality if you safeguard rights of custody and access a la international treaty. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

============================

EDITORIAL: Child abduction in Japan

The Asahi Shinbun October 21, 2009, Courtesy of Matt D

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200910210140.html

When the United States and European nations say that more than 100 children have been “abducted” to Japan, they are not lying.

Troubles involving children of international divorces being taken from their countries of residence by their Japanese parents and brought back “illegally” to Japan are creating an international stir.

More than 100 such cases have been filed in the United States, Britain, Canada and other countries so far. Some people even accuse Japan of “encouraging child abduction.”

Last month, a U.S. citizen was arrested in Japan for attempting to snatch back his two children from his Japanese ex-wife who had returned to Japan with them in August.

The trouble occurred because of differences in the rules for dealing with children of international divorces in Japan and the United States. The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, to which 81 nations are signatories, states that, in principle, when a child has been taken from his or her country of residence, the child must be returned to that country. The convention requires the governments of signatory nations to comply.

Among the Group of Eight countries, Japan and Russia are the only non-signatories to the convention. Disputes occur frequently between citizens of signatory and non-signatory nations.

Japan is now coming under increased pressure from abroad to join the convention. John Roos, U.S. ambassador to Japan, last Friday joined his European counterparts in urging Justice Minister Keiko Chiba to act.

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told a news conference, “We are approaching the matter with an open mind, but we must also take public opinion into account.”

How should disputes related to child custody be resolved between divorced couples whose cultures differ and who are subject to different laws? The argument that everyone should abide by the rules of the Hague Convention carries conviction.

At present, divorced Japanese parents whose children have been taken abroad by their non-Japanese ex-spouses have no legal recourse. The ranks of Japanese citizens marrying non-Japanese are swelling steadily, and the number tops 40,000 a year. It is probably not realistic for Japan to continue avoiding the Hague Convention.

On the other hand, there are other issues that need working out.

The great majority of parental child abduction cases filed in North America and Europe today involve ex-wives who are Japanese. And a number of these women say they have returned to Japan with their children to escape physical abuse by their ex-husbands. How can such women and their children be saved from their predicament abroad? This question cannot be ignored.

There are cultural and legal differences between Japan and the West. In the United States, visitation rights of divorced parents are clearly defined, but they are not spelled out under the Japanese Civil Code. Joint custody is not a recognized custom in Japan, and the overwhelming tendency here is to award custody to the mother.

Furthermore, courts of law are rarely involved in forcing one parent to hand the child over to the other. If Japan were to sign the Hague Convention now, the result could prove as ineffective as grafting a shoot onto a different kind of tree.

We must never lose sight of one fundamental principle–that each child’s welfare must trump everything. How do we respect the right of children to have a relationship with both parents after they split? This is an issue that has not been properly addressed, but it pertains to all divorces, not only international break-ups.

The time has come for Japanese society to seriously debate the welfare of children of divorced parents, in Japan and overseas.

–The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 20 (IHT/Asahi: October 21,2009)

Colin Jones in Japan Times: How J media is portraying J divorcees and child abductors as victims, NJ as perps

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Lawyer Colin Jones has hit us with a one-two punch this week in the Japan Times — first by explaining what Christopher Savoie’s arrest and recent release for “kidnapping” his own kids has brought to light, and now about how the domestic media is reacting to it. Predictably, portraying Japanese as perpetual victim, NJ as perp and victimizer. I’ve mentioned the biased NHK report on the subject before (so does Colin below in his article). Now, here’s a deeper roundup and some crystal-balling about how this might affect NJ particularly adversely, as wagons circle and the GOJ protects its own. Excerpt follows. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

===========================

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009
Foreign parents face travel curbs?
By COLIN P. A. JONES
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091020a1.html
Excerpt:

…While Japan signing the Hague Convention is certainly a desirable goal, it is probably convenient for everyone on the Japanese government side of the issue for foreigners to be the bad guys. That way they appear to be dealing with a “new” problem, rather than one that they have already ignored for far too long. From there, the easiest way to prevent further abductions is to require foreign residents seeking to exit Japan with their children to show proof that the other parent consents to the travel. This requirement, I believe, will be the most immediate tangible result of Japan signing the Hague Convention (if in fact it ever does).

If such a requirement is imposed, will it apply to Japanese people? Probably not: Japanese citizens have a constitutional right to leave their country. And foreigners? They apparently lack this right — the re-entry permit foreigner residents are required to have is proof that they are not equally free to come and go as they please!

Full article at
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091020a1.html
ENDS

CBS News interviews Chris Savoie after his return to US

Posted on October 21, 2009October 21, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Left-behind father in the Savoie Abduction Case, Christopher Savoie is interviewed on CBS’s Early Show earlier today (courtesy of Newscenter5 Tennessee) after his recent release about his treatment in Japanese jails and the US Consulate Fukuoka. According to him, they knew he was coming and a consulate official was present when he arrived there with the kids, but for some reason the Consulate front gate never opened. He also says he is not permitted any contact whatsoever with his children now and must pursue matters through Japanese courts. Well, that’s it then. He’s lost them. Courtesy of Paul Wong. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Video:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5400359n

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Text:
American Dad on Losing Kids, Japanese Jail
In an Exclusive Interview, Christopher Savoie Tells Story of Trying to Take Back His Kids with Police on His Heels
CBS News.com Oct. 20, 2009
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/20/earlyshow/main5400421.shtml

(CBS) The American father who tried to take his children back from his ex-wife in Japan said in an exclusive interview with Phil Williams, chief investigative reporter of CBS Nashville affiliate WTVF that he’s not only have trouble getting over what he endured in Japan — he’s also now having to come to grips with the real possibility that he won’t be able to watch his own children grow up.

Christopher Savoie said the ordeal of more than two weeks in a Japanese jail was bad enough. But coming home without his children — Isaac, now 9, and Rebeccab 6 — was excruciating.

“There are no words for it, you know. There just aren’t any words for it,” he said.

Savoie, who’s from Nashville, made international news when he picked up his kids as they walked to school with their mother.

He says his ex-wife, Noriko Savoie, had abducted the children to Japan in August — and Tennessee courts gave him full custody. But Japan doesn’t honor foreign custody agreements, so Chris took matters in his own hands.

Savoie told Williams the physical act of taking his children from their mother wasn’t aggressive, saying, “Oh, no, hugging your kids and putting them in a car, I hardly think that is a violent act.”

Savoie added he didn’t push or hit his ex-wife when he took the children.

Finally reunited with them, Savoie raced to the nearby U.S. consulate. Savoie said the consulate knew they were coming, because he called ahead.

However, Savoie’s plans for returning his children were thwarted by his ex-wife, who had alerted local police. They were waiting outside the Consulate.

With Rebecca in his arms and Isaac trailing behind, Savoie said he tried to race past a police barricade, to get the children to U.S. soil. Savoie said he ran to the door with police in riot gear running after him with shields and batons.

“It felt like a movie, actually,” Savoie said. “It was very unreal for me.”

Japanese police arrested him and, for 17 days, held him in jail, repeatedly interrogating him, while they decided whether to indict him on kidnapping charges.

Savoie said, “Everything that you’re not supposed to do to a defendant, especially pre-indictment, they did — and a whole lot more.”

While imprisioned, Savoie said he argued that he had a right to his children.

“They didn’t disagree with me on that,” he said. “They just said I’m not allowed to see them.”

Then, last week prosecutors let Savoie go, with the stipulation that he leave the country and his kids.

“Basically, I’m not allowed to see them. I’m not allowed to call them,” Savoie told Williams. “I’m not even allowed to send them birthday presents.”

While Japanese authorities say he can pursue custody of his children through Japanese courts, Savoie knows the odds are against him. He said he just hopes the memory of the incident will let his children know he tried.

“They’re going to find out who their dad is, what he’s all about, and that he loves them,” he said. “And if loving my kids so much that I really want to be with them is a crime, then, well, I’m guilty. I’m guilty of loving my kids.”

Williams added on “The Early Show” that Savoie also said that, when he got to the onsulate gates, one official reached out to take his daughter. But for reasons he doesn’t understand, the gates never opened.
ENDS

Colin Jones in Japan Times: What the media attention from Savoie Child Abduction Case highlights

Posted on October 21, 2009October 21, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. People have asked what the Savoie Child Abduction Case actually brought to light. I’ll let lawyer Colin Jones explain that below. Again, whichever side of the custody battle you support, you have to give Christopher credit for bringing the international spotlight on one of Japan’s dirty little secrets. Excerpt follows. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

====================================

The Japan Times Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009
THE ZEIT GIST
Signing Hague treaty no cure-all for parental abduction scourge
‘Best interests of the bureaucracy’ standard applies in Japan
By COLIN P. A. JONES
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091020zg.html
Excerpt follows:

…Thus, the fact that police have recently started to arrest parents like Mr. Savoie despite the Japanese penal code remaining unchanged may simply reflect the police having decided that parental abduction is a problem they should do something about either in general, or in specific cases. Having made this decision, what the law actually says or is intended to address doesn’t really matter, so long as there is a vaguely drafted statute they can point to as justification.

A similar dynamic plays out in Japanese courts. In custody disputes, courts purport to apply a “best interests of the child” standard. Fortunately for the courts, this standard remains undefined by either statute or clearly announced judicial rules, meaning that judges are free to resolve cases in whatever way is most convenient for the court — which more often than not is the status quo, which they have little power to change. Thus, the real standard being applied is probably what is in the best interests of the court.

A similarly bureaucratic approach may also explain the apparent willingness of Japanese courts to cooperate with other bureaucracies such as police and prosecutors by ratifying seemingly novel applications of criminal law arrests and prosecutions that seem to stretch the law. In another parental abduction case earlier this decade a Dutch man was arrested for trying to leave Japan with his daughter. He was prosecuted for violating an obscure human trafficking statute and duly convicted. In rejecting his appeal, Japan’s Supreme Court noted that there is a high degree of unlawfulness in taking a child whose life is established in one country to another country, even if the person doing so is one of that child’s parents. Apparently, neither this statute nor this logic has ever been applied to any of the scores of cases of abduction to Japan.

My own view is that as a matter of law, Japan could start returning abducted children tomorrow without having signed the Hague Convention — just as children who have been abducted to countries like the United States or England have been returned to Japan notwithstanding the country’s nonsignatory status. Mr. Savoie’s case clearly demonstrates that it is not actually necessary to waste time and money in futile family court proceedings to get your child back: The police will do it for you if it is in their interests to arrest the abducting parent. The converse is that they may not do anything if it is not, and this is also why it is conceivable that Japan could sign the Hague Convention and immediately appear on the U.S. State Department’s list of noncompliant treaty partners.

Whatever the law says, it is very hard to imagine it being in the interests of the police and prosecutors to be seen taking crying half-Japanese children away from distraught Japanese mothers.

This is why the media attention is so important on this issue. Because law in Japan tends to serve the bureaucrats first and the people second, legislation and litigation may not lead to solutions if the bureaucrats are part of the problem. Thus, it will likely be criticism — relentless pressure and attention from both domestic and foreign sources — that will probably carry the day in Japan shedding its shameful status as an abduction haven. If so, it will be because the criticism risks damaging the authority of the bureaucrats by making them look bad…

Full article at:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091020zg.html
ENDS

Foreign Policy.com on Savoie Case: US Govt advised father Chris to get children to Fukuoka Consulate! Plus lots more media.

Posted on October 14, 2009October 14, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. I’m through giving opinions on the Savoie Child Abduction Case (see my final word on that here). However, there is plenty of press coming out related to this, and to the issue of Japan as safe haven for child abductions, that is worth your attention. We have to be grateful to the Savoie Case for bringing that to light. Pertinent articles follow (excerpts, then full text):

Particularly this bit from Foreign Policy.com, courtesy of Matt D:

Another significant article on the Savoie case:
The U.S. Japan child-custody spat
Link:
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/10/08/the_us_japan_child_custody_spat
Here’s something interesting:

“Even before Savoie traveled to Japan, he contacted the State Department’s Office for Citizen Services to ask for advice on how to get his children out of Japan. State Department officials advised Savoie that because a U.S. court had awarded him sole custody on Aug. 17, he could apply for new passports for the children if he could get them to the Fukuoka consulate.”

Well, that didn’t happen.

If true, this exposes a deeper grain of irresponsibility within the USG — advising its citizens one thing, and then washing their hands of it when they do precisely that.

The U.S. Japan child-custody spat

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/10/08/the_us_japan_child_custody_spat

Thu, 10/08/2009 – 12:04pm

While most recent news and commentary about Japan has understandably been focused on that country’s dramatic election results, the U.S. government has been quietly working on a parental-custody case that has become an irritant in the budding relationship between the new Japanese and American administrations.

State Department officials in Japan met yesterday with Christopher Savoie, an American citizen whose recent attempt to reassert custody of his children landed him in a Japanese prison under investigation for kidnapping.

The prospects are not good for Savoie. Local prosecutors in Fukuoka, the western Japanese prefecture where Savoie is being held, are nearing a deadline to decide what charges to bring against the Tennessee native, who traveled to Japan to take back the children his Japanese ex-wife Norikoabsconded with in August. He faces deportation at best, five years in a claustrophobic Japanese prison at worst, and the chances that the Japanese legal system will ever grant him rights to see, much less be a parent to, his 8-year-old son Isaac and 6-year-old daughter Rebecca are slim to none.

State Department officials have been intimately involved in the Savoie case, even before Savoie traveled to Japan, but their ability to sway local Japanese officials is negligible. They point to Japan’s cultural and legal aversion to cooperating at all on international child-abduction cases, while expressing very cautious hope that the new Japanese government might relax that country’s famously intransigent stance on such issues.

In interviews with The Cable, three State Department officials detailed the extensive set of interactions between the U.S. government and Savoie and the ongoing efforts to advocate for him and the dozens of other Americans fighting custody battles in Japan.

Savoie’s communication and coordination with State began shortly after Noriko left for Japan with the children on Aug. 13, never to return. A longtime former resident of Japan, he knew what he what was up against and tried to plan a trip to Japan and then return to the United States with the children.

Even before Savoie traveled to Japan, he contacted the State Department’s Office for Citizen Services to ask for advice on how to get his children out of Japan. State Department officials advised Savoie that because a U.S. court had awarded him sole custody on Aug. 17, he could apply for new passports for the children if he could get them to the Fukuoka consulate.

On Sept. 28, Savoie drove alongside his ex-wife and children while they were walking to school, forced the children into his car, and headed for the consulate. By the time he got there, his wife had alerted the local police, who arrested him on the spot and placed him under investigation for “kidnapping minors by force,” according to the officials.

U.S. consular officials met with Savoie the next day, gave him legal advice, and passed some messages back to his family in the States. Since then, State Department officials have brought up the Savoie case “at the highest levels” of their interactions with Japanese officials, including between the embassy in Tokyo and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, officials said, but to no avail.

In addition to working with Savoie’s Japanese and American lawyers, consular officials also approached Savoie’s ex-wife after yesterday’s meeting and asked for permission to visit the children to check on their welfare. She declined. The embassy plans to ask the Tokyo government to compel her to make the children available, officials said.

Multiple units within the State Department have some activity ongoing in the Savoie case, including the Office of Children’s Issues, the section of the Office of Citizen’s Services that overseas Asia cases, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, the consulate in Fukuoka, and even the East Asian and Pacific Bureau in Washington.

But since Japan is not a signatory to the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which would have given jurisdiction to the American court system, there is little the U.S. government can do.

“Japan stands alone as the only G-7 country that is not a signatory to the convention,” said one official, adding that even if the country had signed it, local laws in Japan would still have to be altered to allow implementation.

There are 82 outstanding child abduction cases in Japan, and U.S. officials are constantly trying to press the Japanese to change their approach. “Every time there is a meeting the issues get raised,” one official said.

U.S. Amb. John Roos told reporters last week, “This is an important disagreement between our two countries.”

But the State Department has said it is not aware of any case where the Japanese courts have returned a child abducted to Japan to the United States. And besides, Japanese cultural and legal norms often result in custody being assigned to one parent only, usually the mother.

But State Department officials point to an interview new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama gave in July, where he said he supports signing the convention and giving fathers visitation rights.

“That issue affects not just foreign national fathers, but Japanese fathers as well. I believe in this change,” Hatoyama said.

Back in Washington, New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith has called onHatoyama to follow through with this promise. Supporters of Savoy staged asmall protest at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on Monday.

The view from Foggy Bottom is one of very guarded optimism.

“We have received communications from the Japanese government through the embassy in Washington that they are seriously looking at it … we are very hopeful,” one official said, adding, “At this point it’s wait and see.”

ENDS

=================================

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/12/japan.savoie.custody.battle/index.html

Christopher Savoie is in jail in Japan after trying to get back his son, Isaac, and daughter, Rebecca.

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) — An American father jailed in Tokyo has been harshly treated in the Japanese prison system, his attorney said Monday

Attorney Jeremy Morley, in a statement released Monday, said Christopher Savoie — accused of trying to kidnap his children after his ex-wife took them to Japan — is being held without trial, interrogated without an attorney present and denied needed medical treatment for high blood pressure.

Savoie has also been exposed to sleep deprivation, and denied private meetings with attorneys and phone calls to his wife, according to Morley, who said the way his client has been treated amounts to “torture.” He acknowledged that some of the claims are based on second-hand information from Savoie’s wife, Amy, saying she has communicated with people familiar with her husband’s case.

Japanese officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Savoie, 38, a Tennessee native and naturalized Japanese citizen, allegedly abducted his two children — 8-year-old Isaac and 6-year-old Rebecca — as his ex-wife walked them to school on September 28 in a rural town in southern Japan.

With the children, Savoie headed for the nearest U.S. consulate, in the city of Fukuoka, to try to obtain passports for them. Screaming at guards to let him in the compound, Savoie was steps away from the front gate but still standing on Japanese soil when he was arrested.

Savoie and his first wife, Noriko Savoie, were married for 14 years before their bitter divorce in January. The couple, both citizens of the United States and Japan, lived in Japan, but had moved to the United States before the divorce.

Noriko Savoie was given custody of the children and agreed to remain in the United States. Christopher Savoie had visitation rights. During the summer, she fled with the children to Japan, according to court documents. A U.S. court then granted Christopher Savoie sole custody.

Japanese law, however, recognizes Noriko Savoie as the primary custodian, regardless of the U.S. court order. The law there also follows a tradition of sole-custody divorces. When a couple splits, one parent typically makes a complete and life-long break from the children.

Complicating the matter further is the fact that the couple is still considered married in Japan because they never divorced there, police said Wednesday. And, Japanese authorities say, the children are Japanese and have Japanese passports.

ENDS

=======================================

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/13/japan.us.custody.battles

By Kyung Lah
CNN

U.S. divorcee’s Japanese custody heartache

OKAZAKI, Japan (CNN) — At Spencer Morrey’s home, there are two constant sounds: His dad, Craig, murmuring, “You’re okay, Spence. You’re okay, buddy,” and the sound of a machine clearing the toddler’s airway.

Both sounds come every few minutes, in between hugs, tears and kisses.

Spencer has severe cerebral palsy and requires constant, 24-hour medical care.

In Japan, a country that lacks sufficient medical services for disabled children, the only person to care for Spencer is his father. Morrey says his wife left, overwhelmed by the strain of their son’s medical condition.

That would be pain beyond what most parents could imagine. But Spencer’s mother fled while pregnant with Morrey’s daughter, Amelia. In more than a year, Morrey says he has only seen his daughter four times.

“She wouldn’t recognize me,” Morrey said, with Spencer propped on his lap. “She wouldn’t call me daddy. She’s just starting to talk now. But she’s not going to know who I am. I think she deserves my love. And I think she deserves to be with Spencer and Spencer deserves to be with her.”

Morrey, a native of Chicago and a U.S. citizen, was married to a Japanese woman with Brazilian citizenship. They divorced in a Japanese court.

Under U.S. law, Morrey would likely have joint custody of both children, and Brazil has already recognized him as the joint custodian of the children. What do you think about Spencer’s case? Have your say

But in Japan, where only one parent gets custody of a child in a divorce, the family courts have left the case in legal limbo for a year because they have not decided which parent legally has custody of the children. Typically, the parent with physical custody of a child retains custody.

Morrey has stayed in Japan the last year, trying to get the courts to recognize that he has joint custody of the children in Brazil (he has not yet applied for such custody under U.S. law).

He is afraid that if he heads home for the U.S. with Spencer without that, he could be subject to international child abduction laws, and he also fears such a move could hurt his chances of getting the Japanese family court to give him joint custody of his daughter.

Morrey has been forced to quit work to care for Spencer. The financial strain of living off his credit cards is adding to the stress of caring for a disabled child alone in a foreign country.

Despite his pleading with court mediators and repeated court filings claiming that joint custody is the law in both the U.S. and Brazil, Japan’s slow and antiquated family courts have let the case languish.

“Kids need both parents,” Morrey said. “Whether the parents are married or not is irrelevant in my mind. The Japanese courts, and I realize you’re going against years and years of cultural differences and everything else, but they don’t care about the welfare of the child.

“In Japan, it’s considered too messy. It’s too complicated. It deals with personal feelings so they don’t want to deal with it. So the best way is to not deal with it.”

CNN contacted Morrey’s ex-wife four times by telephone and once by fax. She declined to discuss the case.

The International Association for Parent and Child Reunion believes there are an estimated 100 American families in situations like Morrey’s in Japan and dozens involving those from Britain, France and Canada.

One of those cases is that of American Christopher Savoie.

Savoie, 38, a Tennessee native and naturalized Japanese citizen, was arrested on September 28 in Yanagawa, Japan, for attempting to abduct his two children, eight-year-old Isaac and six-year-old Rebecca.

Savoie drove his children to the nearest U.S. consulate in the city of Fukuoka to try and obtain passports for them.

Steps away from the front of the consulate, Japanese police arrested him. Savoie is now in jail, awaiting a decision by prosecutors on a possible indictment.

Savoie and his first wife, Noriko Savoie, were married for 14 years before their bitter divorce in January. According to court documents, she fled with the children to Japan in the summer. A U.S. court then gave Christopher Savoie sole custody of the children.

But Japanese law recognizes Noriko Savoie as the sole custodian, despite the U.S. order.

“It’s like a black hole,” Morrey said. “If you go through a divorce, there’s this joke. If you have an international marriage with a Japanese, don’t piss them off because you’ll never see your kids again.”

Not seeing his daughter Amelia again is what is keeping Morrey in Japan. He has been selling off everything he owns, trying to keep himself and Spencer afloat, hoping the Japanese court will bring him some legal connection to his child. He is stuck choosing between caring for his son, who needs the better resources of the U.S., and hoping to be a father to his daughter.

“How do you make that choice? It’s not — once you’re a dad, you’re always a dad.”

ENDS

================================

Custody extended for US man for snatching own kids

By MARI YAMAGUCHI (AP) – October 10, 2009

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i1wNIMvNzJOj4tJ3S-nfVaZ6lCGAD9B7NH1O7

TOKYO — Japanese police said Friday that they are keeping an American man in custody for 10 more days before authorities decide whether to press charges against him for snatching his children from his ex-wife.

Christopher Savoie, of Franklin, Tenn., was arrested Sept. 28 after allegedly grabbing his two children, ages 8 and 6, from his Japanese ex-wife as they walked to school. He will remain held in city of Yanagawa where he was arrested, on the southern island of Kyushu, police official Kiyonori Tanaka said.

Savoie’s Japanese lawyer, Tadashi Yoshino, was not immediately available for comment.

“Obviously it’s a huge disappointment,” Savoie’s current wife, Amy Savoie, told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “It’s a court system over there unlike what we have here, there’s no due process at all.”

Amy Savoie, who remains in Tennessee, said she considers the extra jail time to be a delay tactic on the part of Japanese authorities.

“They enable the children to reside with the Japanese native as long as possible, so they can say ‘Well, the children are here now and they have adjusted, so it would be disruptive to return them,'” she said. “So this is a delay tactic in order to keep the children in that country.”

The case is among a growing number of international custody disputes in Japan, which allows only one parent to be a custodian — almost always the mother. That leaves many divorced fathers without access to their children until they are grown up.

That stance has begun to raise concern abroad, following a recent spate of incidents involving Japanese mothers bringing their children back to their native land and refusing to let their foreign ex-husbands visit them.

The United States, Canada, Britain and France have urged Japan to sign the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction. The convention, signed by 80 countries, seeks to ensure that custody decisions are made by the appropriate courts and that the rights of access of both parents are protected.

Tokyo has argued that signing the convention may not protect Japanese women and their children from abusive foreign husbands, but this week Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said officials were reviewing the matter.

Tanaka said that Savoie’s Japanese ex-wife, Noriko Savoie, is staying with her Japanese parents in Yanagawa with the children, but they have refused to talk to the media.

The family lived in Japan beginning in 2001 and moved to the U.S. in 2008. The couple was divorced in Tennessee in January 2009. In August, Noriko secretly brought the children to Japan.

Savoie could face up to five years in prison if convicted of the crime of kidnapping minors. Tanaka said Savoie has told investigators that he was aware what he did was in violation to Japanese law.

U.S. Consulate spokeswoman Tracy Taylor said Thursday that American officials have visited Savoie regularly since his arrest, and that he appeared “OK physically.”

Amy Savoie said she’s only been able to communicate with her husband through letters and U.S. consular officials, but that she has resisted the urge to go to Japan.

“I’ve thought about going, but I think right now I can do more good here,” she said. “The story is not just about Christopher. There are other families contacting me stating that Japan has treated them horrifically, too.”

Associated Press Writer Erik Schelzig contributed to this report from Nashville, Tenn.

ENDS

=================================

米から子どもと帰国の元妻「ベビーシッター扱い受けた」

朝日新聞　2009年10月9日3時16分

http://www.asahi.com/national/update/1009/SEB200910080034.html

日本人の元妻が米国から連れ帰った２人の子どもを無理やり連れ去ったとして、米国人の男が福岡県警に逮捕された事件で、元妻が県警の調べに「（男に）ベビーシッターのような扱いを受けた」などと話していることが、捜査関係者への取材でわかった。一方、米国では、子どもを勝手に日本に連れ帰った元妻に対する批判が強い。逮捕された男も取材に対し、「親が自分の子に会うことに刑法がかかわるのは違和感がある」などと正当性を主張。お互いに譲らない。

捜査関係者によると、元妻は離婚や子どもと帰国した経緯を説明する中で、男の態度に不満があったという趣旨の話をしているという。「離婚後の財産分与でも財産を隠された」とも話しているらしい。

一方、逮捕された男は８日、柳川署で朝日新聞記者との接見に応じ、「元妻が連れ去った自分の子どもを連れ帰ろうとした。その因果関係がなければ僕はここにはいない」と述べた。今年１月の離婚後、子どもは元妻と一緒に米国の男の自宅近くで住むことで合意していた点について「元妻は自分の意思で（子どもと米国に住むことを）決めたはず。決めた通りに戻してほしい」とも語った。

関係者らによると、夫婦は９５年に米国で結婚。その後、日本での生活を経て、男は日本国籍を取得したが、０８年６月に家族で渡米。離婚後、男は別の女性と再婚。元妻が８月に子どもと帰国し、男は９月、福岡県柳川市内で登校中の子ども２人を連れ去ったとして未成年者略取容疑で逮捕された。（小浦雅和、小林豪）

ENDS

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Sources in this Story

EDITORIAL: Child abduction in Japan

American father mistreated in Japanese jail, attorney says

U.S. divorcee’s Japanese custody heartache

The U.S. Japan child-custody spat

U.S. divorcee’s Japanese custody heartache

米から子どもと帰国の元妻「ベビーシッター扱い受けた」