THE OTARU ONSENS LAWSUIT, TEN YEARS ON: Article for Japonesia Review

Posted on September 19, 2009September 21, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Hi Blog. Today is the tenth anniversary of our visit, on September 19, 1999, to “Japanese Only” Yunohana Onsen et al in Otaru, a life-changing event that to this day has not been fully resolved — mainly because we still don’t have a law against racial discrimination in Japan. This situation remains more than 13 years after Japan effecting of the UN Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, where it promised to take “all measures, including legislation” to effectively eliminate all forms of RD. And it deserves comment and reflection after years of protests, two books, countless articles, and successful lawsuits against the onsen (albeit not against the negligent City of Otaru).

I wrote this article by invitation for the Japonesia Review last January and submitted it in February. After more than seven months’ wait, I see no reason not to publish it here in advance on Debito.org on this auspicious occasion. Written in a simpler style for a non-native audience, there are some anachronisms within (such as regarding FRANCA’s founding). Enjoy.

My thoughts on this day are bittersweet. I know we did the right thing (as Olaf noted, when I called him today, people are still talking about the case), and we had a good outcome in court. But I judge things like this based upon whether or not they could ever happen again. The answer is, unfortunately, yes. After all, all Yunohana Onsen has to do is put up another “Japanese Only” sign and we’d have to take them to court all over again just to get it down. There is no law to stop it, nothing for authorities to enforce. Ten years later, it feels more overdue now than in 1999.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

ARTICLE BEGINS:

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

THE OTARU ONSENS LAWSUIT: TEN YEARS ON

What has and has not changed regarding human rights for Non-Japanese in Japan.

ARUDOU DEBITO

Photo Caption: The author in front of Yunohana Onsen, Otaru.

(Photo courtesy Shouya Grigg of Kookan.com)

For publication in Japonesia Review 2009, Submitted February 3, 2009 and still not published.

DRAFT ONE

PREFACE: BACKGROUND ON THE OTARU ONSENS CASE

On September 19, 1999, a group of seventeen people went to take a bath at a “super sento” (public bathhouse) named Yunohana Onsen (www.yunohana.org) in Otaru, Hokkaido. All seventeen were Japanese, except for three Caucasian males (including the author) from America and Germany, and one Chinese woman from Shanghai. She, like the non-Japanese (NJ) men, was married to a Japanese and came to Yunohana as an international family. We had heard over the Internet that Yunohana, Otaru’s largest bathhouse, was not only refusing entry to NJ, they were even openly displaying a “JAPANESE ONLY” sign on their front door in three languages (Japanese, English, and Russian).

Caption: Yunohana Onsen’s exclusionary sign, 1999

As soon as everyone had entered and bought tickets, we were told that the three Caucasian males in our group (your author included) were not allowed inside.

Consulting with the manager on duty, we heard Yunohana’s justification: Russian sailors (who at the time were frequent visitors to and traders with Otaru) had a history of not following bathhouse rules, therefore were not allowed in because they might cause trouble and inconvenience Japanese customers. When we made it clear that we were neither Russian sailors nor troublemakers, Yunohana said it did not matter: “Refusing only Russians would be discrimination. So we refuse all foreigners equally.”

All foreigners? All. “How about our Chinese friend you allowed in?” As soon as they realized their mistake, management showed her the door. We asked them further about their criteria for determining who was “Japanese”, since it was clear by this example that it was whether somebody looked “Asian” enough. So my wife at the time asked about our daughters, both of whom were born and raised in Japan, spoke Japanese as their first language, and have Japanese citizenship.

One looks more Asian, with black hair and brown eyes, while one looks more Western, with brown hair and bluish eyes. How would they be treated under Yunohana’s rules?

“The Japanese-looking one can come in. But the younger one who looks like a gaijin will be refused entry.”

This made it clear to everyone, nationwide, that “Japanese Only” signs and rules would affect Japanese citizens too.

TEN YEARS LATER: WHAT HAS CHANGED?

If you want to know more about what happened next in the Otaru Case, please read (in English or Japanese) Arudou Debito, “JAPANESE ONLY” — The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan[1] (Akashi Shoten Inc, 2003 and 2004, both books revised 2006). The books describe the worldwide debate on the issue; the months of extralegal efforts made to get “Japanese Only” signs down at Yunohana, at other onsens, in other business sectors, and in other cities around Japan; and the successful lawsuit filed against Yunohana Onsen and the City of Otaru that went all the way up to the Supreme Court.

September 19, 2009 marks ten years since we visited Yunohana. Here is a survey of how things have changed, or not changed, in the past decade regarding human rights for NJ in Japan:

1) A spread of “Japanese Only” signs and rules around Japan.[2]

A website devoted to businesses with exclusionary signs and rules called “The Rogues’ Gallery” (www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html), coordinated by the author, has collected photographic evidence on over 150 places, in 29 cities and towns across Japan, with “Japanese Only” signs and rules. Some places (such as Yuransen bathhouse in Wakkanai, Hokkaido, and bars in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture) directly copied the very substance and style of Otaru’s “Japanese Only” signs.

Bathhouse “Osupa”, Otaru, 2000. Hands holding up newspaper substantiating the date are the author’s.

Bar “Globe”, Misawa, Aomori Prefecture, 2002. Note capital “J”, small “o”, font style of “a”, and “y” with a tail.

The language of “Japanese Only” has clearly become established as a “meme” (learned cultural behavior), as a concise and comprehensive way of saying “stay out” to undesirable customers — who just happen to lack (or look like they lack) Japanese citizenship.[AD1]

Hotel “Tsubakuro”, Hyakunincho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 2003.

Internet café “Dragon BOZ”, Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, 2006.

B-Ball billiards hall, Uruma, Okinawa, 2006

Bar “Santa Monica”, Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture 2004. Manager confirming author’s Japanese passport before telling him to leave the premises, as the bar is “Japanese Only”.

Cause: Despite signing the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in 1995 (effected 1996), and despite Article 14 of the Japanese Constitution banning discrimination by “race, creed, sex, social status, or family origin”, Japan still has no law against discrimination by race. This means that if a “Japanese Only” sign goes up, there is no law in the Civil or Criminal Code for police or authorities to enforce, demanding that signs come down and rules change. To the present day, as in 1999, there are no legal means, outside of a courtroom, for people who are discriminated against to stop it.

Effect: If there are no means to stop this kind of discrimination, it spreads, because it is a “quick fix”. It is convenient for vigilantes (who dislike, fear, or do not want to be bothered with NJ) to put a sign barring them. A “Japanese Only” sign up in public lends legitimacy to the exclusion, and encourages copycatting. Numerous interviews carried out by the author of exclusionary establishments have demonstrated a theme of, “We’re not the only ones with the sign up, so why pick on us?” Like any “tipping point”, enough occurrences can lead to a threshold where isolated instances become legitimized by numbers and precedent, leading to an established practice. That is how discrimination spreads: strength in numbers.

2) The rubric of “Japanese Only” is still based upon physical appearance.

The author of this essay is a naturalized Japanese citizen. However, as the reader can see from his photo at the very beginning, a change of passport has not led to a change from Caucasian to Asian. In the majority of interviews I have had with exclusionary businesses, they have said that even after seeing proof of my Japanese citizenship (my passport or driver license), I would still be excluded from the premises. “You don’t look Japanese. It’ll cause misunderstandings,” was the standard reason.

Cause: Japan still makes a strong association with face/race and nationality, i.e. Japanese people look “Japanese”. Indubitably part of the reason is that Japanese society and media have had limited exposure to “non-Asian Japanese”, such as soccer star Ramos Rui, tarento Konda Bobbi (ne Bobby Ologun), and Dietmember Tsurunen Marutei, to name but a few. There has, however, been copious exposure to international Japanese children Miyazawa Rie, Umemiya Anna, Rebecca Eri RayVaughan (aka “Bekkii”), and also to naturalized citizens with more Asian faces like sumo wrestlers Konishiki and Akebono. However, it is unclear that the public eye has done a complete connect between “Japanese citizenship through roots” and “Japanese citizenship by legal application”, which would mean that “Japaneseness is a legal status”, not a blood status. Reinforcing this disconnect are Japan’s nationality laws, currently under consideration for revision, which explicitly say that Japanese status is something inherited. The laws are jus sanguinis, meaning you must have a Japanese blood relative in order to automatically get Japanese citizenship.

Effect: Many Japanese citizens who do not “look Japanese” will be treated as NJ — not only this author, but also many hundreds of thousands of children of international marriages. Japan’s international marriages are currently about 40,000 per year, up substantially from about 30,000 in 2000, and the number of “mixed children” born annually to be about 21,000[3]. Like the “tipping point” mentioned above that encourages the spread of “Japanese Only” signs, I anticipate that there will be a similar “tipping point” where people realize that racial admixtures are still Japanese. “Conditional Japanese” (as in “half”, “quarter”, “double”, “mix”) have been in the lexicon for quite some time. I think the qualifiers will fade as the numbers increase. Accepting naturalized “non-blood Japanese” will take longer. However, without laws against racial discrimination, one’s face will still not save many “people of mixture” from capricious or ignorant treatment as apparent NJ.

3) “Monocultural, monoethnic Japan” is officially no longer.

Japan’s public policy is also surprisingly exclusionary. Postwar Japan has had public speech at the highest levels (most famously former Prime Minister Nakasone in 1986) extolling “ethnic homogeneity” and “racial purity” as a strength. The Japanese government has repeatedly reported to the UN that the CERD treaty was not applicable to Japan. Japan apparently has no racial minorities (moreover that all people who were in fact racially different were not citizens, therefore also not covered)[4]. This is reinforced in public policymaking. When one reads white papers and laws, the rubric is that the policy is for the benefit of “citizens” (kokumin)[5], as opposed to “taxpayers” (nouzeisha) or “residents” (juumin). Thanks to the vagaries of the Residency Certificate (juuminhyou) system[6], NJ are still not officially listed or counted as “juumin“. Local governments (such as Tokyo Nerima-ku[7]) also do not include NJ in their tally of “residents”. Nor does the National Census (kokusei chousa) survey residents for ethnicity (minzoku) — only nationality (kokuseki). Nor does the Ministry of Health always include NJ (or even newly-naturalized citizens) in its tally of population growth or shrinkage: preferring to use a simple calculation of “births minus deaths”[8].

That said, in June 6, 2008, the Diet for the first time unanimously passed a resolution stating that the Ainu aboriginal people of Hokkaido were a “indigenous people with a distinct language, religion, and culture”. For the first time, Japan’s government did not ignore an ethnic minority in its public policy, and in fact had set up a government panel to study remedial actions.

Cause: It was good timing. As was discussed in this forum (Ota Masakuni, Japonesia Review No. 5, 2008), both the confluence of a UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review on Japan in May, and the Hokkaido G8 Summit (where Hokkaido minority issues were gaining attention and traction) in July that same year, contributed to a push the Fukuda Administration to offer this showcase for human rights. A multi-partisan “Concerned Diet Members’ Group for the Rights of the Ainu” spearheaded the drive.

Effect: On September 28, 2008, new Transport Minister Nakayama Nariaki resigned over various gaffes (including calling Nikkyouso schoolteacher union “a cancer”) that reflected older-school thinking: Speaking on behalf of Japan’s new tourism agency, he mentioned that Japan was “ethnically homogeneous” and in general “Japanese don’t like foreigners”. He was roundly criticized, notably by Social Democratic Party leader Fukushima Mizuho, who said, “Is he ignorant of a Diet resolution which all the members (of both houses of the Diet) supported?”[9] Thus began an ignominious start to the 2008 Aso Cabinet, which helped set the tone for the rest of his unpopular administration. This is the first time a resignation has resulted from a “homogeneous” remark, a far cry from the days of Nakasone.

That said, Ota notes that without a supplemental change in historical perspective in the Japanese public, the consequences for Ainu and other (unrecognized) minority rights may be “inconclusive” (the abovementioned government panel, after all, only has one Ainu member). Similarly, it is probably too early to draw conclusions or show undue pessimism at this time. Wait and see.

4) Japan’s economics and demographics are making immigration inevitable.

Japan is still the second-largest economy by GDP and by most measures larger than all other Asian economies combined. The current worldwide economic downturn notwithstanding, Japan has for three decades had a labor shortage. The government recognized this in 1990 and, at the behest of the industrial lobby, inaugurated a backdoor “Trainee”, “Researcher”, and “Returnee” (teijuusha for overseas Nikkei) working visa program. This regime brought over millions of cheap Asian and South American laborers, more than doubled the NJ population of 1990 from one million to two, and fundamentally shifted the top three NJ ethnicities from 1) Korea (North and South), 2) China, and 3) The Philippines[10] to 1) China, 2) Korea, and 3) Brazil. Industrial towns in Shizuoka, Gifu, and Aichi Prefectures showed NJ population percentages in the double digits, and for the first time mayors of these towns were demanding the national government secure equal rights and enhanced access to social services for their NJ residents[11]. NJ were coming to Japan, being welcomed, and put to work.

They were filling a gap. Thanks to the low birthrate and long life expectancies of the Japanese public, the UN and the Obuchi Administration in 2000 jointly recognized that the Japanese population was aging, and would decrease by the late 2000s if Japan did not import 600,000 NJ per annum[12]. Japan has, on average this decade, imported a net total of 50,000 NJ per annum. Sure enough, by 2007, Japan’s population was first officially announced as dropping. If trends continue, by 2050, according to Shuukan Ekonomisuto (January 15, 2008, pg 16), the percentage of Japanese over retirement age (65) is projected to be more than half of the entire population. Who will man the factories, pay in taxes, and maintain social security pension payments? NJ keep Japanese society young and the birthrate from falling further. The government is currently deliberating scrapping the current backdoor-labor visa regime, and establishing an official immigration policy.

EPILOGUE: TEN YEARS LATER, WHAT HAPPENED IN THE OTARU ONSENS CASE?

The author and two other plaintiffs sued both Yunohana Onsen and the City of Otaru for racial discrimination and negligence under the CERD. Yunohana lost both in Sapporo District and High Court, and was ordered to pay plaintiffs one million yen each for “unrational discrimination”. The City of Otaru won in Sapporo District Court, High Court, and the Supreme Court; the District and High Courts grounded their arguments in “separation of powers” arguments (as in, the judiciary cannot force a government body to pass laws against discrimination, and cannot hold one accountable for not doing so). The Supreme Court ruled that this contravention of Article 14 was “not a Constitutional issue”[13].

Yunohana Onsen took their “Japanese Only” sign down shortly before the lawsuit began, but never apologized for its action. It took advantage of the publicity from the lawsuit to open new branches. Yunohana is now a chain with outlets in Otaru Temiya, Otaru Asari, Sapporo Jozankei, and Ebetsu. Other places and business sectors around Hokkaido and Japan still have their “Japanese Only” signs up.

The Japanese government made it clear to the UN again in March 2008 that it has no intention of creating a law against racial discrimination, reiterating that it has an active judiciary for grievances, therefore no laws are necessary. It stressed in the indicatively-named “Third, fourth, fifth, and sixth combined periodic report to the UN HRC”[14] that it had taken “every conceivable measure to fight against racial discrimination” (begging the question why passing a law is “inconceivable”). Several draft bills have been submitted to the Diet and to the Otaru City Government, but all have died in deliberation.

Author and plaintiff Arudou Debito still works as a university educator at Hokkaido Information University in Ebetsu. Author of two books on the Otaru Onsens Case, Arudou, 44, has recently co-authored another book to help NJ make more secure lives in Japan: Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants to Japan (Akashi Shoten Inc. 2008, English and Japanese). He also is setting up an NPO called FRANCA[15] to better lobby for rights of NJ in the political sphere. He sees the Ebetsu branch of Yunohana every day on his drive to work.

ENDS

2600 WORDS

[1] www.debito.org/japaneseonly.html

[2] More information on this in Japanese in「『外国人』入店禁止という人種差別」（有道　出人　著）、単行本『日本の民族差別人種差別撤廃条約からみた課題）』p２１８ー２２９、岡本雅享先生監修・編著、明石書店（株）２００５年６月出版

[3] “Japanese youth help compatriots embrace diversity”, Christian Science Monitor, January 18, 2008, www.debito.org/?p=933

[4] The text of the debate between Japan and the United Nations may be found at www.debito.org/japanvsun.html

[5] See example at “Forensic Science Fiction: Bad science and racism underpin police policy.” Japan Times, January 13, 2004, at www.debito.org/japantimes011304.html, particularly sidebar at bottom.

[6] www.debito.org/activistspage.html#juuminhyou

[7] www.debito.org/?p=1972

[8] “Japan sees biggest population fall”, Associated Press, printed in the Manchester Guardian, January 2, 2009, www.debito.org/?p=2117

[9] www.debito.org/index.php/?s=Ainu+resolution+June

[10] www.stat.go.jp/data/chouki/02.htm

[11] See for example the Hamamatsu Sengen at www.debito.org/hamamatsusengen.html

[12] Arudou, Debito, “The Coming Internationalization: Can Japan assimilate its immigrants”. Japan Focus, January 12, 2006, www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2078

[13] www.debito.org/otarulawsuit.html

[14] www.debito.org/?p=1927

[15] www.francajapan.org

[AD1]To Hikaru: Play with the layout and put these signs around the article as you like. More at www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html

American journo banned from “Japanese Only” Toyota press conference — in America!

Posted on September 14, 2009September 14, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Here’s something discussed in Ivan Hall’s seminal CARTELS OF THE MIND and other sources, such as Laurie Freeman’s JPRI article on Japan’s Press Clubs (kisha kurabu, i.e. media cartels). It hasn’t changed since the publication of these works. Problem is, the case discussed below isn’t a Japan Press Club. It’s a Japanese company denying access to local-area journalists IN AMERICA, despite both local ethics and corporate promises to the contrary. In other words, it’s Japan’s Press Clubs exported. Read on. Arudou Debito in Tokyo

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Toyota stops American from attending exec’s press conference in America

Former FCCJ President Jim Treece gets the cold shoulder from the PR department of Japan’s automotive giant.

http://www.fccj.or.jp/node/4896

by Jim Treece, courtesy of JCH.

Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan website, Sept 9, 2009

I thought my days of battling kisha clubs were over.

Nope. There I was, arguing that I, an American, should be allowed into a Japanese-only press conference. In Traverse City, Michigan, USA.

I was being excluded not by a kisha club, but by Toyota Motor’s PR staff.

The main speaker at an August automotive conference in Traverse City was Toyota

President Akio Toyoda. He did not meet the media. Instead, after Toyoda’s speech, Toyota Motor Sales USA boss Jim Lentz held a press briefing.

A large number of Japanese reporters showed up in Traverse City. I soon learned that Lentz’ boss, Yoshimi Inaba, would give a separate briefing for the Japanese press. I asked to attend, since I speak Japanese. They said no.

“This stinks,” I e-mailed Toyota USA’s top PR man, Irv Miller.

“I have attended sessions of the kisha club at the Ministry of Infrastructure, Land and Transportation. I have gone on overseas trips with Japanese media from the Jidosha Kisha Club where all events were conducted solely in Japanese. Why am I being kept out of an event in the United States where the only real restriction should be language, not nationality?”

His Blackberry reply: “You are not barred from Mr. Inaba’s press interview you ARE invited to Mr. Lentz’s press interview.”

Well, if I’m not barred, then I might as well walk into the room before it began, I decided. Toyota PR staffers double-teamed me to make sure I didn’t get past the doorway.

“You are not invited. It’s our press conference and we chose to invite only the Japanese media,” lead flack Hashimoto said.

Automotive News attended a media roundtable with Inaba in Detroit a week ago, an American staffer added. Yes, I said, but that was a week ago. There has been news since then. I want to hear what Inaba tells the Japanese media. The Q&A will be different from Lentz’s, I said.

They kept saying they wanted Japanese media only. “Who is ‘they?’” I asked. The Toyota PR department, they replied. Who? Finally, Mr. Hashimoto said, “Me.”

Why, I asked.

“You’re American media and I’m not in charge of American media,” he said. At the Detroit auto show, he argued, you have German media press conferences where the Swedish or Japanese media are not invited.

But those are based on language, I said. I’ve attended Japanese-language press conferences at the Detroit auto show, and at the Tokyo and Bangkok motor shows.

There’s not enough room, he said. They had a dozen chairs and a table in a room easily large enough for 40 people. I suggested they could fit in another chair.

But if you come in, all the American media will want to attend, he said. No, I said, just say it’s going to be done in Japanese with no translation. Only those who can handle that will come.

Hashimoto offered me a deal. He would let me come in, as long as I didn’t tell any other American media that I had attended. That was unacceptable. I would not be able to report anything. Then Miller stepped in.

He repeated the we-can’t-let-everyone-in line, then switched to the offensive. “I take exception to the fact that you do not value your invitation to Mr. Lentz’ press conference,” he said. Trying not to roll my eyes, I said I did value that invitation. I had assigned another reporter to cover that press conference.

He kept me cornered and talking in the hallway. Inaba passed by, and briefly paused and looked at us. I was about to greet him – I had interviewed him one-on-one two or three times in Japan – but Hashimoto hurried him along. With him in the room and the door shut, Miller left me for the room where Lentz would speak. Kicking myself for not just sitting in a chair and daring them to throw me out bodily – hey, it worked at the Prime Minister’s office – I headed back to the media room and wrote up a straightforward account of Toyoda’s speech.

Later, a Japanese reporter came up and asked for clarification about comments Ron Bloom had made. Bloom, head of President Obama’s autos task force, had originally been scheduled to hold a press briefing for a small group of reporters, but as word of the briefing leaked out, it was opened to all reporters at the conference. The Japanese reporters also attended.

Toyota’s PR staffers kept me out because they could not think outside of their organization-chart boxes. Hashimoto was Inaba’s handler, so he would only let in the reporters he deals with. Opening the briefing to all Japanese-speaking media would have required a willingness to rethink the way they worked. Akio Toyoda’s speech had urged the auto industry to do just that.

Too bad his PR staff wasn’t listening. ❶

ENDS

Another way of stealing children in J marriages: legal adoption

Posted on September 6, 2009September 22, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Let’s start inching back towards business as I stay in areas with better internet access. For some reason the most popular article on the JT this morning is one nearly a decade old, one about another loophole in Japanese marriage laws — legal adoption of the children by the grandparents.

Not the first time I’ve heard of this (I had a friend whom this happened to as well), and it’s definitely not limited to J-NJ marriages, but it’s one more cautionary tale about how the lack of strong family law, coupled with the Koseki system and easy inkan fraud, leads to parents being denied access (or even legal ties to) to their kids in Japan.

What makes this an NJ issue is that many don’t know the system, or get taken advantage of more easily than native speakers. And then many spend years stringing along in Japan just trying to see their kids. The information is no less poignant today. Excerpt follows. Arudou Debito in Nagoya

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The Japan Times, Sunday, Feb. 6, 2000
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20000206a1.html
The best parents are both parents
By ANGELA JEFFS
Sunday, Feb. 6, 2000

… Then came the even more alarming matter of the “hanko.”

“My name seal — a present from my father-in-law after Graham’s birth — disappeared,” Thomas recalled. “When it reappeared on my desk, there was a stamped document alongside. My wife said it was a sample adoption paper; her parents had often talked about adopting Graham for tax inheritance purposes. In fact it was the real thing. Graham had been stolen from me behind my back.”

In November 1992, Thomas came home from work to find his wife had taken Graham and moved in with her sister. At a meeting with the family’s lawyer, the adoption certificate was proclaimed legally binding. “Under Japanese law, I no longer had a son.”

Thomas hired a lawyer, who worked out an access agreement. Initially this was honored, but returning one night (he was still living in the marital home), he found padlocks and barbed wire in place. Breaking in (“I was too angry to consider repercussions”), he discovered all his possessions had gone. Services were disconnected one by one. Eventually he was barred entry by a “heavy.”

Initially Thomas moved around Tokyo, sleeping on friends’ floors, spending savings and any income earned from teaching on fighting for justice…

Rest at http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20000206a1.html

Sports drink uses katakana- and KANJI speaking alien: Contrast with McDonald’s “Mr James” katakana-only character

Posted on September 1, 2009September 1, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Saw something surprising on the road down in southernmost Shikoku today:

At a convenience store (Lawsons), we have a sports drink company which uses an alien character to promote its products. Visual:

(ad tab borrowed from Lawsons Shimanto City, Kochi-ken, September 1, 2009)

Note that like McDonald’s Japan “Mr James” Character, he too speaks katakana.

But UNlike “Mr James”, even the space alien speaks kanji!

Somebody please explain to me again why space aliens but not Caucasians are allowed to speak in more natural Japanese? We can’t use the “island society” mentality against fellow humans in favor of extraterrestrials, can we?

Is there a backstory where this space alien came here with his daughter many years ago, and enjoyed the space drinks to the degree where he returned to shill?

Or is it just anti-Caucasian “Karma”?

Either way, this helps to show just how alienating this “Mr James” campaign actually is.

Arudou Debito in Shikoku

Japan Times: Parties split on issues of NJ PR suffrage

Posted on August 23, 2009August 23, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

More good coverage on issues that matter to the NJ community by the Japan Times: Where the parties stand on one of the most fundamental rights that can be granted to anyone: the right to vote. Including those NJ who were born and raised here. This issue is quite unnecessary (given that even talking about immigration in public is taboo), yet Hatoyama is making an issue of it. Good. Again, this election could change everything. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

=================================
The Japan Times Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009
Parties split on foreigner suffrage
By MASAMI ITO Staff writer
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090818a1.html

Prime Minister Taro Aso and Democratic Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama displayed clear differences Monday in their parties’ positions on whether to allow foreigners with permanent residency to vote in local races.

During an open debate hosted by the Japan National Press Club in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, Aso said his Liberal Democratic Party does not favor immediately giving foreigners local-level suffrage.

“(Foreigners’) right to vote is a big issue and we are not fully in agreement with those who are calling for granting suffrage (to foreigners) immediately,” Aso said, refusing to elaborate.

But Hatoyama said it is now time to consider granting foreigners voting rights at the local level.

“There are pros and cons and the DPJ is in the process of unifying its opinion right now,” Hatoyama said. “But considering the future, I think that the time has come to take a positive step.”

Whether to grant foreigners suffrage has become a contentious issue in the political world. While the conservative ranks of the LDP are strongly opposed, its coalition partner New Komeito is actively promoting this right.

Kokumin Shinto (People’s New Party), which is expected to join hands with the DPJ if the main opposition party ousts the LDP-New Komeito coalition Aug. 30, has sided with the LDP view on this issue.

“Giving foreigners local-level suffrage is a major issue that could shake the existence of the nation, and we are against it,” said Kokumin Shinto leader Tamisuke Watanuki, a veteran lawmaker who used to belong to the LDP.

Foreign nationals currently do not have the right to vote, and permanent foreign residents, especially Korean descendants of those who lived in Japan before and during the war and were forced to take Japanese citizenship at that time, have been fighting for local-level suffrage.

According to the Justice Ministry’s Immigration Bureau, there were more than 910,000 foreign nationals registered as permanent residents at the end of 2008.

ENDS

BBC: British furniture store puts up “no foreign students” sign (parallels with Otaru Onsens Case)

Posted on August 6, 2009August 6, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. The parallels with the Otaru Exclusionary Onsens Case are pretty straight, so let’s keep an eye on this one. Will be interesting to see how the British authorities treat this case. I have a feeling the government will demand they take the sign down, and if not threaten with criminal procedure. The article suggests as much. That is, however, where the parallels end. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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

Foreign students banned from shop
BBC News Monday, 3 August 2009 20:36 UK, courtesy of MMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/sussex/8182558.stm

A notice on the door of Perfect Homes bans foreign students from entering
Polite notice
A furniture shop in a south coast town has banned foreign students who it says take their fast food into the store to eat on the sofas and coffee tables.

Chris Moffet, manager of Perfect Homes in Eastbourne, said he put up a sign barring foreign students after his stock was damaged.

Solicitor Paul Gilbert said the store could be leaving itself open to prosecution under race relations laws.

But Mr Moffet said: “I am not prepared to have damage done to my products.”

Rubbish on floor
A “polite notice” on the shop doorway asks foreign students not to enter because of the actions of a small number.

Mr Moffet said students spilt drinks on the tables and left rubbish on the floor.

Eastbourne has 25 language schools, with 25,000 foreign students visiting the town every year and contributing some £12m to its economy.

Students interviewed by BBC South East said they did go into shops to eat, but Jergen Matthes, owner of one of the language schools, said he did not believe students would behave in such a way.

“They will go to sports shops and internet cafes and spend hours and hours there, where they are welcome because they are spending money,” he said.

“But a furniture shop is not an attraction for students anywhere in the world that I know.”

Mr Gilbert said there was no limit on the amount of compensation that could be awarded against the shop by a court if a successful prosecution ever took place.

ENDS

Kyodo & JT: Osaka JH school reluctantly takes preteen NJ kid despite teacher opposition!

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

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. This article has made a few waves. Read and then I’ll comment:

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

Foreign schoolgirl’s admittance delayed due to teachers’ opposition

Kyodo News/Japan Today Tuesday 28th July, 02:35 PM JST.

Courtesy lots of people. A more concise version in the Japan Times July 30

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/foreign-schoolgirls-admittance-delayed-due-to-teachers-opposition

OSAKA —
A 12-year-old girl from a Southeast Asian nation ran into problems earlier this year in trying to attend a public junior high school in Osaka due to opposition from some teachers who resisted her enrollment, the Osaka municipal board of education said Tuesday. She was ultimately enrolled in the school’s first-year level on July 1, a month after she applied for admission.

The girl, accompanied by her parents, visited the school in the city of Osaka on June 1 to say she wanted to be enrolled, but the school, whose name has been withheld, advised the girl to attend the sixth grade in elementary school, citing her inability to speak Japanese, board officials said.

On June 17, the parents again tried to enroll her in the junior high school, but several teachers expressed opposition at a faculty meeting, saying she should go to a different school and that their school could not make adequate preparations to accept her, the officials said.

The junior high school, acting on an instruction from the municipal board of education, finally gave an application form to the parents on June 24.

The girl was admitted to the school on July 1, but she could not attend any classes for the first 10 days, they said.

The municipal board of education said it is impermissible to reject a foreign student at a public school, noting that the school in question should have the girl receive lessons at a Japanese language school or depend on an interpreter.

ENDS

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

COMMENT: How nice. A NJ kid tries to get an education and these teachers try to fob her off on another school (as if that changes the circumstances), claiming… well, let’s come up with something. Oh, I know. A language barrier! We all know how difficult Japanese is for foreigners, and it requires that we be somehow certified in Japanese language training from the MOE to teach them! (Even though kids, as we all know and gnash our teeth about, soak up languages like a sponge; she’ll adapt, wouldn’t you think?)

It’s times like these I wish we had a Hippocratic Oath for teachers too (not that it always binds Japanese doctors dealing with NJ patients). For don’t these teachers feel any obligation to teach children regardless of background? No, I guess not. Compulsory education is only compulsory for citizens. Not foreigners.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard about schools refusing NJ children, either. Check out this report I released April 13, 2000 (almost ten years ago; I’ve been doing these things that long now), and witness the excuses made for local Hokkaido schools refusing children of missionaries (who were even born in Japan and speak Japanese):

1) REPORT: DAVE AND OLAF’S TRIP TO RUMOI AND WAKKANAI:
Olaf Karthaus and Dave Aldwinckle confirm claims that policies excluding non-Japanese have gone beyond both Otaru as a place and the onsens as an industry. A fact-finding mission last weekend to Wakkanai found that not only does a bathhouse there deny entry to foreigners, but so does a sports shop and a barber. Longtime non-Japanese residents of Wakkanai also assert that the situation has worsened over the past few years, alleging that even Japanese public high schools hesitate or refuse missionary children due to “a lack of facilities” and “too much work for teachers”.

https://www.debito.org/onsennyuuyokutimes041300.html

(Page down to section entitled ALLEGED EXCLUSION FROM EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES
ACCORDING TO MISSIONARIES JOHN AND RUTHANNA MATHER)

I’d give this Osaka school a coveted Debito.org Dejima Award (reserved for only the most stupid of the stupid when it comes to exclusionists). But the article decided not to tell us the school’s name. Accountability, anyone? Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Update: Ibaraki Police’s third new NJ-scare poster

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. The Ibaraki Police are at it again. JR Mito Station, July 18, 2009, courtesy of AM:

Yep, that’s another one of those police posters up in a public place explicitly making the case that Japan’s shores have to be defended from foreigners, and calling for public assistance to help the armed police surround and subdue them.

Again, it’s the third poster in as many years. Despite the addition of the red, it’s arguably more subdued than last year’s (click to expand in your browser), where they bore automatic weapons and did Normandy Beach maneuvers:

Or the original and classic from two years ago:

More on these classics at https://www.debito.org/?p=2057.

But the question still remains. Where’s the budget for these redesigns coming from? And why does Ibaraki think it’s specially prone to invasion? It’s not like it’s the only prefecture with a coast (almost all prefectures have one — in fact, pop quiz: name the landlocked prefectures; don’t cheat and look at a map). It’s not even facing the usual suspects for invasion China or North Korea (I shudder to think what posters might go up in Fukui or Ishikawa; any Sea of Japan siders out there?). Even Otaru and other Hokkaido seaports with all their Russian sailor issues didn’t have officially-sponsored police posters like these (naw, they just had exclusionary signs from local-business vigilantes; way better. /sarcasm). So many mysteries created by our vigilant boys in blue, in this case garnished with black riot gear.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

IHT/Asahi on Japan’s reticence to sign Hague Treaty on Child Abduction

Posted on July 17, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

twitter: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. Follow-up to the biased coverage by NHK two days ago on this issue of international divorces, we have the Japanese media once again quoting crank lawyer Ohnuki, depicting Japanese divorcees as refugees of violent NJ spouses. “Abductions”, of course, gets rendered in tentative “quotes”, and also you see how Japanese spouses have their cake and eat it too, with an example of the British legal system returning a child to the J side. Japan hasn’t signed the Hague Convention on Child Abductions yet, and why should it increase expectations of international cooperation by doing so?

I’ll say it:

The GOJ doesn’t want to cooperate with these international treaties because we have enough trouble getting Japanese to have babies. We don’t want to surrender them to NJ overseas. I have heard that theory off the record from an international lawyer quoting somebody in the ministries.

And I bet that even if Japan signs the Hague, it won’t enforce it (similar in the ways it will not enforce the CCPR or the CERD treaties). Why would the GOJ ever give more power over custody to NJ than it would its own citizens, who can already abduct and shut out one parent after divorce thanks in part to the koseki system? Arudou Debito in Sapporo

=============================
Tokyo in bind over treaty on child abduction
BY MIYUKI INOUE AND SATOSHI UKAI
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN 2009/7/16
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200907160027.html
Courtesy of Paul Wong

Broken international marriages involving Japanese in which one parent takes offspring overseas without the other’s consent are on the rise, putting the government in a bind about how to deal with such cases.

The question is whether Japan should be a party to an international treaty aimed at settling such parental “abduction” disputes across national borders.

Tokyo is under pressure–from within and from outside–to join the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction of 1980, which now has 81 parties.

The rise in cases involving Japanese parents as “abductors” has led to stepped-up calls from countries in North America and Europe for Tokyo’s accession.

Some divorced parents say their children would not have been taken overseas by their ex-spouses had Japan ratified the treaty; or it would have been much easier to have them returned.

Opponents, however, say Japan’s ratification would make it difficult for victims of domestic violence to flee with children.

There are also cultural and systematic factors to consider, given that under Japanese law only one parent is granted custody of offspring after a divorce.

The convention, which went into force in 1983, requires a child to be promptly returned to the country of their habitual residence.

It also requests contracting parties to take “all appropriate measures” to expedite the return of a child.

Senior officials and diplomats of the United States, Britain, France and Canada held a news conference in Tokyo in May to press Japan to join the treaty.

They said if children of broken marriages are taken to Japan, a non-party nation, there is “little realistic hope” of having them returned.

According to embassies here, there have been 73 child abductions by Japanese parents from the United States, 36 from Britain and 33 each from Canada and France. [NB: Time period not indicated.]

Kurt Campbell, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs who is visiting Japan from today, told a Senate committee in June that he would raise this issue in his first meeting with Japanese officials.

As it stands, the Foreign Ministry can only serve as “liaison” when it receives an inquiry from other countries.

The government has said it “is seriously considering” accession as it would help Japanese parents retrieve children from their ex-spouses.

A 40-year-old self-employed Japanese woman who faced difficulty regaining custody of her children said Japan should join. In 2007, her British husband went on a “trip” to Britain with the children, aged 5 and 9, and then told her they would never return. Communications were severed.

It took a month and a British lawyer’s services before she located the children at a school near London.

She finally got them back after a divorce mediation in Britain. She said lawyer fees alone cost 7 million yen to 8 million yen.

“Had Japan been a party to the treaty, their whereabouts would have been known right away,” she said. “It should have been much easier, too, to get them back.”

Another self-employed woman, 51, was cautious, however. She had long been a victim of domestic violence by her American husband.

The family moved from the United States to Chiba Prefecture in 1992, and she fled with two children to Tokyo in 1995.

She is now on an international wanted list on suspicion of abduction because the husband, saying the mother and children’s legal abode is in the United States, brought the matter before U.S. authorities.

The woman, who says “all I could do was flee,” thinks the treaty would make such escape difficult.

Lawyer Kensuke Ohnuki, who handles about 200 divorces among international matches a year, says most child “abductions” by Japanese women are a result of spousal violence.

The treaty does not take a parent’s reason for fleeing into consideration, he said.(IHT/Asahi: July 16,2009)
ENDS

Japan Times on critics of new IC Chip Gaijin Card bill from the Right: too lenient!

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

mytest

UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito

Hi Blog. The Japan Times is still at it, getting viewpoints regarding new legislation controlling NJ movements and visas and traceability (which looks like it will pass the Diet) from Dietmembers, bureaucrats, and left-wing opponents. Now we have the view of someone who thinks the laws, which will tighten things in directions Debito.org is not comfortable with, are too lenient! Excerpt follows. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

/////////////////////////////////////////////
The Japan Times Wednesday, July 1, 2009
CONTROLS ON FOREIGNERS
Visa overstayers given too many breaks: rightist
By MINORU MATSUTANI, Staff writer
Fourth in a series
Full article at http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090701a3.html

…Arikado also takes issue with the humanitarian reasons often cited by the justice minister when granting an illegal foreigner special permission to stay in Japan.

“Some foreigners claim to be political refugees. But in many cases, they just want to work,” he said. “Some Japanese died of hunger after they lost their jobs, so is it right to prioritize helping foreigners? Right now, everybody in Japan is losing their spirit as Japanese nationals.”…

Arikado cited the case of the Calderon family as an “obvious example” of the government’s softness.

Justice Minister Eisuke Mori ordered the undocumented Filipino parents, who entered Japan using someone else’s passports, to leave Japan in April. But he allowed their daughter, Noriko, 13, who was born and raised in Japan and speaks only Japanese, to stay.

“Mori established a precedent that children get to stay if illegal foreign parents beg,” he said, criticizing the media for overly sympathetic coverage of the family…

Arikado said he has no problem with giving the justice minister a certain amount of discretion in granting special permission to stay, but he wants the minister to prioritize the welfare of Japanese over foreigners.

Despite the faults he finds with the bills, he still praises them for boosting the government’s ability to wield greater scrutiny over foreigners. Hopefully, punishment for violating the regulations stipulated in the bills will be more strictly imposed than now, said Arikado, whose day job is as a journalist at the Chuo Tsushin news service.
/////////////////////////////////////////////
EXCERPT ENDS
Full article at http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090701a3.html

NPR’s Geoff Nunberg on semantics and their control over public debate

Posted on June 19, 2009June 19, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Lemme do my weekend tangent a little earlier this week. It does relate to something I’ve discussed recently.

Pursuant to my Japan Times’ JUST BE CAUSE column earlier this month (June 2, “The issue that dares not speak its name“), where I talked about how the domestic media and GOJ deliberately refrain from couching the debate on racial discrimination in those exact terms — “racial discrimination” — and how that affects public awareness in Japan of the issue.

Here’s an excerpt of a June 3, 2009 US National Public Radio “Fresh Air” interview with UC Berkeley linguist Geoff Nunberg (June 4 podcast, from minute seven) which explores exactly the same topic, regarding the American media’s treatment of the debate on “torture”:

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

TERRY GROSS: I’m sure you’ve been keeping up with not only the debate about torture, but also the debate over what word to use to describe the interrogation techniques that were used. Some people have been using “torture” for a long time. Some publications say you can’t use the word “torture” because there’s a legal definition of “torture”, and that when they were doing it, they had a different definition of it courtesy of John Yoo and others in the Office of Legal Counsel. So, what are you hearing when you hear the debate about whether or when it’s appropriate to use the word “torture”, and if not that word, what word should be used?

GEOFF NUNBERG: Well, what’s interesting is that right after the Abu Ghraib story broke five years ago, all the European papers right away were using the word “torture”. The British, German, French press, left and right — not just The Guardian but Rupert Murdoch’s The Times were calling it “torture”. And the American press then and now have been very reluctant to use that word. And they have this idea that, well, this is a legal category. That’s because the [Bush II] Administration insists that it’s a legal category, and have defined it in a way such that these things won’t count as “torture” in the legal sense. The Administration’s definition obviously doesn’t have any broader legal significance even beyond the Administration, much less on a world scale.

And more to the point, it’s an English word. And the moral judgment that attaches to “torture” doesn’t have to do with its legal status. It has to do with looking at these acts, and describing them as “torture”. So that somehow, if the Administration was talking as if, “If we can keep that word at bay, we can keep at bay the moral disapproval that comes with it.” So you got all these terms like, “alternative sets of procedures”, and “vigorous questioning”, and of course, “enhanced interrogation techniques”, which people are still trying to use. And with that came this word “professionals” that Bush kept using. He said, “These are professionals; we want our ‘professionals’ to know that they can to this in a professional–.” Which suggests that not simply that they know what they are doing, but also that they are not taking any pleasure in it.

So I think this a perfect example of the way in which the words you choose determines whether you think something is alright or not. Not the thing itself, but the way you choose to name it. It’s something you see not just with torture, but with “suicide” for example. If you ask people in a poll, “Is it okay for doctors to help terminally-ill patients end their lives?”, you get a lot more people saying “yes” than if you ask them if it is okay for doctors to help terminally-ill patients “commit suicide”. Again, this is a semantic debate. But the important thing to realize is that this is not merely semantic.
==============================

Yes, quite. So if we can keep the word “racial discrimination” (as defined under UN treaty) at bay in Japan — call it “foreigner discrimination”, “discrimination by physical appearance”, or even “cultural differences” and “misunderstandings” — we can keep at bay the moral disapproval that comes with it. We can also keep the plausible deniability in the public arena that something very bad (as opposed to just “bad” or “misunderstood”) is going on, one that requires legislation to prevent it. This sort of thing happens everywhere when people play with words to dull or obfuscate debate.

Be aware of how this works. And be prepared to correct people who wish to shift the terms of debate away from the cold, hard truth. That discrimination against foreigners can be, or is in most cases, the same as discrimination by race. Even UN treaty that Japan signed says so.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

PS: And BTW, if you have any doubts that “torture” actually went on at Abu Ghraib, I recommend my two dinnertime movies this week:

1) “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” (Rory Kennedy, director)
and
2) “Standard Operating Procedure” (Errol Morris, director)

Both excellent. And both proof positive that Stanley Milgram’s experiments really got to the cold, hard truth.
ENDS

Sapporo Source DEBITO Column 1 June 2009 on Hokkaido Winters

Posted on June 17, 2009August 27, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. A new “free paper” came out last week in Sapporo. Called SAPPORO SOURCE (get a copy in pdf format at http://www.sapporosource.com), it contains the first of my regular monthly columns, where I talk about offbeat topics (meaning non-human-rights stuff; we got government sponsors). The first one is about the weather. Yes, the weather.

And let me add that it’s taken some time for Japan’s #5 City to come up with a free paper of this quality (Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka have all had their own for quite some time). The longstanding paper, “What’s On In Sapporo?“, is a milquetoast flyer put out by Sapporo City Government bureaucrats (who can’t even spell “calendar” correctly). SAPPORO SOURCE’s predecessor, XENE, gave it a good go — until it succumbed to market temptations that contradicted its mandate as an international paper: 1) putting out damage-control advertising (see my protest letter here), sponsored by the Otaru City Government, that denied that the Otaru Exclusionary Onsens Issue actually existed, and 2) translating exclusionary signs for xenophobes in the Susukino party district, for the 2002 World Cup (some are still up to this day), that effectively said “JAPANESE ONLY” (which XENE decided to render as “MEMBERS ONLY” in five languages, but not Japanese, as if that made things all better; their letter of apology here). XENE folded a couple of years ago, and not before time. It really had no idea how to serve an NJ audience.

Now it’s SAPPORO SOURCE. I had a read of it, and it’s a professional job with a good tone and a lot of useful information. See for yourself.

Oh yes, my column. Cover page and scan of my article follows. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Text:
THE DEBITO COLUMN
HOKKAIDO’S THREE SEASONS
PART ONE: WINTER
Column one for publication in Sapporo Source June 2009
DRAFT THIRTEEN AND FINAL DRAFT

If you’ve ever read any of my writings (www.debito.org), this column will be a bit of a departure. I’m going to try writing about something more banal. Nothing’s more banal, of course, than the weather. Except if it’s the weather in Hokkaido.

Japan likes to chatter on about its distinct four seasons. But Hokkaido, I’ve noticed after more than twenty years here, has only three: Winter, Summer, and two half-seasons — I’ll call them “Pseudo-Spring” and “Pseudo-Autumn” — that act as short transitions between the two. Let’s chatter here about Winter first, since it’s the most memorable of them all.

At the end of Pseudo-Autumn, you tear October from your calendar and watch The Revolution from your window: the first flakes of snow infiltrating the air and occupying cracks in the road. The time is ripe for change — all Hokkaido’s verdure has collapsed into a uniform brown, with skeleton trees and evil-dead spooky forests clawing their way up from the newly-frozen ground. Nights are long, dark, and brutish throughout November, the worst month — as you can neither ski nor even go outside without wincing, as the winds whip up and blow December closer. Just hunker in your bunker and accept the inevitable: the Siberian snows are yet again crashing in, like a sociopath shadowing your door whom you will eventually have to go outside and face.

Then the snows come. And come. And bury you. Overcome, you coin words like “Tropical Snow Forest”, as thirty centimeters at a time almost every day accumulate to a meter, then two, then three or more as you try to shift it around. At least under The Occupation the long nights are brighter now, and Hokkaido’s odd weather pattern of “dump, then clear” means that you can enjoy sunshine on fresh white snow a couple of times a day. If you’re not happy with the current weather, wait half an hour.

Unfortunately, collaborating with rotations of flurry and dazzle becomes tiresome by mid-January, as Winter overstays its welcome. Everywhere becomes an obstacle course. Sidewalks challenge you to sashay your way through ten centimeters of sublimated ice. Side roads demand you merge into traffic by peering around two-meter drifts, sticking your car’s nose in front of oncoming cars. Hokkaido Winter takes your life into its hands, as you learn how to skate in your shoes or on your car’s snow tires. You wonder if that innocuous-looking crossroads on your commute is going to yield a fatality this year. You begin to watch the forecasts avidly, because at any time the weather may turn foul.

Eventually you come round to seeing why Japan’s nanny state exists. Local NHK broadcasts devote at least a third of their airtime to the weather, what roads have been freshly blocked, and where pileups have occurred. You take heed, or else you too might lose the road and find yourself in a potentially fatal situation.

But Hokkaido’s fatalism is what makes us special. Sure, people down south get seasonal spurts of storms when typhoons barrel through. But they don’t compare with our daily dump that whallops, then envelops, for three solid months. So we learn to live with it. Contrast that with Tokyo, when you scoff at their panic at a whole three centimeters accumulated. Their trains and school systems are in chaos! Bah! They’re rich, but they’re softies! By February, snow has even occupied our economy, as the Japanese military tames it into snow sculptures to attract and bedazzle the rich tourists.

Fortunately, Winter officially turns a corner by the end of the Snow Festival, when you get a miraculous day or two above freezing. At the start of March, you wonder if the snow and ice will ever begone. Fear not, it will. Hokkaido has no glaciers, and within three weeks, you can emerge from your bunker to kick over the retreating snow walls on the sidewalks, and smash the cages of icicles on nearby roofs. There is a joy in shoveling dying ice in front of oncoming cars. The Resistance has prevailed. Open the window and savor the victory of outlasting yet another Occupation.

That’s how we suddenly arrive at the dazed and confused brown grasses of Pseudo-Spring — not sure if it’ll rain or shine, but at least it won’t snow and stick. Then you can enjoy Golden Week for one more important reason: it’s as far away from Winter as possible.

It is also mere footfalls from Summer, the reason why everyone in the world should live in Hokkaido. I’ll get to that next column.

760 WORDS
ENDS

ENDS

Tangent: Japan Times on crackdowns on students at Hosei University

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

mytest

Hi Blog. I’m in Tokyo now and not really all that accessible online until Sunday night, so let me direct your attention to a pretty nasty thing brewing over at Hosei University. Not a NJ issue per se, but definitely one involving human rights, freedom of speech, and the ability of administrations to arbitrary police, detain, punish, and expel people within its charge. Worth a read. Sorry to be brief for now. Arudou Debito in Tokyo

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

PHOTO: “Outrageous”: Activists claim the photo above shows a student lying unconscious after being roughed up by security guards hired by Hosei University during a rally at its Ichigaya campus. COURTESY OF ZENGAKUREN
THE ZEIT GIST
Rumpus on campus
Prestigious university in Tokyo has become a battleground in a war over freedom of political expression
By DAVID McNEILL
Japan Times Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Illegal arrests, forced expulsions, “kidnappings” by security police and beatings by hired thugs. No, it’s not another dispatch from a violent banana republic. Those accusations come from the leafy back-streets of Ichigaya, Tokyo, home to a branch campus of the prestigious Hosei University.

Hosei authorities and a group of students are locked in a poisonous struggle that has turned the campus into something resembling a low-security prison.

Entrances are guarded by newly installed CCTV cameras and jittery guards equipped with Bluetooth headsets. Notices have been published at many sites naming and shaming “troublemakers” who have been expelled, and the police are on call in case things get out of hand.

A provisional injunction forbids students from “loitering, putting up banners and making speeches within 200 meters” of the campus.

Since the dispute began three years ago, 107 students have been arrested and 24 indicted, some of whom awaited trial in detention centers for up to six months. Last Friday, five more students were formally charged with offenses including trespassing and obstructing the police. Another is being kept in detention for at least two more weeks.

Supporters say some have been framed using a prewar law designed to crush labor protests…

Rest of the article at
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090609zg.html
ENDS

AP on resuscitating discriminatory Buraku historical maps on Google Earth

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s a bit of history that some would rather be left undisturbed: the historical locations of Japan’s historical underclass, the Burakumin. To me it’s existential historical fact. To corporate employers and marriage suitors, it could be grist for discrimination. Am of two minds about the issue, but if if the BLL comes out against it, so shall I. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

============================
Old Japanese maps on Google Earth unveil secrets
• By JAY ALABASTER, Associated Press – Sat May 2, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h1ON4xXZci7XWpI8IxdZNg86ZYlAD97U56SG0
Courtesy Steve H, MS, and Paul G

TOKYO -When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn’t expect a backlash. The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another Web site, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn’t caused any problems.

But Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities.

The maps date back to the country’s feudal era, when shoguns ruled and a strict caste system was in place. At the bottom of the hierarchy were a class called the “burakumin,” ethnically identical to other Japanese but forced to live in isolation because they did jobs associated with death, such as working with leather, butchering animals and digging graves.

Castes have long since been abolished, and the old buraku villages have largely faded away or been swallowed by Japan’s sprawling metropolises. Today, rights groups say the descendants of burakumin make up about 3 million of the country’s 127 million people.

But they still face prejudice, based almost entirely on where they live or their ancestors lived. Moving is little help, because employers or parents of potential spouses can hire agencies to check for buraku ancestry through Japan’s elaborate family records, which can span back over a hundred years.

An employee at a large, well-known Japanese company, who works in personnel and has direct knowledge of its hiring practices, said the company actively screens out burakumin job seekers.

“If we suspect that an applicant is a burakumin, we always do a background check to find out,” she said. She agreed to discuss the practice only on condition that neither she nor her company be identified.

Lists of “dirty” addresses circulate on Internet bulletin boards. Some surveys have shown that such neighborhoods have lower property values than surrounding areas, and residents have been the target of racial taunts and graffiti. But the modern locations of the old villages are largely unknown to the general public, and many burakumin prefer it that way.

Google Earth’s maps pinpointed several such areas. One village in Tokyo was clearly labeled “eta,” a now strongly derogatory word for burakumin that literally means “filthy mass.” A single click showed the streets and buildings that are currently in the same area.

Google posted the maps as one of many “layers” available via its mapping software, each of which can be easily matched up with modern satellite imagery. The company provided no explanation or historical context, as is common practice in Japan. Its basic stance is that its actions are acceptable because they are legal, one that has angered burakumin leaders.

“If there is an incident because of these maps, and Google is just going to say ‘it’s not our fault’ or ‘it’s down to the user,’ then we have no choice but to conclude that Google’s system itself is a form of prejudice,” said Toru Matsuoka, a member of Japan’s upper house of parliament.

Asked about its stance on the issue, Google responded with a formal statement that “we deeply care about human rights and have no intention to violate them.”

Google spokesman Yoshito Funabashi points out that the company doesn’t own the maps in question, it simply provides them to users. Critics argue they come packaged in its software, and the distinction is not immediately clear.

Printing such maps is legal in Japan. But it is an area where publishers and museums tread carefully, as the burakumin leadership is highly organized and has offices throughout the country. Public showings or publications are nearly always accompanied by a historical explanation, a step Google failed to take.

Matsuoka, whose Osaka office borders one of the areas shown, also serves as secretary general of the Buraku Liberation League, Japan’s largest such group. After discovering the maps last month, he raised the issue to Justice Minister Eisuke Mori at a public legal affairs meeting on March 17.

Two weeks later, after the public comments and at least one reporter contacted Google, the old Japanese maps were suddenly changed, wiped clean of any references to the buraku villages. There was no note made of the changes, and they were seen by some as an attempt to quietly dodge the issue.

“This is like saying those people didn’t exist. There are people for whom this is their hometown, who are still living there now,” said Takashi Uchino from the Buraku Liberation League headquarters in Tokyo.

The Justice Ministry is now “gathering information” on the matter, but has yet to reach any kind of conclusion, according to ministry official Hideyuki Yamaguchi.

The League also sent a letter to Google, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press. It wants a meeting to discuss its knowledge of the buraku issue and position on the use of its services for discrimination. It says Google should “be aware of and responsible for providing a service that can easily be used as a tool for discrimination.”

Google has misjudged public sentiment before. After cool responses to privacy issues raised about its Street View feature, which shows ground-level pictures of Tokyo neighborhoods taken without warning or permission, the company has faced strong public criticism and government hearings. It has also had to negotiate with Japanese companies angry over their copyrighted materials uploaded to its YouTube property.

An Internet legal expert said Google is quick to take advantage of its new technologies to expand its advertising network, but society often pays the price.

“This is a classic example of Google outsourcing the risk and appropriating the benefit of their investment,” said David Vaile, executive director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Center at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

The maps in question are part of a larger collection of Japanese maps owned by the University of California at Berkeley. Their digital versions are overseen by David Rumsey, a collector in the U.S. who has more than 100,000 historical maps of his own. He hosts more than 1,000 historical Japanese maps as part of a massive, English-language online archive he runs, and says he has never had a complaint.

It was Rumsey who worked with Google to post the maps in its software, and who was responsible for removing the references to the buraku villages. He said he preferred to leave them untouched as historical documents, but decided to change them after the search company told him of the complaints from Tokyo.

“We tend to think of maps as factual, like a satellite picture, but maps are never neutral, they always have a certain point of view,” he said.

Rumsey said he’d be willing to restore the maps to their original state in Google Earth. Matsuoka, the lawmaker, said he is open to a discussion of the issue.

A neighborhood in central Tokyo, a few blocks from the touristy Asakusa area and the city’s oldest temple, was labeled as an old “eta” village in the maps. It is indistinguishable from countless other Tokyo communities, except for a large number of leather businesses offering handmade bags, shoes and furniture.

When shown printouts of the maps from Google Earth, several older residents declined to comment. Younger people were more open on the subject.

Wakana Kondo, 27, recently started working in the neighborhood, at a new business that sells leather for sofas. She was surprised when she learned the history of the area, but said it didn’t bother her.

“I learned about the burakumin in school, but it was always something abstract,” she said. “That’s a really interesting bit of history, thank you.”

ENDS

Hokkaido Kushiro gives special Residency Certificate to sea otter

Posted on May 5, 2009May 5, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Continuing in the eye-blinkingly ludicrous trend of issuing government residency documents to things that can’t actually reside anywhere, we have the fifth in the series, behind Tama-Chan the sealion in Yokohama (2003), Tetsuwan Atomu in Niiza (2003), Crayon Shin-chan in Kusakabe (2004), and Lucky Star in Washinomiya (2008), of a juuminhyou Residency Certificate now being granted to a photogenic sea otter in Kushiro, Hokkaido.

Juuminhyou been impossible to issue, despite decades of protest, to taxpaying foreign residents because “they aren’t Japanese citizens” (and because they aren’t listed on the juumin kihon daichou, NJ aren’t even counted within many local government population tallies!). Oh, well, seafaring mammals and anime characters aren’t citizens either, but they can be “special residents” and bring in merchandising yen. Why I otter…!

We now have GOJ proposals to put NJ on juuminhyou at long last. But not before time (we’re looking at 2012 before this happens), and after far too much of this spoon-biting idiocy. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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Kushiro gives sea otter special residency status
Thursday 30th April, 07:15 AM JST Courtesy of Mark M-T and MJ

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/kushiro-gives-sea-otter-special-residency-status

KUSHIRO — The city of Kushiro in Hokkaido has awarded special residency status to a sea otter which began appearing in the Kushiro River in February. The award ceremony for the sea otter, named Ku-chan, was held Wednesday at the riverbank near Nusamai Bruidge, where the sea otter has often been spotted.

Ku-chan appeared during a ceremony speech being delivered by Mayor Hiroya Ebina. The residency card bears the sea otter’s name, favorite food and ID photo. Copies of the card will be distributed free of charge at kiosks and a shopping complex near the bridge.

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Popular sea otter receives special residency status

A special residency card awarded to a sea otter that frequents Kushiro River in Hokkaido. (Mainichi)

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20090502p2a00m0na015000c.html?inb=rs

KUSHIRO, Hokkaido — A wild sea otter has become a special resident here, after making a contribution to the city by attracting many tourists.

The otter, dubbed “Ku-chan,” began appearing in Kushiro River in February and was awarded special residency status from the city of Kushiro in Hokkaido last week.

The economic benefit to the local area generated by the sea otter, which has been attracting visitors even from outside of the country, is said to reach about 50 million yen per month.

“It seems like he has the will to receive it,” said Kushiro mayor Hiroya Ebina, commenting on the otter’s appearance immediately after the award ceremony, held at a square near the foot of Nusamai Bridge.

Copies of Ku-chan’s residency card are provided free as souvenirs upon request.

Click here for the original Japanese story

(Mainichi Japan) May 3, 2009

ラッコ：晴れて新住民、クーちゃん　北海道・釧路

クーちゃんに授与された「特別住民票」＝２００９年４月２９日、山田泰雄撮影

　釧路川に２月から居着いている野生のラッコ、クーちゃんに２９日、北海道釧路市から特別住民票が贈られた。

　クーちゃんは登場以来、市民はもとより海外からも見物客が来るほどの人気。地元への経済効果は毎月５０００万円ともいわれ、その“功績”をたたえるため、交付が決まった。希望者には無料配布され、お土産にもなる。

　幣舞（ぬさまい）橋たもとの広場で行われた式典では、クーちゃんが姿を見せず、皆をがっかりさせたが、式の終了後に突然、川面に登場。あまりのタイミングの良さに蝦名大也市長は「受け取る意志はあるようだ」。【山田泰雄】

ENDS

Sunday Tangent: Economist on Japan buying LNG from Sakhalin (finally!) and Hokkaido’s missed opportunities

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

mytest

Hi Blog. I spotted this recent Economist article (I have a paper subscription; call me retro) over lunch last week, and was surprised to see that Japanese industry, after decades of wait (see article below), has finally bought Russian fuel. About time.

Living in Hokkaido for more than twenty years now has given me a number of insights by osmosis regarding our extremely proximate Russian neighbor (in three places — Wakkanai, Nemuro, and Rausu — mere kilometers away), and how that affects business.

First, Japanese and Russians tend not to get along. We still have no peace treaty (merely an armistice) with Russia after the 1945 seizure of the Northern Territories (and the big loss of southern Sakhalin, still called by its prewar name “Karafuto” by not a few Hokkaidoites). We also get occasional articles in the Hokkaido Shinbun reminding the public of pre-surrender Soviet submarine raids off Rumoi, and the impending invasion of northern and eastern Hokkaido before McArthur stepped in. Old people still remember postwar Russian concentration camps and forced repatriations from lands they feel they rightfully settled. And even today, the rough-and-tumble nature of the Russian that Hokkaidoites most frequently come in contact with (the sailor) was at the heart of the exclusionism behind the Otaru Onsens Case. The Japanese military, excuse me, “Self Defense Forces” still have a very strong presence up here (even building our snow sculptures) to ward off possible Soviet invasions, and keep us from getting too friendly with (or receive too many Aeroflot flights from) the Rosuke.

Second, Hokkaido has for years been unable to take advantage of the goldmine just off their shores. Potential deals with Sakhalin have not only been stymied by foot-dragging government bureaucrats (and the occasional businessman who, according to business contact Simon Jackson of North Point Network KK, cite business deals gone sour with the Soviets around three or four decades ago!). The most ludicrous example was where overseas energy interests were considering opening offices in Sapporo in the early 1990s (for Sapporo’s standard of living was far higher than that of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk). But they took one look at the toolshed that was essentially the Hokkaido International School back then and decided their relocated families needed better educational opportunities. The Hokkaido Government has since rectified that with a much nicer building for HIS, but it remains in the annals of bungled policy and opportunities. Thus Sapporo missed out on all the gobs of riches that oil money provides anywhere (viz. Edmonton or Calgary) as the end of the era of cheap petroleum makes exploration and development economically feasible just about anywhere.

Third, as the article demonstrates below, Tokyo seems to be skipping over Hokkaido again with its first LNG deal. If we had set up the infrastructure when we had the chance, we could be getting some of that value-added. Granted, doing business in Russia (what with the shady elements posing as dealers and administrators) is pretty risky. But it seems in keeping with the historical gormlessness of Hokkaido (what with all the crowding out of entrepreneurial industry through a century of public works), and the maintenance of our island as a resource colony of the mainland. See an essay I wrote on this way back in 1996, and tell me if much has changed.

In fact, it seems the only reason Japan has come round to dealing with Sakhalin at all is because increasingly mighty China is squeezing them out of the market, according to The Economist below.

Enough comment from me. Here’s the article. It reflects none of the background I give above, sadly. Hokkaido’s perpetual non-player status means we’re skipped over again. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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Energy in Japan
Raising the stakes

Apr 8th 2009 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13447453

Low prices and a strong yen give Japanese firms an opportunity to buy abroad

WHEN Energy Frontier, an enormous tanker, glided into Tokyo Bay on April 6th from Sakhalin Island, she was not just carrying the first shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from a problematic Russian venture, under a deal signed 15 years ago. She was also bearing the symbolic weight of Japan’s aspirations to greater energy security. Lacking natural resources, Japan imports more than 95% of its energy. Almost all its oil and a quarter of its LNG come from the Middle East. To reach Japan ships must travel for 20 days, passing near pirate-infested waters. Sakhalin, by contrast, is just three days away.

In 2006 the Japanese government called on industry to increase its ownership of foreign energy projects to cover 40% of Japan’s energy needs, up from 15% at the time. The idea was to make the country less dependent on the spot market in case of trouble by taking stakes in various energy projects around the world. But as prices soared and China became a keen buyer, slow-moving Japanese firms found themselves being shut out of deals.

Today, however, many energy projects are starved of capital because of the credit crunch, energy prices are low and the yen is strong. Since mid-2008 the price of crude oil has fallen by two-thirds and the yen had at one point appreciated by as much as 20% against the dollar. This has given Japanese energy firms a window of opportunity to make foreign acquisitions.

In January Nippon Oil bought rights to oilfields in Papua New Guinea. Inpex, Japan’s largest oil-development company, has acquired rights to oil in South America and Australia. A consortium that includes Nippon Oil and Inpex is vying for rights to a project in southern Iraq. And this month Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, visited Tokyo to sign energy deals.

“We have been very quietly shifting the gravity of our strategy from exploration and ‘greenfield’ projects to acquisitions and exchange deals,” says Tadashi Maeda of the Japan Bank for International Co-operation (JBIC), a state-backed lender for foreign projects. Deals rather than digging lets Japan obtain resources faster, he says. JBIC can put around $12 billion a year towards energy acquisitions.

The Japanese government’s 40% target is immaterial, Mr Maeda asserts. Instead, JBIC’s aim is to ensure that the market functions smoothly and that the fuel can be transported to Japan if necessary. A stake in an oilfield does not always entitle the owner to a share of its output, rather than a share of the revenue when the oil is sold on the open market. But ownership helps absorb the shock of sudden price increases or tight supply. And some contracts do specify that in the event of a crisis, output is reserved for the owners.

So far the Japanese firms’ deals have been small, raising concerns that they may be missing their chance to buy at a favourable time, says David Hewitt of CLSA, a broker. Yet the hesitation is understandable. Lower energy prices means certain projects are no longer viable. Some firms, including Mitsubishi and Mitsui, are expected to have to write off portions of recent investments, making them wary of new deals. Even when capital is available, taking on debt can jeopardise a firm’s credit rating. And the recession has reduced Japan’s energy use by 10-20%.

Japanese executives also complain that Chinese firms, which have plenty of capital from state-run banks and face less pressure to show profits, are overpaying and driving up prices. JBIC encourages Japanese firms to form consortiums to increase their heft. In February Toshiba, Tokyo Power and JBIC took a joint 20% stake in Uranium One of Canada—a deal that suits everybody’s interests but which no party could have achieved on its own.

The shipment of LNG that arrived in Tokyo this month came from the giant Sakhalin II project, set up in the 1990s by Royal Dutch Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil giant, in partnership with Mitsubishi, Mitsui and other Western firms. At the time it was the only big energy project in Russia that did not involve a local partner. That changed in late 2006 when Shell and its Japanese partners reluctantly agreed to sell a 50% stake to Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas giant. This highlighted the political risks involved in the pursuit of energy security—and why having the government represented, via a state-backed lender like JBIC, is not a bad idea.

The Sakhalin II project will produce as much as 9.6m tonnes of LNG a year, 60% of which will go to Japan, accounting for about 7% of its LNG imports. For Japan, the project’s proximity is its main appeal. Parts of Sakhalin were Japanese territory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and were ceded after Japan’s defeat in the second world war. Today’s commercial battles are less bloody, but no less intense.

ENDS

TIME Mag, Asahi, NY Times: “Japan to Immigrants: Thanks, but go home”

Posted on April 23, 2009April 23, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Three articles that echo much of the sentiment I expressed in my April 7, 2009 Japan Times article on the Nikkei repatriation bribe. First TIME Magazine, then a blurb (that’s all) from the Asahi on how returned Nikkei are faring overseas, and than finally the New York Times with some good quotes from the architect of this policy, the LDP’s Kawasaki Jiro (who amazingly calls US immigration policy “a failure”, and uses it to justify kicking out Japan’s immigrants). Arudou Debito in Sapporo

PS: Here’s a political comic based upon the NY Times photo accompanying the article below. Courtesy of creator RDV:

http://politicomix.blogspot.com/2009/04/foreigners-fuck-off.html

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TIME Magazine, Monday, Apr. 20, 2009
Japan to Immigrants: Thanks, But You Can Go Home Now
By Coco Masters / Tokyo, Courtesy Matt Dioguardi and KG
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892469,00.html

When union leader Francisco Freitas has something to say, Japan’s Brazilian community listens. The 49-year old director of the Japan Metal and Information Machinery Workers called up the Brazilian Embassy in Tokyo April 14, fuming over a form being passed out at employment offices in Hamamatsu City, southwest of Tokyo. Double-sided and printed on large sheets of paper, the form enables unemployed workers of Japanese descent — and their family members — to secure government money for tickets home. It sounded like a good deal to the Brazilians for whom it was intended. The fine print in Portuguese, however, revealed a catch that soured the deal: it’s a one-way ticket with an agreement not to return.

Japan’s offer to minority communities in need has spawned the ire of those whom it intends to help. It is one thing to be laid off in an economic crisis. It is quite another to be unemployed and to feel unwanted by the country where you’ve settled. That’s how Freitas and other Brazilians feel since the Japanese government started the program to pay $3,000 to each jobless foreigner of Japanese descent (called Nikkei) and $2,000 to each family member to return to their country of origin. The money isn’t the problem, the Brazilians say; it’s the fact that they will not be allowed to return until economic and employment conditions improve — whenever that may be. “When Nikkei go back and can’t return, for us that’s discrimination,” says Freitas, who has lived in Japan with his family for 12 years.

With Japan’s unemployment rate on the rise — it reached a three-year high of 4.4% in February — the government is frantic to find solutions to stanch the flow of job losses and to help the unemployed. The virtual collapse of Japan’s export-driven economy, in which exports have nearly halved compared to the first two months of last year, has forced manufacturers to cut production. Temporary and contract workers at automotive and electronics companies have been hit especially hard. Hamamatsu has 18,000 Brazilian residents, about 5% of the total in Japan, and is home to the nation’s largest Brazilian community. After immigration laws relaxed in 1990, making it easier for foreigners to live and work in Japan, Brazilians have grown to be the country’s third largest minority, after Koreans and Chinese. But as jobs grow scarce and money runs out, some Nikkei ironically now face the same tough decision their Japanese relatives did 100 years ago, when they migrated to Brazil.

Japan can scarcely afford to lose part of its labor force, or close itself off further to foreigners. Japan, with its aging population that is projected to shrink by one-third over the next 50 years, needs all the workers it can get. The U.N. has projected that the nation will need 17 million immigrants by 2050 to maintain a productive economy. But immigration laws remain strict, and foreign-born workers make up only 1.7% of the total population. Brazilians feel particularly hard done by. “The reaction from the Brazilian community is very hot,” says a Brazilian Embassy official. The embassy has asked Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare to “ease the conditions” of reentry for Brazilians who accept the money. (Paradoxically, the Japanese government had recently stepped up efforts to help Brazilian residents, with programs such as Japanese-language training and job-counseling.) This particular solution to unemployment, however, is perceived as a misguided gift. “Maybe there were good intentions, but the offer was presented in the worst way possible,” says the Brazilian official. The program applies to Brazilians who have long-term Nikkei visas, but restricts their right — and that of their family members — to reentry until jobs are available in Japan. The terms are vague and will probably stay that way. Tatsushi Nagasawa, a Japanese health ministry official says it’s not possible to know when those who accept the money will be allowed back into Japan, though the conditions for reentry for highly skilled positions might be relaxed.

The Brazilian community plainly needs some help. The Brazilian embassy normally pays for between 10 and 15 repatriations each year, but in the last few months it has already paid for about 40. Since last September, Carlos Zaha has seen many in his Hamamatsu community lose their jobs. In December, he helped start Brasil Fureai, or “Contact Brazil,” an association to help unemployed Brazilian residents find jobs. He’s thankful to the Japanese government for the offer of assisted repatriation, but says the decision will be a rough one for workers. “I don’t think [the government] thought this through well,” Zaha says. “If someone is over 50 years old and is already thinking of returning to Brazil then it might work. But there are many people in their 20s and 30s, and after two or three years they’re going to want to come back to Japan — and they won’t be able to.”

Lenine Freitas, 23, the son of the union leader, lost his job at Asmo, a small motor manufacturer, one month ago, but says he plans to stay in Japan and work. Freitas says that there would be no problem if the Japanese government set a term of, say, three years, after which Brazilians who took the money could return. But after nine years working at Suzuki Motor Corp., he thinks that the government should continue to take responsibility for foreigners in Japan. “They have to help people to continue working in Japan,” he says. “If Brazilians go home, what will they do there?”

And if Nikkei Brazilians, Peruvians and others who have lost their jobs go home, what will Japan do? Last week, Prime Minister Taro Aso unveiled a long-term growth strategy to create millions of jobs and add $1.2 trillion to GDP by 2020. But the discussion of immigration reform is notoriously absent in Japan, and reaching a sensible policy for foreign workers has hardly got under way. Encouraging those foreigners who would actually like to stay in Japan to leave seems a funny place to start.

ENDS

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http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200904170104.html

Returnees to Brazil finding it tough

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

2009/4/17, courtesy of KG
SAO PAULO–Many Brazilians of Japanese ancestry returning here from recession-struck Japan are struggling to find work, according to Grupo Nikkei, an NGO set up to support the job-seekers.

The group said the number of returnees seeking help had more than doubled from 70 a month last year to 150 a month this year.

Some returnees who performed unskilled labor in Japan have found it difficult to return to old jobs that require specific expertise, according to Leda Shimabukuro, 57, who heads the group. Some youths also lack Portuguese literacy skills, Shimabukuro said.(IHT/Asahi: April 17,2009)

ENDS (yes, that’s all the space this merits in the Asahi)

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New York Times April 23, 2009

Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Go Home

By HIROKO TABUCHI, courtesy of Alechan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigrant.html?_r=1&ref=business

HAMAMATSU, Japan — Rita Yamaoka, a mother of three who immigrated from Brazil, recently lost her factory job here. Now, Japan has made her an offer she may not be able to refuse.

The government will pay thousands of dollars to fly Mrs. Yamaoka; her husband, who is a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent; and their family back to Brazil. But in exchange, Mrs. Yamaoka and her husband must agree never to seek to work in Japan again.

“I feel immense stress. I’ve been crying very often,” Mrs. Yamaoka, 38, said after a meeting where local officials detailed the offer in this industrial town in central Japan.

“I tell my husband that we should take the money and go back,” she said, her eyes teary. “We can’t afford to stay here much longer.”

Japan’s offer, extended to hundreds of thousands of blue-collar Latin American immigrants, is part of a new drive to encourage them to leave this recession-racked country. So far, at least 100 workers and their families have agreed to leave, Japanese officials said.

But critics denounce the program as shortsighted, inhumane and a threat to what little progress Japan has made in opening its economy to foreign workers.

“It’s a disgrace. It’s cold-hearted,” said Hidenori Sakanaka, director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, an independent research organization.

“And Japan is kicking itself in the foot,” he added. “We might be in a recession now, but it’s clear it doesn’t have a future without workers from overseas.”

The program is limited to the country’s Latin American guest workers, whose Japanese parents and grandparents emigrated to Brazil and neighboring countries a century ago to work on coffee plantations.

In 1990, Japan — facing a growing industrial labor shortage — started issuing thousands of special work visas to descendants of these emigrants. An estimated 366,000 Brazilians and Peruvians now live in Japan.

The guest workers quickly became the largest group of foreign blue-collar workers in an otherwise immigration-averse country, filling the so-called three-K jobs (kitsui, kitanai, kiken — hard, dirty and dangerous).

But the nation’s manufacturing sector has slumped as demand for Japanese goods evaporated, pushing unemployment to a three-year high of 4.4 percent. Japan’s exports plunged 45.6 percent in March from a year earlier, and industrial production is at its lowest level in 25 years.

New data from the Japanese trade ministry suggested manufacturing output could rise in March and April, as manufacturers start to ease production cuts. But the numbers could have more to do with inventories falling so low that they need to be replenished than with any increase in demand.

While Japan waits for that to happen, it has been keen to help foreign workers leave, which could ease pressure on domestic labor markets and the unemployment rolls.

“There won’t be good employment opportunities for a while, so that’s why we’re suggesting that the Nikkei Brazilians go home,” said Jiro Kawasaki, a former health minister and senior lawmaker of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

“Nikkei” visas are special visas granted because of Japanese ancestry or association.

Mr. Kawasaki led the ruling party task force that devised the repatriation plan, part of a wider emergency strategy to combat rising unemployment.

Under the emergency program, introduced this month, the country’s Brazilian and other Latin American guest workers are offered $3,000 toward air fare, plus $2,000 for each dependent — attractive lump sums for many immigrants here. Workers who leave have been told they can pocket any amount left over.

But those who travel home on Japan’s dime will not be allowed to reapply for a work visa. Stripped of that status, most would find it all but impossible to return. They could come back on three-month tourist visas. Or, if they became doctors or bankers or held certain other positions, and had a company sponsor, they could apply for professional visas.

Spain, with a unemployment rate of 15.5 percent, has adopted a similar program, but immigrants are allowed to reclaim their residency and work visas after three years.

Japan is under pressure to allow returns. Officials have said they will consider such a modification, but have not committed to it.

“Naturally, we don’t want those same people back in Japan after a couple of months,” Mr. Kawasaki said. “Japanese taxpayers would ask, ‘What kind of ridiculous policy is this?’ ”

The plan came as a shock to many, especially after the government introduced a number of measures in recent months to help jobless foreigners, including free Japanese-language courses, vocational training and job counseling. Guest workers are eligible for limited cash unemployment benefits, provided they have paid monthly premiums.

“It’s baffling,” said Angelo Ishi, an associate professor in sociology at Musashi University in Tokyo. “The Japanese government has previously made it clear that they welcome Japanese-Brazilians, but this is an insult to the community.”

It could also hurt Japan in the long run. The aging country faces an impending labor shortage. The population has been falling since 2005, and its working-age population could fall by a third by 2050. Though manufacturers have been laying off workers, sectors like farming and care for the elderly still face shortages.

But Mr. Kawasaki said the economic slump was a good opportunity to overhaul Japan’s immigration policy as a whole.

“We should stop letting unskilled laborers into Japan. We should make sure that even the three-K jobs are paid well, and that they are filled by Japanese,” he said. “I do not think that Japan should ever become a multi-ethnic society.”

He said the United States had been “a failure on the immigration front,” and cited extreme income inequalities between rich Americans and poor immigrants.

At the packed town hall meeting in Hamamatsu, immigrants voiced disbelief that they would be barred from returning. Angry members of the audience converged on officials. Others walked out of the meeting room.

“Are you saying even our children will not be able to come back?” one man shouted.

“That is correct, they will not be able to come back,” a local labor official, Masahiro Watai, answered calmly.

Claudio Nishimori, 30, said he was considering returning to Brazil because his shifts at a electronics parts factory were recently reduced. But he felt anxious about going back to a country he had left so long ago.

“I’ve lived in Japan for 13 years. I’m not sure what job I can find when I return to Brazil,” he said. But his wife has been unemployed since being laid off last year and he can no longer afford to support his family.

Mrs. Yamaoka and her husband, Sergio, who settled here three years ago at the height of the export boom, are undecided. But they have both lost jobs at auto factories. Others have made up their minds to leave. About 1,000 of Hamamatsu’s Brazilian inhabitants left the city before the aid was even announced. The city’s Brazilian elementary school closed last month.

“They put up with us as long as they needed the labor,” said Wellington Shibuya, who came six years ago and lost his job at a stove factory in October. “But now that the economy is bad, they throw us a bit of cash and say goodbye.”

He recently applied for the government repatriation aid and is set to leave in June.

“We worked hard; we tried to fit in. Yet they’re so quick to kick us out,” he said. “I’m happy to leave a country like this.”

ENDS

Nisshin Kasai Insurance company allows insurance to NJ customers

Posted on April 22, 2009July 12, 2012 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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Hi Blog. Just got a call from the insurance company that insures my car, answering my request for information regarding how open-door their policies are towards customers of varied backgrounds.

Nisshin Fire and Marine Insurance Company (Nisshin Kasai Kaijou Hoken 日新火災海上保険) KK allows insurance for NJ regardless of Japanese language ability. If that is lacking, the customer just has to bring along an interpreter.

Of course, this should not be blog-entry-worthy news. The default should be acceptance of customers and their money. But we do hear at Debito.org of companies that refuse NJ flat out because they assume that NJ cannot communicate in Japanese, therefore they cannot get into contractual relationships.

Some examples:

Shounan Shinkin Bank in Chigasaki

Hokkoku Shinbun in Ishikawa Prefecture (yes, a newspaper!)

AXA Direct Insurance (later amended its CNN advertising to accept NJ)

Just wanted to put the word out there that there is a good company to steer your business towards. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Sunday Tangent: NPR interview with late scholar John Hope Franklin: feel the parallels

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

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s Sunday’s tangent. On March 27, 2009, NPR replayed a 1990 interview with the late John Hope Franklin, historian of racism within the United States. He died at age 94 on March 25. The Economist ran this as part of their obituary on April 2:

…Academia offered no shelter. He excelled from high school onwards, eventually earning a doctorate at Harvard and becoming, in 1956, the first black head of an all-white history department at a mostly white university, Brooklyn College. Later, the University of Chicago recruited him. But in Montgomery, Louisiana, the archivist called him a “Harvard nigger” to his face. In the state archives in Raleigh, North Carolina, he was confined to a tiny separate room and allowed free run of the stacks because the white assistants would not serve him. At Duke in 1943, a university to which he returned 40 years later as a teaching professor, he could not use the library cafeteria or the washrooms.

Whites, he noted, had no qualms about “undervaluing an entire race”. Blacks were excluded both from their histories, and from their understanding of how America had been made. Mr Franklin’s intention was to weave the black experience back into the national story. Unlike many after him, he did not see “black history” as an independent discipline, and never taught a formal course in it. What he was doing was revising American history as a whole. His books, especially “From Slavery to Freedom” (1947), offered Americans their first complete view of themselves…

http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13403067

Now read this excerpt from the NPR interview, which I transcribed, and see if you get what I did from it:

Terry Gross: In some of your essays in your new book, you talk about some of the obstacles that you faced as a Black scholar, and you wrote that you faced discrimination that goes beyond any discrimination you faced in the field itself. For example, when you were chairman of history at Brooklyn College [New York City, in 1956], one of the problems you had was finding an apartment you wanted to live in, because a lot of neighborhoods refused to sell to you.

JHF: That’s right. I spent more than a year trying to find a place I wanted to purchase. My appointment was so spectacular that news of it with my picture was on the front page of the New York Times. But when I set out to find a house near my college — I hoped to be able to walk to work — almost none of the real estate dealers in the area would show me any of the houses that they were widely advertising. And when I finally found one being sold by the owner, I then had the problem of trying to find the money so I could purchase the house. And that was another round of excruciating experiences. I finally found it, but I could have spent this time so much better.

TG: Let me ask you kind of a stupid question. Did you ever take that New York Times article around to the real estate agents and say to them, “Look, don’t you know who I am?”

JHF: No, I don’t believe in that. I’m a human being, and that ought to be enough. I’m well-mannered, I think I’m well-dressed, and I think that my conduct is above reproach. I think that that should commend me. And if it doesn’t, well, then I think they’re not interested in hearing anything about who I am. I have no doubt that many of these people knew who I was. And yet, I was still rejected.

COMMENT: These sorts of things are mostly seen nowadays as unpleasant historical anachronisms, approached and reflected upon with the attitude of “How could people do this sort of thing? What were we thinking back then?” And rightly so.

However, just try to rent as a foreigner in Japan, and get credit as a foreigner in Japan. Bonne chance. You simply are not going to resolve these situations until you make what happened to JHF illegal.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

NPA enforcing Hotel Management Law against exclusionary Prince Hotel Tokyo

Posted on March 18, 2009March 18, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Interesting precedent here. A hotel which refused a booking to a major organization (in fact, cancelled their reservation) looks to be taken before the public prosecutor by police.

This is a good precedent. The police are at last enforcing the Hotel Management Law, which says you can’t refuse people unless there are no rooms, there’s a threat to public health, or a threat to public morals. But hotels sometimes refuse foreigners, even have signs up to that effect. They can’t legally do that, but last time I took a case before the local police box in Shinjuku, they told me they wouldn’t enforce the law.

Not in this case. Read on. As I said, interesting precedent being set here, what with this criminal case instead of a civil suit. Pity it took more than a year to enforce, and it took a group this big and organized to kick the NPA’s butt into action. I’m not sure this is a situation the average NJ will be able to take much advantage of. But again, a step in the right direction. Courtesy of HH. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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

Police move Prince Hotels-teachers union case to next level

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

IHT/Asahi: March 17,2009

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200903170247.html

Police sent papers to prosecutors Tuesday against the operator of a Tokyo hotel that refused entry to the Japan Teachers Union for its annual convention, fearing protests by right-wing groups.

Police said Prince Hotels Inc., its president, Yukihiro Watanabe, 61, the 52-year-old general manager of three Prince group hotels, and managers of the company’s administration and reception departments are suspected of violating the Hotel Business Law.

They said the parties reneged on their obligation to provide lodging as stipulated by the law.

It is rare for police to establish a case based on the hotel law’s stipulation, according to officials of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

According to police, Prince Hotels and Watanabe in November 2007 rescinded a contract signed with the teachers union to use the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa in Tokyo’s Minato Ward for its 57th National Conference on Educational Research scheduled from Feb. 2, 2008.

They also refused, without a justifiable reason, to let the union reserve 190 rooms at the hotel for conference participants, police said.

As a result, the teachers union was forced to cancel the plenary session of the conference for the first time since 1951.

According to police, Prince Hotel officials said they were aware that their actions were illegal, but they insisted they had no choice because the Japan Teachers Union’s convention could draw “protests by right-wing groups and cause problems for other guests and residents nearby.”

The union has demanded an apology and has sued the hotel for compensation.

The union filed a criminal complaint with police in August last year.

Under the Hotel Business Law, hotel operators are prohibited from denying accommodations to guests except when they pose a clear risk of spreading a communicable disease, engage in illegal activities, or disrupt public moral, or when the hotel has no vacancies.

Violators face a 5,000-yen fine, but under a special measures law on fines, the hotel operator and executives can be fined a maximum 20,000 yen if found guilty.

A lawyer representing the union said the issue with the hotel touches upon basic constitutional rights.

“Freedom of assembly, protected under the Constitution, will be jeopardized” if government and judiciary fail to take strict measures, the lawyer said.

The union made reservations in March 2007 through a travel agency, paid half of the costs in July that year, and signed a formal contract the following month.

The hotel then sent a certified letter to the union saying the contract had been annulled.

The union fought back and won a tentative injunction from the Tokyo District Court to allow it to use the hotel facilities.

The Tokyo High Court upheld the injunction on Jan. 30, 2008. However, the hotel still refused to let the union members in.

Minato Ward, where the hotel is located, reprimanded hotel officials in April 2008. But the ward stopped short of using administrative penalties, such as ordering a suspension of business operations, after receiving a letter from the operator vowing to prevent a recurrence.

Prince Hotels issued a statement Tuesday saying it “considers seriously the sending of papers to prosecutors and will continue to cooperate with the investigation.”

(IHT/Asahi: March 17,2009)

ENDS

NJ company “J Hewitt” advertises “Japanese Only” jobs in the Japan Times!

Posted on March 10, 2009March 28, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. In what came as a shock to me, alert reader Rob sent me scans of yesterday’s (March 9, 2009) Japan Times Classified Ads, with three sections advertising for “Japanese Only” applicants! See scans:

japaneseonlyjapantimesjobad2009309

Sounds a bit like a forklift operator. But Japanese Only?

japaneseonlyjapantimesjobad20093092

“Must be bilingual”. So then why Japanese Only?

japaneseonlyjapantimesjobad20093093

Selling soap and ear piercing products. Okay, again, why Japanese Only?

Nice company, this J. Hewitt KK (http://www.jhewitt.co.jp/). Seems to be run by a NJ named Jon Knight. Feel free to drop the company a line to say how you feel at info@jhewitt.co.jp

Rob also sent a message of complaint to the Japan Times. (You can too. Classified Ads Dept at jtad@japantimes.co.jp, and all other departments at https://form.japantimes.co.jp/info/contact_us.html).

For by their own guidelines:

japaneseonlyjapantimesjobad20093094

Advertising jobs that discriminate by nationality may not be “offensive” to some, but they certainly may easily be construed to be illegal. They violate Japan’s Labor Standards Law Article 3: “An employer shall not engage in discriminatory treatment with respect to wages, working hours or other working conditions by reason of the nationality, creed or social status of any worker.” That’s before we even get to the Japanese Constitution Article 14…

I shouldn’t have to be barking about this. I expected more from the Japan Times when it comes to promoting equality in the workplace. Shame on them, and especially on their client.

JT, screen your advertisements and stop abetting discrimination.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Officially proposed by Soumushou: NJ to get Juuminhyou

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. In a country where NJ are so separated from Japanese that citizenship has been required for residency, the news keeps getting better.

In a country where the bureaucrats are usually the drafters of laws and quasi-law directives (whereas the politicians are more the lobbyists), we have a proposal formally announced by Soumushou (The Ministry of the Interior) that puts NJ on a Juuminhyou Residency Certificate with their Japanese families. Email regarding this arrived yesterday from AM:

======================
Hi Debito, It looks like the details of NJ inclusion in the juuminhyou system have been cemented.

http://www.soumu.go.jp/menu_04/k_houan.html

The link above has some interesting information under the new proposed law titled 住民基本台帳法の一部を改正する法律案. Especially the 概要 part and the 法律案・理由 part. Excerpt from the former:

For one, it looks like the proper handling of international families is a main goal. So no more need to be a “jijitsujou no setainushi”. Also, any change in visa status will be reported directly from immigration, so no need for a trip to city hall.

It looks like this inclusion in the juuminhyou system will happen on the same day the residence card is rolled out. Best Regards, AM

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

Yes, and how about that jijitsujou setai nushi (“effective head of household”, the tenuous status granted to NJ breadwinners if they happen to be breadwinners, and male (females often got rejected, because gimlet-eyed bureaucrats have discretionary powers to doubt that people without the proper gonads could make proper money)). This status used to be the only way an NJ could be listed with his or her family on the Residency Certificate.

Well, for more than a decade now Debito.org has had copies of a particular “legal clarification” (Seirei 292, in this case) that bureaucrats can make to mint new laws without involving politicians. According to this Seirei, NJ could actually be juuminhyoued if they requested it. People then downloaded that and forced the gimlets to effectively household head them. So many NJ did it that the gimlets actually created special forms for the procedure. See another email I got yesterday:

====================
Hi Debito: The Juuminhyou request went surprisingly smooth, we didn’t even need to hit anybody over the head with a rolled up copy of Seirei 292.

As a matter of fact, look at this nice form they gave us, which kindly notified us of 2 additional rights we have, so we said “Yes” to all 3 rights:
jijitsujousetainushi

I think this form, plus the “Juuminhyou for all Residents by 2012” possibility, are both direct results of your activism. Thanks again Debito!

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

Quite welcome. We all played a part in this. It’s only taken 60 years (1952, when NJ first had to register, to 2012) for it to change. But we did it.

Next up, the Koseki Family Registry issue, where citizenship is again required for proper listing as a spouse and current family member.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

JT JUST BE CAUSE Column Mar 3 2009 on “Toadies, Vultures, and Zombie Debates”

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

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s this month’s JT JBC column. I think it’s my best yet. It gelled a number of things on my mind into concise mindsets. Enjoy. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

ON TOADIES, VULTURES, AND ZOMBIE DEBATES
JUST BE CAUSE
Column 13 for the Japan Times JBC Column, published March 3, 2009
By Arudou Debito
DRAFT TWENTY THREE, as submitted to the JT

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090303ad.html

If there’s one thing execrable in the marketplace of ideas, it’s “zombie debates”. As in, discussions long dead, yet exhumed by Dr. Frankensteins posing as serious debaters.

Take the recent one in the Japan Times about racial discrimination (here, here, here, here, and here). When you consider the human-rights advances of the past fifty years, it’s settled, long settled. Yet regurgitated is the same old guff:

“We must separate people by physical appearance and treat them differently, because another solution is inconceivable.” Or, “It’s not discrimination — it’s a matter of cultural misunderstandings, and anyone who objects is a cultural imperialist.” Or, “Discrimination maintains social order or follows human nature.”

Bunkum. We’ve had 165 countries sign an agreement in the United Nations defining what racial discrimination is, and committing themselves to stop it. That includes our country.

We’ve had governments learn from historical example, creating systems for abolition and redress. We’ve even had one apartheid government abolish itself.

In history, these are all fixed stars. There is simply no defense for racial discrimination within civilized countries.

Yet as if in a bell jar, the debate continues in Japan: Japan is somehow unique due to historical circumstance, geographic accident, or purity of race or method. Or bullying foreigners who hate Japan take advantage of peace-loving effete Japanese. Or racial discrimination is not illegal in Japan, so there. (Actually, that last one is true.)

A good liberal arts education should have fixed this. It could be that the most frequent proponents — Internet denizens — have a “fluid morality.” Their attitude towards human rights depends on what kind of reaction they’ll get online, or how well they’ve digested their last meal. But who cares? These mass debaters are not credible sources, brave enough to append their real names and take responsibility for their statements. Easily ignored.

Harder to ignore are some pundits in established media who clearly never bought into the historical training found in all developed (and many developing) multicultural societies: that racial discrimination is simply not an equitable or even workable system. However, in Japan, where history is ill-taught, these scribblers flourish.

The ultimate irony is that it’s often foreigners, who stand to lose the most from discrimination, making the most racist arguments. They wouldn’t dare say the same things in their countries of origin, but by coupling 1) the cultural relativity and tolerance training found in liberal societies with 2) the innate “guestism” of fellow outsiders, they try to reset the human-rights clock to zero.

Why do it? What do they get from apologism? Certainly not more rights.

Well, some apologists are culture vultures, and posturing is what they do. Some claim a “cultural emissary” status, as in: “Only I truly understand how unique Japan is, and how it deserves exemption from the pantheon of human experience.” Then the poseurs seek their own unique status, as an oracle for the less “cultured.”

Then there are the toadies: the disenfranchised cozying up to the empowered and the majority. It’s simple: Tell “the natives” what they want to hear (“You’re special, even unique, and any problems are somebody else’s fault.”) — and lookit! You can enjoy the trappings of The Club (without ever having any real membership in it) while pulling up the ladder behind you.

It’s an easy sell. People are suckers for pinning the blame on others. For some toadies, croaking “It’s the foreigners’ fault!” has become a form of Tourette’s syndrome.

That’s why this debate, continuously looped by a tiny minority, is not only zombified, it’s stale and boring thanks to its repetitiveness and preposterousness. For who can argue with a straight face that some people, by mere dint of birth, deserve an inferior place in a society?

Answer: those with their own agendas, who care not one whit for society’s weakest members. Like comprador bourgeoisie, apologists are so caught up in the game they’ve lost their moral bearing.

These people don’t deserve “equal time” in places like this newspaper. The media doesn’t ask, “for the sake of balance,” a lynch mob to justify why they lynched somebody, because what they did was illegal. Racial discrimination should be illegal too in Japan, under our Constitution. However, because it’s not (yet), apologists take advantage, amorally parroting century-old discredited mind sets to present themselves as “good gaijin.”

Don’t fall for it. Japan is no exception from the world community and its rules. It admitted as such when it signed international treaties.

The debate on racial discrimination is dead. Those who seek to resurrect it should grow up, get an education, or be ignored for their subterfuge.

755 WORDS

Debito Arudou is coauthor of the “Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants.” Just Be Cause appears on the first Community Page of the month. Send comments to community@japantimes.co.jp
ENDS

Southland Times on how New Zealand deals with restaurant exclusions

Posted on January 17, 2009January 17, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. As another template about “what to do if…” (or rather, a model for what the GOJ should be more proactive about) when you get a restaurant refusing customers on the basis of race, ethnicity, national background, etc., here’s an article on what would happen in New Zealand. Here’s a Human Rights Commission and a media that actually does some follow-up, unlike the Japanese example. Then again, I guess Old Bigoted Gregory would rail against this as some sort of violation of locals’ “rights to discriminate”. Or that it isn’t Japan, therefore not special enough to warrant exceptionalism. But I beg to disagree, and point to this as an example of how to handle this sort of situation. Anyway, courtesy of JL. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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

Cafe owner ‘breached ‘human rights’ kicking out Israelis

By EVAN HARDING – The Southland Times (New Zealand) | Thursday, 15 January 2009

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4818871a11.html

An Invercargill cafe owner’s refusal to serve Israelis on the basis of their nationality is a clear human rights breach, Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres says.

Sisters Natalie Bennie and Tamara Shefa were upset after being booted out of the Mevlana Cafe in Esk St yesterday by owner Mustafa Tekinkaya.

They chose to eat at Mevlana Cafe because it had a play area for Mrs Bennie’s two children, but they were told to leave before they had ordered any food, Mrs Bennie said.

“He heard us speaking Hebrew and he asked us where we were from. I said Israel and he said ‘get out, I am not serving you’. It was shocking.”

Mr Tekinkaya, who is Muslim and from Turkey, said he was making his own protest against Israel because it was killing innocent babies and women in the Gaza Strip.

“I have decided as a protest not to serve Israelis until the war stops.”

He said he had nothing against Israeli people but if any more came into his shop they would also be told to leave, and he was not concerned if he lost business.

Mr de Bres said the Human Rights Act prohibited discrimination in the provision of goods and services on the grounds of ethnic or national origin, or of political opinion.

“Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation in Palestine, it is simply against the law for providers of goods and services in New Zealand to discriminate in this way,” he said.

Mr Tekinkaya’s stance was supported by neighbouring Turkish Kebabs shop owner Ali Uzun, who said he was also refusing to serve Israelis.

Mrs Bennie said she did not disagree that Israel was committing crimes against children.

“I just don’t think I should be declined service because I am from Israel.”

She had rung the Human Rights Commission and was told the cafe owner’s actions were against the law because he was discriminating on the basis of ethnicity.

“I wouldn’t mind having a chat to him. Someone has to put him in his place,” Mrs Bennie said.

Ms Shefa is visiting Mrs Bennie at her Makarewa home, on the outskirts of Invercargill, where she lives with her New Zealand husband and two children.

Both women said they had travelled widely, and to places much more hostile than New Zealand, but had never been treated in such a way.

Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt was shocked when told of the incident.

“Oh my god, the Gaza Strip has come to Invercargill. Hell’s bells.”

He said he was bewildered.

“Generally speaking I am against all wars and I suppose people have got a right to protest. I couldn’t really deny that. It would have been upsetting for the women and I feel sympathy for them.”

PHOTOS

JOHN HAWKINS/Southland Times

SHOCKED AND HURT: Israeli nationals Natalie Bennie, left, and Tamara Shefa, with Mrs Bennie’s two children Noah, 2, and Ella, 4, were told to leave Mevlana Cafe in Invercargill because they were from Israel.

JOHN HAWKINS/Southland Times

TAKING A STAND: Mevlana Cafe owner Mustafa Tekinkaya, left, with family and friends.

ENDS

AP/Guardian on Japan’s steepest population fall yet, excludes NJ from tally

Posted on January 4, 2009January 9, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s a bit of a sloppy article from the AP that the Guardian republished unusually without much of a fact-checking (don’t understand the relevance of the throwaway sentence at the end about J fathers and paternity, or of homebound mothers). Worse yet, it seems the AP has just accepted the GOJ’s assessment of “population” as “births minus deaths” without analysis. Meaning the population is just denoted as Japanese citizens (unless you include of course babies born to NJ-NJ couples, but they don’t get juuminhyou anyway and aren’t included in local govt. tallies of population either). Er, how about including net inflows of NJ from overseas (which have been positive for more than four decades)? Or of naturalized citizens, which the Yomiuri reported some months ago contributed to an actual rise in population? Sloppy, unreflective, and inaccurate assessments of the taxpayer base. Arudou Debito
===============================
Japan sees biggest population fall

Associated Press in Tokyo
Friday 2 January 2009
Article history
Courtesy of TK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/02/japan-population

Japan‘s population had its sharpest decline ever last year as deaths outnumbered births, posing an escalating economic threat to growth prospects amid a global recession.

With low birthrates and long lifespans, Japan’s shrinking population is ageing more quickly than any other economic power.

Health ministry records estimated the population fell by 51,000 in 2008. The number of deaths hit a record of 1.14 million … the highest since the government began compiling the data in 1947, and the number of births totalled 1.09 million.

Japan’s births outnumbered deaths until 2005, when the trend was reversed. About one-fifth of Japan’s 126 million people are now aged 65 or over.

Japanese increasingly marry at a later age, and working women wait to have children. The survey showed the number of births last year increased by just 0.02% from a year earlier.

The ministry forecast that Japan’s fertility rate – the average number of children born to a woman aged between 15 and 49 – would rise slightly to 1.36 in 2008 from 1.34 in 2007. Exact figures for 2008 were unavailable. The country’s fertility rate is far lower than that of the US, 2.10, and France, 1.98.

In recent years, the government has tried to encourage women to have more babies. But it is rare for fathers to take paternity in Japan, where traditional values tend to keep mothers at home.

Excellent Japan Times roundup on debate on J Nationality Law and proposed dual citizenship

Posted on January 3, 2009January 9, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s an excellent Japan Times roundup of the debate which came out of nowhere last year regarding Japan’s loopy nationality laws, which were once based on what I would call a “culture of no”, as in rather arbitrary ways to disqualify people (as in babies not getting J citizenship if the J father didn’t recognize patrimony before birth). A Supreme Court decision last year called that unconstitutional, and forced rare legislation from the bench to rectify that late in 2008. Now the scope of inclusivity has widened as Dietmember Kouno Taro (drawing on the shock of a former Japanese citizen getting a Nobel Prize, and a confused Japanese media trying to claim him as ours) advocates allowing Japanese to hold more than one citizenship. Bravo. About time.

The article below sets out the discussions and goalposts for this year regarding this proposal (using arguments that have appeared on Debito.org for years now). In a year when there will apparently be a record-number of candidates running in the general election (which MUST happen this year, despite PM Aso’s best efforts to keep leadership for himself), there is a good possibility it might come to pass, especially if the opposition DPJ party actually takes power.

2009 looks to be an interesting year indeed, as one more cornerstone of legal exclusionism in Japan looks set to crack. Arudou Debito

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

THE MANY FACES OF CITIZENSHIP
Debate on multiple nationalities to heat up

Diet battle lines being drawn in wake of law change and amid Kono effort to rectify dual citizenship situation

By MINORU MATSUTANI, Staff writer

The Japan Times: Thursday, Jan. 1, 2009

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090101a1.html

First in a series

The issue of nationality had never been discussed more seriously than it was in 2008.

Big decision ahead: Students of an international school in Tokyo gather for an event. Some will have to choose their nationality in some 10 years if the current Nationality Law prevails. THE JAPAN TIMES PHOTO

In a specific legal challenge in June, the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to deny Japanese citizenship to children of unwed Filipino mothers whose Japanese fathers had not acknowledged paternity before their birth. Lawmakers quickly went to work to pass a revised Nationality Law in December.

Now, Taro Kono, a Lower House member of the Liberal Democratic Party, the larger of the two-party ruling coalition, is trying to iron out another wrinkle in the law that became apparent in October when it was learned that Tokyo-born Nobel Prize winner Yoichiro Nambu had given up his Japanese nationality to obtain U.S. citizenship.

People like Nambu follow the letter of the law with respect to the Constitution’s Article 14, which requires that Japanese renounce other nationalities by the age of 22 if they wish to keep Japanese citizenship. Yet, according to Kono, there are 600,000 to 700,000 Japanese 22 or older with two nationalities, if not more. In other words, fewer than 10 percent of Japanese with more than one nationality make that choice by the time they turn 22, Kono said.

“The current system puts honest people and those who appear in the media at a disadvantage,” Kono said. In November, he submitted a proposal to an LDP panel he heads calling for the Nationality Law to be revised to allow Japanese to hold other nationalities.

The Justice Ministry acknowledges there are Japanese with other nationalities but does not press them to choose only one.

“Technically, the justice minister can order us to crack down on multiple-nationality holders. But none of the past ministers has,” said Katsuyoshi Otani, who is in charge of nationality affairs at the ministry. By law, someone ordered by the minister to choose a single nationality has a month to do so before Japanese citizenship is automatically revoked.

Lawmakers are divided on Kono’s proposal, which also requires that royalty, Diet members, Cabinet ministers, diplomats, certain members of the Self-Defense Forces and judges hold only Japanese nationality. Liberals stress the need for Japan to globalize, while conservatives express concern that opening up too much will diminish the country’s sense of unity.

Shinkun Haku, a member of the Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition party, supports the proposal.

Born to a Japanese mother and a South Korean father, Haku became a naturalized Japanese citizen in January 2003 and won a seat in the Upper House the following year.

Kono’s multiple citizenship plan

• The government allows Japanese nationals to be citizens of other countries.

• Japanese holding other nationalities must declare this to the local authorities where their Japanese residency is registered. Those who fail to do so may be fined or lose their Japanese citizenship.

• Japanese can obtain citizenship elsewhere, except for locations Japan does not recognize, and continue to hold Japanese nationality as long as the other countries allow multiple nationalities.

• People from countries other than North Korea or other areas lacking Japanese diplomatic recognition can obtain Japanese nationality without losing their original citizenship as long as their home countries allow multiple nationalities.

• The Imperial family, Diet members, Cabinet ministers, diplomats, certain members of the Self-Defense Forces or court judges can only hold Japanese nationality.

• Japanese who become presidents, lawmakers, Cabinet ministers, diplomats, soldiers, court judges or members of royalty of other countries will lose their Japanese nationality.

• Japanese who have a Japanese parent and hold multiple nationalities will lose their Japanese citizenship if they have not lived in Japan for 365 days or more by the time they turn 22.

• If Japan goes to war against a country, Japanese public servants cannot hold citizenship in that country.

• Japanese holding other nationalities will lose their Japanese citizenship if they apply for and join the military of other countries.

He was not allowed to have Japanese nationality at birth because the children of a foreign father and Japanese mother were barred from having Japanese nationality until the Nationality Law was revised in 1985.

Multiple-nationality holders were also then required to choose one nationality before their 22nd birthday. Before then, Japanese could be citizens of other countries as well.

Those with multiple nationalities who were 20 or older as of Jan. 1, 1985, were supposed to declare a single choice to local authorities by the end of 1986, and if they had not, it would be assumed they had chosen Japanese citizenship and abandoned any others. Those with a Japanese mother and foreign father who were under age 20 as of Jan. 1, 1985, had until the end of 1987 to settle on a nationality.

Japan is the only developed country that does not automatically grant citizenship to babies born within its territory, allow its nationals to have multiple citizenship or let foreigners vote in local-level elections, Haku said.

“I am not criticizing Japan for that, but now we have 2 million registered foreigners, and one in every 30 babies born here has at least one foreign parent. We are in the midst of globalization whether we like it or not,” Haku said. “We have to discuss very seriously how we should involve foreign residents in building our society.”

He is urging Japanese to change their outlook. “For example, we shouldn’t think we ought to give foreigners local government voting rights out of pity. We should think Japan can become a better country by doing so,” Haku said.

Other lawmakers oppose Kono’s proposal, especially those troubled by the revised Article 3 of the Nationality Law. It previously only granted citizenship to a child born out of wedlock to a foreign mother and a Japanese father if the man admitted paternity before birth, but not after.

LDP lawmaker Hideki Makihara fears that granting nationality easily will bring more problems than benefits.

“I think the immigration policy of many European countries has failed as they have had some serious problems” regarding foreign residents, Makihara said. “We need to be very prudent.”

Makihara also noted that citizens who gave up their non-Japanese nationality will feel cheated if Japan allows multiple nationalities, because “there is no guarantee they will regain their renounced citizenships.”

The proposed revision has also stirred nationalists to action. During Diet deliberations on the bill in November and early December, anonymous bloggers posted messages expressing their concern that foreigners may approach Japanese men to falsely claim paternity in illicit bids to gain citizenship.

Although the bill cleared the Diet on Dec. 5, LDP lawmaker Takeo Hiranuma established a lawmaker group scrutinizing the Nationality Law to prevent bogus claims.

While the LDP is divided on the revision of Article 3, the party is also busy dealing with other important issues. This could mean Kono’s proposal will not be deliberated seriously anytime soon, political scientist Hirotada Asakawa said.

With Prime Minister Taro Aso’s approval rate declining and the global economy in serious recession, Aso wants to impress voters by swiftly passing bills on the supplementary budget for the current fiscal year that would finance a ¥2 trillion cash handout program during the Diet session starting later this month, Asakawa said. The LDP then has to pass the budget for the next fiscal year during the same Diet session.

“These issues are enough of a handful. The LDP will also have to prepare for an anticipated Lower House election, which could happen who knows when,” he said. “In such a crucial time, the LDP will not want to discuss Kono’s proposal, which is likely to divide the LDP.”

Nevertheless, many lawmakers seem to agree that the current situation, in which many Japanese unlawfully hold multiple nationalities, needs to be fixed.

The case of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, born to a Japanese couple who emigrated to Peru early last century, is an extreme but forceful example. Kokumin Shinto (People’s New Party) asked Fujimori, who holds Peruvian and Japanese nationalities, in June 2007 to run for the Upper House election when he was detained in Chile. He ran in and lost. After Fujimori fled to Japan in exile, Tokyo declared he has Japanese citizenship, because of his parental roots.

What if he had won a Diet seat?

“Japan escaped by a hair’s breadth as Fujimori lost the election,” Kono said. “I have no idea what lawmakers would have done (if Fujimori had won). Legislation was a step behind the reality.”

To be sure, the proposal has a long way to go to be legalized. A typical process would be that the panel deliberates, finalizes and submits it to LDP executives, who would then decide whether to create a bill to be submitted to the Diet. However, it is unknown if Kono can sway his party.

“I have created a draft for everybody, not just lawmakers, to discuss the nationality issue,” Kono said. “I want to tell Japanese nationals, ‘Let’s discuss it.’ “

The Japan Times: Thursday, Jan. 1, 2009

Mainichi: NJ cause Tsukiji to ban all tourists for a month

Posted on December 5, 2008December 5, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Tsukiji is enforcing an outright ban for a month on all visitors to Tsukiji fish market, the world’s largest. The Mainichi says the Tokyo Govt claims it’s due to NJ tourists and their bad manners (or so the Japanese headline says below — the English headline just says they’re too numerous; thanks, Mainichi, for sweetening your translations, again). And the fish market itself claims they cannot communicate the rules with Johnny Foreigner in their foreign tongues (nobody there has ever heard of handing out multilingual pamphlets upon entry or putting up signs?). Anyway, I wonder if this issue is so simply a matter of NJ manners?

Anyway, this isn’t the first time Tsukiji Market has threatened to do this, but this is the first I’ve heard of an outright ban. Moreover, using a purported language barrier as a real barrier to entry and service is becoming the catch-all excuse, as we are increasingly seeing in Japanese businesses, such as banks and insurance agencies. Beats actually making more efforts to cater to the customer, in this case the tourists eating the fish around the marketplace after the marketing, I guess.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo, where the fish is also good.

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

Too many foreigners forces ban on tourists to Tsukiji fish market
(Mainichi Japan) December 3, 2008
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20081203p2a00m0na015000c.html?inb=rs

Courtesy of several submitters

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has announced a month-long ban on visitors to the famous fish auctions in Tsukiji from mid-December, blaming large numbers of foreign tourists for obstructing business.

The metropolitan government has sent out a notice of the ban to embassies, hotels, travel companies and other businesses across the capital.

The Tuna Markets, as they are known, are one of the three most popular tourist spots in Tokyo, alongside Akihabara and Asakusa. During early morning hours there were nearly 500 visitors on some days; but many working at the markets have complained of visitors’ showing a lack of courtesy to staff.

According to a tuna wholesalers’ association, the rush in foreign visitors started with the “sushi boom” 10 or so years ago, and has grown especially severe over the past five to six years, following news of the market’s planned closure.

While the auctions are technically off-limits to spectators, auctioneers have informally allowed people to watch from a designated area of the auction hall. With many taking flash photography or touching the produce, however, auctioneers and market workers alike have often been disturbed by visitors: “They can’t understand the language, so we can’t even warn them,” complained one.

As a result, the metropolitan government has informed various tourism-related organizations of their decision to ban spectators at the morning auctions from Dec. 15 to Jan. 17.

“It’s not a bad thing for Tsukiji to gain attention, but with the risk of injury to visitors, and the potential to affect business during the busy Year End and New Year season, it’s unavoidable,” said a metropolitan official. But it’s likely to take time for the news to filter round through signboards and leaflets, as there are many foreigners who visit the auctions individually after learning about the place by word of mouth.

One Tokyo hotel said: “We’ve explained you can’t enter the auction area before, but if you are asked for directions to Tsukiji, you have no choice but to tell them. All we can do is leave it to the judgment of our guests.”

ends

================================
Original Japanese story
築地市場：競り見学中止　外国人観光客マナー悪い
毎日新聞　2008年12月3日　15時00分（最終更新　12月3日　16時55分）
http://mainichi.jp/select/today/news/20081203k0000e040078000c.html

　東京都中央卸売市場（築地市場、中央区築地５）のマグロの競り場に、外国人観光客が多数押し掛け業務に支障が出ているとして、都は各国大使館やホテル、旅行会社に、１２月中旬から約１カ月間、競り場の見学中止を通知した。築地のマグロ競りは外国人の間でも「ツナ・マーケット」と呼ばれ、秋葉原、浅草と並ぶ３大人気スポット。早朝から５００人近くが訪れる日もあるが、マナーを守らない人もいて関係者から不満の声が出ていた。

　マグロを扱う仲卸業者の団体によると、見学者はほとんどが外国人で、すしブームに伴って十数年前から増え始めた。取り上げる観光ガイドブックも多く、築地市場が数年後に閉鎖されることも知られ、ここ５、６年は特に目立つという。

　競り場は基本的に見学者の立ち入りは禁止だが、外国人観光客が多いため市場側がスペースを設けて黙認してきた。しかし、競り場に入ってフラッシュをたいたり、マグロに触ったりして、競りの仕事を妨げるマナー違反者も多い。仲卸業者の野末誠さん（７２）は「言葉が通じず注意もできない」と話す。

　このため都は、１２月１５日から来年１月１７日までは早朝の競り場の見学中止を決め、関係団体に通知した。市場担当者は「築地が注目されるのは悪いことではないが、年末年始の繁忙期に業務に支障が出たり、観光客がけがをされても困るのでやむをえない」と話す。今後、看板やチラシで周知するが、口コミで個人的に訪れる外国人観光客も多く、周知徹底には時間がかかりそうだ。

　都内のあるホテルは「以前から競り場への立ち入りはできないと説明しているが、築地への行き方を聞かれれば教えないわけにはいかない。お客様の判断に任せるしかない」と困惑している。【合田月美】
ends

Japan Times Zeit Gist column on Otaru Onsens Case (not by me) (Now UPDATED with comment)

Posted on December 2, 2008December 6, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s an article that came out in the Japan Times this morning about the Otaru Onsens Case, critical of what happened. I’ll refrain from comment (readers, go first), as I’m in transit. What do you think? Arudou Debito, returning from Iwate
(UPDATE: See my commentary in Comment #32 below)
=======================================

CHRIS MacKENZIE ILLUSTRATION

THE ZEIT GIST

Back to the baths: Otaru revisited

Paul de Vries sees worrying precedent for Japan in 2002 landmark court ruling

By PAUL DE VRIES

The Japan Times Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2008

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20081202zg.html

The story is familiar to regular readers of Zeit Gist. Debito Arudou, a naturalized Japanese citizen, originally from America, was living in Sapporo, Hokkaido, and had heard of the Yunohana public bath’s policy of denying entry to foreigners. In 1999, media in tow, he decided to put that onsen’s policy to the test. Sure enough, entry was denied, with the accompanying explanation that foreigners often “cause trouble” and, as such, the regulars “dislike sharing the facilities with them.”

The origin of this controversy is the behavior of Russian sailors. The Yunohana “onsen” is located in Otaru, the main port between Japan and the Russian Far East. Otaru attracts over a thousand Russian vessels and more than 25,000 sailors a year on stays of varying lengths. In the mid-1990s, Russian sailors were frequently showing up drunk at the city’s various onsen and jumping into the tubs with soap on their bodies, thus rendering the facilities unusable.

Prior to taking on the Yunohana onsen, Earth Cure, the management company against whom Arudou’s court action was taken, was running one of the city’s other onsen facilities. It had been pushed to the brink of ruin after its regular clientele had been driven away by the behavior of Russian sailors. When that problem reappeared at Yunohana, Earth Cure opted for an uncompromising stance: Anyone who did not immediately appear to be Japanese was turned away at the door.

To give Arudou his due, he didn’t rush to the courts. In accordance with the accepted customs of his adopted Japan, he attempted to reach an accord by working with Otaru city officials, and through consultations with the Yunohana onsen and a couple of other like-minded facilities. These efforts were successful with all but Yunohana, and it was that particular onsen against which Arudou and two other plaintiffs made a claim for ¥6 million for the “mental distress” that the self-inflicted ordeal had put them through. The case was won in November 2002 with a judgment awarding the plaintiffs half of what they had sought.

A responsible individual was barred from a facility to which the general public is entitled to enter upon presentation of an entry fee. His rights were upheld by the courts. The facility was forced to back down. So what’s the problem with that? The problem is that the case was fought and won on the issue of racial discrimination when the policy being employed by the Yunohana onsen could more accurately be described as the racial application of “group accountability.”

Group accountability is a process within which all of the members of a group are punished for the indiscretion of one of that group’s members. It is a process that seeks to take the onus of policing away from law enforcement professionals and place it in the hands of society at large. The upside of group accountability is high levels of public safety and the scarcity of rogue individuals. A downside occurs when the innocent are prejudiced or punished for behavior and deeds they did not commit.

There is nothing particularly Japanese about this process. It is commonly used in the West by parents and in schools, and is most notably employed in the battle against soccer hooliganism. In “adult” Western society, however, group accountability is incompatible with the cherished Western ideal of individual rights. Officially, in the West, group accountability is not to be employed. But is it?

In the West, are people prejudged by the actions of others from the same race, color, neighborhood or region? In the West, are preconceptions based on a history of behavior of others from the same sex or religion? The answer to both of these questions is an emphatic “Yes.” The reality for the West is that it gets the worst of both worlds: Individuals are still prejudged on the basis of group association, yet society does not benefit from the restraining force that peer pressure can provide.

While the most controversial applications of group accountability for foreigners within Japan are those that are based on race, it is a mistake to think that group accountability is not applied by the Japanese with an even hand. Consider, for example, the designation of women-only train carriages.

The women-only carriage initiative was first carried out on certain commuter lines during 2002, but was confined to late-night services. The stated rationale was to provide protection against lewd behavior by drunken male passengers — a rationale against which few could object. The ante was upped in 2005 when the service was extended to morning commuter trains, thus effectively conceding for the first time that “chikan” (gropers) and not alcohol was the primary cause of the problem.

In the weeks after the women-only carriages were introduced on morning services, there was a certain amount of guttural male rumbling, yet the measure has been widely accepted. This is clear proof that the Japanese are not above applying group-based discrimination within their own ranks.

It is also quite notable that the foreign male population of Japan does not appear to be particularly upset about being excluded from these train carriages. There has been no mention of any discontent in columns such as Zeit Gist, not a single word from Debito Arudou, and the silence in Readers in Council from non-Japanese has been deafening.

A subject on which the foreign (but most vociferously, Western) population did manage to find its voice was the regimen of photographic registering and fingerprinting that was introduced in November 2007. Under the justification of countering terrorism, the Japanese government decided to require that visitors to its shores be photographed and have their fingerprints scanned at immigration — a policy with both precedent and reasonable justification in that it was also being carried out by the U.S. and was in the process of being set up in Britain. But what a reaction followed! Online petitions, protests, letter after letter to The Japan Times, U.N.-sponsored seminars. It was unbelievable!

Women-only train carriages and fingerprinting/photographing are both applications of group accountability. On both of these issues, a section of society (men and foreigners) is being asked to undergo a measure of inconvenience in order to counter a threat that comes from within their ranks (chikan and al-Qaida). The attitude of the Japanese toward these two issues is consistent. The attitude of the Western population is not. The Western population of Japan clearly draws a distinction between racial and nonracial applications of group accountability. Or perhaps more accurately, between applications that are primarily directed toward Westerners and those that are not.

The use of group accountability as an instrument of social control in Japan has not historically been racial in application.

It became an accepted societal tool during a time when this nation was — for all practical purposes — a mono-racial society. It has therefore been traditionally applied on a basis of criteria other than race.

This contrasts sharply with the history of group-based discrimination in Arudou’s America. “White America” has always been racial to the core, with “the other” always being a member of another race (the same being largely true for Australia, New Zealand, Canada or any of the other landmasses that “whites” succeeded in colonizing). As such, group accountability is a far touchier subject in the West than it is in Japan and much of Asia.

But surely that’s the West’s problem. Why should the social benefits of group accountability be denied to the Japanese simply because of the history of entrenched Western racism, especially given that the Japanese employ it with an even hand? The concept enjoys a broad level of acceptance within Asia as a whole, and the majority of non-Japanese residing on Japanese shores are Asian nationals. It makes little sense for the Western attitude to prevail.

It is more than appropriate that Debito Arudou ultimately got to take his bath at the Yunohana facility, but the ruling that was handed down was misguided. In truth, the case should not have even gone to court. At a pre-trial hearing the judge should have addressed Earth Cure with something like the following:

“Look, I understand your concerns. You have clearly suffered from the behavior of Russian customers, and as you were driven out of business at a former facility, it is not unnatural that you are the final remaining holdout. But enough is enough! Considerable efforts have been made in good faith to resolve this problem at a multitude of levels. It is time for you to give some ground.”

And if that didn’t work, the judge should have either asked Arudou to come to him with something other than a racial discrimination claim, or have issued a judgment that addressed the issue of group accountability directly. But that was not to be. The judgment that was made placed negligible weight on the preamble to the claim, thereby laying the legal groundwork for the demise of group accountability as a social conditioner within Japan.

Debito Arudou has embraced the precedent set in the Yunohana onsen case and sought to make the “right of entry” something of an “inalienable human right.” Precedent in hand, he has spent much of the past few years confronting unwelcoming Japanese “businesses” — the vast majority of which no self-respecting person should want to be seen anywhere near. This crusade is essentially geared toward having Japan conform with American (as distinct from Western) standards.

I am no regular rider on the anti-American bandwagon. America is a truly wonderful country with some particularly obvious virtues, but these do not include its level of safety and social cohesion. While the rights of the individual are certainly more strongly upheld in America than in Japan, the presence of rogue individuals within America is disproportionately high. America is unquestionably a more dangerous place than Japan.

And this brings us to the point that Arudou ignores or simply fails to see. Group accountability is not employed in Japan simply for the sake of pushing people around. It is employed for the purpose of making Japan cohesive and safe. It is a major reason why Japan, unlike the U.S., is a nation in which the fear of random violence is relatively low. If Arudou succeeds in his quest, Japan will become one more nation in which the individual is to be feared. That is an outrageously high price to pay for the occasional racial, national, generational or gender-driven slight.

Paul de Vries is putting the finishing touches to a book about what the world can learn from Japan. Send comments on this issue and story ideas to community@japantimes.co.jp

Asahi NP Op-Ed urges J to make education compulsory for NJ children too

Posted on November 24, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Another column calling for the guaranteed education of NJ children. Good. Keep it up. The more of these, the better. Previous one earlier this year here. Debito in Sapporo

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

POINT OF VIEW/ Takaaki Kato: Non-Japanese kids deserve an education, too

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, 2008/11/20

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200811200044.html

Among non-Japanese families residing in Japan, there are too many that do not enroll their children in public or other schools here. Whatever their reasons, this is a serious problem. These children of foreign nationality, some of whom were born in Japan, are being deprived of their right to an education.

As a Japanese-language teacher at an elementary school, I find this situation distressing. Not only do these kids lose out, but so do their families and the community in general.

The Council for Cities of Non-Japanese Residents, which comprises representatives from municipal governments that have a high concentration of foreign residents, has made proposals to the national and prefectural governments on how best to educate the children of foreign nationality.

I believe the main reason many children of foreign nationality are not enrolled in school is because Japanese law does not oblige them to receive compulsory education.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology says that when such children apply for enrollment at public elementary and junior high schools, they are accepted free of charge and are thus guaranteed educational opportunities.

However, that doesn’t prevent their parents or guardians from failing to enroll them, the first main problem.

Some non-Japanese parents or guardians prefer to send their children to international schools, such as those for Brazilians living in Japan. That is fine.

But others who don’t send their children to international schools also do not apply for their children to enter the Japanese school system. In some cases, they have pulled their kids out of school to baby-sit younger siblings.

This brings us to a second problem. Even when school officials try to persuade guardians to enroll their children, they fail because there is no law requiring enrollment. The School Education Law is not clear on whether children of foreign nationality fall within the definition of “mandatory school-age pupils and students.”

Still, Article 26 of the Constitution states: “All people shall be obliged to ensure that all boys and girls under their protection receive ordinary education as provided for by law.”

But since foreign residents are not Japanese citizens, they are not obliged to ensure their children go to school. That seems to be the general interpretation.

Does this mean children of foreign nationality in Japan have no right to an education?

No, it does not.

Under the spirit of the Constitution, under internationally accepted universal human rights principles and under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, both of which Japan has ratified, every human being, regardless of nationality, has the right to a basic education.

Thus, a child’s right to an education means their parents or guardians are obliged to ensure they receive such schooling.

Therefore, foreign residents in Japan must be legally required to ensure the children under their care receive compulsory education.

So it seems obvious that a new clause must be added to the Fundamental Law of Education, for example, to ensure such children receive the education that is rightfully theirs.

If children of foreign nationality are legally obliged to receive compulsory education, local governments would have to check to ensure they have been enrolled in school.

The authorities would of course let guardians decide whether to enroll the children in international schools or Japanese public schools, but either way, they would have to ensure the children were actually attending school.

A revised system like this would also improve awareness among foreign residents about their children’s right to an education.

The government must tackle this problem seriously and implement measures to promote enrollment of foreign children in public or other schools.

Such steps might include providing subsidies to international schools, producing and distributing free Japanese-language learning textbooks and assigning Japanese-language teachers to teach Japanese as a second language to children of foreign nationality.

The future of these children is at stake. I strongly urge the government to make elementary and junior high school education compulsory for children of foreign nationality, too.

* * *

The author teaches international students at Imawatarikita Elementary School in Kani, Gifu Prefecture. (IHT/Asahi: November 20,2008)

Japan Times on GOJ’s new efforts to boost tourism to 20 million per annum

Posted on November 19, 2008November 19, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. I heard from Tyler Lynch that Japan Tourism Agency Commissioner Mr Honpo gave a speech in Nagano recently, on how to more than double tourism to Japan to 20 million visitors per annum by 2020 (see article immediately following). One question during the Q&A was the recent poll indicating that 27% of hotels polled don’t want NJ tourists, for whatever reason (something not mentioned in the article below). What was the GOJ going to do about these coy lodgings, refusing people in violation of Japanese hotel laws? Well, according to Tyler, nothing. First the article, then Tyler’s report:

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

In tough economic times, tourism boss finds visitor boost a tall order

The Japan Times, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2008

By TAKAHIRO FUKADA Staff writer

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/member.html?mode=getarticle&file=nn20081111f2.html

Courtesy of Tyler Lynch

Japan’s ailing regional economies can be revitalized by tapping the sightseeing potential of growing Asian countries, according to Japan Tourism Agency Commissioner Yoshiaki Hompo.

Tall order: Japan Tourism Agency Commissioner Yoshiaki Hompo is interviewed recently in Tokyo. YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO

China will be a vital market, and Hompo’s agency is now in talks with other government bodies to gradually ease rules for issuing visas to Chinese tourists, he said during a recent interview in Tokyo.

Hompo also said the Japanese are not exclusionist and boasted the country has a unique natural and cultural diversity.

The agency was launched last month as part of efforts to draw 20 million foreign tourists by 2020, far beyond the 8.4 million who visited last year.

“Because the nation’s population is declining, Japan as a whole is increasingly aware that it must vitalize its regions by expanding exchanges, and some municipalities are desperate,” the new agency chief said.

Hompo hopes that despite the yen’s recent appreciation, Chinese, South Koreans, Taiwanese and Singaporeans will boost travel to Japan in the future.

Those parts of Asia with high growth potential must be included in Japan’s economic growth strategy, he said. Sightseeing can be a crucial and effective way to serve these goals, he stressed.

Hompo said he is proud of Japan’s unique tourism resources.

“Japan has been taking in both Western and Oriental cultures in its own way, so we now have an extremely diverse culture,” Hompo boasted.

“We have diversity that even Europe and Asia do not possess. It is a distinguishable feature of Japanese tourism resources,” Hompo said.

To draw 20 million tourists, the agency said Japan will need to attract around 6 million from China, which is far more than the 900,000 who visited last year.

“We will not be able to achieve that if we do not ease visa” restrictions for travelers from China, Hompo said, adding, however, the government will ease them gradually.

Experts are recommending streamlining the visa process or offering exemptions in certain cases to attract more visitors.

While boasting attractive tourism resources, and ambitious goals, the surging yen and recent world economic turmoil have cast a dark shadow on the market, Hompo conceded.

In September, the number of foreign tourists to Japan fell almost 7 percent from a year earlier to 611,500. South Korean travelers plunged more than 20 percent to 159,500.

“We have to be ready for this situation possibly continuing,” Hompo said.

But he remains optimistic as he said many foreign tourists have been choosing Japan in recent years.

Hompo said the agency will accelerate coordination with other ministries on easing visa restrictions for Chinese tourists.

“Easing visa (restrictions) has apparently quick effects” in bringing in more foreign tourists, he said.

While some may argue that many Japanese are xenophobic, Hompo said Japan will welcome foreign tourists with hearty hospitality.

“I do not necessarily think (Japanese) are exclusive in general,” Hompo said. “I wonder if anywhere else has people with this abundant hospitable mentality.”

The agency is in charge of implementing measures to turn Japan into a more tourism-oriented nation. It promotes the Visit Japan campaign, which publicizes appeals overseas for people to visit Japan and take in its natural scenery, modern metropolises and traditional enclaves.

ENDS

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

COMMENT: Here’s how Tyler reported (from a comment on Debito.org) about a speech Mr Honpo gave:

Tyler (平) Lynch Says:
October 30th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

Debito-san,
Yesterday I attended a tourism symposium in Matsumoto (Nagano Pref.) Yoshiaki Hompo, the 長官 of the newly created Japan Tourism Agency, was the guest speaker, and he commented on this issue of 27% of ryokans not wanted foreign guests.

Hompo-san presented some impressive stats on Japan’s tourism and (declining) population trends. One important figure was how much tourist expenditure it would take to cover the economic loss of one resident: 24 Japanese tourists (76 if just day trippers) or just 5 tourists from overseas. The point is Japan’s economy needs “Inbound” tourists to keep the economy stable during its population loss. In 2003, ex-PM Koizumi declared the goal of 10 million foreign tourists per year by 2010. Seemed pretty ambitious with there only being 5,100,000 at the time, but ‘08 is on target for 9,150,000. (That target is now in danger due to the recent climb of the Japenese Yen.) As Koizumi’s goal will likely be achieved earlier than expected, the JTA is now considering a new goal of 20 million by 2010. That would mean 1 in every 6 宿泊者　(lodgers) would be a foreigner (compared with 1 in 14 in 2007).

Hompo-san then said he is often asked: “With that type of stat, are you just going to ignore the 27% of the ryokans that don’t want to accept foreigners?” You know what his reply was? “Yes, we are going to ignore them.” The reasoning was that the 1 in 6 won’t be spread evenly across all inns and hotels. The percentages will obviously be higher in Tokyo than the countryside. The inns in the 27% group tend to be in the countryside and tend to not want foreigner guests because they are not confident they can provide satisfactory service to them (c.f. Iegumo-san’s in-laws). Hompo-san indicated he would prefer to let such inns persist in their ignorance rather than forcing Inbounders on them, which would only create unpleasant experiences for both parties. As Japan’s population (and therefore their customer base) shrinks, then maybe the inns will wake up to the reality of needing to direct their omotenashi towards foreigners. Or maybe they’ll just keep on sleeping… (My editorializing, not his, but Hompo-san did say he would ほっとく the 27% in the hopes of avoiding them providing 忠太半端 service to foreign guests.)

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

DEBITO COMMENTS: So there you have it. The economic incentives are clear: 5 NJ tourists equals 24 J tourists (or 76 J day trippers) — meaning NJ tourists spend five to fifteen times more money than Japanese tourists. But Mr Honpo doesn’t seem to think that enforcing the Ryokan Gyouhou matters — the invisible hand of economic pressure will take care of everything, including discrimination against foreigners.

Maybe. But it’s still odd for a member of the administrative branch to argue that laws need not be enforced — that exclusionary hotels can just be ignored. As if “JAPANESE ONLY” rules at hotels will not encourage copycats in other business sectors to put up similar signs and rules. Moreover, economic incentives have not resolved other cases of exclusion, even when there are similar buyers’ markets in the apartment rental economy, where refusals of NJ are still commonplace. Harrumph.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo, another major tourist destination.

Robert Whiting on NJ flunkey-cum-baseball hero Oh Sadaharu’s legacy

Posted on November 8, 2008November 8, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s an article which made me conclude something that I have been suspecting all along.

Baseball hero Oh Sadaharu, a Zainichi Taiwanese, is retiring. He has done a lot for baseball and no doubt for the image of NJ in Japan (especially the Sangokujin, Tokyo Gov. Ishihara’s pet NJ to target as potential criminals).

But I am not a fan. As the article rather euphemistically headlines below, Oh’s record was hard to beat. That’s because anyone who came close, particularly a line of foreign baseball players, was stopped because they were gaijin. Even by Oh himself. Now, that’s unsportsmanlike. I will cheer anytime anyone does well as a personal best, especially when they overcome great personal odds (Oh was not allowed to play Korakuen High School baseball tournaments because Japan didn’t, and still doesn’t to some degree, allow foreign players to play in Kokutai leagues where “they might qualify for the Olympics and become national representatives” sort of thing).

But Oh for years now has struck me as a person who earns his laurels and his pedestal, then pulls the ladder up behind him, even for others who face similar obstacles. It’s one thing to discriminate because discrimination is the norm and you’re just playing ball. It’s another to go through the discrimination yourself, then turn around and abet the discrimination against others. It’s hypocritical, and Oh should have known and done better. He chose not to. And now that we have an authority on Japanese baseball, Robert Whiting, coming out and indicating as such in the article below, I’m ready to draw this conclusion:

Oh Sadaharu may be a baseball hero, but he’s an Uncle Tom and a turncoat, and that tarnishes his image as a genuine hero. Shame on you, Sadaharu. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

More on discrimination against NJ in the Kokutai here.

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

Equaling Oh’s HR record proved difficult

By ROBERT WHITING

Special to The Japan Times, Friday, Oct. 31, 2008

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/sb20081031j3.html

Third in a three-part series

PART I — Devoted to the game: Looking back at Oh’s career
PART II — Oh’s career sparkled with achievements as player, manager

Back in the day: Sadaharu Oh, Hank Aaron and CBS-TV announcer Brent Musburger are seen at an exhibition home run contest held by the two prodigious sluggers on Nov. 2, 1974, at Tokyo’s Korakuen Stadium. Aaron won 10-9. (C) STARS AND STRIPES

The one big black mark on Sadaharu Oh’s reputation was, of course, the unsportsmanlike behavior of the pitchers on his team whenever foreign batsmen threatened his single season home run record of 55.

The phenomenon had first surfaced in 1985, when American Randy Bass playing for the Hanshin Tigers, who went into the last game of the season — against the Oh-managed Giants at Korakuen Stadium — with 54 home runs.

Bass was walked intentionally four times on four straight pitches and would have been walked a fifth, had he not reached out and poked a pitch far outside the plate into the outfield.

Oh denied ordering his pitchers to walk Bass, but Keith Comstock, an American pitcher for Yomiuri reported afterward that a certain Giants coach imposed a fine of $1,000 for every strike Giants pitchers threw to Bass.

A subsequent investigation by the magazine Takarajima concluded that the instructions had probably originated in the Giants front office, which wanted the home run record kept in the Giants organization.

Except for an editorial in the Yomiuri Shimbun’s archrival, the Asahi, demanding to know why Oh did not run out to the mound and order his pitchers to throw strikes, the media remained silent, as did then-NPB commissioner Takeso Shimoda, who had often stated his belief that the Japanese game would never be considered first class as long as there were former MLB bench-warmers starring on Japanese teams.

Of course, the reality was more complex. There were many imports who were in fact gifted hitters, but were kept out of big league lineups by other shortcomings in their game or by bad luck — simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, Shimoda and like-minded critics failed to see such shades of gray.

A replay of the Bass episode came during the 2001 season. American Tuffy Rhodes, playing for the Kintetsu Buffaloes, threatened Oh’s record.

With several games left in the season, Rhodes hit the 55 mark. But during a late season weekend series in Fukuoka, pitchers on the Hawks refused to throw strikes to Rhodes and catcher Kenji Johjima could be seen grinning during the walks.

Again Oh denied any involvement in their actions and Hawks battery coach Yoshiharu Wakana admitted the pitchers had acted on his orders.

“It would be distasteful to see a foreign player break Oh’s record,” he told reporters.

The NPB commissioner on watch, Hiromori Kawashima, denounced his behavior as “unsportsmanlike,” and there was some outcry from the media.

However, this did not help Rhodes, who went homerless the rest of the way. Rhodes remained convinced that there was a “Code Red” that kicked into action whenever a foreign player did too well.

A second replay occurred in 2002, when Venezuelan Alex Cabrera also hit 55 home runs, tying Oh (and Rhodes) with five games left to play in the season. Oh commanded his pitchers not to repeat their behavior of the previous year, but, not surprisingly, most of them ignored him. There was more condemnation from the public, but, curiously, not from Oh, who simply shrugged and said, “If you’re going to break the record, you should do it by more than one. Do it by a lot.”

Such behavior led an ESPN critic to call Oh’s record “one of the phoniest in baseball.”

In Oh’s defense, there was probably nothing he could have done to prevent his pitchers from acting as they did. Feelings about “gaijin” aside, it was (and still is) common practice for teams to take such action to protect a teammate’s record or title.

In all three assaults on Oh’s record, the respective front offices had a decided interest in the outcome. Oh’s 55 homers was a Yomiuri record, while executives with the Hawks believed Oh’s status as a record-holder brought the organization favorable PR.

No pitcher on any of Oh’s teams wanted to be the one who gave up the homer that cost Oh that particular spot in the record books.

Finally, there was the question of Oh’s own personality. He was a product of his life experiences and his father’s life experiences as a member of a minority group in Japan. He surely knew better than to make waves and to embarrass the executive suits that had so much invested in him.

Still, amid all the fuss about protectionism in baseball, it is noteworthy that no one in the Japanese game ever sees fit to mention the fact that Oh hit most of his home runs using rock hard, custom-made compressed bats.

A batter using a compressed bat, it was said, could propel a ball farther than he can with an ordinary bat. Compressed bats were illegal in the MLB when Oh was playing in Japan, and were outlawed by the NPB in 1982 after Oh retired, but well before Bass, Rhodes and Cabrera had Japan visas stamped into their passports.

Oh’s finest hour as a manager was perhaps his performance in the 2006 inaugural WBC. He had passed his 65th birthday and his age was starting to show. Moreover, he was not in the best of health, and was months away from a bout with cancer that would spare his life but cause a rearrangement of his digestive system.

Thanks for the memories: Sadaharu Oh has left a lasting impact during his 50 years in baseball. His 868 career home runs is a record that may never be surpassed in Japan. AP PHOT

The NPB owners, after long negotiations, had agreed to participate in the tourney but the NPB Players Association refused to cooperate. They were upset over the March schedule which they felt would interfere with their spring training.

Another thing that bothered them was that they had been completely left out of the loop in the discussions leading up to the WBC, both by the NPB owners and the American organizers of the event.

The NPB owners, with typical arrogance, had not bothered to inform the players of what had been going on, much less seek their consent or consult with them about the terms of participation in the WBC, until long after the tournament was announced.

More important, the players were skeptical of the event itself. They did not particularly think it was a worthy use of their time.

To break the impasse, senior executives from Yomiuri (which had agreed to sponsor the Asian round) prevailed upon Sadaharu Oh to manage the team, hoping that the presence of one of the most revered names in Japanese baseball history could somehow change the dynamic. Their first choice, Shigeo Nagashima (naturally), was not available due to the aftereffects of his stroke.

Oh had his own (secret) misgivings about the event, but true to his agreeable nature, finally agreed to take part. “I’ll do it for the welfare of Japanese baseball,” Oh had said a well-publicized remark, “I’ll do it for the future. For 50 years from now.”

Ichiro Suzuki, among others, was, initially, not impressed.

“What difference does it make if some old guy is going to manage the team?” he reportedly told acquaintances, “That doesn’t make it a real event.”

But the “old guy” was persistent. He threw himself into the job with typical perseverance. His own story was a tale of continued perseverance and triumph over personal tragedy.

Oh began a courtship of Ichiro and Hideki Matsui and he did it with the grace and diplomacy that was typical of him. He worked very hard to persuade them individually how important it was that Japan participate, that they participate.

Japan’s greatest slugger approached them as if they would be doing him a personal favor if they joined the team. In the end, Ichiro agreed to play, although Matsui felt too strong an obligation to the Yankees to leave spring camp.

Oh drove his players hard and the cool, aloof Ichiro somehow magically transformed into a fiery leader, exhorting his team to greater effort in practice and in the actual competition.

Japan went on to win the tourney — despite its three defeats overall — on a succession of steadily improving performances and a managerial strategy which combined caution with aggression.

The final, a 10-6 triumph over Cuba played at Petco Park in San Diego, riveted the nation. It was watched by one out of every two Japanese, a total audience of roughly 60 million people, which made it one of the most watched sporting events in the history of Japan.

It ignited an enormous national cheer back home. It was an ironic ending for a team that had not wanted to participate in the first place.

With the WBC victory, Oh was now more popular than he had ever been and it was a fitting cap to his career. Yet in a survey conducted by Sangyo Noritsu University to determine the “Boss of the Decade” the following year, Oh finished well behind Nagashima in the voting, despite having a higher lifetime winning percentage, at the time.

Somehow the results were not surprising.

Oh had fought against adversity his whole life, it seemed. As a youth, he had been banned from participating in an important national tournament because he was not a Japanese citizen, even though he was the best player on his team.

As a pro, he had to cede the spotlight to the more popular, pure-blooded Nagashima, despite the fact that he was arguably the best player in baseball during the Giants glory years, and as Giants manager had been faced with a team that did not wholeheartedly welcome his leadership.

Oh’s years with the Hawks, successful as they were, were marred by other difficulties. Among them was the premature death, in 2002, of his wife Kyoko, who succumbed to stomach cancer. That was followed by the inexplicable theft of her ashes from the family graveyard, never to be retrieved.

And then came Oh’s own bout with stomach cancer. In the middle of the 2006 season, Oh underwent laparoscopic surgery in which his cancerous stomach was completely removed.

But the thing about Oh is that you never, ever heard him complain — about anything. He just sucked up whatever misfortunes life dealt to him and went on to the next challenge. He always tried to look at the bright side.

When he returned to manage the Hawks in 2007, several kilograms lighter and looking, as one reporter put it, “like an underfed jockey,” he acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

“Yes, I don’t have a stomach anymore,” he said, the last time I saw him, in the fall of 2007 when he appeared at a Foreign Sportswriters of Japan event to pick up a Lifetime Achievement Award, “but now I can eat as much chocolate as I want.”

However, the Hawks fell further out of contention in that ’07 season and were eliminated in the playoffs for the fourth straight year.

In 2008, the Hawks dropped into last place and Oh announced his resignation and his retirement from field managing. He referenced ill health, but also took responsibility for the team’s failure to win another championship. “Managers should not stay that long in one place,” he said.

The announcement of his retirement prompted a wave of tributes from the prime minister’s office on down, as well as a special newspaper editions and TV reports lauding his accomplishments.

People seemed to sense that with Oh’s retirement they had lost something more than just a baseball hero, that they had lost a connection to an era in Japan where the values of hard work, selflessness, and responsibility mattered a lot more than they do now.

Professor Saito summed it up when he eulogized Oh in an interview with NHK. “We are living in an era of instant gratification,” he said, “People these days want everything now and they give in too easily to adversity. But not Oh. He has shown us what the true meaning of ‘doryoku’ is.”

Johjima had flown back from the States to attend Oh’s farewell game on Oct. 7, 2008.

“Oh was a great human being,” he said when it was all over, “He was special, as a player, as a manager, as a man. He was a baseball father figure to me. It was a huge honor to play for him.”

ENDS

PART I — Devoted to the game: Looking back at Oh’s career
PART II — Oh’s career sparkled with achievements as player, manager

Japan Focus runs translation of Asahi Oct 5 2008 article on discrimination

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Academic website JAPAN FOCUS ran my translation of the October 5 2008 Asahi article earlier this week. Now it’s got an international audience. Good. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

=============================
Japan’s Entrenched Discrimination Toward Foreigners
The Asahi Shimbun October 5, 2008
Translation by Arudou Debito

Japan Focus, October 25, 2008

http://www.japanfocus.org/_The_Asahi_Shimbun-Japan_s_Entrenched_Discrimination_Toward_Foreigners

Will Japan ever overcome its distrust of foreigners? This question has been forcefully posed in various guises, most notably perhaps by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights Doudou Diene. In 2005 he concluded after a nine-day investigation in Japan that the authorities were not doing enough to tackle what he called Japan’s “deep and profound racism” and xenophobia, particularly against its former colonial subjects. The report appeared to vindicate the work of campaigners such as naturalized Japanese Arudou Debito, who argue that Japan needs, among other things, an anti-discrimination law.

Now, unusually perhaps for a major national newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun has waded into the debate with a major article on the issue. Titled, “Opening the nation: Time to make choices,” the article recounts tales of discrimination by long-term foreign residents before looking at how Japan compares to other nations, including perhaps its nearest equivalent, South Korea. A lively illustration helps makes the point that foreigners sometimes feel like second-class citizens. The Asahi concludes that the dearth of laws here protecting the livelihoods or rights of non-Japanese makes the country somewhat unique. “In other countries…there is almost no example of foreigners being shut out like this.” Interestingly, the Asahi did not translate the article for its foreign edition. David McNeill

—————————-

Apartments, hospitals…even restaurants

“They’re judging me on my appearance. They suspect me because I’m not Japanese.” Pakistani national Ali Nusrat (46), a resident of Saitama Prefecture, was stopped near his home by a policeman and asked, “What’s all this, then?” He soon lost his patience. This is his twentieth year in Japan and he has a valid visa. However, since last year, he has gotten more and more questions about his identity and workplace, to the point where he was stopped by police every day for seven days. He was aware that security was being tightened because of the G8 Summit of world leaders [which took place in Hokkaido in July 2008], but still thought it over the top.

Nusrat has admired Japan since childhood. There are lots of nice people here, he says. But after the terrorism of 9/11, he feels that local eyes have grown more suspicious towards non-Japanese. Realtors have told him, “We don’t take foreign renters.” When he took a Brazilian friend to a hospital, they refused to treat him: “Sorry, we don’t take foreign patients.”

Recently, an American male (44) who has lived in Japan 23 years took his visiting American friend to a yakitori shop in Tokyo. Nobody took their order. When he eventually asked in Japanese for service, a woman who appeared to be the head manager said, “No gaijin” [the epithet for “foreigner”]. It was a shock. “If this were the US, the first thing we’d do is report it to the police. But there is no law against discrimination in Japan, so there’s nothing the cops will do about it.”

In Otaru, on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, there were public bathhouses with signs saying “we refuse entry to foreigners” back in 1998. A court determined that this “qualified as discrimination”, handing down a verdict ordering one establishment to pay compensation. However, non-Japanese making a life in Japan still to this day face various forms of discrimination (see illustration). “Japanese Only” signs have still not disappeared, and some establishments charge non-Japanese entry fees many times higher than Japanese customers.

“If you’re worried about people’s manners, then make the rules clear, and kick out people who don’t follow them,” is the advice offered to these businesses by Arudou Debito, a native of the United States with Japanese citizenship and an associate professor at Hokkaido Information University. He was also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against an exclusionary bathhouse. “These days, when Japan needs labor from overseas, properly protecting foreigner rights sends an important message that people are welcome here.”

What about other countries? While there are punitive measures, there are also moves to encourage communication.

From July 2007, South Korea began enforcing the “Basic Act on Treatment of Foreigners Residing in Korea”. It demands that national and local governments “strive towards measures to prevent irrational cases of discrimination,” proclaiming in Article 1: “Foreigners will adapt to South Korean society in a way that will enable them to demonstrate their individual abilities.” South Korea’s aging society is outpacing Japan’s, and international unions now account for over 10 percent of all marriages. Forty percent of South Korean farmers and fishermen have welcomed brides from China, Southeast Asia, and other countries. The acceptance of foreign laborers continues apace. This law is the result of strong demands for improvements in the human rights of foreigners, who are propping up South Korean society and economy.

In Western countries, in addition to punitive laws against racial discrimination, there are very powerful organizations backing up foreigners’ rights, such as Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has a staff of 500 people. Public-sector residences doled out to white residents only; a child denied entry into a school “because he’s a Gypsy;” job promotions slow in coming — many of these types of cases and claims flow into the offices of the Commission, which carries out redress against discrimination by race, gender, and disability.

After investigating a bona fide case of discrimination, the Commission proposes all parties talk to each other. If mediation fails, then the organization issues an order for parties to improve their behavior. In the event of a lawsuit, the Commission provides legal funding and offers evidence in court. In recent years, as more people have emigrated from Eastern Europe, as well as from Africa and Asia, it has become harder to argue that discrimination is simply between “Whites” and “non-Whites”. According to [Patrick] Diamond, head of a government policy and strategy division within the Commission, “There are new duties concerning the prevention of antagonisms between ethnicities within communities.”

It is not only a matter of cracking down on discrimination after the fact, but also how to prevent it happening in the first place. France has begun trying out a procedure where application forms for public housing, as well as resumes for employment, are made anonymous; this way, people do not know by an applicant’s name if the latter is from an ethnic minority or a foreign country. In England, local governments are supporting events where immigrants and long-term residents cook each other food. By methods including trial and error, they are breaking down deeply-held insecurities (kokoro no kabe), creating “a leading country of immigration” (imin senshinkoku).

Creating anti-discrimination laws in Japan — the debate stalls

Saitama Prefecture, 2007: A non-Japanese couple in their seventies had just begun renting an upscale apartment, only to find the day before moving that they would be turned away. The management association of the apartment found that bylaws forbade rental or transfer of their apartments to foreigners. The couple’s oldest daughter called this a violation of human rights and appealed to the local Ministry of Justice, Bureau of Human Rights. The Bureau issued a warning to the association that this was “discriminatory treatment, conspicuously violating the freedom to choose one’s residence”. However, the association refused to revise its decision, and the couple had to look elsewhere.

Nationwide, the Bureau of Human Rights took on 21,600 cases of rights violations in 2007, including cases of violence or abuse towards women or the elderly, invasions of privacy and bullying. But there were also 126 cases of discrimination towards foreigners, a figure that is increasing year on year, with numerous cases involving refusals of service by renters, public baths, and hotels. However, even in cases determined to involve discrimination, the Bureau only has the power to issue “explanations” (setsuji) or “warnings”, not redress measures. Many are deterred by lawsuits and the enormous investment of time, emotional energy, and money they demand. In the end, many people just put up with it.

Japan still has no fundamental law protecting the livelihood or rights of non-Japanese. A bill for the protection of rights for handicapped and women, which also covers discrimination by race and ethnicity, was defeated in 2003. Debate is continuing within the government and ruling party on whether to resubmit it. Still, a “Human Rights Committee”, entrusted with the duties of hearing and investigating violations of human rights, has engendered great criticism from conservatives on the issue of appointing foreigners as committee members. The government eventually did a volte-face, saying that “only residents who have the right to vote for people in the local assemblies” are allowed, thus limiting appointments to Japanese.

In other countries, where organizations protect foreigners from discrimination, there is almost no example of foreigners being shut out like this. Even people within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have been critical: “The very organizations that are supposed to help foreigners in all manner of difficulties, such as language barriers, are in fact putting up barriers of their own. Their priorities are truly skewed” (honmatsu tentou).

===========================
This article first appeared in The Asahi Shimbun morning edition, October 5, 2008 in the ashita o kangaeru (With Tomorrow in Mind) column. The original text of the article is archived here. Posted at Japan Focus on October 25, 2008.

ARUDOU Debito is an Associate Professor at Hokkaido Information University. A human rights activist, he is the author of Japaniizu Onrii–Otaru Onsen Nyuuyoku Kyohi Mondai to Jinshu Sabetsu and its English version, “JAPANESE ONLY”–The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan (Akashi Shoten Inc) and coauthor of a bilingual Guidebook for Immigrants in Japan.

With thanks to Miki Kaoru for technical assistance in rendering the cartoon in English.

Govt websites don’t include NJ residents in their tallies of “local population”

Posted on October 28, 2008October 29, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Mark in Yayoi pointed out a singular thing to me the other night — that the Tokyo Nerima-ku website lists its population and households in various municipal subsections. Then puts at the top that “foreigners are not included”.

Screen capture (click on image to go to website) from:

http://www.city.nerima.tokyo.jp/shiryo/jinko/data/area/200810.html

etc. We already saw in yesterday’s blog entry that NJ workers are not included in official unemployment statistics. Now NJ taxpayers are also not included as part of the “general population”?

So I did a google search using the words “人口　総数には、外国人登録数を含んでいません” and found that other government websites do the same thing! It is, in fact, SOP.

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=人口　総数には、外国人登録数を含んでいません。&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

The Nerima-ku page, BTW, does not even mention anywhere on the page I captured above that foreigners even exist in Nerima-ku — you have to go to a separate page, a separate enclave, for the gaijin.

Pedants (meaning the GOJ) will no doubt claim (as is worded at the top) that “we’re only counting registered residents, and NJ aren’t registered residents, therefore we can’t count them“. But that doesn’t make it a good thing to do, especially when you’re using the context of “人口総数” (total population). What a nasty thing anyway to do to people who pay your taxes and live there! It also becomes a tad harder to complain about “Japanese Only” signs on businesses when even the GOJ also excludes foreigners from official statistics.

And it’s also harder to believe the GOJ’s claim to the UN that it has taken “every conceivable measure to fight against racial discrimination”. How about measures like counting (not to mention officially registering) foreigners as taxpayers and members of the population?

(I bet if any measure actually does get taken in response to this blog entry, the only “conceivable” one to the bureaucrats will be to change the terminology, using the word “juumin” instead of “jinkou sousuu”. Solve the problem by futzing with the rubric, not changing the law. Beyond conception.)

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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

UPDATE: And of course, don’t forget this, from Debito.org too…

Population rises 1st time in 3 years The Yomiuri Shimbun, Aug 1, 2008 http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080801TDY01306.htm

The nation’s population grew for the first time in three years to 127,066,178 in the year to March 31, up 12,707 from a year earlier, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Thursday.

The figure was based on resident registrations at municipal government offices and does not include foreign residents…

https://www.debito.org/?p=1860

“Japanese Only” at Tokyo Takadanobaba private-sector job placement agency

Posted on October 20, 2008March 28, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s something received from a friend: A private-sector job placement agency which explicitly says that foreign applicants cannot register (and I have telephoned to confirm, means they will not allow foreigners to apply):

The sign reads “Workers KK”.

Below, “We accept applicants for day-paid jobs, walk-ins fine. Construction, jobs within storage facilities, transport work etc.”

And in parenthesis: “People with foreign nationalities cannot register for our services.”

Address (gleaned from the general website at http://www.workers.co.jp/) for this, the Takadanobaba Branch, is:

〒169-0075
東京都新宿区高田馬場3-3-9山下ビル4Ｆ

From their site:

■　高田馬場支店　■

所在地：	〒169-0075
	東京都新宿区高田馬場3-3-9
	山下ビル4Ｆ
TEL:	03-3365-7701
FAX:	03-3365-7702

【登録スタッフ・登録のお問合せ専用ＴＥＬ】

TEL:	03-3365-7703

登録予約可能時間　月～土　11:00～15:00
※登録は予約制になっております。

■お給料のお支払い■
作業後当日からお支払い可能です。
お支払い時間　16:00～19:00
月～金(※祝・祭日除く)

Well, it goes without saying by now for readers of this site, but this exclusionary sign is unconstitutional and goes against international treaty. It also goes against the Labor Standards Law (Articles 3 and 4), which does not permit discrimination of workers on the basis of nationality etc. (More on that from NUGW site here.)

I called the number on the sign today and talked to a Mr Yoshimura, who confirmed that they do in fact refuse service to foreign workers. That includes all their branches, yes. When I mentioned that this is in violation of the LSL, he said that they are, as of now, considering a revision (doryoku shimasu, was how he put it). I gave him my phone number and email address should they decide to revise their rules and their sign. Meanwhile, another entry for the Rogues’ Gallery within a few days, and I’ll let the labor unions know.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Rogues’ Gallery of “Japanese Only” Establishments updated: Tokyo Akihabara, Kabukicho, Minami-Azabu, Tsukiji, & Ishikawa added

Posted on October 14, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

The “Rogues’ Gallery”, an archive of “Japanese Only” exclusionary establishments spreading nationwide across Japan, has now been updated for the season.

Added have been Tokyo Akihabara (shop), Minami-Asabu (ballet school), Kabukichou (nightlife), Tsukiji (seafood restaurant), and Ishikawa (a newspaper subscription outlet for the Hokkoku Shinbun — yes, a Japanese newspaper outlet refusing NJ subscribers).

This brings the tally to (places and types of establishment):

Onsens in Otaru (Hokkaido), Bars, baths, karaoke, and restaurant in Monbetsu City (Hokkaido), Public bath and sports store in Wakkanai (Hokkaido), Pachinko parlor, restaurant, and nightlife in Sapporo (Hokkaido), Bars in Misawa (Aomori Pref), Disco in Akita City (Akita Pref), Hotels and Bar in Shinjuku and Kabukicho (Tokyo Shinjuku-ku), Ballet School in Minami-Azabu (Tokyo Minato-ku), Seafood restaurant in Tsukiji (Tokyo Minato-ku), Weapons etc. store in Akihabara (Tokyo Chiyoda-ku), Women’s (i.e for women customers) Relaxation Boutique in Aoyama Doori (Tokyo Minato-ku), Bar in Ogikubo (Tokyo Suginami-ku), Bars in Koshigaya (Saitama Pref), Bar in Toda-Shi(Saitama Pref), Stores and nightclubs in Hamamatsu (Shizuoka Pref), Onsen in Kofu City (Yamanashi Pref), Nightlife in Isesaki City (Gunma Pref), Nightlife in Ota City (Gunma Pref), Bars in Nagoya City (Aichi Pref), Internet Cafe in Okazaki City (Aichi Pref), Hokkoku Shinbun Newspaper in Nonochi, Ishikawa Pref. (yes, you read that right), Onsen Hotel in Kyoto, Eyeglass store in Daitou City (Osaka Pref), Apartments in Fukshima-ku (Osaka City), Bar in Kurashiki (Okayama Pref), Nightclub and Bar in Hiroshima(Hiroshima Pref), Restaurant in Kokura, Kitakyushu City (Fukuoka Pref), Billiards hall in Uruma City Gushikawa (Okinawa Pref), Miscellaneous exclusionary signs (Tokyo Ikebukuro, Kabukicho, Hiroshima).

Update details as follows:

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

Akihabara (Tokyo Chiyoda-ku)
Shop “Mad”
東京都　千代田区　外神田　３丁目１６番１５号
電話　東京０３－３２５１－５２４１ FAX: 03 3255 0012
(their website says they will only take phone calls between two and three pm on weekdays)
http://www.akiba-mad.com/
After the famous stabbings in Akihabara in June 2008 (by a Japanese), a shop which sells weapons and knives in Akihabara had the temerity to maintain a sign up on their shop refusing foreigners entry. Photos received May 24, 2008.

(Click on images to expand in browser)
UPDATE: After calls (June 9 and 16, 2008) and meeting with the owner of the shop (June 17, he was very friendly and cooperative), the store agreed to take down their sign and replace it with a new one written by Rogues’ Gallery monitor Arudou Debito (photo by same taken June 17).

Now while I’m not a fan of making weapons obtainable by anyone, there are more things in the store than just knives etc. The misleading sign has at least been made nondiscriminatory.
FULL REPORT HERE.
Nevertheless, as of October 10, 2008, “MAD”s website still explicitly says their knives are not for sale to foreigners.

Rogues’ Gallery entry at https://www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html#Akihabara

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

KABUKICHOU 歌舞伎町
Mass-produced neighborhood signs for excluding all foreigners. Note how sophisticated the English language level of exclusionism has gotten.

These cellphone staps taken March 16, 2008 by Rogues’ Gallery monitor Arudou Debito at the address above (look down the stairwell to see the sign just to the left of the black stand).

But there are many other businesses now displaying the same sign in Kabukichou. Ironic, given that Kabukichou has the highest concentration of businesses run and staffed by foreigners in Japan. How do they go to work? I guess they’re not “guests”. See what I mean about the increasing sophistication of the exclusionary language?

Full report at https://www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html#Shinjuku

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

Minami-Azabu (Tokyo Minato-ku)
Ballet School
ＭＧインターナショナル･アーツ・オブ・バレエ
東京都港区麻布5丁目5-9 後藤ハウスB1F MGホール
MG International Arts of Ballet, MG Hall, B1F GOTO House 5-5-9
Minami-Azabu Minato-ku, Tokyo
http://www.mg-ballet.org/home.html

Full report here: https://www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html#minamiazabu

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

TSUKIJI SEAFOOD RESTAURANT
Address and phone number unknown (was not able to check for myself from Sapporo), photo taken February 2008, courtesy CG. Sign describes complicated rules, and indicates that even Japanese who cannot follow them will be refused entry. However, the assumption still remains that non-Japanese will be unable to understand the rules of the establishment, so it blanket refuses them.
Full report here.

UPDATE: Exclusionary pign is now down as of February 2008, thanks to others contacting the restaurant and encouraging the management to reconsider.

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

Nonoichi City (Ishikawa Prefecture)
Dealer for Hokkoku Shinbun

日本語のレポート
北國新聞
販売所名：　野々市三馬（石川県）
代表者名：松田了三（まつだ・りょうぞ）
電話：　０７６−２４７－２１２０ (changed to 076-243-1810)
〒920-8588　石川県金沢市香林坊2丁目5番1号　TEL.076-263-2111
dokusha@hokkoku.co.jp
koho@hokkoku.co.jp
nanbuhanbai@hokkoku.co.jp
http://www.hokkoku.co.jp/

As was reported on the Debito.org blog on January 8, 2008, in November 2007 a NJ resident of Ishikawa Prefecture was offered a subscription, by a sales manager of an independent company selling magazine subscriptions, to the Hokkoku Shinbun, a regional Ishikawa Japanese newspaper. Receipts dated November 13, 2007 as follows: (click here to see larger scans and a fuller report):

The subscription was abruptly cancelled the next day, with a postcard from the salesman, a Mr Matsuda, confirming that the company will not sell subscriptions to foreigners (click on images for larger scans and a fuller report). The company’s standpoint as revealed in telephone interviews here. (The Hokkoku Shinbun itself has disavowed any connection with this company.)

This outcome is confounding. As can be seen in other entries on this Rogues’ Gallery, we have managers worried that letting NJ into their facilities might cause, they claim, problems with manners, sanitation, violence, or just plain discomfort to the owners for their own langauge insecurities or xenophobic tendencies. It’s confusing why a newspaper outlet (in these days when print journalism is scrambling for paying customers) would unilaterally void a subscription contract. Are they worried the foreigner might be able to read their paper? UPDATE (February 2008): After investigation by reporters from Kyodo News, the Mainichi Shinbun, and a shuukanshi weekly, reporters on the case told me that their editors said this was a non-story, and no article on this issue appeared in any publication. The Rogues’ Gallery moderator’s interpretation of this outcome is that newspapers are not happy to investigate other newspapers when there are financial interests involved. This is how uncritical our media gets.

Anyway, as newspapers themselves advise, avoid subscription outlets that are not official newspaper sales offices.

https://www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html#Nonoichi

See whole Rogues’ Gallery up at https://www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html

ENDS

Fukushima Prefectural Tourist Information Association lists “No Foreigner” hotels on their official website, 2007

Posted on October 10, 2008October 10, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. As a matter of record, here is a notification I received from a reader last year regarding the Tourist Information Fukushima website, an official prefectural government site, which offered information about sights and stays in the area. They allowed — even publicized — hotels that expressly refused accommodation to NJ guests (I called a few of them to confirm, and yes, they don’t want NJ guests due to the owner’s own classic fears — language barriers, no Western beds, a fear that NJ might steal, or noncommunication in case of emergency or trouble). As the emails I received from TIF later on indicate (it took them some time to get back to me), they have since instructed the hotels that what they are doing is in violation of hotel laws, and have corrected the TIF website to remove the option of refusing foreigners.

Thanks, I guess. Now why a government agency felt like offering hotels an exclusionary option in the first place is a bit stupefying.

Given October 2008’s GOJ hotel survey indicating that 27% of respondents didn’t want NJ staying on their premises, this may be but the tip of the iceberg. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

=====================================
From: TH
Subject: Fukushima – discriminatory hotels
Date: September 12, 2007 7:36:54 PM JST
To: debito@debito.org

Hi Debito,

A friend told me about Fukushima Prefecture’s English tourism website, which bizarrely lists 142 hotels and categories for them including “Acceptance of foreigners” and “Admittance of foreigners.” I don’t understand the difference between the two categories, but many hotels have one or both of these categories checked. The accommodation website is

http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/subCategory.do?areaID=all&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

I looked at all 142 accommodations listed on the website. The 35 listed below bar foreigners in one or both of the above categories.

I think this kind of categorization is completely unacceptable, even for a rural area like Fukushima.

I was also wondering whether you might be willing to look into this. I think you would be the best person given your tact and expertise.

Please let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Tim

Hotel & Ristorante Irregarro
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=11&areaID=1&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Tawaraya
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=124&areaID=3&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Nihon Kanko Hotel
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=23&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Iseya
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=30&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Higenoie
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=31&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Yamaneya
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=33&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Tamagoyu, Inc.
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=37&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Anahara Hot Spring Izumiya
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=43&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Kajikaso
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=55&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Oku-tsuchiyu Hot Spring, Hotel Kotaki
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=65&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Guesthouse Tanno
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=118&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Fukushima
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=119&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Matsukawa Masuya Hotel
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=127&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Shinobuso
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=128&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Fukushima Green Palece
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=133&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

The Garden Hotel Shokeien
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=45&areaID=5&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Koshi Highland Fujiya Hotel
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=84&areaID=7&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Wafutei Morinoyu
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=90&areaID=9&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Resort Hotel Yuzuru
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=123&areaID=9&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Guesthouse Yamari
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=140&areaID=9&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Minatoya
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=143&areaID=9&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Fujiya
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=19&areaID=2&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Business Hotel Denen
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=97&areaID=2&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Business Hotel Orient
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=104&areaID=2&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Nakanoyu
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=136&areaID=2&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Oshima
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=17&areaID=4&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Mizuho Hotel
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=20&areaID=6&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Atamiso
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=64&areaID=6&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Horai
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=102&areaID=6&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Teneitou
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=141&areaID=6&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Kagamiishi Daiichi Hotel Kagamiishikan
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=120&areaID=6&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Toraya Shinkan
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=21&areaID=8&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Hotel Kashiwa
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=69&areaID=8&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Spa Hotel Sumirekan
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=87&areaID=8&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

Tamayama Hot Spring Fujiya Hotel
http://www.tif.ne.jp/eng/details.do?code=144&areaID=8&categoryID=4&subCategoryID=24

ENDS

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

From: Arudou Debito

To: Mr Katou

Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 10:17 AM

Subject: 有道　出人より転送します。Fukushima – discriminatory hotels

（社）福島県観光連盟の加藤さま、有道　出人（あるどう　でびと）です。きょうのお電話のこと、誠にありがとうございました。

　さて、「外国人お断り」に見えるホテルの件につきまして、いただいたメールを転送します。どうぞお調べして外国人お断りであれば、取り止めるようにご注意下さい。旅館業法第５条違反です。

https://www.debito.org/whattodoif.html#refusedhotel

　そして、調べた結果を知らせていただけますか。

　お多忙のところで申し訳ございませんが、宜しくお願い致します。有道　出人

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

From: rfs01@tif.ne.jp

Subject: Re: 有道　出人より転送します。Fukushima – discriminatory hotels

Date: September 14, 2007 10:32:07 AM JST

To: debito@debito.org

Cc: gasc@tif.ne.jp

あるどう　でびと様

メールありがとうございました。

現在調査中です。

おそらく、各旅館施設にホームページに掲載する時、項目の意味が

理解しないで、掲載しているところもあるように見受けられます。

状況がわかりましたら、再度ご連絡させていただきます。

この件については、ホームページ担当の齋藤が調査しております。

よろしくお願いします。

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

Subject: 調査状況について（中間報告）

Date: October 1, 2007 2:49:25 PM JST

To: debito@debito.org

このたびは、外国人宿泊の件に関しましてご教示をいただきありがとうございます。

調査に関する現在の状況でございますが、各旅館・ホテルに対しまして、個別に電話で確認を

いたしております。その状況からは「あえて外国人を排除するようなことは行っていない。」との回答が多くなっております。

従いまして、ホームページに×となって掲載された経緯、「質問項目の内容」まで含めて現在確認作業を行っております。

今しばらくお時間をいただければ幸いです。取り急ぎご報告まで。

（福島県観光連盟　総務情報担当　齊藤）

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

From: gasc@tif.ne.jp

Subject: 当ホームページにおける外国人宿泊可否表示について

Date: September 14, 2007 5:26:58 PM JST

To: debito@debito.org

【有道出人様】

このたびは、当ホームページに関する「外国人宿泊可否」に関する表示に関しましてご指摘をいただき誠にありがとうございました。

当ホームページ作成にあたっての意図、回答いただいた各旅館・ホテルの意志等を早急に調査したいと考えております。ただ、

これには若干の時間をいただきたいと存じますので、本日、午後４時半、暫定的な措置といたしまして、データベースの該当する部分のレコードを非表示にする措置を

とらさせていただきました。取り急ぎご報告させていただきます。

調査の結果や今後の方針等につきましては、改めてご報告申し上げます。

よろしくお願いいたします。

==============================
ほんものの旅　オーダーメード　うつくしま。
社団法人　福島県観光連盟
【総務・情報課長】　齊藤登
Ph 024-521-3812 fax024-521-3811
E-mail gasc@tif.ne.jp
http://www.tif.ne.jp
東京上野「サテライトショップふくしま」ＯＰＥＮ
=============================

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

From: gasc@tif.ne.jp （福島県観光連盟　総務・情報課長　齊藤登）
Subject: 当ホームページにおける外国人宿泊可否表示に関する件（ご回答）
Date: October 22, 2007 7:35:30 PM JST
To: debito@debito.org

有道出人様

このたびは、福島県観光連盟英語ホームページの「ＳＴＡＹ」「外国人受け入れ」に関する項目に関しご指摘をいただきましてありがとうございます。

項目において×になっている３５の旅館・ホテルに対しまして直接電話により確認を行いましたが、その結果は次のとおりです。

● 外国人を拒否するようなことはまったくしていない。２４軒

● 外国人を拒否してはいないが、英語ができる人がいないので、外国人を積極的には受け入れていない。８軒

● 廃業や連絡とれず　３軒

（計３５軒）

この結果では、外国人を拒否するようなことはまったくしていない、２４軒と大変項目が多くなっておりますが、これは、当方からの調査の際「外国人の受け入れ」という質問項目であったため、「今まで外国人を受け入れた経験がない（極めて少ない）」旅館・ホテルさんが勘違いし×と記入されたものと思われます。これは当方からの質問の仕方が中途半端な面があったと反省しております。また、「拒否はしていないが、積極的に受け入れてもいない。」とする旅館・ホテルが計８軒ございましたので、念のため当旅館・ホテルにつきましては、旅館業法第５条の趣旨を説明いたしましてご理解をいただきました。

以上のような状況と対応をいたしましたのでご報告させていただきますとともに、調査・表示にあたりまして、行き違いがございましたことにお詫びを申し上げます。

今後とも福島県の観光振興にご協力を賜りますようお願い申し上げます。

（福島県観光連盟　総務・情報課長　齊藤登）

ENDS

Asahi/CNN: GOJ survey report: 38% of J hotels had no NJ guests in 2007, and 72% of those (as in 27%) don’t want NJ guests

Posted on October 10, 2008October 12, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s a breathtaking statistic. Courtesy of several people this morning:

Japan: No room at inn for foreigners

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/10/09/japan.inn.room.foreigners.ap/index.html

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs says over 70 percent of Japanese inns and hotels that didn’t have foreign guests last year don’t want any in the future either.

The ministry says that a survey of such businesses showed they feel unable to support foreign languages and that their facilities are not suited to foreigners.

The survey released Thursday shows that over 60 percent of Japan’s inns and hotels had foreign guests last year, but the majority of the rest don’t want any.

It was released as Japan continues its efforts to attract more foreign visitors. The country’s “Visit Japan Campaign” aims to draw 10 million foreigners to the country for trips and business in the year 2010, up from 8.35 million last year.

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

「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

http://www.asahi.com/travel/news/TKY200810090312.html

　ホテルや旅館の少なくとも３割が「外国人旅行者を泊めたくない」と考えていることが、総務省が９日に公表した観光関連業者に対する意識調査でわかった。小規模な業者ほど「もてなし」に消極的で、総務省は「国が主導して受け入れやすい環境を整える必要がある」としている。

　０６年時点で政府が把握している全国の旅館・ホテル１万６１１３業者すべてに調査票を送り、７０６８業者（４４％）が回答した。「これだけ大規模な調査は初めて」（総務省行政評価局）という。

　０７年に外国人旅行者の宿泊が全くなかった業者は３８％。このうち７２％が「宿泊してほしくない」と答えた。全体の２７％にあたる。理由を複数回答で聞くと「外国語対応ができない」（７６％）、「施設が外国人向きでない」（７２％）、「問題が発生した時の対応に不安がある」（６３％）の順に多かった。

　宿泊がなかった業者の割合を規模別に見ると、１００室以上は６％、３０〜９９室は１８％、３０室未満は５１％。規模が小さいほど多く、総務省は「地域振興の観点からも、地方に多い中小の業者の受け入れが進むことが望ましい」としている。

　１日に発足した観光庁は、０７年に８３５万人だった外国人旅行者を、２０年に２千万人とする目標を掲げている。

ENDS

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

COMMENT: This is not news to me (although I am grateful to the GOJ for conducting this survey and making this information available to the public). I’ve called a number of hotels (in places like Shinjuku, Wakkanai and Nagano) with “Japanese Only” rules and signs up and their most common excuse was, “we don’t speak any foreign languages” (they’ve also said “we don’t have Western beds” and “we can’t handle NJ problems if they come up”, precisely those listed in the Asahi article above). I’ve even pointed out to these hotels and to the local police box (with a keitai snap of the sign and a copy of the laws they have to enforce) that this is in fact an illegal activity under the Ryokan Gyouhou (which is very specific under what conditions hotels can refuse clientele; being a foreigner is not one of them); in all cases I was told to get lost. Even the police (in Ohkubo) couldn’t be bothered.

I even found a website last year put up by the Fukushima Prefectural Government Tourist Information Association which had several places stating (again, with government knowledge and sponsorship) that they explicitly did not want NJ to stay there. That was taken down after I pointed out the laws to the tourist agency and they spent several weeks researching, but gee whiz, doesn’t the government even know their own laws?

As the CNN article points out, how can Japan get more tourists when (mathematically) a estimable 27% or all hotels surveyed in Japan (72% of 38%, according to the Asahi above) don’t want their money because they can’t be bothered to offer their services properly? They are part of the sa-bisu gyoukai, aren’t they?

What to do? It’s pretty simple, really. Suspend their operating licenses until they shape up. And sic the press on them. Like the Kumamoto Pref Govt did the hotel that refused Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) ex-patients in 2004.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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

UPDATE: The Manchester Guardian quoted me soon afterwards. I’m not too comfortable with how my quotes came out, but here’s the article FYI. Debito

=====================
Japanese hoteliers turn backs on foreign tourists
Justin McCurry in Tokyo, The Guardian (guardian.co.uk)
Friday October 10 2008 14.57 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/10/japan-japan
WITH ADDENDA TO MY QUOTES (I’m not all that comfortable with how they came out)

Japan’s mission to boost the number of overseas visitors suffered a setback this week after hundreds of hoteliers and inn owners said they would turn away foreign guests.

Of the 7,068 hotels and inns that responded to a survey by the communications ministry, 62% had received at least one foreign guest last year, while 38%, or 2,655 establishments, had received none. Of that number, 72% said they would prefer their doors to remain closed to non-Japanese.

The results were published only days after Japan’s newly formed tourist agency said it planned to increase the number of foreign visitors to 10 million by the end of the decade, compared with 8.35 million last year. It then hopes to double the number to 20 million by 2020.

Many cited language problems, while others said they did not have the facilities for foreign guests, although what that actually meant wasn’t specified. Some said they would be unable to respond properly if any problems involving foreigners arose on their premises.

Smaller hotels and traditional inns, called ryokan, are most reluctant to court the international tourist yen.

In theory at least, the country’s thousands of ryokan, often located deep in the mountains or near the coast, are supposed to offer old-fashioned hospitality: faultless service, rooms with sliding paper screens and tatami-mat floors, communal hot spring baths and exquisitely presented local delicacies.

“The survey sheds light on a pretty dark part of Japan,” said Debito Arudou, an American-born naturalised Japanese citizen. [I’m grateful to the Japanese government for dealing with this kind of problem, usually kept quiet.]

Arudou, the author of a book on racial discrimination in his adopted country, called on local government to enforce anti-discrimination laws and revoke the business licenses of offending hotels and inns.

“They are supposed to be part of the service industry, but they’re not providing that service to foreigners.

[It’s a paradox.] “They claim they can’t provide foreign guests with a proper standard of service, so instead they deny it to them altogether. That’s arrogance on a grand scale.” [How can the hotel decide what the customer likes like this, and based upon their presupposition just say they’re not even going to try? In any case, it’s the law. They legally cannot refuse people just because they’re foreign.]

Officials from Visit Japan, a government-sponsored tourist drive launched in 2003, conceded there was little they could do to encourage reluctant hoteliers to change their ways.

“It is up to the individual hotels and inns to decide who they have as guests, but we would like them to realise that the influx of foreign visitors represents a huge business opportunity,” Daisuke Tonai, a spokesman for the Japan National Tourism Organisation, told the Guardian.

“Although we can’t force them to act, we certainly want hotels and inns to do more to make overseas visitors feel more welcome.”

Renewed efforts to woo overseas visitors got off to an inglorious start last month when Nariaki Nakayama, the transport minister, was forced to resign after saying that Japan was “ethnically homogeneous” and that the Japanese, in general, “do not like foreigners”.

His replacement, Kazuyoshi Kaneko, whose brief includes tourism, admitted that foreigners were unwelcome in some places.

“Some people might not like the idea of having foreign tourists very much,” he told the Japan Times. “Although it’s not our intention to change the people’s mindset, [the tourism agency’s] major task will be to attract a large number of foreign tourists.”

Though tourist numbers have risen significantly from 5.21 million five years ago, Japan has strict visa and immigration rules and has been criticised for its sometimes frosty attitude towards outsiders.

ENDS

Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE column on how “gaijin” concept destroys Japan’s rural communities

Posted on October 7, 2008October 28, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

THE JAPAN TIMES Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008

Courtesy http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20081007ad.html

CHRIS McKENZIE ILLUSTRATION

JUST BE CAUSE Column 8 DIRECTOR’S CUT, with deleted paragraph reinstated and links to sources. Article inspired after several lengthy conversations with James Eriksson of Monbetsu, Hokkaido, quoted below.

‘Gaijin’ mind-set is killing rural Japan

By DEBITO ARUDOU

Allow me to conclude my trilogy of columns regarding the word “gaijin” this month by talking about the damage the concept does to Japanese society. That’s right — damage to Japanese society.

I previously mentioned the historical fact that “gaijin” once also applied to Japanese — to “outsiders” not from one’s neighborhood. But as Japan unified and built a nation-state, it made its “volk” all one “community,” for political and jingoistic reasons. Anyone considered to be Japanese became an “insider,” while the rest of the world became “outsiders,” neatly pigeonholed by that contentious term “gaijin.”

However, old habits die hard, and “outsiderdom” still applies to Japanese. Even if not specifically labeled “gaijin,” the effect is the same: If Japanese aren’t from “around here,” they don’t belong, and it’s destroying Japan’s rural communities.

You don’t choose your ‘hood

Here’s the dynamic: Postwar Japanese society has been surprisingly mobile. Japan’s high-speed growth and corporate culture sucked people to the cities and overseas. Afterward, people found themselves unable to return to their rural hometowns because they no longer “belonged” there.

(Referential links here and here)

Consider this phenomenon in microcosm at the school level. Pluck a kid out of class awhile, then witness the trouble “fitting back in.” The readjustment problems of Japanese students who leave the fold, then find themselves socially isolated, are well-reported (there’s even an established term: “kikoku shijo“). And that’s after only a year or two’s absence.

It’s worse for adults. Whole classes of occupations do round-robin transfers throughout Japan. If they take their families along (called “tenkin zoku”), their kids speak of solitary childhoods unable to make friends. To avoid this, fathers often choose “tanshin fu’nin,” where the husband lives apart from his wife and children for years, so as not to disrupt the kids’ schooling. Thus transplanting in Japan is so painful a prospect that people break up their families.

People also move around later in life. Some want that quiet country home away from the rat race. Others want to be closer to their grandchildren, or have their grown-up kids closer to them during retirement. Yet after moving in they often find the locals distant.

“I know some ‘newcomers’ who have waited 20 years for someone to make them feel welcome,” says James Eriksson, a 16-year resident of Monbetsu, a remote seaport city in eastern Hokkaido. “It’s tough in Japan. There’s no Welcome Wagon. In Canada, when my parents moved to a small town 40 years ago, within two days somebody dropped by with flowers and coupons. Then once a month for a year Welcome Wagon had meetings for them to make contacts. People also invited them out. Thanks to that, my parents still live there.

“But imagine a new arrival in Hokkaido being invited to the local Rotary or Lion’s Club. Not likely. Newcomers need to feel welcomed, be included, invited to take part in things — not feel like the perpetual stranger in the room.”

Eriksson concluded, “You can always tell the tenkin zoku here in Monbetsu. They don’t tend their gardens. It’s a great metaphor for how they don’t feel like investing in their community. But without newcomers relocating here, Monbetsu will continue to shrink.”

Monbetsu is but one example. As business and industry has concentrated in the urban areas (called “ikkyoku shuuchuu”), all of Japan’s rural prefectures are watching in alarm as they lose people to the big cities: Since 2000, Tokyo’s population has risen by 3%, Nagoya by 2.5%, while the Kansai region stays at equilibrium. However, rural regions like Hokkaido (-1%), Tohoku and Shikoku (-2%) are watching people flee, and property values drop by double digits (Hokuriku by a stunning 35%).

Can’t even give it away

In fact, according to the New York Times (June 3), Hokkaido towns Shibetsu and Yakumo are offering land for free if people build and live on it. Yet takers are few. Why bother if “outsiders” have to ingratiate themselves like stray cats, having no say for decades in how locals run things? No wonder people favor urban communities where everyone else is “from somewhere else.”

I know this firsthand because I once lived in a small Hokkaido farming town of 10,000 souls. It was only possible to make friends and get politically involved because 40 percent of the population were bed-town newcomers. Woe betide if you lived in the surrounding towns, however.

Here’s how bad it’s getting: The Economist (Aug 24, 2006) mentioned the village of Ogama, Ishikawa Pref., where everyone is above retirement age, and people are too elderly even to farm. The plan is — after everyone moves out and takes their ancestral graves with them — that Ogama’s beautiful valley will become a dump for industrial waste. Thus, in a nation where 40 percent of rural residents are older than 65, whole histories are winking out of existence, fine old structures are collapsing from lack of maintenance, and arable land is going fallow. Or worse.

Treating Japanese as ‘gaijin’

People are trying to reverse the trend, but again, exclusionary Japanese communities are strangling themselves. I witnessed this last July at a Hokkaido forum I emceed near Niseko, the site of a tourism and property boom thanks to Australian skiers and developers.

The forum launched Takadai Meadows ( www.takadainiseko.com ), an organic farm run by Japanese and non-Japanese (NJ). T.M.’s aim is to revitalize the local economy, bringing urbanites out to the countryside for fresh air, healthy locally-grown food — and perhaps even a pastoral home and lifestyle.

Attendees, including dozens of local farmers, were receptive but leery. I realized it wasn’t due to the “foreigner factor.” It was the generic “outsider factor.” During the Q&A, a newcomer Japanese farmer who had retired here many years ago said he still felt unwelcome. Why? Because despite all those years and investments he was still an “outsider.” A Japanese “gaijin.”

This must stop, for Japan’s sake. And believe it or not, the “real gaijin” are in the best position to show the way.

Save us from ourselves

Some of the most culturally fluent and conservation-minded individuals in Japan are not from “around here.” They are immigrants.

Consider author Alex Kerr, who preserves old houses and warns against public works concreting over Japan’s rich past. Or naturalist C.W. Nicol, columnist for this newspaper, who buys up Nagano forests before the loggers arrive. Or viticulturist Bruce Gutlove, who has helped revitalize rural Tochigi by running Coco Farm and Winery. Or Tyler Lynch, of Kamesei Ryokan in Chikuma, Nagano Prefecture, who seeks to save his local onsen town from crapulence and decrepitude. Or Sayuki, Japan’s first Caucasian geisha, who wants to preserve geisha traditions while opening things up to the modern world. Or Anthony Bianchi, twice-elected city councilor in Inuyama, Aichi Pref., who wants people to discover his under-promoted city, which is steeped in history.

Newcomers they all are, but they are also die-hard fans-cum-curators of things Japanese, trying to save ancient structures and cultures from public-pork-barrel, cookie-cutter “modernizers.” Many come from societies where centuries-old buildings are commonplace, so they know the value of their upkeep. They don’t fall for the scam of recycling homes and mortgages every 20 years, and have an innate appreciation of time-worn wood and stone over sterile concrete kitsch.

Non-Japanese as net gain

Best of all, NJ newcomers represent two absolute pluses. The first is as a repopulater. A native Japanese moving from one place to another is zero-sum: one community gets, another loses. Bring in an immigrant, however, and the entire country net-gains a new taxpayer.

The other boon is cultural. NJ aren’t necessarily culturally hidebound by the notion that “newcomers should shut up and wait to be invited in.” They’re also less likely to swallow the excuse of lack of precedent, i.e. “it can’t work because we’ve never done it here before.” Fortunately, NJ aren’t always expected to be familiar with or follow “the rules” anyhow.

These opportunities, plus the “can-do,” “make-do,” and “muddle-through” attitudes of many immigrants, make them invaluable for revitalization.

Friends must help friends break bad habits. Your friendly neighborhood “gaijin” should speak out against the word and the concept itself. “Gaijin,” in the sense of “outsiders who don’t belong,” is hurting Japan, because it ultimately affects Japanese too. Create the Welcome Wagon, not the Gaijin Cart.

Readers, lead the charge. Don’t accept “gaijin” outsider status. Open Japan and its communities to newcomers, regardless of where they’ve come from. Otherwise this very rich society, in every sense of the word, will continue to wither despite itself.

—————

Debito Arudou is co-author of the “Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants and Immigrants to Japan.” Send comments and story ideas tocommunity@japantimes.co.jp

ENDS

10月5日朝日新聞（朝）「後絶たぬ『外国人お断り』」Oct 5’s Asahi on NJ discrimination and what to do about it

Posted on October 5, 2008October 11, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Had a couple of telephone interviews with the Asahi this week, and some quotes got incorporated into a tidy big article on discrimination against NJ in Japan in what should be done about it. Have a read. Good illustrations too — get the point across. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

(click on images to expand in your browser)

ENDS

Japan Times Community Page on upcoming movie on divorce and child abduction in Japan

Posted on August 26, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. More attention being given this movie, which I have seen previews of and can attest that it will be worth seeing. Debito in San Francisco

THE ZEIT GIST

Coming out of the shadows

Filmmakers tackle contentious issue of parents’ abduction of children to Japan

THE JAPAN TIMES, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008

By MICHAEL HASSETT

Special to The Japan Times

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080826zg.html

“We judge that it will be best for the child that the (parent) pray from the shadows for his healthy upbringing. If worried about the child, ask about him through others, secretly watch him from behind a wall, and be satisfied with what is heard about the way he is growing up. Acting in accordance with emotion, even if based on love, will cause the child misfortune. Suppressing emotions for the sake of one’s child — that is the true love of a (parent) toward a child.’

Better days: Canadian Murray Wood plays with his children, Taka and Mana, before their abduction. COURTESY OF DAVID HEARN

Imagine the trauma of the mother being permanently denied visitation with her own children in this family court decision handed down by the Tokyo High Court. Being told to pray, watch and love “from the shadows.”

Imagine losing contact with your children after your spouse files a domestic-abuse grievance, causing an immediate and renewable six-month restraining order to be issued in response to real or fabricated “abuse” for which not an iota of evidence is required. Next, imagine permanently losing custody of, and contact with, your children when the ruling favors your spouse because he or she has been caring for the children while these orders have kept you away.

As a 4-year-old child, imagine being told that your father murdered your mother by creating and then releasing into her body a demonic bug that crawled up inside of her and festered on her innards.

Sound awful? Well, welcome to the hell of parental child abduction and custody battles, Japanese style.

In January 2006, David Hearn, Matthew Antell and Sean Nichols began research on a documentary film that would dramatically affect their lives over the next few years.

They had heard about high-profile cases of parental child abduction, such as the two children of Murray Wood being abducted from their home in Canada by their Japanese mother, but these filmmakers had not yet realized all the muck they would have to work through in order to gain a clearer understanding of what has increasingly become Japan’s own scarlet letter.

Capital location: Filmmakers Matthew Antell (left) and David Hearn take a break from filming in Washington, D.C.

For those new to the topic of child abduction, here are the basics:

The parent who has physical custody of the children and has established a routine for them for the duration of at least a few weeks when divorce is filed is granted custody in virtually every case.

Japan has neither statutes nor judicial precedents providing for joint custody. When divorce occurs, either the father or mother receives custody. Visitation is not a substantive right that can be asserted by parents.

In 2006, there were 257,475 divorces involving 150,050 children. Fathers maintained custody of all children 14.9 percent of the time, down from 48.7 percent in 1950, and custody of at least one of several children 3.6 percent of the time, down from 11 percent in 1950.

A parent attempting to take children outside Japan can possibly be arrested if charges are processed before the children exit the country. A married Dutchman was arrested in 2000 and sentenced the following year for doing exactly that after his Japanese wife objected to him taking their daughter to visit the young girl’s dying grandfather. If children are unlawfully removed from Japan, every attempt will usually be made by law enforcement in the destination country to return the children to Japan if the destination country is a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Japan has not signed this treaty so children abducted to Japan are not returned. One source has reported that Japan plans to sign this treaty by 2010.

Now, back to the movie.

Earlier this month, I sat down with director David Hearn to inquire about the progress of his documentary on this most contentious subject.

What is the working title for the film and when do you expect to have it completed? We initially titled the film “For Taka and Mana” in response to the unlimited access and cooperation so generously provided to us by Murray Wood. We have since changed the title to “From the Shadows” because we will also be highlighting cases involving many others who have had to endure the tragedy of losing a child in this often cruel manner.

We have conducted scores of interviews with those involved in these tragedies — parents, children, government officials, and experts on the subject — and we hope to complete the film in time to enter it in several film festivals next year. We have been humbled by the generosity of so many, but how quickly we can finish and the quality of the film is dependent on our fundraising from here forward, so we ask that people do what they can do to be of assistance. Information and clips can be found at our Web site, www.fromtheshadowsmovie.com. In custody cases in Japan, possession is actually more than nine-tenths of the law, isn’t it? Certainly. The parent who has the children keeps them 99 percent of the time.

Before divorce occurs, lawyers, divorce advisers and legal experts routinely advise their clients to get the kids and run. The application for divorce can then be submitted from the new setup, and the left-behind parent can be left with absolutely no information about the relocation of the children.

Once the divorce process has begun, the court will all too commonly ignore how the new setup was achieved, and instead justify it as now being “in the best interests of the child” so that a stable environment can be maintained.

And even if the court were to rule in favor of the noncustodial side, there is no legal entity, such as police or a child welfare agency, to enforce the ruling if one side does not live up to its responsibilities as dictated by the court. So, in the very rare case when the court does rule in favor of the noncustodial parent, it can be worth no more than the paper it is printed on if the physical custody-holder simply holds on to the children.

According to Colin P. A. Jones, a professor at Doshisha Law School in Kyoto, “With little or no enforcement mechanisms, the family court fails to protect children and their parents.” How are the children affected by these highly emotional clashes? We have interviewed a number of children involved in these battles, and sadly what is most often lost in the shuffle is the psychological damage done to these children caught in the middle. There are numerous horror stories. Unfortunately, the custodial parent often abuses his or her authority by dispensing information to the children about the other parent to paint a scenario that works best for the custodial parent no matter how devious or outright false the information is. This behavior is defined widely as parental alienation syndrome. Despite its acceptance in courts in most Western countries, it is entirely unrecognized in Japan. Aren’t some parents able to individually agree on and work out visitation arrangements? For those custodial parents who permit it, the standard of one visit for a couple of hours a month is about average. Though considerably less than Western standards, most participating parents agree it is better than nothing. This might be the one silver lining of this entire issue. Slowly, more custodial parents are seeing the benefits for the child to meet the noncustodial parent even when by law they are not required to do so.

However, the legal shortcomings make visitation for the noncustodial parent a very touchy situation. He or she must play by the rules of the custodial parent, and visitation is often changed or simply halted, many times for very frivolous reasons, such as if the noncustodial parent begins dating. How did you react to the report that Japan may become a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction by 2010? Hopeful, but not yet convinced. This was reported by only one news outlet and the details of the source were very vague. We do not know the source, and we have not been able to confirm the report. But, we remain hopeful.

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo puts the number of active abduction cases involving American children at 80. That’s just from the United States. So we have hundreds, if not thousands, of children in this country who have had to endure the loss of a living, usually loving, parent — one who desires to see and interact with his or her children. Our film aims to inspire an open discussion on this issue and encourage a more critical review of this “take the kids and run” mentality that has become so prevalent.

Children are losing contact with their parents every day and one has to wonder, is this the best Japan can do? Do we want to continue to hurt the children involved and push loving parents off into the shadows?

Send comments on this issue and story ideas to community@japantimes.co.jp

ENDS

Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE Column 6: The case for “Gaijin” as a racist word

Posted on August 6, 2008October 28, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

THE CASE FOR “GAIJIN” AS A RACIST WORD
Column Six for the Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE Column
By Arudou Debito
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
DRAFT TEN–version submitted to the Editor, with links to sources.

Courtesy http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080805ad.html

“Gaijin“. It seems we hear the word every day. For some, it’s merely harmless shorthand for “gaikokujin” (foreigner). Even Wikipedia (that online wall for intellectual graffiti artists) had a section on “political correctness“, claiming illiterate and oversensitive Westerners had misunderstood their Japanese word.

I take a different view. Gaijin is not merely a word. It is an epithet. About the billions of people who are not Japanese. It makes attributions to them that go beyond nationality.

Let’s deal with basic counterarguments: Calling gaijin a mere contraction of gaikokujin is not historically accurate. According to ancient texts and prewar dictionaries [see Endnote], “gaijin” (or “guwaijin” in the contemporary rendering) once referred to Japanese people too. Anyone not from your village, in-group etc. was one. It was a way of showing you don’t belong here–even (according to my 1978 Kojien, Japan’s premier dictionary) “regarded as an enemy” (tekishi). Back then there were other (even more unsavory) words for foreigners anyway, so gaijin has a separate etymology from words specifically meaning “extranational”.

Even if you argue modern usage conflates, gaijin is still a loaded word, easily abused. Consider two nasty side effects:

1) “Gaijin” strips the world of diversity. Japan’s proportion of the world’s population is a little under 2%. In the gaijin binary worldview, you either are a Japanese or you’re not–an “ichi-ro” or a “ze-ro”. Thus you indicate the remaining 98% of the world are outsiders.

2) And always will be: A gaijin is a gaijin anytime, any place. The word is even used overseas by traveling/resident Japanese to describe non-Japanese, or rather, “foreigners in their own country”. Often without any apparent sense of irony or contradiction. Japanese outside of Japan logically must be foreigners somewhere! Not when everyone else is a gaijin.

Left unchallenged, this rubric encourages dreadful social science–ultimately creating a constellation of “us and them” differences (as opposed to possible similarities) for the ichiro culture vultures to guide their sextants by.

For those hung up on gaijin’s apparently harmless kanji (“outside person”), even that is indicative. The “koku” in gaikokujin refers specifically to country–a legal status you can change. The epithet doesn’t, effectively making classification a matter of birth status, physical appearance, race. Meaning once you get relegated to the “gaijin” group, you never get out.

Allow me to illustrate that with a joke from the American South:

Question: “What do you call a black man with a PhD in neurobiology from Harvard, who works as a brain surgeon at Johns Hopkins, earns seven figures a year, and runs one of the world’s largest philanthropies?”

Answer: “N*gg*r” (rhymes with “bigger”).

Hardy har. Now let’s rephrase:

Question: “What do you can a white man with degrees from top-tier schools, who has lived in Japan for more than two decades, contributes to Japanese society as an university educator, is fluent in Japanese, and has Japanese citizenship?”

Answer: “Gaijin”.

As a naturalized citizen I resemble that remark. But nobody who knows my nationality calls me a gaikokujin anymore–it’s factually incorrect. But there are plenty of people (especially foreigners) who don’t hesitate to call me a gaijin–often pejoratively.

Thus gaijin is a caste. No matter how hard you try to acculturalize yourself, become literate and lingual, even make yourself legally inseparable from the putative “naikokujin” (whoever they are), you’re still “not one of us”.

Moreover, factor in Japan’s increasing number of children of international marriages. Based upon whether or not they look like their foreign parent (again, “gaijin-ppoi“), there are cases where they get treated differently, even adversely, by society. Thus the rubric of gaijin even encourages discrimination against its own citizens.

This must be acknowledged. Even though trying to get people to stop using gaijin overnight would be like swatting flies, people should know of its potential abuses. At least people should stop arguing that it’s the same as gaikokujin.

For gaijin is essentially “n*gg*r”, and should be likewise obsolesced.

Fortunately, our media is helping out, long since adding gaijin to the list of “housou kinshi yougo” (words unfit for broadcast).

So can we. Apply Japan’s slogan against undesirable social actions: “Shinai, sasenai” (I won’t use it, I won’t let it be used.)
690 words

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー
Arudou Debito is co-author of Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants to Japan. A fuller version of this article at www.debito.org/kumegaijinissue.html
ENDS

===================================
ENDNOTE:
Sources for ancient texts and dictionaries concerning the word Gaijin:

１）言海（大正１４年出版）pg 299: 「外人：外（ホカ）ノ人、外国人」(Courtesy 北海道立図書館）
２）A. Matsumura (ed.), Daijisen (大辞泉), (p. 437, 1st ed., vol. 1). (1998). Tokyo: Shogakukan. “がいじん。【外人】②　仲間以外の人。他人。「外人もなき所に兵具をととのへ」〈平家・一〉”
３）”外人”. Kōjien (5). (1998). Iwanami. ISBN 4000801112. “がいじん【外人】①　仲間以外の人。疎遠の人。連理秘抄「外人など上手多からむ座にては」②　敵視すべきな人。平家一「外人もなき所に兵具をととのへ」”
４）A. Matsumura (ed.), Daijirin (大辞林), (p. 397, 9th ed., vol. 1). (1989). Tokyo: Sanseido. “がいじん【外人】②　そのことに関係のない人。第三者。「外人もなき所に兵具をととのへ／平家一」”
５）「外人もなき所に兵具をとゝのへ」（Assembling arms where there are no gaijin）高木, 市之助; 小沢正夫, 渥美かをる, 金田一春彦 (1959). 日本古典文学大系: 平家物語 (in Japanese). 岩波書店, 123. ISBN 4-00-060032-X.
６）「源平両家の童形たちのおのおのござ候ふに、かやうの外人は然るべからず候」（Since the children of both Genji and Heike are here, such a gaijin is not appropriate to stay together.）鞍馬天狗
(All courtesy of source footnotes in Wikipedia entry on “Gaijin”, retrieved August 1, 2008.)
END

GOJ announces J population rises. But excludes NJ residents from survey.

Posted on August 2, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s something quite odd. We have the GOJ saying that the population of Japan is rising (ii n ja nai?). Then they make it clear that the figures doesn’t include foreign residents. Now why would any government worth its salt decide to exclude taxpayers thusly? Aren’t registered foreign residents people too, part of a “population”? Arudou Debito

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

Population rises 1st time in 3 years

The Yomiuri Shimbun, Aug 1, 2008

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080801TDY01306.htm

The nation’s population grew for the first time in three years to 127,066,178 in the year to March 31, up 12,707 from a year earlier, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Thursday.

The figure was based on resident registrations at municipal government offices and does not include foreign residents.

Over the period, there was a fall in the natural population–the number of births minus the number of deaths in the year through the end of March–of 29,119. However, the figures showed an increase of 41,826 due to social factors such as the rise in the number of repatriates and newly naturalized citizens.

The survey also showed that the population in Tokyo increased by 100,460, breaking the 100,000 mark for the first time since the government began taking such surveys in 1968 and reflecting the trend toward a concentration of the population in large cities.

The number of births increased for two consecutive years to 1,096,465, but was offset by the number of the deaths, which went up by 44,410 to 1,125,584. The natural decline was the second for the nation, following the 2006 survey.

Meanwhile, the so-called social population, which saw a decline of 12,297 in the year through March 31, 2007, rose by 41,826 for this year. The ministry believes that the social population increase can be attributed to an increased number of people returning home after their companies closed their offices overseas. Officials noted therefore that the overall trend of a declining population had not changed.

(Aug. 1, 2008)

読売：「人口３年ぶり増加」と言うが、「住民基本台帳」のみに基づき外国人住民は数に入らん。

Posted on August 2, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

ブロクの読者、こんにちは。きょうのトピックスは：

　きのうの読売によると、「人口３年ぶり増加」という。おめでとう。が、なぜ「人口」を言うのに外国人住民（つまり外国人登録者数）は入らないのでしょうか。国内に住居であり、納税して、社会の貢献者やメンバーではないかと思います。総務省はそうやって人を加算しないメリットはありますか。今後、「人口」を測るなら「人」を測りましょう。有道　出人

＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝

人口３年ぶり増加、１億２７０６万人…帰国や帰化増え

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/news/20080731-OYT1T00679.htm

　総務省は３１日、住民基本台帳に基づく今年３月末現在の人口を発表した。

　全国の人口は前年同期比１万２７０７人増の１億２７０６万６１７８人で、２００６年３月末現在で減少に転じたが、３年ぶりに増えた。

　出生者数から死亡者数を引いた「自然増加数」はマイナス２万９１１９人で過去最大幅のマイナスとなったが、海外への転出入や帰化などに伴う「社会増加数」がプラス４万１８２６人となったため。うち帰化は「推定１万数千人」（総務省）。東京都の人口増加数は１０万４６０人と、１９６８年の調査開始以来初めて１０万人を超え、大都市の人口集中加速が浮き彫りになった。

　住民基本台帳の人口は日本に住む日本人の数で、永住外国人らは含まない。

　出生者数は２年連続増の１０９万６４６５人だったが、死亡者数も４万４４１０人増えて１１２万５５８４人だった。社会増加数は０７年３月末のマイナス１万２２９７人が、プラス４万１８２６人に転じた。年度末は転入、転出が多く、数値が変動することもあるが、同省は「海外進出した企業が国内へ戻るなどして、在外邦人の転入が増えたことも一因ではないか」と見て、全体では「減少傾向は変わらない」としている。

　東京、名古屋、関西の３大都市圏は全人口の５０・２０％を占める６３７８万６８３０人と過去最高。都道府県別では東京１２４６万２１９６人、神奈川８７９万８２８９人、大阪８６７万３０２人の順で多く、最少は鳥取の６０万２４１１人。

（2008年8月1日02時14分読売新聞）

Good News #1: Zainichi lodges complaint re Nihon U debate club discrim, university takes appropriate action

Posted on July 17, 2008July 17, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Good news for a change–the mechanisms for investigating and taking action against claims of discrimination seem to be working at Nihon University, at least. Well done, and thanks to 1) the investigators for doing their job and taking action, and 2) the victim and family for not just naki-neiri-ing this situation.

Additional comment from T3:
“Investigators confirmed that the refusal to allow the 3rd generation korean resident into the university debate team was based on racial discrimination. bizarrely so, because members of the team claimed that they might not be able to assimilate with a foreigner – a 3rd generation “foreigner”.”

One more piece of good news coming up today. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

===============================
University debate team suspends activities after resident Korean student claims discrimination
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN 2008/7/16
Courtesy of Mak and T3
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200807160268.html

The debate club of Nihon University’s College of Law suspended activities after a third-generation Korean resident said she was refused entry because of her ethnicity, The Asahi Shimbun learned.

The 21-year-old first-year student said she could not join the club in April because several senior members had a problem with her South Korean nationality.

Along with her mother, she lodged a discrimination complaint to the Tokyo-based university in early June.

The university administration commissioned lawyers to investigate the case and determined that the student was indeed discriminated against because of her nationality and ethnicity.

But members of the club denied that discrimination had anything to do with their refusal to let the student join.

The investigative team found that concerns were raised by senior club members over “how they would get along with a foreigner” and the possibility that she might be involved in a “radical religious activity.”

The club suspended activities in late June after a request from the university’s human rights committee.

Three senior members and two professors serving as club supervisors issued an apology to the student for causing “grief and pain.”

The student has refused to accept the apology because of their denial of discrimination.

The student attended an introductory session for prospective new members in late April, but was told the following day that she could not join.

A senior student told her that her class schedule would likely conflict with the club’s activities and that the club supervisor might dislike “the light color of her hair.”

However, she said she later learned from a friend who was a member of the club that senior members had said to the effect that they would “have a problem with her cultural background as a resident Korean.”

(IHT/Asahi: July 16,2008)

ENDS

Japan Times: Foreign reporters covering G8 face harassment: media group

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Article I forwarded you from Kimura-san at NikkanBeria.com, about Japan’s security forces zapping NJ media coming in for the Summit, has hit other media outlets. Here’s the Japan Times. Arudou Debito

————————–

G8 COUNTDOWN

Foreign reporters covering G8 face harassment: media group
The Japan Times: Tuesday, July 1, 2008
By JUN HONGO Staff writer
Courtesy http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080701a4.html

When Chu Hoi Dick arrived at Narita International Airport last Thursday to cover events related to next week’s Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, he never imagined it would take nearly 20 hours to clear Immigration and set foot on Japanese soil.

“We were taken to an Immigration facility to stay overnight,” Choi, a Hong Kong-based journalist from a small media outlet, told reporters Monday during a news conference in Tokyo. Choi, who has no criminal record, was not permitted to make any phone calls and was denied access to his personal belongings.

Interrogated by Immigration officials, Choi was asked about his past involvement in demonstrations. At one point he was “threatened” by an official, who wanted him to pay $200 to stay overnight at the Immigration facility. He received no food until he paid for his own lunch the next day.

When they released him Friday afternoon, Immigration officials “said thank you very much for your cooperation” but gave no explanation for the detainment, Choi said.

The G8 Media Network, a Japan-based group of journalists from grassroots media outlets, said six people involved with its summit-related events have been wrongfully held and questioned by Immigration officials.

The relentless grilling of journalists and political activists entering Japan constitutes a threat to freedom of expression, the group said.

“This is suppression of freedom of thought and expression,” said Go Hirasawa, a representative of the group. “This is harassment (of journalists).”

Another journalist who was detained for 11 hours after arriving in Tokyo on Friday said she was asked to hand over a detailed itinerary and account for every hour of her stay in Japan. She told The Japan Times that she has no criminal record that would justify the detainment.

The journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, said that attempts by the government to censor journalists are “symptomatic of the G8,” as voices around the world are being silenced while a handful of nations maintain their authority over global issues.

“Those of us who report the stories are silenced” as well, she said. The network of journalists condemned the detainment of so many reporters and activists as unreasonable, calling the practice “a violation of human rights.”

The group said it filed a request with authorities including the Justice Ministry and the National Police Agency demanding that journalists from smaller media outlets be treated properly when arriving in Japan.

ENDS

Registered overseas journalists being detained, refused entry into Japan due to Summit

Posted on June 28, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Forwarding from Ms Kimura Kayoko, freelance writer for online independent internet newspaper Nikkan Berita (http://www.NikkanBerita.com). Original Japanese in previous blog entry. Translation mine. Arudou Debito

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

REPORTS OF DETENTIONS UPON ENTRY AT TOKYO IMMIGRATION

Recently, as the eve of the G8 Summit approaches, we are seeing incident after incident of non-Japanese being stopped at airports.

NJ who are coming here for G8 Summit activities (including reportage and convocations), without connections to governments or major press outlets, are apparently being subjected to background searches. 24-hour detentions are not unusual.

Last night (June 27), three Hong Kong citizen journalists who have been registered with the Citizens’ Media Center (Sapporo) were detained by Immigration, and were on the verge of being deported.

This morning, Susan George (ATTAC France) was stopped and questioned at the airport. Ms George is 74 years old, and her detention demonstrates a lack of humanity on the part of authorities.

Similar measures on the part of Immigration are forecast to continue in this vein.

Japan, as host to this Summit, is a developed country with a democracy. It is shameful for a member of the international community to treat visitors from other countries in this fashion.

And detaining, even refusing entry to, international journalists and media coming in for the Summit is a suppression of freedom of expression.

This is developing into a large international issue, with constraints being placed upon the length of stay for journalists belonging to international journalistic associations.

Journalists and international media people often have to cover unforeseen events, and cannot always tell Immigration in advance their exact itinerary or schedule. This is normal. However, people having schedules with free days are apparently being turned away at the border.

Journalists who are not members of the major media are also coming to Japan, covering the Summit from the point of view of the general public. Suppressing those people’s activities is depriving the public of a chance to have their voices heard, and only promotes overemphasis on the reports from the powers that be.

We wish to draw more attention to this problem so that more visitors can come overseas and enter Japan more smoothly. We would like your help. Anything you can do would be welcome.

Further, here is the phone number for Narita Immigration:

0476-32-6774

Also, the G8 Media Network will be having a press conference on Monday, June 30, with the detained media figures and Dietmembers in attendance. More details here as they become available.

Kimura Kayoko

info AT berita DOT jp

ENDS

サミットの関係で、外国人ジャーナリストが拘束、強制退去

Posted on June 28, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

本日いただいた文を転送します：

有道さん

東京より外国人入国時の拘束に関する情報がはいりましたので、メールさせていただきます。

Ｇ８サミットが目前に迫った昨今、外国人が空港で足止めされるという事態があいついでいます。

政府関係者および大手メディア以外の目的で、Ｇ８関係の活動（取材、講演会を含む）のために訪れる外国人は事情聴取が必要で、２４時間の拘束は珍しくないそうです。

昨晩（６月２７日）、市民メディアセンター（札幌）に登録済みの香港・市民ジャーナリスト３人が入管に拘束され、強制退去寸前という事態が発生しました。

今朝は、スーザン・ジョージさん（ATTAC France）が空港で足止めされているとのことです。７４歳のジョージさんを拘束するのは、人道上の配慮にも欠けていると思われます。

今後もこのような入管措置は続くと予想されます。

今回のＧ８サミットのホスト国であり、先進国であり、民主主義国家である日本が、外国からの訪問者をこのように扱うのは、国際社会の一員として恥ずべきことです。

Ｇ８の取材で入国しようとしているジャーナリストやメディア関係者の拘束（場合によっては入国拒否）は、表現の自由を抑圧する行為です。

国際ジャーナリスト連盟に所属しているジャーナリストも滞在期間を制約され、国際問題として大きく発展しつつあります。

ジャーナリストやメディア関係者というのは、不測の出来事を取材するケースが多く、入国の際にあらかじめ取材日程を決めることができず、スケジュールが埋まっていないのが普通です。しかし、予定がない日が数日あると、その前に帰国を命じられることもあるそうです。

大手マスコミ以外のメディア関係者は、市民の視線でＧ８を取材するために来日しています。彼らの活動の抑制は、市民の声を伝える機会を奪い、権力側に偏重した報道を助長させるだけです。

こうした問題を顕在化し、海外からの訪問者が速やかに入国できるよう、みなさまのお力をお借りしたいと思います。

できる範囲で結構ですので、ご協力どうぞよろしくお願いいたします。

なお、成田空港の入管の連絡先は以下の通りです。

成田入管　電話：０４７６－３２－６７７４　

また、Ｇ８メディア・ネットワークでは、月曜日に東京で、拘束された当事者や国会議員を交えた記者会見を予定しているそうです。

詳細が決まりましたら、ご連絡させていただきます。

（日刊ベリタ　記者　木村嘉代子　著）

http://www.NikkanBerita.com

info AT berita DOT jp
以上

World-famous company, Tohoku branch, refuses to employ Japanese kid expressly because he’s “half”–even retracts original job offer

Posted on June 27, 2008June 27, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hello Blog. Got this yesterday. I’ve anonymized it for now because the family fears that the employer will refuse to employ the job candidate further if this article can be traced back to him. Summary: A world-famous company in northern Japan, with branches and products overseas for generations, refuses to employ a young Japanese (despite giving him a job offer)–expressly, despite being a citizen, because he’s “half”.

This could have major repercussions in Japan if other Japanese with international roots get discriminated against similarly. Read on. More details to reporters if they want a story. I have the feeling we have a major lawsuit here. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

=====================================
Dear Debito San,

Thank you very much for your advice on the phone on Friday June 13th.
I will give you all the information that I have to date about my son’s problem.

My son, 21 years old, phoned a company in [Tohoku, Northern Japan] [Headhunters KK] to apply for a job advertised in “XXXXX” (a flyer with available jobs). The job he applied for was at the [World Famous Company] factory near [our town in Tohoku]. The job is a full time Syain job with bonus, Kousainenkin and Koyouhoken. Monday to Friday and 850 yen per hour plus 10,000 yen Koutsuhi per month. The return trip to [World Famous Company] is 13km from our home. The [World Famous Company] factory is new and nice with canteen. Saturday, Sunday and public holidays off.

He went for the interview on Tuesday June 10th at 10am. The interviewer a Mr. M of [Headhunters KK]. After the interview my son was told that he had the job at the [World Famous Company] factory and would start work on Monday June 16th.

(My son was very excited that he got the job because when he went for an interview at a different company one week earlier that interviewer told him that because he is half Japanese that he most likely wouldn’t be able to get a job locally and would probably have to go to Tokyo to work. Of course he didn’t get that job, but that interviewer asked him to go out with him for dinner or lunch. Also he has phoned him a few times to ask him to dinner. (My son has a girlfriend and is not gay) what this guy wants I don’t know but I think that it is inappropriate for any job interviewer to ask the applicant out for dinner).

At the interview on Tuesday June 10th my son was asked to get a medical check Kenkoushindan form 5 and to come back on Friday June 13th with it and bank book, mitomein, drivers license, syakensyo, jibaiseki hoken syoumeisyo, nini hoken syoumeisyo and nenkin techo. The medical check includes height, weight, blood pressure, urine check, sight and hearing check, blood check, chest xray and heart check. He passed all checks and cost 10,000 yen.

When he returned on Friday June 13th the same interviewer Mr. M took him away from the other 3 people which also passed for the jobs at [World Famous Company]. And told him that he would be working at a different factory and not at [World Famous Company]. My son knew that he was a victim of racial discrimination but couldn’t say anything for fear of not getting the other job. He was told that it has nothing to do with him being half Japanese. But it seems his katakana name is 面倒くさい、ハーフだからというわけでは無いけれども、[一流の会社]では[東北]の人しか働いていないし、あとあと面倒なことになると困るし、

But the interviewer knows from my son’s rirekisyo that my son was born in this area went to youchien, elementary school, junior high and high school here in [the town which contains this World Famous Company] so he is a Tohoku person and can speak the local dialect and has Japanese Koseki.

The interviewer was very uneasy telling my son this information and was also told that they no longer need the medical check form because that was only for the [World Famous Company] job. Also they never mentioned compensating him the 10,000 yen for that medical check which they asked for and then told him he didn’t need.

The other job which he started today Monday June 16th is only a two month contract, doesn’t include a bonus or any of the other things included in the [World Famous Company] job, the hourly rate is 50yen less than the [World Famous Company] job plus he has to work on some Saturdays with only Sunday off.

The factory is 20km return from out home as compared to 13km at the [World Famous Company] factory. There is no canteen and it is just not a full time position at [World Famous Company] that he was interviewed for and then promised.

My thinking is that Mr. M is a good man and didn’t discriminate against my son for not being 100% Japanese but [World Famous Company] did refuse my son on the grounds of racial discrimination and then Mr. M had to do as [World Famous Company] wished.

My son has been at the new job for just over a week now and doesn’t want to risk losing his job by causing any trouble to [World Famous Company] or [Headhunters KK]. Not for the moment anyway as he doesn’t know how permanent this job will be. The contract is only for two months.

My wife phoned a few government departments and was told that a verbal promise of a job is the same as a written promise, so we have good grounds to take action against [Headhunters KK] and maybe [World Famous Company].

My son’s friend who did get a job in [World Famous Company] said that he has heard my son’s name mentioned a few times in the [World Famous Company] factory and my son’s boss Mr. M also asked my son about a rumor at the [World Famous Company] factory that he was discriminated against for being half. My son said he knew nothing of that rumor.

This is all we have at the moment. I will keep you informed of any changes. If you have any other ideas then we would be very happy to hear them.

Again many thanks for your advice.
Keep up your good work.

Best regards

Anonymous Dad

Akihabara stabbing incident June 8, 2008–yet Akihabara knife shop with “Japanese Only” sign up

Posted on June 9, 2008June 17, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. No doubt detractors will say I’m trying to “monster” yet another case of something into a case of racism. Hardly. But somebody needs to say it:

Japan Times article below has a recount of the recent spate of stabbings in Japan, particularly the shocking one yesterday of the Akihabara maniac who killed with a knife as if he had a gun. Despicable.

But the irony I also see in this horrible event is that a store in Akihabara–a knife and weapon shop, no less–has limited its customers to “Japanese Only”. Store called “MAD”, coordinates according to DR, the submitter: “on the main drag that runs parallel to the JR Yamanote line, inside the loop, on the opposite side of the street, at the far North end”. Here’s their address and website:

http://www.akiba-mad.com/

電話　東京０３－３２５１－５２４１ (their website says they will only take phone calls between two and three pm on weekdays)

東京都　千代田区　外神田　３丁目１６番１５号

Their website also explicitly says their knives are not for sale to foreigners or people under 18.

Are “the authorities” being cited in the sign still going to make the case that non-Japanese customers are less safe than Japanese? The shopkeeps of “MAD” might. Let’s use this occasion to reflect a bit on how insanity and nationality are not linked. And my condolences to the families of the victims.

Received photos May 24, 2008, submitter says sign is still up. Japan Times article follows photos. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

UPDATE JUNE 9, 2008, AFTERNOON. I gave “Mad” a call this afternoon during their call-in window and spoke to a very friendly clerk. He said the sign is there because foreigners will only just have to give up their knives etc. once they reach Narita, so they’d be wasting their money. (He said the “authorities” referred to in the are air transport officials.)

I mentioned that there are many different types of NJ in Japan, and not all of their customers are simply leaving Japan afterwards. He said that they don’t mind selling to NJ with addresses in Japan as long as they present ID. I said that that’s not what the sign out front says, and suggested he change the sign to reflect what he just told me. He suggested we send him text for how the sign should be, via MAD’s fax number:

FAX MAD: 03 3255 0012

Go for it, readers. Arudou Debito

TWO MORE UPDATES CAN BE FOUND IN THE COMMENTS BELOW–MAD HAS AGREED TO ALTER THE SIGN

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/nn20080608x1.html

HOME

The Japan Times Printer Friendly Articles

7 killed, 10 injured in Akihabara stabbing spree

Kyodo News

Seven people died and 10 others were injured after a man hit pedestrians with a truck and then stabbed people Sunday in broad daylight on a street in Tokyo’s busy Akihabara district.

Passersby attempt to help a traffic police officer injured during a stabbing spree in Tokyo’s Akihabara district today. Seven people died and 11 were injured after a 25-year-old man from Shizuoka Prefecture began indistriminately stabbing people around 12:30 p.m. KYODO PHOTO

Police arrested the man, 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato from Susono, Shizuoka Prefecture, and seized a survival knife he was carrying. He admitted to stabbing all the people with the knife from around 12:30 p.m., the police said. The truck was rented in Shizuoka Prefecture.

“I came to Akihabara to kill people,” investigative sources quoted Kato as telling the police. “I am tired of the world. Anyone was OK. I came alone.”

According to the police and hospital officials, six of the seven who died were males and aged 19, 20, 29, 33, 47 and 74. The other was a 21-year-old female.

In addition to the seven, 11 people who were taken to hospital after the stabbing rampage. Of these, eight men and two women were injured, including a traffic police officer who was patrolling at the time. The remaining male person had sustained no injury but simply had blood on his clothing.

The area was crowded with shoppers as Chuo-dori in the Akihabara district was vehicle-free for pedestrians. The scene was near the intersection of Chuo-dori and Kanda Myojin-dori streets, only a stone’s throw from JR Akihabara Station.

A 19-year-old man from Tokyo’s Ota Ward said, “The man (Kato) jumped on top of a man he had hit with his vehicle and stabbed him with a knife many times. Walking toward Akihabara Station, he slashed nearby people at random.”

Shunichi Jingu, a 26-year-old self-employed man from Gunma Prefecture, who witnessed the incident, said, “It seemed that a traffic accident had happened. Then a man got out of a vehicle and began to brandish a knife.”

Akihabara is a district of Tokyo known for its electronics shops and as a center of modern culture, including manga and animations, and attracts many visitors from both Japan and abroad.

There were similar street stabbing rampages earlier this year.

In January, a 16-year-old boy attacked five people and injured two of them with kitchen knives on a shopping street in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward. A man wanted by police on suspicion of murder stabbed passersby with a knife at an entrance to a shopping mall in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, in March, leaving eight people injured, one of whom died later in hospital.

The Akihabara rampage also occurred on the seventh anniversary of a stabbing spree by a man at Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka Prefecture on June 8, 2001.

The attacker, Mamoru Takuma, was executed for killing eight children and injuring 15 others in that case.

The Japan Times: Sunday, June 8, 2008

Go back to The Japan Times Online

UPDATE JUNE 17, 2008: NEW SIGN IS UP (Photo by Arudou Debito)

Fun Facts #10: Excellent Japan Times FYI column on the sex industry in Japan

Posted on June 8, 2008February 23, 2009 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Yet another excellent and informative Japan Times FYI column, this time on the sex industry in Japan. I’m not going to comment specifically on why I’m reposting it on Debito.org (because anything I say will just be misconstrued). It’s just a great article on a pervasive topic in Japan. Arudou Debito

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

FYI

SEX INDUSTRY

Law bends over backward to allow ‘fuzoku’

By JUN HONGO, Staff writer

The Japan Times May 27, 2008

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080527i1.html

Some desires money can’t gratify, but for appetites of the flesh, there are ways in Japan to legally sate one’s carnal cravings.

Hey sailor: Two men stroll among “soapland” parlors in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, last year. JUN HONGO PHOTO

Like many countries, prostitution is illegal in Japan, at least on paper. Brothel-like “soapland” and sexual massage parlors get around these barriers.

And the overt, erotic services of the so-called fashion health venues found in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district and the soaplands in the hot springs resort of Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, ensure that the world’s oldest profession lives on, only under another name.

The context of Japan’s legal definition of prostitution is narrow enough to provide ample loopholes for red-light district operators.

Following are questions and answers regarding Japan’s sex industry — commonly known as “fuzoku” — and the attempts or lack thereof by the government to curb them:

What law bans prostitution in Japan?

The Prostitution Prevention Law, enacted in 1957, forbids the act of having “intercourse with an unspecified person in exchange for payment.” It also punishes acts including soliciting by prostitutes and organized prostitution, such as operating brothels.

Legal experts say it is hard for police to crack down on prostitution because it is tricky to verify if a couple had consensual or compensated sex.

The law meanwhile does not ban paid sex with a “specified person,” or someone who has become an acquaintance. It also defines sex exclusively as vaginal intercourse. Thus other paid sexual acts are not illegal.

Soliciting sex on the street could be punishable by a maximum six-month prison term or ¥10,000 fine. Parties who provide locations for prostitution could face a maximum seven-year sentence or ¥300,000 fine.

According to National Police Agency statistics, 923 people were arrested for violating the Prostitution Prevention Law in 2006.

How many types of fuzoku businesses are there?

Enacted in 1948, the Law Regulating Businesses Affecting Public Morals breaks down the sex industry into several major categories, including soaplands, “fashion health” massage parlors, call-girl businesses, strip clubs, love hotels and adult shops.

Soaplands, the “king” of fuzoku, are where clients have sex. “Fashion health” massage parlors offer sexual activities other than straight intercourse.

The law requires such businesses to register with police and operate only within their registered category. It also bans people under age 18 from working or entering fuzoku establishments.

All sex businesses except soaplands abide by the prostitution law because they do not provide straight intercourse and limit other services to mainly massages.

So how can soaplands operate legally?

To dodge the law, soapland operators claim their male clients and their hired masseuses perform sex as couples who have grown fond of each other.

A customer entering a soapland, legally registered as “a special public bathhouse,” pays an admission fee “that holds the pretext as the charge to use the bathing facility,” Kansai University professor Yoshikazu Nagai said.

The client then is usually asked to pay a massage-service fee directly to the masseuse — giving the pretense that the woman is working on her own and the soapland owner is not running a brothel.

According to Nagai, who authored “Fuzoku Eigyo Torishimari” (“Control of Sex Business Operations”), the process also allows the two to be deemed as adults who became acquainted at the soapland.

The law is conveniently interpreted to mean the male customer is having sex with an acquaintance, not with an “unspecified” person in exchange for cash.

Is that an acceptable justification?

“Is it nonsense to deem that the couple fell in love while massaging at a soapland? Yes. But that is how things have operated inside the Japanese legal framework for over five decades,” Nagai said.

Nagai noted the legal framework on prostitution varies worldwide. Sudan, for instance, punishes prostitutes with death, but the same act is legal and out in the open in the Netherlands.

Many observers say police avoid cracking down hard on prostitution mainly because it is considered a necessary evil and they would rather keep the industry on a loose leash than let the market go underground.

“Putting aside the debate of whether it is right or wrong, the definition of prostitution differs greatly by country and is influenced by cultural, historical and religious backgrounds,” Nagai explained.

When did the sex trade begin in Japan?

Prostitution goes back to ancient times, and there were only local-level laws against selling sex until the prostitution law was enacted in the postwar period.

According to Nagai, 16th century feudal lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi was the first to demarcate part of Kyoto as a red-light district.

“Hideyoshi knew that it would be easier for him to supervise the brothels if they were concentrated in a single location,” Nagai said. “It also made it easier for him to collect levies from business owners.”

What are the health concerns at fuzoku establishments?

In regards to sexually transmitted diseases, most fuzoku businesses conduct comprehensive medical tests when hiring a female worker. Soaplands undergo monthly inspections by public health centers to maintain hygiene.

Some establishments turn away foreign clients.

“This is because of the worldwide outbreak of AIDS in the late 1980s,” Nagai said, noting some premises continue to ban foreign nationals because of the misguided fear that AIDS is spread by them.

How big is the sex industry?

There were approximately 1,200 soaplands in Japan and 17,500 sex-related businesses, including massage parlors and strip clubs, in 2006, according to statistics released by the NPA.

While some have suggested the sex business is a ¥1 trillion industry, Nagai said coming up with an accurate estimate is difficult because of the diversity.

But it is still a way for women to make quick cash, as a soapland “masseuse” can make ¥10 million or more a year, he said.

The sex industry also remains a source of funds for the underworld. According to the NPA, 20 percent of people arrested in violation of the prostitution law in 2006 were related to the mob.

But Nagai believes the industry may be facing a downtrend, since information technology has made it easy for amateurs to operate as freelancers.

Many outdated sex businesses will face such competition in the future, he said.

“One only needs a cell phone to secretly start a call-girl business,” Nagai said. “It has become so convenient and there is no need for professional knowledge or the effort to maintain a bathhouse.”

The Weekly FYI appears Tuesdays (Wednesday in some areas). Readers are encouraged to send ideas, questions and opinions to National News Desk

The Japan Times: Tuesday, May 27, 2008

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