Hi Blog. Developed from an earlier post on Debito.org, here is my 113th JUST BE CAUSE column for The Japan Times Community page. Here’s a teaser opening with a link to the rest of the article. Dr. Debito Arudou
========================================== Warning to Naomi Osaka: Playing for Japan can seriously shorten your career JBC 113 for the Japan Times Community page By Debito Arudou, September 19, 2018
JUST BE CAUSE
First, Just Be Cause congratulates Naomi Osaka on her outstanding win over tennis legend Serena Williams in the U.S. Open. Osaka’s grace under fire was world-class, and she deserves all the plaudits she can get.
And let’s just get this out of the way: I also agree that Williams had every right to protest her treatment by a heavy-handed umpire. The ump made the game about his ability to punish instead of defuse a situation, and penalized a woman more severely than men for similar infractions.
But that commentary is for the Sports pages. Here’s the JBC issue:
Ms. Osaka, I don’t think you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into by choosing to play for Japan.
Hi Blog. First off, I want to say congratulations to Naomi Osaka, for winning the US Open last weekend, soundly defeating her hero and template, tennis legend Serena Williams.
But Ms. Osaka, I don’t think you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into by deciding to play tennis for Japan.
Now, another first off: this blog entry is NOT to dispute whether Ms. Osaka is “Japanese” or not. She has Japanese and American citizenships, so of course legally she is Japanese. Further, if she wishes to self-identify as a Japanese, that is her right as an individual. Debito.org has always supported the right of individuals to decide their identity for themselves, and not suffer identity policing from others. Ms. Osaka is a Japanese. And an American. And a Haitian, her father’s background. Bravo for this confluence of diverse influences to produce a world-class athlete.
But where I think a problem arises, in terms of self-awareness as a Japanese sports champion representing Japan, is illustrated by the following video:
Text: “I was born in Osaka. I came to New York when I was three. I moved from New York to Florida when I was about eight or nine. And then I’ve been training in Florida since… My dad’s Haitian, so I grew up in a Haitian household in New York. I lived with my Grandma. And my mom’s Japanese, and I grew up with the Japanese culture too. And if you’re saying American, I guess because I lived in America I have that too.”
I can see how living in America for just about all of your life (the past seventeen of your twenty years) could make you “American”. I could also see how growing up in a Haitian household could deepen that ethnic tie to Haiti. But I don’t think she’s thought this through well:
It seems a bit dangerous to assume that just because your mother is Japanese, that makes you representatively “Japanese” (especially in a society where the very real phenomenon of kikoku shijou, “Returnee Japanese Students”, suffer ethnic and cultural displacement after only a year or less of being educated abroad during primary and secondary school years).
Compound that with the fact that you don’t read, write, or speak much Japanese beyond the “Kitchen Japanese” level (or as Nikkan Sports renders her abilities, “kikitori wa aru teido rikai suru ga, hanasu no wa nigate“, or “can understand Japanese somewhat when it’s being spoken to her, but speaking isn’t her thing”). But she likes Japanese Anime and Manga, eats unagi and sushi (as the Japanese media has dutifully reported). Somehow that’ll… do?
Again, Ms. Osaka can claim her “Japaneseness”, but it will be a hard road ahead for her given Japan’s unreal expectations of Japanese athletes.
Doubly so for “haafu” Japanese, since questions about their identity and loyalties seep in to complicate things further. There are plenty of examples of Japanese with diverse backgrounds being discounted or disqualified from being “true” Japanese when they don’t win something (such as international beauty pageants). But when they do win (as seen numerous times with Japan’s Nobel Laureates, many of whom have long left Japan, taken foreign citizenships, and even said that they wouldn’t have gotten their achievements if they had remained in Japan), it’s suddenly because they are “Japanese”.
Let’s call it “Nippon-Claiming“. It’s a common phenomenon in racialized societies where “They’ll Claim Us If We’re Famous”. And now with this landmark victory at the US Open, Ms. Osaka has been claimed. (She’s even had the rare honor of having her name rendered all in Kanji and Hiragana, not Katakana, in the Japanese press.)
“Though born in Japan, Osaka has lived in the United States since she was 3. She is not fully fluent in Japanese. Yet nearly a decade ago, her father decided that his two daughters would represent Japan, not America. It was a prescient move.
“…The United States Tennis Association showed little interest in helping [Naomi Osaka and her sister Mari] develop. Rather than vie for support with hundreds of other talented young players in America, [Naomi’s father] Francois made a pivotal decision: His daughters, from age 13, would play for Japan, the nation they left behind nearly a decade earlier…
“The decision to play for Japan has had major repercussions in Osaka’s life, from the way she is perceived in Japan and the United States to the size of the endorsement contracts she can now command as a top Japanese athlete ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics… The Japan Tennis Association, facing a drought of top female players, offered them an opportunity. But for Tamaki and Francois, who spent many years in Japan himself, it was natural for the girls to play in the country where they were born, even if the parent’s own memories of the place were tinged with anger and regret.
“…[Ms.] Osaka has been embraced by Japanese media, companies and fans hungering for a female tennis star. Nissin, one of the world’s largest instant-noodle companies, has already signed her to a lucrative deal, as has Wowow, the tennis channel that broadcasts her matches in Japan. The Osaka camp plans to announce a large new endorsement deal before the U.S. Open, and other Japanese multinationals are circling. Osaka’s biggest payday may come at the end of the year, when her Adidas shoe-and-apparel contract expires — just in time for the prelude to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“If Osaka played under the American flag, it’s very unlikely that these opportunities would exist. Japanese companies would have no reason to court her and U.S. brands would have other higher-ranked young guns to consider, like Madison Keys and Sloane Stephens. But as Japan’s top-ranked player, Osaka has the full attention of the country’s top brands, whose sponsorship fees can run far higher than those of their Western counterparts.”
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That NYT feature also concludes presciently:
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“In Japan, sports fans already know who Osaka is: She’s the rising star playing for the land of the rising sun. Her Japanese might not be perfect, her appearance not traditional. But the barriers may ultimately be no match for success. ‘If Naomi wins a Grand Slam, the other things won’t matter as much,’ Fukuhara says. ‘All of Japan would embrace her.’”
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True. But the problem is the converse will also be true: if she doesn’t continue to win, that support evaporates.
And all Ms. Osaka’s talent and youthful energy may wind up being frittered away dealing with the limitless pressure put upon representatives of Japanese society — a pressure of perfectionism that expects Japanese champions to remain champions no matter what.
In essence, this approach, decided by Ms. Osaka’s father, to make her a bigger-fish-in-a-smaller-pond may backfire, becoming the millstone around her neck: a drag that could shorten her overall career if not her life.
Again, I congratulate Ms. Osaka on her success, and wish her the best of luck. But I really don’t think she knows what she’s gotten herself into. Dr. Debito Arudou
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Hi Blog. The GOJ is starting to take NJ influx more seriously now, with a ministerial upgrade (from Bureau to Agency). When it becomes a full-fledged Ministry that explicitly says “Immigration” in it (as in, Imin-Shou), not a “Bureau/Agency for Processing National Influx” (which is what the Nyuukoku Kanri Kyoku literally is), with an actual Immigration Policy, then Debito.org will be a bit more cheery. That raises hope that the GOJ will someday actually want NJ to stay and become productive members of society and citizens, not revolving-door visa recipients. But baby steps for now. What say Debito.org Readers about this? Dr. Debito Arudou
The Justice Ministry will upgrade its Immigration Bureau to an agency from April to deal with an anticipated influx of foreign workers, Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa said at a news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday.
With the government seeking to accept more foreign workers from April and introducing a new status of residence amid a serious labor crunch across industries, the Justice Ministry will be conducting “a fundamental revision of the Immigration Bureau” and is currently finalizing the establishment of a new agency that will oversee immigration, Kamikawa said. […]
Media has reported that the upgrade of the bureau will see an increase of over 500 ministry staff and immigration officers, with the latter expected to help the country boost checks for inbound tourists ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
Reports have also said that the ministry will be requesting about ¥3 billion within their fiscal 2019 budget for outlays related to the overhaul. […]
The upgrade of the Immigration Bureau comes as Japan, facing a declining population and shrinking workforce, plans to open the door to blue-collar laborers from abroad, in addition to the currently accepted highly skilled foreigners, by introducing a new resident status.
The government has so far confirmed that foreign workers will not be able to bring family members under the new residency status, and that their stay will be limited to five years.
According to figures provided by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, the number of registered foreign workers in the nation hit a record high of 1.28 million in October 2017 — a twofold increase from the 486,398 foreign nationals seen in 2008.
On the other hand, the number of people in Japan aged between 15 to 64 who are capable of working decreased from 86.99 million in 1997 to 76.65 million in 2016, according to data submitted to the Council of Economic Fiscal Policy in February.
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Hi Blog. Every now and again I hear from people how Debito.org has been helpful in dealing with daily life in Japan. Here’s one such example. After more than twenty years of the Debito.org Archive, and ten years of the Debito.org Blog, things like this make it all worth it. Thanks for writing in, TJ. Dr. Debito Arudou
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To: debito@debito.org From: TJ Date: August 12, 2018 Subject: Well, I put on my Debito hat today!
I’m an American married to a Japanese, and we’re on an adventure doing standby flights from Japan to overseas. However, unluckily we got bumped at Nagoya Airport. So we checked into a Comfort Inn at the airport in my (Japanese) spouse’s name.
I gave her a chotto matte kudasai… and dug out that nifty Japanese paper you posted on Debito.org years ago and I held it up to her to read, showing her the letter of the law that says that ID is only required for tourists, not for residents of Japan, including foreign residents.
Another receptionist came over to investigate, and I repeated that I live in Japan permanently. Basically, the other woman’s attitude was since my Japanese spouse was with me, I didn’t have to hand any ID to be photocopied. Because I’m “one of the good ones”. Not a win, but I don’t think she expected me to stand my ground the way I did.
I cannot understand why they need my most intimate and personal information photocopied. What is done with it later? How is it disposed of? It seems like a waste of paper, toner, etc., and because of identity theft, it makes me really nervous.
So… fresh off this experience, we went out to dinner at Nagoya Airport. The hotel is connected so we went back over. My spouse popped into a shop to get toiletries and I sat down in a public chair to wait.
A security guard — I wasn’t sure if he was a police officer, but my spouse later thinks he was — came up and said he was randomly checking passengers’ passports.
Well, I answered in fluent Japanese, which I think he did not expect and threw him off. I explained I am staying at a hotel at the airport and am with a friend who is in the shop over there and we are having dinner. I didn’t have a passport, so I flashed my Zairyuu Residence Card.
But that wasn’t enough. He said he needed me to remove it from my wallet so he could make a written “memo”.
Now, I’m a pretty easygoing person. But at this point my aggressive alter ego, I call him “Pinky”, came out and refused to comply. Pinky told him he was targeting only foreigners, and that wasn’t right, even from a legal standpoint. And at that point my spouse walked up, but could see Pinky had taken over and stepped back to let us handle it.
The security guard eventually backed down, but again, I know it’s because a Japanese was with me. He tried to compliment my Japanese but Pinky wasn’t having it. Pinky told him that I have lived in Japan longer than he has. He was some 20 year old kid who has a tin badge and hat, and thinks he can boss people around and invade their privacy without just cause.
So, I went over to a comment box for Nagoya Airport and wrote a lengthy complaint. It probably won’t even get read, but it made me feel better. The point is, thousands of other people, including foreigners were in the vestibule, and I was basically getting targeted for “sitting while being a foreigner.” So much for kokusaika ahead of the Olympics. Geez. Not very welcoming.
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So strong is this centuries-old belief that even Mali-born naturalized Japanese Dr. Oussouby Sacko, recently-elected president of Kyoto Seika University (congratulations!), made the bold statement in the New York Times that his differential treatment in Japan is not due to racism:
“Dr. Sacko, a citizen of Japan for 16 years, says he is treated differently because he does not look Japanese. But he distinguished that from racism. ‘It’s not because you’re black,’ he said.”
Sorry, that’s not now modern definitions of racism work anymore, Dr. Sacko. Differential treatment of Visible Minorities in Japan is still a racialization process. But I guess anyone can succumb to the predominant “Japan is not racist” groupthink if it is that strong. Read the NYT article below for fuller context.
But the questions remain: Is this a form of Stockholm Syndrome? A cynical attempt to parrot the narrative for the sake of professional advancement? A lack of awareness and social-science training on the part of a person, despite fluency in several languages, with a doctorate in a non-social science (engineering/architecture)? I’m open to suggestion. Especially from Dr. Sacko himself, if he’s reading.
Anyway, much better articles than the NYT’s about Dr. Sacko’s background and training are available from Baye McNeil in the Japan Times here and here.
In any case, congratulations, Dr. Sacko. But I would suggest you utilize your position also to raise awareness about the very real issues of racism in Japan, not attempt a mitigating or denialist approach. Dr. Debito Arudou
KYOTO, Japan — On a beautiful spring Sunday during cherry blossom season, the new president of Kyoto Seika University welcomed students for the start of the Japanese school year. “You have left your home,” he told the 770 first-year and graduate students gathered in a gym on the hilly campus. “But this is also your home.”
In Bamanankan — the lingua franca of his native Mali.
And so Oussouby Sacko, 51, quickly dispensed with the elephant in the room: He is a black man in a homogeneous country that has long had an ambivalent relationship with outsiders.
Dr. Sacko, who is believed to be the first African-born president of a Japanese university, segued elegantly into fluent Japanese, invoking Hannah Arendt, Edward Said, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ. The university, Dr. Sacko said, was “diversifying and internationalizing,” and he wanted the students to “recognize your difference from others.”
In this island country that is sometimes less than welcoming to immigrants, Mr. Sacko is an outlier. A resident for 27 years, he obtained Japanese citizenship 16 years ago and worked his way up through the ranks of a Japanese institution.
With a declining population, Japan is being forced to confront its traditional resistance to taking in foreigners. Last year, according to government figures, the number of foreign nationals living in Japan hit a record high of more than 2.5 million, with about 15,140 of them from African countries.
Yet that total number of foreign nationals makes up less than 2 percent of Japan’s population of 127 million, a lower proportion than in South Korea, for example, where foreigners make up about 3.4 percent of the population. The share is much higher in the United States, at 14 percent, and it is close to 40 percent in Hong Kong, according to data from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Obtaining Japanese citizenship is extremely difficult. Since 1952, just over 550,000 people have managed to naturalize as Japanese citizens, most of them ethnic Koreans whose families have lived in Japan for several generations since the colonial occupation of Korea.
And despite recent efforts to allow highly skilled foreigners to obtain permanent residency more quickly, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has declared that he will not relax immigration policy to address the country’s falling population.
Dr. Sacko says he believes Japan needs to allow in more outsiders, simply as an act of self-preservation.
“Japanese people think they have to protect something,” he said during an interview in English before a reception recently to celebrate his appointment. But, “someone who has a broad view from outside on your culture can maybe help you objectively improve your goals,” he said, occasionally interrupting the interview to greet his guests, switching effortlessly between English, French and Japanese.
Dr. Sacko, the eldest son of a customs officer and homemaker, grew up in Bamako, the capital city of Mali. A strong student, he won a scholarship from the Malian government to attend college abroad.
He had never been anywhere other than the neighboring country of Senegal. With 13 other students from Mali, he was assigned to study in China and landed in Beijing in 1985 to study Mandarin before embarking on a degree in engineering and architecture at Southeast University in Nanjing.
On a vacation to Japan after obtaining his undergraduate degree in 1990, Dr. Sacko found himself enchanted by what he observed as strong community ties and the hospitality toward guests. Although he had begun graduate studies in China, he was frustrated that a government minder always shadowed him when he conducted field research in local villages.
He had also met and started to date a Japanese woman, Chikako Tanaka, whom he later married and with whom he has two sons.
Dr. Sacko moved to Osaka, Japan, for six months of language lessons before enrolling in a master’s degree program at Kyoto University. In meetings with colleagues, he was often asked to take minutes, which helped him improve his listening comprehension and writing ability. At night, he watched Japanese television shows and socialized with Japanese classmates.
Twenty percent of Kyoto Seika’s student body comes from abroad, much higher than the 4 percent overall ratio in Japanese higher education. Dr. Sacko hopes to raise Kyoto Seika’s figure to 40 percent within a decade.Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times His dedication to becoming fluent distinguished him from other foreigners. “They said, ‘If you speak Japanese, they will put you in meetings and on committees and that’s not interesting,’ ” he said. Many foreigners, he added, “spend too much time among ourselves.”
Dr. Sacko said he had hoped to return to Mali someday, but after a military coup in 1991, his employment options were limited. As he pursued a doctorate in Japan, he worked to understand a culture where people can say the exact opposite of what they mean. “You don’t always catch things from the meanings of the words,” he said. “You have to go deeper.”
Along the way, there were some misunderstandings.
After hosting a few parties at his apartment, his neighbors remarked that he and his friends always seemed happy and that they were envious. Dr. Sacko urged them to join his next party.
Instead, they called the police.
“The police said, ‘You are too noisy,’ ” Dr. Sacko recalled. “And I said ‘But my neighbors like that!’ ”
He applied for a job at Kyoto Seika, which specializes in the arts, and started as a lecturer in 2001. Colleagues say that over the years he has worked very hard to adapt to Japanese social codes while also retaining his own sensibility.
“He deeply understands Japanese culture and the way of thinking,” said Emiko Yoshioka, a professor of art theory whom Dr. Sacko appointed as vice president at Kyoto Seika. “But he also is able to poke fun at the fact that he is a foreigner.”
The faculty vote for president was extremely close, with Dr. Sacko winning by just one vote. At his inaugural reception, a group of musicians played Malian music on a patio, and Dr. Sacko stood quietly on a small stage during a parade of speeches from the mayor of Kyoto; the Malian ambassador to Japan; and various academic colleagues, including a professor from Kyoto University who repeatedly slipped up and called him “Professor Mali.”
Ryo Ishida, chairman of Kyoto Seika’s board, noted that the university had recently started a campaign to embrace diversity.
“But I don’t think his election was much to do with the university’s promotion of diversity,” Mr. Ishida said. “He was elected as the best leader of the university among his colleagues.”
In a practical sense, Dr. Sacko’s appointment could help Kyoto Seika appeal to more foreign students at a time when many universities across Japan are struggling to maintain enrollment.
Already, 20 percent of its student body comes from abroad, much higher than the 4 percent overall ratio of foreign students in Japanese higher education. Dr. Sacko said he hoped to raise Kyoto Seika’s level to 40 percent within a decade.
“I think he will help shrink the distance between Japanese and foreigners,” said Chihiro Morita, 18, an illustration major from Hyogo Prefecture.
Other black residents of Japan said that Dr. Sacko could help improve race relations in a country where performers still appear on television in blackface.
“The fact that he has been placed in such a prominent position will have a significant impact on how we’re perceived,” said Baye McNeil, a Brooklyn-born black columnist for the English-language Japan Times who has lived in Japan for 13 years.
Dr. Sacko said he had not experienced racism in Japan but said he was treated differently simply because he does not look Japanese. Despite his Japanese citizenship, for example, he says he is automatically routed to lines for foreigners at the airport when he returns from trips abroad. “It’s not because you’re black,” he said. “It’s because you’re different.”
He said he considered it his mission to foster differences beyond race. When recruiting Ms. Yoshioka as vice president, he told her he wanted her for the job because she was a woman and a single mother.
“If we don’t have a person like you in the top administration of the university, the board will just be filled with men,” he told her when she first hesitated to take the job. “And that doesn’t fit my vision.”
ENDS
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OSAKA — A Korean resident of Japan whose damages lawsuit against an anti-Korean hate group and its former chairman ended last year with the top court ruling in her favor told the Mainichi Shimbun in an interview, “The ruling doesn’t mean we’ve crossed the finish line. It means we’ve just started on our way toward ridding the world of discrimination.”
Freelance writer Lee Sin Hae, 46, filed a lawsuit with the Osaka District Court in August 2014 against[officially-acknowledged hate group] “Zainichi tokken o yurusanai shimin no kai” (“Citizens’ group that does not forgive special rights for Korean residents of Japan,” or “Zaitokukai”) and its then chairman, Makoto Sakurai, demanding 5.5 million yen in compensation. Lee alleged that the group defamed her by calling her “an old Korean hag” during rallies in the Sannomiya district of Kobe and “a lawless Korean” on Twitter.
The district court ruled in September 2016 that Zaitokukai had made the statements with the intent to incite and intensify discrimination against Korean residents of Japan, and ordered the group to pay Lee 770,000 yen in damages.
According to Lee’s attorney, in June 2017, the Osaka High Court became the first court to recognize that a plaintiff had been subjected to “composite discrimination” — in Lee’s case, ethnic and gender discrimination[emphasis added]. However, the high court upheld the lower court’s compensation amount of 770,000 yen. Zaitokukai appealed, but the Supreme Court’s Second Petty Bench turned down the appeal late last year, finalizing the Osaka High Court’s decision.
It was through her writings criticizing hate speech that Lee herself increasingly became a target of hate mongers. She looked back on her three-year legal battle, during which she suffered insomnia and sudden-onset deafness as a result of stress caused by remembering painful incidents as she collected evidence for her case. “It’s been made clear that if one singles out another as a target of hate speech, they will have to pay for it with money,” she said.
Lee is hopeful that the precedent the courts set by recognizing that she had been subjected to composite discrimination will serve as a deterrent against discrimination in the future. Yet, people continue to take part in hate speech even when their identities are made public or they are ordered to pay damages, resulting in a reality in which hate speech is still plentiful both on the streets and on the internet.
“With the lawsuit, I became keenly aware that my strength alone was very weak,” Lee said. “Society won’t change unless the central government and administrative agencies come together and pour all their efforts into ending discrimination.” What Lee demands now are effective measures that include criminal punishment.
Hiroko Kotaki, an attorney who represented Lee in the lawsuit, offered a certain measure of praise for the Osaka High Court’s ruling for its recognition of the composite discrimination to which Lee was subjected. But Kotaki pointed out that it was problematic that claims to recover damage done by hate speech directed at an indefinite number of people, such as “Korean residents of Japan,” are not possible under current laws. With that in mind, she said, “In addition to establishing new legal standards, internet service providers need to work to reinforce their self-monitoring capacity.”
When the Osaka District Court ruled in favor of Lee in September 2016, former Zaitokukai leader Sakurai released a statement through his lawyer, accusing the ruling of being “unjust, as it was based on societal prejudice toward Zaitokukai.” When the Osaka High Court upheld the lower court’s decision, he released a statement that said, “I praise the fact that the compensation amount was limited to 770,000 yen, dealing a blow to the intentions of those who hoped to politically exploit the ruling.”
JK COMMENTS:From the article, we learn that Lee Sin Hae’s case wasn’t finished in September 2016 — in June of 2017, the Osaka High Court upheld by the decision of the Osaka District Court to fine Mr. Sakurai ~$7200, and late last year, Mr. Sakurai and Zaitokai appealed the case, but the Second Petty Bench of the Supreme Court denied the appeal.
Now one of the things I find curious in the article is that we’re introduced to so-called “composite discrimination” (複合差別) which, in the Japanese version of the article is defined as racial discrimination (人種差別) plus “gender discrimination” (女性差別; I think ‘sexism’ would be a better choice of words).
However, in the English version, “composite discrimination” is defined as “**ethnic** and gender discrimination”.
How is it that 「民族差別」 now equates to ‘ethnic’ instead of ‘racial’? And if the intent was to convey the notion of ‘ethnic discrimination’ (whatever that is), why does the Japanese version not use 「民族差別」 instead?
The only explanation I can offer is that Mainichi is playing word games and deliberately whitewashing ‘racial discrimination’ with ‘ethnic discrimination’ in the English-language version because the latter is more palatable to the reader. What’s your take?Regards, JK
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DEBITO COMMENTS: The mistranslation is very indicative. My take is that one of three things happened:
The mistranslation was deliberate, because Japan has no races, therefore “racial discrimination” cannot exist in Japan (after all, holds the liberal Japanese view, “Japanese and Koreans are the same race, therefore discrimination against Koreans isn’t racial; it’s ethnic“). More on that below. Or,
The mistranslation was subterfuge, because the translator at the Mainichi happened to be one of those White Samurai types, who personally doesn’t see “racism” as a problem in Japan (despite the original Japanese wording), and sneakily changed things to protect his Japan from the outside world.
So strong is this centuries-old belief that even Mali-born naturalized Japanese Dr. Oussouby Sacko, recently-elected president of Kyoto Seika University (congratulations!), made the bold statement in the New York Times that his differential treatment in Japan is not due to racism:
“Dr. Sacko, a citizen of Japan for 16 years, says he is treated differently because he does not look Japanese. But he distinguished that from racism. ‘It’s not because you’re black,’ he said.”
In this light, the Mainichi can be seen as merely maintaining the narrative, reverse-engineering the censorious language into English this time. Dr. Debito Arudou
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Hi Blog. We had an important Supreme Court ruling come down earlier this month, where an international custody dispute between two Japanese divorcees living in different countries resulted in the custodial parent overseas being awarded custody of the child, as per the Hague Convention on International Child Abductions. (See Japan Times article excerpt below.)
As evidence, consider this TV segment (with English subtitles) on Japan’s ultraconservative (PM Abe Shinzo is a frequent contributor) Sakura Channel TV network (firmly established with the “present Japan positively no matter what” NHK World network). It contains enough bald-facedly anti-foreign hypotheticals (including the requisite stereotype that foreign men are violent, and Japanese women are trying to escape DV) to inspire entire sociological articles, and the incredible claim that Japan’s court system is just appeasing White people and forcing a “selfish” alien system upon Japan.
The best bits were when banner commentator Takayama Masayuki claimed a) White men just marry women from “uncivilized” countries until they find better women (such as ex-girlfriends from high school) and then divorce them, capturing the former as “babysitters” for once-a-week meet-ups with their kids (which Takayama overtly claims is the “premise” of the Hague Convention in the first place); and b) (which was not translated properly in the subtitles) where Takayama at the very end cites Mori Ohgai (poet, soldier, medical doctor and translator who wrote sexualized fiction about a liaison between a Japanese man and a German woman) to say, “play around with White WOMEN and then escape back home.” (Who’s being selfish, not to mention hypocritical, now?)
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in favor of a U.S.-based Japanese father seeking to reunite with his teenage son, who was taken by his estranged wife to Japan in 2016, concluding that the wife’s dogged refusal to abide by an earlier court order mandating the minor’s repatriation amounts to her “illegally confining” him.
The ruling is believed to be the first by the Supreme Court on cases where return orders by courts have been refused. It is likely to send a strong message regarding domestic legislation that is often slammed as impotent on cross-border child abductions, despite Japan’s commitments under the Hague Convention, following mounting criticism that return orders issued by courts have been ignored.
The Supreme Court sent the case back to the Nagoya High Court.
This latest case involved a formerly U.S.-based Japanese couple whose marital relationship began to deteriorate in 2008. According to the ruling, the wife unilaterally took away one of her children, then aged 11, in January 2016 and brought him to Japan where the two have since lived together.
Upon a complaint by the husband, a Tokyo court issued in September the same year a “return order” for the child under the Hague Convention, but the wife didn’t comply. When a court-appointed officer intervened to recover the child the following year the wife “refused to unlock the door,” prompting the officer to enter her residence via a second-story window, the ruling said. The mother then put up a fierce fight to retain the child, who also articulated his wish to stay in Japan.
On Thursday the top court overturned a Nagoya High Court ruling that acknowledged the child’s desire to stay in Japan. The latest ruling judged the minor was “in a difficult position to make a multifaceted, objective judgment about whether to remain under control of his mother,” citing his “heavy reliance” on her and the “undue psychological influence” she was likely exerting upon him in his life in Japan. The apparent lack of his free will, the ruling said, meant the mother’s attempt to keep the child equated to detention…
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Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward has drafted an ordinance designed to protect racial, ethnic and sexual minorities from discriminatory practices, a move hailed by human rights experts as an “advanced measure.”
The ward was one of the first local governments in Japan to recognize same-sex marriages, and the draft ordinance covers sexual minorities.
However, the draft specifically notes that its target also includes discrimination based on nationality and race.
Under the plan, the ward will establish a committee that will handle public complaints about discrimination and advise the mayor on what measures to take.
A standing committee of the Setagaya Ward assembly approved the draft on Feb. 26. The assembly is expected to adopt the ordinance at a plenary session on March 2, and it will likely take effect in April.
“I have never heard of an ordinance that is intended to end discrimination based on nationality and race and will create a system for handling complaints,” said lawyer Kim Chang-ho, a third-generation ethnic Korean and a member of a nongovernmental organization that protects the human rights of foreign residents in Japan.
“The ordinance will be of help in collecting evidence when victims call for action on discriminatory problems. I hope that the measure will spread nationwide,” Kim said.
Other municipalities have complaint management committees, but they mainly handle cases of sexual discrimination.
The Setagaya Ward committee will consist of three members who will act as advisers to the mayor.
Although the draft contained no punitive measures against offenders, it did suggest possible action that could be taken.
The ward, for example, could refuse to allow hate-speech groups to use public spaces and facilities for demonstrations and meetings. The ward also wants to ensure the needs of sexual minorities and other groups are met when they use public facilities.
In addition, the ward could issue “improvement” instructions to landlords who refuse to rent apartments to minorities, as well as those responsible for discriminatory graffiti or online videos.
Shigenori Nakagawa, a lawyer involved in protecting the rights of sexual minorities, praised the ward’s move.
“Amid a society where discrimination and stereotypes about sexual minorities are deeply rooted, it is meaningful to clearly specify basic social rules,” Nakagawa said.
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Hi Blog. Here’s something interesting and something to support if you are a Japanese living abroad — the maintenance of your legal identity in the form of dual nationality.
The Asahi reports that several Japanese citizens in Europe unprecedentedly plan to sue the government to abolish the law forcing Japanese to pick one nationality if they take another. Some emigres also want to undo the damage and restore their Japanese nationality.
Naturally, Debito.org wholeheartedly supports this effort. For too long the embedded binary of “you’re either Japanese or you’re not” (an Ichi-ro or a Ze-ro) has done untold social damage to people of multiple ethnicities and identities. Nobody in power has ever really listened to them, so now it’s time for the monoethnic Japanese abroad, who want inclusivity for their newfound diversity, to take up the charge.
PHOTO CAPTION: Hitoshi Nogawa, a Japanese-born citizen in Basel, Switzerland, holds his now invalid Japanese passport in Geneva on Feb. 13. The Japanese government refused to renew it in 2015 after he gained Swiss citizenship. (Ichiro Matsuo)
GENEVA–Japanese residing in Europe plan to file a lawsuit demanding the right to dual citizenship, arguing that the Japanese law that forces people to pick only one nationality are outdated, unconstitutional and invalid.
The lawsuit, to be filed against the government at the Tokyo District Court next month, will be the first litigation of its kind, according to the legal team of the eight would-be plaintiffs, who include Japanese living in Switzerland and France.
Six of them have been granted foreign citizenship and want to restore their Japanese nationality.
However, Section 1 in Article 11 of the Nationality Law stipulates that if “a Japanese citizen acquires the nationality of a foreign country at his/her choice, he/she loses Japanese nationality.”
The remaining two want to confirm that they can keep their Japanese citizenship even if they obtain a foreign nationality.
Teruo Naka, a lawyer for the group, says it is unreasonable for Japanese to lose their nationality at a time when they have growing opportunities to live and work regardless of national borders.
“The plaintiffs are hoping to keep their Japanese nationality out of an attachment to Japan and ties with their relatives living in Japan,” he said.
The plaintiffs are expected to argue in court that Section 1 in Article 11 was originally established to prevent the granting of multiple citizenship from the perspective of compulsory military service when the 1890 Constitution of the Empire of Japan was in effect. That clause was automatically passed into the current Nationality Law, which became effective in 1950, after the postwar Constitution took effect in 1947.
Sovereignty rested with the emperor under the previous Constitution, known as the Meiji Constitution. The current Constitution upholds sovereignty of the people.
They will also argue that a wide disparity has grown between the ideal of a single nationality, championed since the Meiji Era (1868-1912), and the current realities of globalization.
The group will also contend that the right to retain Japanese nationality is guaranteed under articles of the current Constitution.
Article 13 of the postwar Constitution, for example, guarantees the right to the pursuit of happiness, they said. Paragraph 2 of Article 22, they noted, states, “Freedom of all persons to move to a foreign country and to divest themselves of their nationality shall be inviolate.”
Unlike in the United States and some European countries, where residents can hold more than one citizenship, the Japanese law still pushes for a single nationality.
Individuals with dual or multiple citizenship, such as children born to Japanese and foreign nationals, are required to select one nationality by the age of 22 under the Nationality Law. Their numbers have increased in recent years with the rise in international marriages in Japan.
If Japanese citizens obtain a foreign nationality through, for example, an international marriage, they are legally obliged to renounce either the foreign or Japanese nationality within two years.
But there is no clause that penalizes those who do not come forward to announce their decision.
“Only those who honestly declare their selection in compliance with the law lose their Japanese nationality,” one of the plaintiffs said.
It is common for Japanese families overseas to acquire the citizenship of their host country for business or employment opportunities.
Hitoshi Nogawa, 74, who leads the plaintiffs and serves as head of the Japanese community in Basel, Switzerland, said he needed Swiss citizenship to enable his company to participate in defense-related public works projects in the country.
Another plaintiff said it is common practice for Japanese expatriates to use their Japanese passports only when they return and leave Japan. Inside their host country, they use the citizenship they have acquired there for business.
It is widely believed that many Japanese with dual citizenship have not declared their status. But not coming forward can lead to problems.
In 2016, questions arose about the nationality of Renho, an Upper House member who then headed the main opposition party. She was born in Japan to a Taiwanese father and Japanese mother, and doubts were raised that she had renounced her Taiwanese citizenship under the Nationality Law. She produced documents showing she did so in 2016.
According to the Foreign Ministry, about 460,000 Japanese with resident status were living overseas as of October 2016. It was not clear how many of them actually held more than one nationality.
Justice Ministry statistics showed that the number of Japanese who renounced their Japanese nationality after selecting a foreign citizenship or for other reasons ranged from 700 to 1,000 annually between 2012 and 2016.
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Hi Blog. While the PyeongChang Olympics are still going on, let’s talk about how national borders are being broken down in the name of enhancing national sporting prowess.
As per the Washington Post article below, South Korea has been converting foreigners into Korean Olympic athletes with the stroke of the bureaucratic pen. Thus it is unclear at this point how much of a dent they will make on the national self-image of what it means “to be a Korean”. If they don’t win (which, sadly, they won’t), then it’s doubtful they will be anything more than an unsuccessful means to an end, an asterisk in the annals of Korean sports.
PHOTO CAPTION: Seven of the South Korean men’s hockey team members are foreign-born, including six from Canada.
GANGNEUNG, South Korea — Not long after South Korea was chosen to host these Winter Olympics, as officials spoke openly about setting new medal records and showing off the country’s growing winter sports prowess to the world, a humbling reality set in:
South Korea was going to have to field a men’s ice hockey team.
At that point, the country’s all-time Winter Olympic hockey record was 0-0. Its national team was ranked neck-and-neck with North Korea. The country had a nonexistent hockey tradition, a thin pool of talent and just a few years to draw up a plan that would save itself from embarrassment.
Player by player, the results of that plan stepped Sunday night onto the ice, where the team’s latest practice kicked off with a goalie skating out from the locker room, wristing a puck at an angle and saying, in English, “These boards are bouncy.” Soon the whole team was on the ice, circling and taking slap shots, and somebody yelled, “Whooo, nice one.” Finally the coach settled at center ice, calling everybody toward the red line to take a knee. Every word of his was in English. “Bring it in, bring it in,” he said.
In a bid to upgrade its hockey program in fast-forward, one of the world’s most homogenous countries has created one of the most foreign-heavy Olympic teams of all time. Among 25 players on the South Korean men’s hockey team in PyeongChang, seven were born in other countries, including six in Canada. South Korea has 19 foreign-born athletes competing for it in these Olympics, most of any country, with hockey accounting for the largest share.
The men, so far, have gotten far less attention than their South Korean female hockey counterparts. The men, unlike the women, have no eye-catching diplomatic narrative. They don’t share a roster with any North Koreans. They won’t draw synchronized cheerleaders to their games. Instead, they prepare in near-empty arenas — and draw only three or four media members to their practices.
The imported men’s players are less mercenaries than converts, granted naturalized Korean citizenship even though they have no Korean blood. To get that opportunity, they had to play at least two seasons for Korean clubs in a pan-Asian hockey league. And then meet with national hockey officials. And then national Olympic officials. And then the country’s Ministry of Justice.
Oh, and then they had to take a test and sing the national anthem.
“Then, you find out if you pass or not,” said Eric Regan, a defenseman from Ontario, who naturalized in 2016. “I was with Matt Dalton, the goalie, at the time. We went through the process together and we both passed along with, I think, two other biathletes that day — both Russians. A month later we’re playing in the world championships for Team Korea. It was wild.”
The plan to boost South Korea’s competence began in 2014, with the hiring of a coach. The coach was Jim Paek, the first Korean-born player to make the National Hockey League. He had won a Stanley Cup championship in the early 1990s with the Pittsburgh Penguins, skating alongside Mario Lemieux. Several months after his hiring, the International Ice Hockey Federation announced that South Korea — having shown enough commitment to its program — would get an automatic bid, becoming one of 12 teams in the Olympic tournament. Traditionally, host countries receive automatic bids.
To hear Paek tell it, the national team recruited foreigners not from all over the world but rather from its own doorstep, targeting foreigners already playing in South Korea. For years, a handful of borderline NHL prospects had landed in the Asia League, a 15-year-old hockey league that spans four countries and has had 15 teams — seven of which have dissolved. Teams in Korea attract players by offering modest perks: a car, a tax-free salary, an apartment with heated floors. “I literally live in a building called Samsung,” said Mike Testwuide, a U.S.-born player on the Korean team.
It was these players that Paek began to recruit.
A few were already naturalized citizens. Others, Paek pitched on the idea.
He told them the Olympics were coming up, and that they could help.
“I didn’t hesitate, really,” Testwuide said. “It’s about showing that Korea has a serious hockey program.”
Paek said scouting players for his national team was relatively easy. The talent pool was so thin that it didn’t take much time.
“I don’t know if that’s lucky or not,” he said.
At least two of Korea’s current players, Bryan William Young and Alex Plante, have logged a couple of shifts in the NHL. The goalie, Dalton, dressed for a few games as a Boston Bruins backup. The player who has spent the most time in Korea, Brock Radunske, has played more than 350 games in the Asia League — and stands at 6-foot-5, nicknamed the Canadian Big Beauty.
The team begins play Thursday and is matched in a group with Canada, Switzerland and the Czech Republic — countries with a combined 27 medals in men’s hockey. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency wrote recently that a “winless performance isn’t entirely out of the question.” But Paek disagreed.
“We work really hard, and our expectation is, we’re prepared to win a game,” he said. “To win every game we play.”
ENDS
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Hi Blog. PyeongChang. It’s Olympics time again, and, as long-time readers know, I’m a fan of the athleticism but not the nationalism (and inevitable comparisons of strengths and weaknesses along national lines) that is endemic to bordered sports. Too many people compete for glory as representatives of whole societies, not for individual bests, and that particularly takes a toll on Japan’s athletes.
I’ve been a relentless critic of Japan’s sports commentary, but now that I’m watching it in the US, fair game. I was quite incandescent with rage at times listening to NBC’s stupid, overgeneralizing, and often borderline racist commentary of the Opening Ceremonies. (One of the most annoying was when Katie Couric noted how internet addiction is allegedly a problem in South Korea, and used it as a segue into a shameless plug of her upcoming show on internet addiction in America; and this relates to the Olympics how!?)
Fortunately, I was not alone, and Korea protested not only the overgeneralizations, but also the ahistorical comments that were ill-considered. Fortunately, NBC apologized (and told the press that the offending commentator’s “assignment is over”), which is better than I’ve ever seen NHK do for its nasty coverage. Here’s the Washington Post on the issue. Dr. Debito Arudou
Friday’s Opening Ceremonies for the Winter Olympics in South Korea were, by most accounts, spectacular. NBC’s coverage of the spectacle, on the other hand, was considered hit and miss. Occasionally disastrous.
It wasn’t so much the hosts, Katie Couric and Mike Tirico, who annoyed critics, but rather the network’s analyst, Joshua Cooper Ramo.
Slate wrote that Ramo’s commentary amounted to bland trivia about Asia “seemingly plucked from hastily written social studies reports” — such as his observation that white and blue flags stood for North and South Korean unity. Variety compared his commentary to a Wikipedia article.
But Ramo’s big misstep came when he noticed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan in the crowd and offered what he knew about the country’s history with Korea.
Japan was “a country which occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945,” Ramo said, correctly (though he did not mention that historians say the Japanese army forced tens of thousands of Koreans into sex slavery.)
“But,” Ramo continued, “every Korean will tell you that Japan as a cultural and technological and economic example has been so important to their own transformation.”
This was definitely not correct. Every Korean did not agree that Japanese colonialism had its upside. In fact, thousands signed a petition demanding that NBC apologize for Ramo’s statement.
“His incorrect and insensitive comment about Korea’s history has enraged many of its people,” the Korea Times observed.
“Some say it’s questionable whether Ramo has been even following the news leading up to the current Olympics, as some of the disputes between South Korea and Japan erupted even during the preparation phase of the games,” the Korea Herald added, mentioning as an example the unified Korean flag that Ramo liked so much.
In fact, the Herald reported, an earlier flag design had outraged Japan because it included a group of islets still claimed by both countries.
Japan and South Korea have not even fully reconciled over atrocities committed during the occupation. While the Japanese government has expressed remorse and set up a fund in the 1990s to help victims it once referred to as “comfort women,” some politicians and academics claim estimates of 200,000 sex slaves are exaggerated. Many South Koreans, in turns, compare those skeptics to Holocaust deniers.
The morning after the Opening Ceremonies, NBC apologized for Ramo’s remarks. “We understand the Korean people were insulted by these comments,” an anchor said during a Saturday broadcast, according to MSN.
In a statement to The Washington Post, NBC Sports said that the network also apologized in writing and that “we’re very gratified that [the PyeongChang Olympics] has accepted that apology.”
Yahoo Sports reported this was the second time that Ramo, who co-directs a think tank founded by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, has appeared as an Olympics analyst for NBC. He shared an Emmy Award for his commentary during Beijing’s Summer Games in 2008.
Ramo could not be immediately reached for comment. An NBC official told The Post that his assignment is over.
ENDS
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Hi Blog. As is tradition, here is JBC’s annual countdown of the top 10 human rights events as they affected non-Japanese (NJ) residents of Japan over the past year, as published in The Japan Times.
ISSUES | JUST BE CAUSE In 2017, Japan woke up to the issue of discrimination [NB: I didn’t write the headline.] BY DEBITO ARUDOU THE JAPAN TIMES, JAN 3, 2018
10) As Japan’s population falls, NJ residents hit record
Figures released in 2017 indicated that Japan’s society is not just continuing to age and depopulate, but that the trends are accelerating. Annual births fell under 1 million — a record low — while deaths reached a record high. The segment of the population aged 65 or older also accounted for a record 27 percent of the total.
In contrast, after four years (2010-2013) of net outflow, the NJ resident influx set new records. A registered 2.38 million now make up 1.86 percent of Japan’s total population, somewhat offsetting the overall decline.
Alas, that didn’t matter. Japanese media as usual tended to report “Japan’s population” not in terms of people living in Japan, but rather Nihonjin (Japanese citizens), indicating once again that NJ residents simply don’t count.
9) ‘Hair police’ issue attracts attention with lawsuit
Japan’s secondary schools have a degree of uniformity that stifles diversity. And this trend reached its logical conclusion with the news that one school was forcing children with natural hair color that’s anything but black to dye and straighten their locks.
We talked about dyeing a decade ago (“Schools single out foreign roots,” July 17, 2007), noting its adverse effects on children’s physical and mental health. Yet the Asahi Shimbun reported in May that 57 percent of surveyed Tokyo metropolitan high schools still require “proof of real hair color.” In Osaka, it’s more like 80 percent.
The tone-deaf school justified this by saying, “Even a blond-haired foreign exchange student dyed her hair black.” This lawsuit’s outcome will signal whether Japan’s increasingly diverse student population can ever escape this kind of institutionalized harassment. But at least one student is standing up for herself.
8) Five-year limit on contract employment backfires
As reported in the JT by Hifumi Okunuki (“‘Five-year rule’ triggers ‘Tohoku college massacre’ of jobs,” Nov. 27, 2016), Japan’s Labor Contract Law was revised in 2013 to increase worker job security. To put an end to perennial full-time contracted employment, anyone working more than five years on serial fixed-term contracts will now be able to switch to normalized full-time noncontracted (seishain) status if they wish.
However, the law was not retroactive and the clock started ticking on April 1, 2013, so as the five-year deadline approaches this coming April, employers are now terminating contracts en masse: Last April, Tohoku University told 3,200 employees their current contracts would be their last.
But contract law has a special impact on NJ workers, as many endure perpetual contracted status (especially educators in Japan’s university system). The five-year rule has now normalized the practice of periodically “vacationing” and “rehiring” NJ to avoid continuous contracts, while encouraging major companies to finagle NJ employees’ working conditions by offering them “special temp status” (for example, explicitly capping contracts at less than five years).
Hence the bamboo ceiling remains alive and well, except it’s been expanded from just filtering out foreign nationals to affecting anyone.
7) Hate-speech law has concrete effects
Despite concerns about potential infringement of freedom of speech, a hate speech law was enacted in 2016 to, among other things, specifically protect foreign nationals from public defamation. It worked: Kyodo reported last year that xenophobic rallies, once averaging about one a day somewhere in Japan, were down by nearly half. Racialized invective has been softened, and official permission for hate groups to use public venues denied.
Of course, this hate speech law is not legislation with criminal penalties against, for example, racial discrimination. And it still assumes that noncitizens (rather than, for example, members of “visible minorities” who happen to be citizens) need special protection, incurring accusations of favoritism and “reverse discrimination.”
Nevertheless, according to the Mainichi, haters have been chastened. A report quotes one hate rally attendee as saying that before the law change, “I felt like anything I said was protected by the shield of ‘freedom of speech’… I felt safe because I knew the police officers would protect us. It felt like we had the upper hand.”
Not so much anymore.
6) Pension system qualification lowered to 10 years
Last year saw an important amendment to Japan’s state pension (nenkin) rules. Until last August, you had to invest a minimum of 300 months, or 25 years, in the various schemes to qualify for payouts after reaching retirement age.
Japan thus turned workers into “pension prisoners” — if you ever took your career elsewhere, you would get at most a small lump-sum payout from Japan, and possibly zero from your new country of residence for not paying in enough. (It was especially punitive toward Japan’s South American workers, who forfeited pensions when bribed by the government to “return home” during 2009’s economic downturn.)
Although things have improved under bilateral totalization agreements (where pension payments in designated countries get counted toward Japan’s 25-year minimum), this year Japan lowered the bar to the more reasonable 10 years. (More on this at www.debito.org/?p=14704.)
Of course, this does not resolve the fact that Japan will have the highest proportion of pensioners anywhere on Earth. Payouts and minimum retirement ages will be revised accordingly to make the pension worth little. But still, it will not be zero, and payments can be claimed anywhere in the world when you’re ready.
5) Renho resigns, Democratic Party withers
In 2016, in an unprecedented move, a member of an ethnic minority became the leader of a major Japanese political party. Alas, that party was the Democratic Party (formerly the Democratic Party of Japan), which in 2017 crumbled into nothing.
Renho, a Taiwanese-Japanese who served in Cabinets under two DPJ prime ministers, was a popular reformer. (She was re-elected in 2010 with a record number of votes for her district.) However, last year her integrity was questioned when it emerged that she had technically retained dual citizenship by not formally renouncing her Taiwanese nationality. That was rectified in July, but weeks later Renho resigned, ostensibly to “take responsibility” for a poor DP showing in the Tokyo prefectural election. From there, the DP downward-spiraled into virtual oblivion.
Many Japanese politicians have been tainted by scandal merely for associating with foreign types (for example, former DPJ Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara in 2011). Renho, alas, could not escape the stigma of her own putative “foreignness” — a huge setback for Japan’s politically invested ethnic minorities.
4) ‘Trainee’ program expanded, with ‘reforms’
Since 1993, to offset a labor shortage in Japan’s rusting small-firm industries, the government has been providing unskilled labor under an ostensible training program for foreign workers.
Things have not improved in recent years. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry announced that about 70 percent of some 5,200 companies that accepted trainees in 2015 violated laws, and in 2016 a record 4,004 employers engaged in illegal activities. The program is so rotten that even the United Nations demanded Japan scrap it.
So guess what: In 2014, Prime Minster Shinzo Abe announced it would be expanded. Once restricted to the construction, manufacturing, agricultural and fishery industries, as of November it also includes nursing and caregiving. New opportunities were also proposed in “special economic zones” (so that foreign college graduates with Japanese language skills can pull weeds and till farmland — seriously). Furthermore, visas will be longer-term (up to five years).
To counter the abuses, the government also launched an official watchdog agency in November to do on-site inspections, offer counseling services to workers and penalize miscreant employers. But labor rights groups remain skeptical. The program’s fundamental incentives remain unchanged — not to actually “train” foreign laborers (or even provide Japanese language instruction), but rather to exploit them as cheap unskilled labor.
So expect more of the same. Except that now the program will ingest even more foreign workers for longer. After all, uncompetitive factories will continue to use cheap labor to avoid bankruptcy, construction will expand due to the Olympics, and more elderly Japanese will require caregivers.
3) North Korean missile tests and the fallout
Last year North Korea, the perpetual destabilizer of East Asia, commanded even more worldwide attention than usual (even popularizing the obscure word “dotard” among native English speakers). Flexing its muscles as a probable nuclear power, it test-fired missiles over Japan. The Japanese government responded by calling 2017 “the most severe security environment since the end of World War II” and warned regions of launches via the J-Alert system, while local authorities ran duck-and-cover-style nuclear attack drills.
This is but the most recent episode in a long history of Japan-North Korea reactionary antagonism. However, Japan is particularly wary of the possibility of infiltration. Members of the North Korean diaspora live in Japan (attending ethnic schools with photos of the Kim dynasty on their walls), with established networks for smuggling, money laundering and kidnapping of Japanese.
Essentially, North Korea’s international recklessness and habitual stupidity empower Japan’s warmongers and xenophobes to reinforce Japan’s bunker mentalities. They’ve successfully created domestic policies (such as the new “anti-conspiracy law”) that curtail civil, political and human rights for foreign and Japanese nationals alike — all legitimized based on the fear of North Koreans gaining even an iota of power in Japan.
Thus, North Korea’s antics ruin Japan’s liberal society for everyone. And last year Kim Jong Un upped the ante.
Abe’s success is partly down to an aging society being predictably more conservative. No political party in the democratic world has held on to power as long as Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party. Voting LDP, particularly in rural Japan, where votes count more than urban ones do, is often generational habit.
It’s also partly due to an opposition in disarray: After the DP stumbled and fell, the newly formed Kibo no To (Party of Hope) (whose policies weren’t all that different from the LDP’s) soured under the leadership of mercurial Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike — who resigned as party head, effectively abandoning her baby, in November.
And, to give due credit, it’s partly because Abe offers reassuring policies that, as usual for the LDP, sloganize stability and preservation of the status quo over concrete results or necessary reforms.
As far as Japan’s NJ residents are concerned, this election offered no good news. No party offered any policy improvements whatsoever for Japan’s international residents. (As noted above, how could they, what with North Korea’s missiles flying overhead?)
In sum, 2017’s election was not a rout of the opposition as has been seen before; the ruling coalition even lost a few seats. Moreover, the biggest victors, a new Constitutional Democratic Party streamlined of wishy-washy former DP members, offered a clear voice to the strong opposition among Japanese to changing the Constitution.
That said, JBC believes those changes will probably happen anyway, because despite this year’s scandals (e.g., the Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen school debacles), five wins at the ballot box have made it clear that voters are just fine with Abe in power, whatever he does.
Twenty-five percent of respondents looking for work said they had been rejected for being foreign, and nearly a fifth said they had received a lower salary for the same reason. Nearly 30 percent said they were targeted by race-based insults. More than 37 percent said they supported a law against “foreigner discrimination” (sic).
There’s lots more (see “Time to act on insights on landmark survey,” JBC, April 26), and even with all the caveats (e.g., excluding Japan’s visible-minority citizens, who tend to be treated as foreigners, and offering no questions about discrimination by officialdom, such as police street ID checks or the manufacturing of fictitious foreign crime waves), it’s an unimpeachable set of official stats that may, despite the xenophobic political climate, result in future antidiscrimination policies.
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Hi Blog. The Mainichi gives us an interesting case study of how one Wajin became a participant in hate speech groups, how he felt empowered due to the fact there was (at the time) no enforceable hate speech law in Japan, and how he eventually became disillusioned with the movement. While completely anecdotal and single-case, if we get enough of these, patterns emerge, and aggregated case studies eventually can become meaningful surveys (as the fieldwork resulting from the Otaru Onsens Case demonstrated, as it morphed into the Rogues’ Gallery of Exclusionary Establishments and a doctoral dissertation study). Let us begin the first step of understanding how and why people hate, and hopefully more people will realize why societies should make hate speech legally culpable. Dr. Debito Arudou
To mark the one year anniversary of the anti-hate speech law coming into effect on June 3, the Mainichi Shimbun interviewed a 38-year-old man who formerly participated actively in anti-Korean and anti-foreigner hate speech demonstrations to the extent of becoming a leading member. He spoke about his experience and the actions that he now deeply regrets.
The man’s involvement with the hate speech groups began following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster. Due to Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (TEPCO) rolling blackouts in the wake of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster to conserve electricity, the company where the man worked had trouble with its operations, and he was unable to return home for three days. During that time, he happened upon an internet post which claimed that the anti-nuclear power movement was a conspiracy orchestrated by leftist groups and Korean residents in Japan. He believed the claims, and started to doubt the anti-nuclear power movement.
After that, he began participating in demonstrations that called for resuming operations of nuclear power plants halted after the disaster, and learned of the existence of hate speech groups. Researching the claims of the groups, he found there were many points with which he sympathized and began participating in the demonstrations with a new sense of “righteousness.”
In 2012, the location of the demonstrations he joined moved to “Korean town” in the Shin-Okubo district of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward. Participating in the anti-Korean demonstrations at least twice a month, the man cultivated friendships with fellow participants and he started to feel like the demonstrations were a place where he really belonged.
While shouting phrases like, “Kick out the criminal foreigners!” at demonstrations, calling Korean residents “cockroaches” and “ticks” became second nature. Gradually, his remarks escalated to “Die!” and “Kill them!”
His sole source of information was the internet. Coming across information not covered in mass media, he felt like only he knew the truth. When news media reported on particularly atrocious crimes, he almost instantly thought that they were committed by foreigners, and firmly believed that news organizations were intentionally hiding the nationality and real names of the perpetrators.
In 2014, he became a central member of a hate speech group, and was dubbed a captain leading the offense of the movement. When asked about what fueled his extreme behavior, he offered the authorization of the use of roads for demonstrations and the many dispatched police officers that surrounded the events.
“Because we had received permission to use the road, I felt like anything I said was protected by the shield of ‘freedom of speech,'” he remembered. “Even if opposition groups surrounded our demonstrations, I felt safe because I knew the police officers would protect us. It felt like we had the upper hand.”
His extreme behavior culminated in August 2014. At a gathering of over 100 members of the hate speech group at an “izakaya” bar, seven men belonging to an anti-hate speech group coincidentally entered the same establishment. Believing them to be Korean, the group attacked and injured them. In October of the same year, the man was arrested on charges of assault in connection to the incident. As penitence, he vowed to no longer get involved with the demonstrations, but once he distanced himself from the hate speech group, they began suspecting him of joining an opposition group. He was verbally abused by members screaming, “Kick out the traitor!” and his ties to the group were severed.
What ultimately saved him was an email from a 52-year-old, second-generation Korean resident who was a member of an anti-hate speech group. It read, “If you receive any threats or harassment (from the hate speech group he belonged to), just tell me.” At first he thought, “Why is he saying this to me when I’m the one who has attacked him?” However, the message became an impetus for self-reflection. He asked the man what he could do to be forgiven for his own aggressive actions. “I want you to promise me that you will never do it again even if you’re not forgiven,” was his answer.
Even now, video of him participating in hate speech demonstrations remains on the internet. Each time he meets new people, he is always afraid they will discover his past. “There is nothing to gain from joining hate speech demonstrations, but there is a lot to lose,” he said. To those who still participate in the demonstrations, the man has this message:
“I want you to quit as soon as you can. I don’t want the number of people who have been hurt to grow any further. Don’t throw away your precious time and relationships for hate.”
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However, if this paper was from a student in my Research Methods class, I would dock points for a number of things here, not least the lack of peer-reviewed sources cited. It’s essentially taking all the work from Debito.org (particularly from here) and rehashing it as a show-and-tell for academic credit, moreover without reading the most recent books and analyses on cases since then; plus it has a number of typos, and a rather glib final conclusion that:
[A]s it correctly noted [sic] by Yoshio Sugimoto[,] “contemporary Japanese society is caught between the contradictory forces of narrow ethnocentrism and open internalization [sic]“. This proves the fact [sic] that passing laws at all levels of government outlawing discrimination in Japan is just a matter of time.
As written, I don’t logically follow.
(I have the feeling even the article title was readjusted by the gatekeepers to revert the issue back to “foreigner discrimination”, making it once again an issue of nationality, and glossing over the fact that one of the excluded plaintiffs in the Otaru Onsens Case was in fact NOT foreign. Moreover, reading the Abstract below, I note how even the summary must include a disclaimer that the “foreigners” are partially to blame for their being discriminated against “due to differences in language, religion, custom and appearance as well”.)
Citation: EKATERINA, Kostina. Discrimination Against Foreigners in Japan. Journal of Law and Policy Transformation, [S.l.], v. 2, n. 1, p. 183-203, july 2017. ISSN 2541-3139. Available at: <http://ejournal.uib.ac.id/index.php/jlpt/article/view/80>.
Abstract The notion of Japan as a homogeneous society has been challenged by many recent studies. In fact, Japan is a home to different minority groups, ethnic and non-ethnic. Although the percentage of resident foreigners is relatively low comparing to other countries, acts of racial discrimination against them occur in everyday life in Japan. Thus, this study discusses how the foreigners are treated in Japan, and therefore tends to answer the question whether the legislation exists in order to protect their rights and penalize discriminatory activities committed by citizens or organizations. The study reveals that although Japan signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the problem of racial discrimination against foreign nationals still remains considerable. There are many reported incidents of human rights violation and discrimination practice against foreigners among individuals due to differences in language, religion, custom and appearance as well. Some of the cases handled by the human rights organs of the Ministry of Justice include the refusals of apartment rental or entrance to a public swimming pool on the grounds of being a foreigner. The study suggests that Japan should introduce new legislation to combat discrimination.
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Consider Yu Darvish, who has gone from local pitcher in my pennant-winning local team (Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Sapporo) to the starting pitcher for the LA Dodgers in the World Series, and how he recently dealt with a racist incident in the middle of the event:
HOUSTON, TX – OCTOBER 27: Houston Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel has reportedly been suspended for the first five games of next season after making a racist gesture aimed at Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish in Game 3 of the World Series.
USA Today’s Bob Nightengale first reported Gurriel’s suspension.
The Astros issued a statement on Gurriel’s punishment:
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred cited four reasons for not wanting to suspend Gurriel during the World Series, including not wanting to punish the other players on the Astros roster by having a starter sit out, per Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com. Manfred did say there was “no place in our game” for what Gurriel did.
Before MLB decided on Gurriel’s punishment, ESPN’s Buster Olney noted it would be difficult to suspend him for any games in the World Series due to the way the appeals process is set up.
Gurriel homered off Darvish in the second inning of Houston’s 5-3 win on Friday. After returning to the dugout, television cameras showed Gurriel pulling down on the corners of his eyes. He apologized for the incident following the game.
“I did not mean it to be offensive at any point,” Gurriel said, per ESPN’s Scott Lauber. “Quite the opposite. I have always had a lot of respect [for Japanese people]. … I’ve never had anything against Darvish. For me, he’s always been one of the best pitchers. I never had any luck against him. If I offended him, I apologize. It was not my intention.”
Per Gabe Lacques and Jorge L. Ortiz of USA Today, Gurriel also admitted using the Spanish term “Chinito,” which translates to “little Chinese guy,” in the dugout.
Darvish told reporters after the game he felt Gurriel’s gesture was “disrespectful” and later issued a statement on Twitter about the situation:
A Cuba native, Gurriel played 15 seasons in the Cuban National Series and Japan Central League from 2001-16. He signed a five-year deal with the Astros in July 2016 and appeared in 36 games last season.
In his first full MLB season in 2017, the 33-year-old hit .299/.332/.486 with 18 home runs in 139 games.
ENDS
////////////////////////////////////////
COMMENT: The most interesting take on this was from The Washington Post, so let me simply quote them:
HOUSTON — Shocking acts of civility, common sense, accountability and generosity have broken out at the World Series. Please, someone put a stop to this before it spreads.
On Saturday, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred suspended Yuli Gurriel of the Houston Astros without pay for five games at the beginning of next season for making a racially insensitive gesture and yelling an anti-Asian insult at Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish during Game 3 of the World Series on Friday night. It is not expected that the players’ union will contest the discipline.
Gurriel’s immediate expression of remorse after the game, as well as a full apology and a desire to meet Darvish personally to apologize, may have helped the Astros first baseman avoid being suspended during this World Series.
Just as pertinent, Darvish, after saying that Gurriel’s acts were “disrespectful” to Asians around the world, wrote in a tweet that, “I believe we should put our effort into learning rather than to accuse him. . . . Let’s stay positive and move forward instead of focusing on anger. I’m counting on everyone’s big love.”
What is the world coming to?
First, an apology for ugly acts that appears sincere and without strings attached. Then, generosity from the victim toward the man who has insulted him. And the next day, in a situation in which there probably is no perfect discipline, a punishment to which everyone involved appears to have agreed to agree.
Gurriel, who went 0 for 3 and grounded into a double play Saturday in the Astros’ 6-2 loss in Game 4, will have to live with whatever damage he has done to his reputation both by his acts and by his honesty in admitting to them. But his team will not be punished during the World Series. And the Dodgers, who had the family of Jackie Robinson involved in pregame ceremonies earlier this month, appear to agree with Darvish that this is a moment for education and conciliation, not outrage.
In this incident, the devil — but also the instant disgust, apparently followed by dignity and decency — truly is in the details. Let’s go through them.
The Cuban-born Gurriel was brushed back Friday night by a 93-mph fastball thrown in the second inning by Darvish, who is of Japanese-Iranian descent. Gurriel retaliated, as hitters have always tried to do, by hitting a homer on the next pitch.
When Gurriel returned to the Houston dugout, he did what countless hitters have done in such emotional competitive moments. He made a disparaging comment directed at the pitcher and added an insulting gesture.
If Gurriel had yelled that Darvish was a gutless cheap-shot artist and added the universal gesture for “choker” by grabbing his throat, then no big deal — just hardball. Maybe the Dodgers or Darvish see it and Gurriel or some Astro gets drilled.
But instead, in a split-second of self-destructive glee, Gurriel made the universal insulting gesture, seen all over the world for generations, of using his fingers to pull his eyes until they looked slanted. And he yelled “Chinito,” which translates as “little Chinese boy.”
At this point, because the moment was captured on video, American social media erupted with predictable racial vitriol, packed with anonymous insults that would make anything Gurriel did seem mild.
Then a remarkable thing happened. After the game, won by the Astros, Houston Manager A.J. Hinch praised the 33-year-old Gurriel for his slugging, a homer and double. But when asked about the racially charged incident, Hinch faced it immediately. “I am aware of it,” Hinch said. “He’s remorseful. He’s going to have a statement.”
Not just sorry but “remorseful,” a stronger choice of word.
Gurriel answered questions afterward at his locker. In one answer, he seemed to duck behind the excuse that he was simply telling teammates that he had had bad luck in the past against Asians. In the end, far from trying to gloss over what he had done, he volunteered that he had played for a year in Japan and knew that “Chinito” was an insult.
“In Cuba and in other places, we call all Asian people Chinese,” Gurriel said through team interpreter Alex Cintron. “But I played in Japan, and I know [that is] offensive, so I apologize for that.”
Gurriel did not say that his word had been misunderstood by dugout lip-readers or that it had been taken out of context or that he did not consider the term an insult. Gurriel had used a race-based disparaging word, and he simply said, “I apologize for that.” He did not excuse himself by citing the heat of the moment or the proximity of the previous fastball.
“I didn’t want to offend anybody,” Gurriel added. “I don’t want to offend him or anybody in Japan. I have a lot of respect. I played in Japan.”
Clearly, at least for a couple of seconds, Gurriel intended to offend Darvish, just as generations of hitters have yelled baseball’s magic twelve-letter word at pitchers after an apparent brushback, followed by a home run. But I will give Gurriel the benefit of the doubt that he really does respect people in Japan, is familiar with their culture and wishes he could stuff that “Chinito” back in his lungs, not simply because he was caught — on camera — but because he really feels shame.
Because Gurriel answered several similar questions, he did, at least in translation, appear to fall into the fashionable dodge of apologizing to anybody who was offended — the backhanded non-apology apology. But to me, these are the words that count: “Of course, I want to talk to him because I don’t have anything against him,” Gurriel said. “I want to apologize to him.”
That’s an apology-apology. No hairsplitting. No blame-ducking. But Gurriel also did not accuse himself of being a racist, either. In the direct way of many athletes, he stepped up, faced the hard moment and did his best to apologize.
As for the slant-eyed gesture, that requires as much interpretation as a raised middle finger. It means what it means. Those who deny it merely self-identify as sympathizers with those who use racially derogatory gestures, words and symbols. Thanks. That’s always useful information.
Darvish, the “victim” in current parlance, gave a distinguished account of his own character in his balanced but forgiving response.
Immediately after the game, Darvish said, through an interpreter: “Of course, Houston has Asian fans and Japanese fans. Acting like that is disrespectful to people around the world and the Houston organization.”
Later, in a tweet, Davish wrote, “No one is perfect. That includes both you and I. What he [did] today isn’t right, but I believe we should put our effort into learning rather than to accuse him. If we can take something from this, this is a giant step for mankind.”
Both my cynicism barometer and my irony meter just broke.
In recent times, American culture has become addicted to the adrenaline rush of outrage. Each day, we awake as a nation looking for something to disagree with and get angry about. We don’t even realize what is most obvious: This is sickness. If a family acted this way, it would destroy itself and maximize its own misery. Yet we not only excuse deliberate divisiveness in politics, we ignore it by the gross.
Perhaps we can look to a Cuban, in this country for less than two years, for an example of the ability to make both an ugly mistake and a direct apology.
And to someone of Japanese-Iranian descent who grew up in Osaka, Japan, and came to America only five years ago, to hear a voice that says we should “count on everyone’s big love” and “put our effort into learning rather than to accuse.”
MLB’s ability to impose discipline quickly was helped by Hinch’s appropriate response. Balanced against that, Darvish’s broad-minded response laid the ground for discipline that, MLB hopes, was proportional to the act.
If only, on larger scales, our opportunities for minimizing our divisions could be handled as well as Gurriel and Darvish handled theirs. Gurriel acknowledged that he shamed his own decency and will have to live with the consequences. That’s hard to do. Darvish saw an ancient ugliness raise its head again but chose to view it as a moment for education and understanding. That’s mighty tough, too.
ENDS
//////////////////////////////////
FINAL COMMENT: People might argue compellingly that this outcome is too severe, or insufficient. Yes, Gurriel could have been suspended immediately, not next season, when his absence would matter more to his team. Or yes, others might argue (and have), that there are differing cultural interpretations of gestures and sentiments towards people of differences depending on society.
Nevertheless, in this case, I rather like the attitudes taken by officialdom (immediate response to tamp down on racist expressions) and by the target (anger but optimism that this will be a lesson learned).
I’m just a bit worried that the typical reaction in the Japanese press will be, “Well, discrimination happened to one of ours! Disgraceful! You see? Our racism towards others is just what everyone does worldwide. So there’s little need to address it here.” I doubt it will be seen as a “teaching moment”, beyond saying that racism happens in other countries to us Japanese, not in Japan. That’s the standard narrative reinforced in standardized education in Japan, and that’s why when you see it happen in Japan, it’s less likely to have constructive outcomes like these. Now that is a wasted opportunity. Well done, US MLB and all parties to this incident. Dr. Debito Arudou
=======================
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On Aug. 25, the Osaka District Court handed down a landmark ruling in a discrimination lawsuit.
Ibrahim Yener, a Turkish national and 14-year resident of Japan, was refused service last October by an Osaka used car dealer, which stated in an email (text at www.debito.org/?p=14743) that they would not serve foreign customers. The car company also stipulated that even if the customer legally holds Japanese citizenship, they would only sell to people who could “hold their own (sonshoku ga nai) against native speakers” in terms of Japanese language ability (as determined solely by the car company).
Yener felt this was discriminatory, filed suit and won. The presiding judge said that it “was based on prejudice that a foreigner would cause trouble and does not justify the discriminatory treatment.”
But what made this case particularly noteworthy is that Yener navigated Japan’s legal system all by himself — without a lawyer.
Thus this case offers potential lessons for other non-Japanese or international Japanese who face similar discrimination. JBC contacted Yener last week to find out more about the thinking behind bringing the case.
What motivated you to file the lawsuit? Were you trying to show the public that it could be done without a lawyer? Or were you just angry after all the other cases of discrimination you say you faced? What made you say “Enough is enough!”?
I faced so many discrimination issues during my 14 years in Japan. I will give you two examples: […]
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Hi Blog. Good news. Another NJ wins in court against a “Japanese Only” establishment, this time a car dealer who wouldn’t send Osakan Plaintiff Ibrahim Yener information about their goods because he’s a foreigner.
The positive thing to note here is that Mr. Yener filed suit all by himself, without legal representation, and still won. He no doubt had the company dead to rights because he had their refusal in writing. That means that anyone else with a case as watertight as his can also take it to court and win, and I advise people to do so whenever possible.
The negative thing to note here is that once again the award amount has been reduced. In the Bortz Case, the award was 2 million yen, in the Otaru Case it was 1 million yen per plaintiff, and in the McGowan Case, after a ludicrous defeat in lower court, it was eventually only 350,000 yen on appeal, which didn’t even come close to covering his legal fees. In the Yener Case, it’s now been reduced to a paltry 200,000 yen, which means it’s a good thing he didn’t seek legal representation.
(And as the article notes, the discriminator is thinking of appealing, claiming this amount — essentially pocket change for a company — is too high. The idiots also try to make the common excuse that “Japanese Only” alludes to a language barrier, not a racial one; nice try, but didn’t hold up in court.)
Anyway, glad that Mr. Yener won. It’s just a pity that after all this time and effort, there isn’t any deterrent of punitive damages against racial discriminators. That’s why we need a criminal law against racial discrimination in Japan — because the excuse the Japanese government officially keeps making (that laws are unnecessary because there is a court system for redress) becomes less compelling with every lawsuit filed. Dr. Debito Arudou
PHOTO: Ibrahim Yener, a 40-year-old Turkish national, in Osaka’s Kita Ward on Aug. 29. He successfully fought a court battle against a car dealer that declined to offer information about a used car on grounds Yener does not have Japanese citizenship. (Satoko Onuki)
OSAKA–Incensed at a car dealer’s refusal to send him literature on its range because he is not Japanese, Ibrahim Yener, a Turkish national, decided to wage a legal battle against the company for discriminating against a foreigner.
And Yener, who is 40 and a resident of Osaka, did it all alone–without a lawyer to represent him.
He said he opted out of hiring legal representation because he was confident his claim “is 100 percent legitimate.”
Yener went online to learn how to write a complaint to the court in Japanese and got friends to help him.
His complaint seeking 1 million yen ($9,090) in damages, filed with the Osaka District Court in March, reads: “I was informed by a company official that they will not serve foreigners.”
On Aug. 25, his efforts paid off.
The court ordered the company to pay Yener 200,000 yen in damages for “discriminating against him merely on grounds that he is a foreign national.”
Yener’s quest for equal treatment began when he made an online request last October for information on a second-hand car he was thinking of buying from the Osaka-based dealer.
The company replied: “We serve only those with Japanese nationality, and we do not meet requests for information from foreigners.”
Yener, a big fan of Japan and its culture, arrived in 2003.
His fascination with Japan began after he watched “Seven Samurai” by internationally-renowned filmmaker Akira Kurosawa while he was still back in his home country.
After his arrival in Japan, he studied the language in earnest and has worked for an information technology company and other businesses.
On occasion Yener had been distressed to hear people ridicule foreign nationals who cannot read kanji. He said there are times when he feels he is not treated “as an equal.”
“Regrettably, many people in Japan, not just the car dealer, think that they can discriminate against foreigners,” he said. “Since I admire Japan, I am very saddened by that.”
Many of Yener’s work colleagues sympathized with his plight and extended their assistance when he took the case to court.
“The lawsuit represents more than his personal battle as it raises an important question for everyone who lives in Japan,” said a colleague.
Preparing the documents was an enormous effort, and Yener was forced to take a day off from work so he could testify in court.
Nevertheless, Yener felt he was on a mission and prepared to fight to the end.
“Our world is certainly becoming a better place, compared with 100 years ago,” he said. “We can enjoy today’s world because people in the preceding era plucked up the courage and challenged (what was unreasonable). I, too, fought for people who will live in this society 100 years from now.”
The president of the car company said he is considering filing an appeal, adding that the sum ordered by the court is too high.
“Our original intention was to refuse to serve people who have difficulty understanding Japanese,” he said.
ENDS
[…] It is a brave critique of Japanese society and its failure to look outward in its demographic and economic development. The book will, no doubt, add to a lively discussion already afoot in Japanese studies, critical race studies, and critical mixed race studies of racism in Japan.
[…] The strongest part of the book, in my view, is chapter 5, which illustrates how “Japaneseness” is enforced through legal and extralegal means. The examples of visa regimes and even exclusion from sports and other contests through educational institutions show how everyday racism leaks into larger organizational practices, often without challenge.
[…] The book is clearly written and seems to be aimed primarily at undergraduate students, as it makes an important contribution for those wishing to understand racism in Japan better, and it compiles interesting documentary legal data about the history of cases of discrimination in Japan. The book would easily suit courses that address global conceptions of race and ethnicity and how these are changing in Japan at both the micro and macro levels because of globalization. ENDS
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Hi Blog. Good news. A couple of weeks ago, friends Olaf and James wrote in to say that they went down Hamanasu Doori in Monbetsu, a seaport town in Eastern Outback Hokkaido. Here’s what book “Embedded Racism” Ch. 3 has to say about this case (expanded from the original entry on the Rogues’ Gallery of Exclusionary Establishments on Debito.org):
============================ Monbetsu, Hokkaidō
Place: Miscellaneous places around Monbetsu City (Hokkaidō) (two public/private sector bathhouses, a ramen shop, a restaurant, a karaoke parlor, and more than 100 bars).
Background: According to newspaper articles, plus several visits and interviews between 2000 and 2009 by the author and other activists, since 1995 Monbetsu’s local restaurateurs’ association (inshokuten kumiai) created and sold standardized signs in Cyrillic saying “Japanese Only Store” (Nihonjin sen’yō ten) that went up on over 100 bars and restaurants in the Hamanasu Dōri nightlife district. Interviews with bars displaying the signs revealed fears of Russian sailors’ custom, including the language barrier, drunken unruliness, nonpayment of bills, rumors of rape, surrounding Japanese customer dissatisfaction, and ties to Russian organized crime (although many interviewees said they had no actual experience with any of these issues – the sign was a preventive measure); some refused the author’s business even though he is not Russian and was accompanied by other Japanese. Three restaurants and a karaoke parlor expressed similar sentiments, and said they would have refused the author had he not been a fluent Japanese speaker. Two bathhouses (one private-sector, one public/private (dai-san sekutā)) claimed drunk and unruly Russian bathers were driving away Japanese customers).
Action taken by observers/activists: In July 2000, the Japanese Ministry of Justice, Bureau of Human Rights (jinken yōgobu) Asahikawa Branch wrote a letter (see ER Chapter Eight) to the restaurateurs’ association calling their activities “clear racial discrimination against foreigners,” demanding they remove their exclusionary signs. In an interview with the author in April 2001, the kumiai head claimed that these signs were now the property of their respective purchasers, and what they did with them was not their concern. After extensive media exposure of the situation in local newspapers and national TV between 2000 and 2005, signs began coming down, and further interviews and media exposure of the restaurants, karaoke parlor, and the bathhouses resulted in exclusionary rules being rescinded in the karaoke parlor, one restaurant and the public/private-sector bathhouse. In 2006, an interview with another restaurant enabled the author to personally take down one of the Cyrillic signs with permission. In 2004, the author and one other activist submitted a petition (chinjō) to pass a local anti-discrimination ordinance (jōrei), which subsequently died in committee.
Current status (as of end-2014): Confirmed in January 2010, at least sixteen of the original mass-produced Cyrillic signs are confirmed as remaining on the storefronts of Hamanasu Dōri bars and one restaurant. The private-sector bathhouse still has an exclusionary sign, but will let in “foreign” clientele if they speak a level of Japanese that satisfies the manager on duty. One of the former exclusionary restaurants went bankrupt in 2007. Monbetsu still has no anti-discrimination ordinance.
============================
So the update is: The exclusionary signs are down in Hamanasu Doori. Pity it only took 22 years for it to happen, apparently by attrition. No thanks to the Monbetsu City Government, natch. Dr. Debito Arudou
============================
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Hi Blog. Good news. Until now, if you wanted to qualify for any retirement payout under the Japanese National Pension System (Nenkin), you had to contribute 300 months, or 25 years, of your salary in Japan.
It made it so that the longer you stayed in Japan, the more of a pension prisoner you became, since if you left the country to work elsewhere, you’d lose, because you hadn’t paid into pension schemes in other countries and wouldn’t qualify.
Totalization Agreements (where countries agree that years worked in Country B count towards working in Country A as well) have eased that burden somewhat. But now the threshold for qualifying at all in Japan has fortunately been reduced. From 25 to 10 years, as of August 2017. Hurrah.
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Embedded Racism: Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination, by Debito Arudou. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015, 404 pp., $110.00 (ISBN 978-1-4985-1390-6) Robert W. ASPINALL Social Science Journal Japan jyx012. DOI: https://academic.oup.com/ssjj/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/ssjj/jyx012 Published: 15 July 2017
Excerpt of the first and last paragraphs:
Why are there so few academic books or articles on Japan with the word ‘Racism’ in the title? It would be odd, to say the least, if Japan were the only inhabited place on earth where racism did not exist. Could it be that racial minorities in Japan are made up of groups that are too small, too transitory or too lacking in visibility to be worth the effort of close study? A more plausible explanation is offered by those who, like anthropologist John Russell, argue that powerful groups have disseminated the ‘national myth of Japan as a racism-free society that always manages to retain uncorrupted its essentialistic character, despite cultural borrowings’ (Russell 2010: 110). Given this highly successful effort to hush up discussions of racism in Japan, Debito Arudou’s new book on ‘Embedded Racism’ is very welcome.
[…]
In an anti-globalist era of Trump and ‘Brexit’ there will be many who argue that Japan is right to severely restrict immigration and preserve as much as possible that is unique about its national character. If those who do not ‘look Japanese’ have to suffer some discrimination, then that is just the price that has to be paid. There are also many who believe that the best antidote to racism is to have a nation state where as few people as possible look out of place. Arudou’s reply to this point of view, which acts simultaneously as a challenge to Japan’s leaders, is that if this national narrative is allowed to prevail, it will not only condemn Japan’s aging population to an ever-worsening demographic crisis, it will also have a ‘suffocating and self-strangulating’ effect on society (p. 303).
There are important academic contributions to the study of racism in Japan in this book, but it is as a must-read text on the crisis facing the shrinking Japanese population and its leaders that it really leaves its mark. Embedded Racism is highly recommended reading to anyone—whether they self-identify as Japanese or foreign or both—who is interested in Japan’s future.
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Hi Blog. Coming out of Debito.org’s Summer Vacation briefly with some good news:
Long-time readers of Debito.org know what a deep appreciation I have for ’80s band Duran Duran — which is still putting out good albums chock full of good music (see below), and touring to full arenas. I was at the Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu tonight to catch them (for the second time, the first back in Canandaigua NY on June 26, 1987). Good seats, great setlist. This was their first time playing in Honolulu (they cancelled a previous date in 1994 due to lead singer Simon Le Bon losing his voice), and as the last stop on their current tour (they spent a few days recuperating on-island), they put on an excellent show to a rapt crowd.
And, I’m proud to say, thanks to mutual friend GB, I got a backstage pass. And met and briefly chatted with Simon Le Bon. As they say, pictures or it didn’t happen:
I’m going to treasure this memory for a lifetime, as I have been following DD assiduously since 1982. Thanks GB. And thanks Simon.
Here’s the playlist, songs in the order I play them. You can find them on YouTube if not on iTunes:
Last Chance on the Stairway
Serious
A View to a Kill
Late Bar (2010 Remastered Version, from the Deluxe Version of their first eponymous album)
Too Late Marlene
My Own Way (Night Version)
Khanada
Come Undone
Breath after Breath
Point of No Return
Land
The Flame (as Arcadia)
What Happens Tomorrow
Reach Up for the Sunrise (Ferry Corsten Dub Mix)
Girls on Film (16 Millimeter Mix)
Only in Dreams
Box Full o’ Honey
Winter Marches On
All You Need is Now
First Impression
Do You Believe in Shame?
Anyone Out There?
Late Bar (Live at Hammersmith Odeon, 17 December 1981)
New Religion
Before the Rain
Still Breathing
The Chauffeur
Ordinary World
The Man Who Stole a Leopard
Watching the Detectives
Is There Something I Should Know?
Last Night in the City
Playing With Uranium
Be My Icon
Shadows On Your Side
Crystal Ship
Michael You’ve Got a Lot to Answer For
El Diablo (as Arcadia)
Lady Ice (as Arcadia)
The Universe Alone
Very few of these were chart material. Many are deep album cuts, very rewarding to fans. But at 3 hours 15 minutes you have a lot of good stuff from a band you’ve probably thought was merely fashion and hair. Give them a listen. And maybe you’ll know why I’m such a devoted fan after nearly 40 years of their existence (and 52 years of mine). Dr. Debito Arudou
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Hi Blog. We’ve talked before about unsophisticated columns in Japanese media regarding human rights. This one joins them. It wags a few fingers and applauds some local moves to eliminate hate speech, but it still has trouble going beyond vague urgings to actually advocate for the root solution: passing a law with criminal penalties against racial discrimination. Until this law in specific is part of the media’s steady drumbeat of finger-wagging, advocating a mere patchwork of local-level patches is again, a half-measure. Dr. Debito Arudou
It has been a year since Japan’s anti-hate speech law took effect. And over that year, the number of demonstrations targeting specific races or ethnicities has apparently declined.
Public institutions have been doing their part. Courts have issued provisional injunctions against holding hate speech demonstrations in certain places, while police forces have been boosting supervision and control of such demonstrations, and these measures seem to be having a real impact.
Nevertheless, we still see an endless stream of hateful language in Japan, starting, but by no means ending, with “go home!” and “kick them out!”
Hate speech is a social disease. It is extremely important for the idea that hate speech is unforgiveable to permeate society as a whole.
The hate speech law commits local administrations to work with the central government on eliminating discrimination. We call on these bodies to tackle the problem proactively.
According to a recent announcement, the municipal government of Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, will draw up guidelines as early as this autumn that would allow city officials to issue warnings or refuse applications to use public facilities if they suspect the applicant will engage in discriminatory speech or conduct. In other words, the guidelines set out measures to halt hate speech gatherings before they happen, and the city will call for the opinions of third-party observers to make sure the guidelines are applied fairly.
It is perfectly natural to make sure that countermeasures against hate speech demonstrations do not lead to curbs on freedom of expression, but hate speech clearly violates human rights. We would like to see local governments across the country consider hate speech regulations in line with local conditions.
While street demonstrations have declined over the past year, online hate speech appears to have been reinvigorated. Dealing with this is an urgent task.
The Osaka Municipal Government recently announced the online handles of three users confirmed to have posted hate speech videos on the internet, as well as the content of the images. The move was based on a municipal ordinance passed last July, the first of its kind in Japan.
Meanwhile, it should be remembered that even primary school children use computers and smartphones. Educating school children about online hate ought to be a national project.
There is some disturbing data on the prevalence of hate speech in Japan.
In March this year, the Justice Ministry released its first-ever survey of racial and ethnic discrimination in Japan. The survey, which was conducted late last year, covered about 4,200 medium- and long-term foreign residents of this country including Koreans. It found that some 30 percent of respondents had been the target of “discriminatory speech.” Forty percent said they had been refused a home rental contract.
Japanese people’s coexistence with foreigners and people from different cultural backgrounds is indispensable to Japan. It is a must for us to face up to the discriminatory thinking deeply rooted in our society in an effort to eradicate hate speech in Japan.
ENDS
PS: Compare the Mainichi with the Japan Times Editorial on the same anniversary of the Hate Speech Law. At least it’s more specific: “Local officials need to secure enough manpower and funding to effectively assist citizens suffering from hate speech and behavior. Citizens’ groups can set up funds to help victims sue for damages. Since the law covers only hate speech against foreign residents, there are calls for expanding its scope to fight offensive language against other minorities, including people with disabilities, indigenous peoples like the Ainu and descendants of historically segregated communities.”
Hi Blog. I thought it prudent to archive here on Debito.org another case of how other societies deal with discrimination. We keep on hearing that, “Well, people discriminate all over the world, and it’s just as bad in [insert country, usually the US] as it is in Japan. So do something about racism in your own country before you lecture Japan.” Okay, but here’s yet another example of what American society, for example, often does when somebody says something racist. There are social repercussions that deter both the current and future racists. In the case mentioned below, the racist got fired. Not ignored, defended (including being defended by foreign media in Japan), given a venue (or his own political party; see here too) to spout and normalize even more racism, or even further elected to office, as can happen in Japan.
For your consideration, and for the record. Dr. Debito Arudou
Terry Frei, a columnist who has been named Colorado’s sportswriter of the year four times, is out of a job after tweeting that he was “very uncomfortable” with Japanese driver Takuma Sato winning the Indianapolis 500 on the day before Memorial Day.
Denver Post publisher Mac Tully and editor Lee Ann Colacioppo apologized Monday for a “disrespectful and unacceptable tweet” as they announced that Frei is no longer an employee of the newspaper because of the social media comment that sparked intense backlash.
“We apologize for the disrespectful and unacceptable tweet that was sent by one of our reporters,” the statement reads. “Terry Frei is no longer an employee of The Denver Post. It’s our policy not to comment further on personnel issues. The tweet doesn’t represent what we believe nor what we stand for. We hope you will accept our profound apologies.”
The Denver Post’s statement on Terry Frei https://t.co/HPYG08FpCJ pic.twitter.com/PnN0tXO2oL
— The Denver Post (@denverpost) May 29, 2017
Frei apologized for the tweet he put up shortly after Sato’s historic win. He later deleted it.
“Nothing specifically personal, but I am very uncomfortable with a Japanese driver winning the Indianapolis 500 during Memorial Day weekend,” Frei tweeted after Sato became the first Japanese driver to win the prestigious race.
“I apologize,” Frei tweeted hours later. The Denver Post tweeted an immediate apology Sunday night and indicated that Frei’s tweet “does not reflect the standards and values of our organization.”
I apologize.
— Terry Frei (@TFrei) May 29, 2017
Frei later tweeted a lengthier apology, which he deleted and replaced with a slightly revised version to remove the title of one of his books. “I made a stupid reference, during an emotional weekend,” wrote Frei, who said his father was a World War II veteran.
Frei also apologized to Sato, who has had no public reaction to Frei’s comment.
Here’s the full text of Frei’s apology:
I fouled up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said when I said it. I should have known better and I regret it. I in no way meant to represent my employer and I apologized to The Denver Post.
On Sunday, I was going down to Fort Logan National Cemetery to place flowers on the grave of and to salute my father, Jerry Frei, who spent the four-year gap between his sophomore and junior seasons at Wisconsin flying the F-5 unarmed version of the one-man P-38 fighter plane in the 26th Photo Squadron. (And I did make that visit.) He flew alone, or with a partner in a second plane, over Japanese targets in advance of the bombing runs. When Blake Olson of Channel 9 asked him about being unarmed, he laughed and said, ‘I had a pistol.’ He flew 67 missions, crossing the 300 combat hours threshold, and earned the World War II Air Medal three times. I have written much other material about American athletes in World War II. I researched and wrote quite graphically about the deaths of my father’s teammates, Dave Schreiner and Bob Baumann, in the Battle of Okinawa. I have the picture wallet containing photos of his family and girlfriend that Schreiner was carrying when he was killed. That is part of my perspective.
I am sorry, I made a mistake, and I understand 72 years have passed since the end of World War II and I do regret people with whom I probably am very closely aligned with politically and philosophically have been so offended. To those people, I apologize. (In fact, the assumptions about my political leanings have been quite inaccurate.) I apologize to Takuma Sato. I made a stupid reference, during an emotional weekend, to one of the nations that we fought in World War II — and, in this case, the specific one my father fought against. Again, I will say I’m sorry, I know better, and I’m angry at myself because there was no constructive purpose in saying it and I should not have said it, especially because The Denver Post has been dragged into this.
Contrast this reaction with the kind of treatment Japanese media gave a Japanese high school baseball player Okoye Rui nearly two years ago. Okoye, who just happens to have Japanese-Nigerian roots, brought forth reactions from the Japanese press that portrayed him as an “animal” with “wild instincts” on the “savannah”, and more. Yes, there were criticisms, as noted in Huffpost Japan, but nobody was fired or in any way clearly sanctioned for saying this about a schoolboy! Where’s the deterrent? — DDA.
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Hi Blog. My next Japan Times Just Be Cause column has just come out. Here’s the opening:
=================================== TIME TO ACT ON INSIGHTS FROM LANDMARK SURVEY OF JAPAN’S FOREIGN RESIDENTS
The Japan Times, JUST BE CAUSE Column 107, Thursday April 27, 2017, by Debito Arudou
As promised, in March the Justice Ministry released the results of a survey on Japan’s foreign residents (gaikokujin juumin chousa), conducted last year (see “Government, Survey Thyself,” JBC Mar. 5). Compiled by the “Center for Human Rights Education and Training” public-interest foundation (www.jinken.or.jp), it surveyed the types and degrees of discrimination that foreigners face here. (The report in Japanese is at http://www.moj.go.jp/content/001221782.pdf.)
And as promised, here’s JBC’s synopsis of those results:
The report opens with a statement of purpose, talking about the pressures to “live together” (kyousei) with foreigners due to internationalization and globalization, not to mention the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Record numbers of foreigners are crossing Japan’s borders, bringing with them different languages and customs, and “so-called” hate speech demos are also causing “numerous human rights problems.” So to lay the groundwork for human rights protections for foreigners, this survey would grasp the issues directly facing foreigners “staying” (zairyuu) in Japan… ===================================
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Hi Blog. As promised, the Ministry of Justice’s official survey on discrimination against foreigners (alas, not “racial discrimination”) came out late last month. Debito.org first reported on this survey some months ago, received primary-source information on it from a Debito.org Reader, and then did a Japan Times column on it. Now the results are out, and they have officialized the levels of discrimination against NJ residents nationwide. I’ll refrain from comment at the moment (Debito.org Readers, please feel free to take up the slack), but for the record, the entire report from the MOJ is here (courtesy of TH). Thanks everyone for all the articles, and for your patience in my getting to this. Dr. Debito Arudou
Some 29.8 percent of foreign residents of Japan have experienced discrimination in the past five years, according to Justice Ministry survey results released on March 31.
The survey was conducted in November and December last year on 18,500 mid-to-long-term foreign residents aged 18 or over, including ethnic Koreans with special permanent resident status. Responses were received from 4,252 people.
The survey was carried out with the cooperation of 37 municipal governments, including those of Tokyo’s Minato Ward and the cities of Sapporo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka. By nation of origin, the greatest number of respondents was from China, at 1,382 people, or 32.5 percent, followed by South Korea at 941 people, or 22.1 percent, and the Philippines, at 285 people, or 6.7 percent.
Of the respondents, 1,269 said they had been the target of discriminatory language. Some 53.3 percent of these respondents, or 676 people, said the offender had been “a stranger.”
In the last five years, 2,044 of the respondents, or 48.1 percent, had looked for a home, and 804, or 39.3 percent, had the experience of being denied a lease because they were a foreigner.
Regarding their exposure to hate speech, 1,826 people, or 42.9 percent of the respondents, said they had seen or heard reports about hate speech demonstrations targeting particular races or ethnic groups through media such as television, newspaper or magazines. Some 1,416, or 33.3 percent, said they had seen reports on hate speech on the internet.
Legal affairs bureaus around the nation have sections where people can seek help regarding human rights issues, but at least 80 percent of survey respondents did not know this. A Justice Ministry representative said, “We want to consider methods to spread awareness of help centers and make them easy for foreign residents to use.”
The survey was the central government’s first ever into discrimination against foreigners. The Justice Ministry plans to examine the results and apply them to its human rights policies.
About 40 percent of foreigners have experienced being turned down when looking for a place to live in Japan because they were not Japanese, the results of a Justice Ministry survey showed Friday.
Of the 2,044 respondents who said they had tried to find residential accommodation in Japan in the past five years, 40 percent said they had been rebuffed in their efforts because they were foreigners.
Around 27 percent said they had given up on a property after seeing a notice saying foreigners are not accepted.
The ministry conducted its first-ever survey to identify the forms of discrimination faced by foreigners in Japan in the run-up to the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. It randomly selected 500 foreigners aged 18 and older in each of 37 municipalities across Japan and 4,252 responded from among the 18,500 people surveyed. Multiple answers were allowed in the survey.
Chinese and South Korean nationals comprised more than half the survey participants, followed by Filipinos, Brazilians and Vietnamese.
Among 2,788 people who have either job-hunted or have worked in Japan, 25 percent said they were refused work for being a foreign national and about 20 percent said their wages were lower than Japanese employees engaged in the same work, even though most of the respondents were able to have a conversation in Japanese, the survey added.
In the survey, conducted between mid-November and early December last year, around 30 percent of all the respondents said they had been subjected to discriminatory remarks, while around 80 percent of 4,085 people who said they have either witnessed or heard hate speech developed negative feelings such as “discomfort” or “intolerance.”
Meanwhile, only around 11 percent of the total respondents said they had sought advice from an institution when faced with discrimination while only about 12 percent said they knew of consultation services offered at the Justice Ministry’s legal affairs bureaus across Japan.
ENDS
And finally, The Japan Times’s take, complete with self-hating foreigner comments beneath, as usual:
Rent application denials, Japanese-only recruitment and racist taunts are among the most rampant forms of discrimination faced by foreign residents in Japan, according to the results of the country’s first nationwide survey on the issue, released Friday.
The unprecedented survey of 18,500 expats of varying nationalities at the end of last year paints a comprehensive picture of deeply rooted discrimination in Japan as the nation struggles to acclimate to a recent surge in foreign residents and braces for an even greater surge in tourists in the lead-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
It also represents the latest in a series of fledgling steps taken by Japan to curb racism, following last year’s first-ever video analysis by the Justice Ministry of anti-Korea demonstrations and the enactment of a law to eradicate hate speech.
In carrying out the survey, the Justice Ministry commissioned the Center for Human Rights Education and Training, a public foundation, to mail questionnaires to non-Japanese residents in 37 municipalities nationwide. Of the 18,500, 4,252 men and women, or 23.0 percent, provided valid responses. Nationalities included Chinese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Brazilians, Vietnamese and Americans.
The study found that 39.3 percent of 2,044 respondents who applied to rent apartments over the past five years got dismissed because they are not Japanese.
In addition, 41.2 percent said they were turned down because they couldn’t secure a Japanese guarantor, while 26.8 percent said they quit their pursuit of a new domicile after being discouraged by a “Japanese-only” prerequisite.
Workplace discrimination appears rife, too.
Of the 4,252 respondents, 2,788 said they had either worked or sought employment in Japan over the past five years. Of them, 25.0 percent said they had experienced being brushed off by potential employers because they are non-Japanese, while 19.6 percent said they were paid lower than their Japanese co-workers.
In a separate question, 29.8 percent of those who responded to the survey said they either “frequently” or “occasionally” heard race-based insults being hurled at them, mostly from strangers (53.3 percent), bosses, co-workers and business partners (38.0 percent) and neighbors (19.3 percent).
Among other examples of unpleasantness mentioned by respondents were “getting weird stares from strangers (31.7 percent),” “being harassed because of poor Japanese-language proficiency (25.1 percent)” and “being avoided in public spaces such as buses, trains and shopping malls (14.9 percent).”
“We believe this survey will serve as key basic data for us to implement policies to protect human rights of foreign nationals in the future,” Justice Minister Katsutoshi Kaneda told reporters Friday.
The implementation of the survey is the latest sign that Japan, after years of inaction, is inching toward tackling the problem of racism as the nation becomes increasingly diverse.
A Justice Ministry statistic released last September showed that the number of permanent as well as middle- and long-term foreign residents in the country hit a record 2.307 million in June, up about 135,000 from a year earlier.
Adding to this is the advent in recent years of jingoistic rallies staged by ultraconservative civic groups on the streets of ethnic Korean neighborhoods, such as Shin-Okubo in Tokyo and Kawasaki, calling for the “massacre” of Koreans they branded as “cockroaches.”
The Justice Ministry’s first probe into hate speech concluded in March last year that 1,152 such demonstrations took place from April 2012 to September 2015 across the nation.
In a related move, an unprecedented hate speech law was enacted last year, highlighting efforts by the central government and municipalities to take steps to eliminate such vitriolic language.
Kim Myungsoo, a professor of sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University, hailed the ministry’s latest survey, saying it shed light on the reality of racism inherent to Japan that effectively discredits this government stance.
“The survey publicly confirmed the reality of victimization caused by racism in Japan, which would prevent the government from sticking to its conventional assertion,” said Kim, who himself is an ethnic Korean resident. “I believe the government is ready to change its position.”
Hiroshi Tanaka, a professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University, said the government has much to learn from the results of this survey, noting an overwhelming 85.3 percent of the respondents said they were not aware of human rights consultation services made available by regional branches of the Justice Ministry.
But a sad irony, he pointed out, plagues these services in the first place, with foreign nationals effectively disqualified from becoming counselors there due to a law that makes having Japanese nationality a prerequisite for the post.
ENDS
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Hi Blog. Here’s another case of bent cops in Japan targeting NJ (Want more? Click here.) even if it means resorting to illegal activities. Comment follows article:
SAPPORO – Following new testimony from a former police inspector about a Russian man who was caught in an illegal police sting operation, a court Tuesday overturned his 1998 conviction for handgun possession.
The Sapporo District Court acquitted former seaman Andrei Novosyolov, 47, who served two years in prison, but did not rule on the legality of the police operation.
Novosyolov was arrested in November 1997 at the port of Otaru in western Hokkaido for possessing a handgun and was found guilty of violating the firearms control law by the district court in August 1998. He had been seeking a retrial, claiming he was the victim of an illegal operation by the Hokkaido police.
Novosyolov’s defense counsel filed for a retrial in September 2013 following new testimony from a former police inspector stating the person who approached Novosyolov about exchanging a used car for a handgun was in fact working for police investigators.
The defense council claimed that Novosyolov was the victim of an “illegal sting operation” by the police and asked the court to make a “bold judgment” on the illegality of the operation in the retrial. Prosecutors had also sought Novosyolov’s acquittal.
The district court approved holding a retrial in March last year, recognizing that the sting operation in Novosyolov’s case was illegal, prompting prosecutors to file an immediate appeal with the Sapporo High Court.
The high court in October rejected the prosecutors’ appeal and called for the retrial to be held on the grounds that police officials at the time made false statements in investigative documents, but it did not rule on the legality of the police operation.
Yoshiaki Inaba, the 63-year-old former police inspector who worked in the Hokkaido police’s firearms control division at the time of his arrest, was arrested in 2002 on suspicion of stimulant drug use, and admitted during his trial that the Hokkaido police had engaged in a sting operation.
“It was a sting operation conducted to aid the police,” Inaba said in a recent interview. “He must have gone through a lot of hardships in prison in a foreign country. I want to apologize to him.”
“His acquittal would lift a great weight from my shoulders,” Inaba added.
At the time of Novosyolov’s arrest, police officers had been assigned a quota to confiscate illegal guns following a series of sniper shootings targeting key figures in Japan.
Police officers instructed an informant to encourage foreigners to bring firearms to Japan as part of efforts to meet the quota. Novosyolov was arrested in the process of exchanging the handgun.
“Me and the organization jumped to grab the opportunity to get the credit,” Inaba said, recalling Novosyolov’s arrest. “I still remember his frightened face at the arrest scene.”
“(My superiors) must have acknowledged that it was an illegal operation. I thought this method was wrong but couldn’t fight back,” Inaba said. “We did many other dirty things and I thought we would have to pay for them someday,” he added.
Inaba said he testified about the police’s sting operation out of his desire to reveal the truth.
Hokkaido police officials declined to comment on the legality of its investigatory method concerning the case. ENDS
/////////////////////////////////////////
As submitter JDG put it:
—————————————-
JDG: It’s NOT the fact that this guy was framed in an illegal entrapment by police and wrongly served 2 years.
No, what is BLOWING MY MIND is that the J-cops; 1. Set quotas for gun related arrests…in ‘safety Japan’, because they claim… 2. There were a series of high profile incidents of sniping at ‘key’ figures! (I never saw ANYTHING about that in the news!). And therefore, to meet the quota… 3. J-police instructed informants to tell NJ to bring guns into Japan, so they could be arrested! Because… 4. Y’know, ‘quotas’ and stuff…err…
Oh, and yeah, let’s not forget; 5. Wrongly imprisoned NJ gets released, BUT why are all these corrupt cops not being prosecuted? Where is the government mandated review of the NPA to stop a BS quota system that engenders abuse?
2) One detail not properly outlined was the timeline. Novosyolov was arrested in 1997 — nearly twenty years ago — and convicted in 1998. He served two years in prison. Yet druggie cop Inaba comes clean in sometime around 2013 and… it takes three more years to spring Novosyolov? Since he was surely not allowed to leave Japan, where was he for the nearly twenty years? Languishing in a Gaijin Tank between the ages of 28 and 47? Bang went the best twenty years of his young life.
And something closer to my heart:
3) This took place in Otaru, my old stomping ground, and the site of the “Japanese Only” racist bathhouses that resulted in the landmark Otaru Onsens Case. Otaru cops are also rather famous for their arrogance, conducting spot Gaijin Card checks just to alleviate their own boredom (my first one happened there in 1987, shortly after I first arrived), so to me this is all within character.
Congrats to Novosyolov for getting sprung. But I doubt this will result in any reforms to the system that illegally entraps NJ for sport. Dr. Debito Arudou
——————————
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ISSUES | JUST BE CAUSE Government of Japan, survey thyself BY DEBITO ARUDOU JBC 106, SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES, MAR 5, 2017
Something landmark happened late last year. Japan’s government undertook a nationwide survey of discrimination toward Japan’s long-term non-Japanese (NJ) residents.
The Foreign Residents Survey (FRS), drawn up in 13 languages, was randomly mailed last November to 18,500 NJ residents. It was widely dispersed — to about 500 names per local government.
Good. We need hard data about the breadth and depth of discrimination to deal with it. However, previous government surveys analyzed in this column (e.g., “Human rights survey stinks,” Zeit Gist, Oct. 23, 2007) had serious methodological problems. And afterwards, thanks to attention in The Japan Times, they were amended (Source: Embedded Racism p 243 fn 140). Many thanks.
So how is the survey this time? Much better. But it still needs work due to an enormous blind spot…
Version with links to sources up shortly.
=========================
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EMBEDDED RACISM: Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination. By Debito Arudou. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015. xxvi, 349 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$110.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4985-1390-6.
Arudou’s book is a timely and important contribution to social and scholarly debates about racial discrimination in Japan. It comes on the heels of both the Japanese government’s 2014 official claim that an anti-racial discrimination law is not necessary (third combined report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination [CERD]), and recent developments in Japan that have politicized the issues of dual nationality and hate speech, and even the Miss Universe Japan pageant.
Arudou draws on a quarter-century of research involving personal interviews, action research, and cataloguing, to highlight micro-level observations that illuminate the broader macro-level structural workings of the racialized dimensions of what it means to be “Japanese” in Japan. The contribution of this book is not only in its richness of information, but also in Arudou’s focus on a paradoxical blind spot in both the quotidian status quo understandings of and academic discourses on racialized social dynamics in Japan: the invisibility of visible minorities. Borrowing from Critical Race Theory (CRT), and applying its analytical paradigms present in Whiteness Studies to the case of Japan, Arudou argues that “the same dynamics can be seen in the Japanese example, by substituting ‘White’ with ‘Japanese’” (322-323). He introduces the concept of embedded racism to describe the deeply internalized understandings of “Japaneseness” that structurally permeate the psyche and sociolegal elements of Japanese society, resulting in systemic discriminatory treatments of individuals based on visible differences.
Instead of defining the Self/Other binary in oft-conceptualized terms of citizenship, he uses an original Wajin/non-Wajin heuristic. By original Wajin, he refers to visually identifiable “Japanese” who are members of Japan’s dominant and privileged majority, and for non-Wajin he refers to both invisible (e.g., ethnic minorities who can pass as “Japanese”) and visible (Gaijin, foreigners and naturalized Japanese citizens who do not “look Japanese”) minorities who are not members of Japan’s dominant and privileged majority. He uses this heuristic to parse out the nuanced sociolegal-structural logics that differentiate between not only citizens and non-citizens, but also non-citizens who can phenotypically pass as “Japanese” and citizens who cannot, in which the former is often given preferential sociolegal treatment, and the latter is often subject to overt racial discrimination.
More specifically, the book opens with a theoretical primer on race and the universal processes of racialization and nation-state formation. The author then critiques how studies on Japan often suffer from flawed conceptualizations of foreignness, viewing it as a function of either ethnic differences within the Asian-phenotype community or legal membership status, thereby overlooking overt discrimination against visible minorities that are racial in nature.
The first chapter contextualizes racial discrimination in Japan and explicates Arudou’s usage of the concept of visible minority and his theory of embedded racism in the context of Japan. The second chapter then addresses the historical roots of extant racialized understandings of “Japaneseness” by tracing national self-image narratives that Arudou argues undergird the dynamics of present-day treatments of foreigners in Japan. The next chapter surveys approximately 470 cases of establishments that have engaged in racialized refusals of entry and services and three civil court lawsuits, to demonstrate that “Japaneseness” is determined by racialized paradigms such as physical appearances (37–38).
In chapter 4, Arudou explains how Japanese nationality laws, family and resident registries, and policing regulations/practices constitute the legal underpinnings of the racialized “Japanese” identity, and asserts that Japan’s legal definition of a “Japanese citizen” is closely intertwined with “Japanese bloodlines” (11). The following chapter shifts the focus to how “Japaneseness” is enforced through exclusionary education laws, visa (residence status) regimes, and racial profiling in security policing. This chapter is supplemented with chapter 6, which highlights differential judicial treatments of those who are seen as “Japanese,” and those who are not. Chapter 7 details how media representations of “foreigners” and “Japanese” as well as the criminalization of “foreigners” popularize the racialized narratives of “Japaneseness” established by the processes discussed in chapters 4 to 6.
Chapter 8 shifts gears as Arudou turns his attention to domestic civil society and international criticisms of Japan’s embedded racism, and discusses the government’s passive reactions. Arudou traces the correspondence between the government and the (CERD) before and during its first two CERD report reviews in 2001 and 2010 (but not the most recent CERD review in 2014). Chapter 9 then takes two binaries that can be used to understand how sociolegal distinctions of “Japaneseness” are often made—by nationality (citizen/non-citizen) and by visual identification (Wajin/Gaijin)—and superimposes them to form a heuristic matrix of eleven categories of “Japanese” and “foreigner.” The author thus drives his point across that social privilege and power in Japan are drawn along lines that straddle conceptual understandings of and assumptions about both legal and phenotypical memberships. The book concludes with a final chapter on the implications of embedded racism for Japan’s future as an ageing society, and argues that Japan’s demographic predicament could be mitigated if Japan can begin eliminating its racism to create a more inclusive society for all.
The book does not touch on the voices and local/community advocacy initiatives among and on behalf of visible minorities, and stops short of systematically testing how the proposed heuristic matrix and its combinations of characteristics empirically lead to differential treatment. However, it does cover a lot of ground, and would be of interest to a wide audience, from the casual reader interested in learning about the racial dynamics in Japan, to researchers with area studies interests in Japan and/or substantive field interests in international migration, ethnic and race studies, citizenship and human rights, and advocacy politics at both the domestic and international levels. Arudou argues that Japan’s passive stance to addressing racial discrimination is “the canary in the coal mine” regarding its openness to “outsiders” (xxiii), and by starting this conversation, he addresses “the elephant in the room” that needs to be reckoned with for Japan to navigate its way through its impending demographic challenges.
— Ralph Ittonen Hosoki, University of California, Irvine, USA
Ends
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Hi Blog. Here’s a nice write-up about a group called the Asian People’s Friendship Society, which is doing a very important thing: Helping NJ help each other. Up until now, we’ve generally had Japanese helping NJ assimilate into Japan, even though, however well-intentioned Wajin are, many if not most have little idea what it’s like to be a foreigner in Japan, or understand practically what it’s like to become a member of society when they always have been one. Now this group is having longer-term NJ help shorter-term NJ learn the ropes. It’s far better than the alternative frequently found in many NJ tribes, particularly the elite ones that enjoy Wajin Privilege, of oldcomers cutting newbies no slack — because apparently nobody ever cut the oldcomers any. Fine, but that’s not helpful at all. Let’s hope groups like the APFS break that vicious circle, and enable NJ to control their own agenda and thus their own lives in Japan. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
Foreign residents in Japan may be at a disadvantage in some ways, but they are by no means powerless nor on their own, says Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Asian People’s Friendship Society (APFS).
In a recently launched program series, the organization is nurturing a new group of volunteers it calls “foreign community leaders” who will assist fellow non-Japanese trying to navigate life amid a different and foreign culture.
“Long-term foreign residents have incredible know-how on how to get by in their everyday lives in Japan,” says Jotaro Kato, the head of APFS. “I want people to know that there are foreigners out there who can speak perfect Japanese” and who can provide guidance if needed.
Targeting long-term foreign residents with a high level of proficiency in the Japanese language, the 30-year-old organization is spearheading the project to groom such veterans so they can help newcomers overcome a variety of everyday obstacles, such as dealing with language barriers, cultural differences and visa conundrums.
For its part, APFS has organized a series of lectures and workshops that are currently taking place every other Saturday in a community hall in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, in which experts from many different fields discuss topics important to foreign residents. The issues covered include visa problems, labor laws, the welfare system and translation problems. […]
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Welcome back to JBC’s annual countdown of the top issues as they affected Non-Japanese (NJ) residents of Japan. We had some brighter spots this year than in previous years, because Japan’s government has been so embarrassed by hate speech toward Japan’s minorities that they did something about it. Read on:
No. 10) Government “snitch sites” close down after nearly 12 years
The discussion has mostly been a shallow one about “looks.” Sadly, this is par for the course. As I said to ABC NewsRadio Australia, “Why do we keep doing these 19th-century rituals? Demeaning women by putting them on a stage, making them do debasing things, and then saying, ‘This is a standard of beauty that is or is not Japanese?’ How about we just call it what it is: incitement to superficial judgment of people not as individuals but by physical appearance?” Progress made, yes, but the real progress will be when beauty pageants stop entirely.
8 Japan’s multiethnic citizens score at 2016 Olympics
Similarly, Japan’s athletes have long been scrutinized for their “foreignness.” If they are “half” or even naturalized, their “foreignness” becomes a factor no matter what.
If they do badly, “It’s the foreigners’ fault.” As seen when Japan’s men’s rugby team lost in 2011 and the nation’s rugby union criticized coach John Kirwan for using “too many foreign players” (including naturalized former NJ). The team was then ethnically cleansed. When multiethnic Japanese figure skaters Chris and Cathy Reed underperformed in 2014, Tokyo 2020 Olympics Chair Yoshiro Mori essentially labeled them leftovers, bashing them (mistakenly) as “naturalized citizens” who couldn’t make the U.S. Team.
But if they do well, they get celebrated. Remember October 2015, when Brave Blossoms, the men’s rugby team, scored an upset over South Africa, and their players’ enhanced physical strength was attributed to their multiethnicity? Suddenly the fact that many players didn’t “look Japanese” (11 were even born outside Japan) was no problem.
Same when Japanese athletes did well in Rio last year. Prominent performances by multiethnic Japanese, including Mashu Baker (Gold in Judo); members of Japan’s Rugby Sevens (the men’s team came in fourth); other members of Japan’s soccer, basketball and athletics teams; and most prominently, runner Asuka Cambridge (who missed out on Gold only to Usain Bolt) made it clear that hybrid Japanese help Japan in sports. If only people would stop putting up the extra hurdle of attributing success or failure to race.
7 Renho Murata takes helm of the Democratic Party
After years of tired leftist politics with stale or uninspiring leaders, last September the main opposition Democratic Party made young and dynamic Taiwanese-Japanese politician Renho Murata its leader. It was the first time a multiethnic Japanese has ever helmed a major party, and immediately there were full-throated doubts about her loyalties. Media and politicos brought up Renho’s alleged ties to untrustworthy China (even though Taiwan and China are different countries; even the Ministry of Justice said that Taiwanese in Japan are not under PRC law), or that she had technically naturalized (Renho was born before Japanese citizenship could legally pass through her mother) but had not renounced her dual citizenship, which wasn’t an issue when she was a Cabinet member, nor when former Peruvian President and dual citizen Alberto Fujimori ran for a Diet seat in 2007 (Zeit Gist, May 5, 2009).
Whatever. Renho has proven herself a charismatic leader with an acerbic wit, ready to ask difficult and pointed questions of decision makers. She famously did so in 2009, during deliberations to fund the “world’s most powerful computer,’ when she asked, “What’s wrong with being number two?” The project still passed, but demanding potential boondoggles justify themselves is an important job. The fact that Renho is not cowed by tough questions herself is good for a country, which with 680,000 Japanese dual citizens deserves fresh unfettered talent with international backgrounds.
6 Abubakar Awudu Suraj case loses once and for all
This has made the JBC annual Top 10 several times, because it’s a test case of accountability when NJ die in official custody. In 2010, Ghanaian visa overstayer Abubakar Awudu Suraj was so “brutally” (according to this newspaper) restrained during deportation that he was asphyxiated. Suraj’s widow, unsuccessfully seeking justice through Japan’s criminal justice system, won civil damages from the Immigration Bureau in a 2014 Tokyo District Court decision. However, last January, the Tokyo High Court overturned this, deciding that the lethal level of physical force was “not illegal” — it was even “necessary” — and concluded that the authorities were “not culpable.” Suraj’s widow took it to the Supreme Court, but the appeal was rejected last November.
5 2016 Upper house elections seal Shinzo Abe’s mandate
Past JBC columns on Japan’s right-wing swing anticipated that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would capitalize on the left’s disarray and take Japan’s imagined community back to an imagined past. Sure enough, winning the Upper House elections last July and solidifying a majority in both houses of Parliament, he accomplished this hat trick. Since then, Abe’s popular support, according to the Asahi, remains at near record-highs (here and here). There’s even talk of changing the rules so he can be PM beyond his mandated five-year term.
That’s it then, really. Everything we feared his administration would do since 2012 is all coming to pass: the dismissing of universal human rights as a “Western concept,” the muzzling and intimidation of the press under a vague state secrets act, the deliberate destabilization of East Asia over petty territorial disputes, the enfranchising of historical denialism through a far-right cabal of elites, the emboldening of domestic xenophobia to accomplish remilitarization, the resurgence of enforced patriotism in Japan’s education system, the further exploitation of foreign workers under an expanded “trainee” program, and the forthcoming fundamental abrogation of Japan’s “Peace Constitution.”
Making Japan “great” again, similar to what’s happening in the United States under President-elect Donald Trump, has been going on for the past four years. With no signs of it abating.
4 Next generation of “Great Gaijin Massacres” loom
In April 2013, Japan’s Labor Contracts Law was amended to state that companies, after five years of continuous contract renewals, must hire their temporary workers as “regular employees” (seishain). Meant to stop employers from hiring people perpetually on insecure contract jobs (“insecure” because employees are easily fired by contract nonrenewal), it is having the opposite effect: Companies are inserting five-year caps in contracts to avoid hiring people for real. Last November, The Japan Times reported on the “Tohoku University job massacre,” where 3,200 contract workers are slated to be fired en masse in 2017.
JBC sees this as yet another “Gaijin as Guinea Pig” scenario (ZG, July 8, 2008). This happened in Japanese academia for generations: Known as “Academic Apartheid,” foreign full-time scholars received perpetual contract employment while Japanese full-time scholars received permanent uncontracted tenure from day one. This unequal status resulted in the “Great Gaijin Massacre” of 1992-4, where the Ministry of Education (MOE) told National and Public Universities not to renew the contracts of foreigners over the age of 35 as a cost-cutting measure. Then from 1997, the MOE encouraged contract employment be expanded to Japanese full-time educators. From 2018, it will be expanded to the nonacademic private sector. It’s a classic case of Martin Niemoller’s “First they came …” poem: Denying equal rights to part of the population eventually got normalized and applied to everyone.
Then the Ministry of Justice’s Bureau of Human Rights conducted its first-ever nationwide survey of discrimination toward longer-term NJ residents by mailing them a detailed multilingual survey (available at www.debito.org/?p=14298), asking questions specifically about unequal treatment in housing, employment, education, social situations, etc. It even mentioned the establishment of “laws and regulations prohibiting discrimination against foreigners” (not a law against discrimination by race, natch).
Although this survey is well-intentioned, it still has two big blind spots: It depicted discrimination as 1) due to extranationality, not physical appearance, and 2) done by Japanese people, not the government through systemic racism embedded in Japan’s laws and systems (see my book “Embedded Racism” for more). As such, the survey won’t resolve the root problems fundamental to Japan’s very identity as an ethnostate.
2 Blowback involving NJ tourism and labor
Japan’s oft-touted sense of “selfless hospitality” (omotenashi) is an odd thing. We are seeing designated “foreigner taxis” at Kyoto Station (with a segregated stop), “foreign driver” stickers on Hokkaido and Okinawa rental cars stigmatizing NJ tourists (and NJ residents touring), and media grumblings about ill-mannered Chinese crowding stores, spending scads of money (diddums!) and leaving behind litter. (Japan’s tourist sites were of course sparkling clean before foreigners showed up. Not.)
And after all this, 2016 offered one big bright spot:
1 Hate speech law gets passed — and enforced
Japan’s first law protecting “foreigners” from group denigration in public was passed nationwide in May. JBC (Feb. 1) heralded it as a step in the right direction. Critics quickly pointed out its shortcomings: It doesn’t actually ban hate speech, or have penalties for violators, and it only covers people of overseas origin “who live legally in Japan” (meaning “foreigners,” but not all of them). Plus it skirts the issue of racial discrimination, natch.
However, it has had important effects. The law offered a working definition of hate speech and silenced people claiming the “Western construct” of hate speech didn’t exist in Japan. It also gave Japan’s bureaucrats the power to curtail haters. The Mainichi Shimbun reported that this year’s xenophobic rallies, once daily on average somewhere in Japan, had decreased. Rallies also reportedly softened their hateful invective. Since Japan’s outdoor public gatherings need police and community approval (ZG March 4, 2003), even an official frown on hatred can be powerful.
Official frowning spread. The National Police Agency advised prefectural police departments to respond to hate speech demos. A court banned a rally in a Korean area of Kawasaki for “illegal actions that infringe upon the personal rights for leading a personal life.” Another court ordered hate group Zaitokukai to compensate a Zainichi Korean for public slurs against her. Both judges cited the United Nations Convention on Racial Discrimination, which has been ignored in lawsuits against “Japanese only” establishments.
These are remarkable new outcomes in a society loath to call “No Foreigners Allowed” signs discriminatory, let alone order police to take them down. Progress to build upon.
Bubbling under the top 10
11 Population of registered NJ residents reaches record 2.23 million despite significant decreases in recent years.
12 “Special economic zones” expand to the aging agriculture sector, and want “skilled foreigners” with college degrees and Japanese-language ability to till fields on three-year visas. Seriously.
13 The Nankai Line train conductor who apologized to passengers for “too many foreigners” on an airport-bound train is officially reprimanded, not ignored.
15 Debito.org’s archive of human rights issues in Japan celebrates its 20th Anniversary.
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Hi Blog, and welcome to 2017. And to start this year (which I am not at all optimistic about), let’s try to talk about two bright sides to 2016.
First up, this piece of good news that shows that targeting of foreign passengers (on an airport train, no less) is officially not cool — either from the passengers’ point of view or from the train company’s:
OSAKA — A Nankai Electric Railway Co. conductor was dealt a verbal warning after apologizing to Japanese passengers for crowding on a train heading to Kansai International Airport with a large number of foreigners, it has been learned.
The company said the male conductor, who is in his 40s, made the announcement on an express train bound for Kansai International Airport at around 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 10, a public holiday, after the train left Tengachaya Station.
“Today there are many foreign passengers aboard and it is very crowded, so we are inconveniencing Japanese passengers,” the conductor was quoted as stating in the announcement.
After the train arrived at Kansai-Airport Station, a Japanese woman questioned a station attendant about the announcement, asking whether it was within the bounds of company rules.
When questioned by the company, the conductor was quoted as replying, “I heard a male Japanese passenger at Namba Station yelling, ‘All these foreigners are a nuisance,’ so I made the announcement to avert trouble. I had no intention of discriminating.”
The company says it has received complaints in the past about the large pieces of luggage carried by foreign visitors, but the announcement made by the conductor was the first of its kind.
“Whether people are Japanese or non-Japanese, the fact remains that they are our passengers. Language that sets them apart is inappropriate,” a company representative said.
Next up an article from the Grauniad, which coupled the above story with another one about some sushi itamae-san who took it upon themselves to wasabi-bomb some NJ sushi. Full article follows below, but pertinent excerpt:
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The incident follows an accusation by South Korean tourists that a sushi restaurant in Osaka deliberately smeared their orders with eye-watering quantities of wasabi, a pungent condiment that should be used sparingly.
The restaurant chain Ichibazushi apologised but denied accusations of racism, saying its chefs had decided to use excessive amounts of wasabi after other foreign diners had previously requested larger dollops for added piquancy.
“Because many of our overseas customers frequently order extra amounts of pickled ginger and wasabi, we gave them more without checking first,” the chain’s management said. “The result was unpleasant for some guests who aren’t fans of wasabi.”
It was not clear how many such incidents – labelled “wasabi terrorism” on social media – had occurred, but some disgruntled diners posted photos of sushi containing twice as much wasabi as usual.
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Again, the fact that this incident made news, and (Japanese) social media thought this was worth criticizing is a good thing. The restaurant acknowledged and apologized.
There is lots to bellyache about when it comes to how NJ are seen and treated in Japan, but when people (especially Japanese people, who are often not all that quick to leap to the defense of NJ, since what happens to NJ does not affect them) stand up against this, this is progress. Credit where credit is due. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
Full Grauniad article:
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A railway company in Japan has reprimanded a conductor who blamed the large number of foreign tourists on a crowded train for inconveniencing Japanese passengers.
The outburst will have done little to help Japan’s attempts to become a more welcoming destination for foreign visitors as it prepares to host the 2019 rugby World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics a year later.
Japan’s successful pitch for the 2020 Games made much of the country’s reputation for omotenashi– traditional hospitality and service.
But there was precious little omotenashi on display when the conductor addressed passengers on a Nankai Electric Railway express train bound for Kansai international airport near Osaka on Monday morning.
“There are many foreign passengers on board today … this has caused serious congestion and is causing inconvenience to Japanese passengers,” said the conductor, a man in his 40s.
A Japanese passenger reported the incident to a station attendant at the airport, questioning whether the conductor’s wording was acceptable.
The conductor, who has not been named, later defended his choice of words: “I heard a male Japanese passenger at [another station] yelling: ‘All these foreigners are a nuisance,’” the Mainichi Shimbun quoted him as saying.
“I made the announcement to avert trouble and had no intention of discriminating [against foreign passengers],” he said.
A Nankai Electric spokesman told the newspaper that the firm had previously received complaints about foreign visitors with large suitcases, but added: “Whether people are Japanese or non-Japanese, the fact remains that they are our passengers. Language that sets them apart [from other passengers] is inappropriate.”
The incident follows an accusation by South Korean tourists that a sushi restaurant in Osaka deliberately smeared their orders with eye-watering quantities of wasabi, a pungent condiment that should be used sparingly.
The restaurant chain Ichibazushi apologised but denied accusations of racism, saying its chefs had decided to use excessive amounts of wasabi after other foreign diners had previously requested larger dollops for added piquancy.
“Because many of our overseas customers frequently order extra amounts of pickled ginger and wasabi, we gave them more without checking first,” the chain’s management said. “The result was unpleasant for some guests who aren’t fans of wasabi.”
It was not clear how many such incidents – labelled “wasabi terrorism” on social media – had occurred, but some disgruntled diners posted photos of sushi containing twice as much wasabi as usual.
Whether or not the incidents resulted from misunderstandings, the potential for friction between visitors and local people is likely to increase as Japan gains popularity as a tourist destination.
A record 2.05 million people visited the country in August, according to the Japan Tourism Agency, including 677,000 from China, 458,900 from South Korea and 333,200 from Taiwan.
Japan’s government hopes to double the number of foreign visitors to 40 million in 2020, and expects a tourism windfall of 8tn yen (£63bn).
ENDS
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Now will this law be enforced? Remains to be seen. I’m not sure how this governmental “body to carry out on-site inspections at companies and organizations using the program and offer counseling services for participating workers” will work in practice. We’ve already seen how ineffectual other human-rights organs for “counseling” (such as the Ministry of Justice’s Potemkin Bureau of Human Rights) are in Japan. And there are all manner of institutionalized incentives (and decades of established practice) for people to turn blind eyes. After all, the only ones being hurt by this slavery program are foreigners, and they can just go back home if they don’t like it. (Except that they can’t.) Debito.org will keep you posted on developments. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
In an effort to prevent human rights abuses in the workplace, a law was enacted Friday to improve supervision of companies that accept foreign workers under a government program.
The move comes after the government decided recently to include nursing care in the list of industries in which foreign trainees can work under the Technical Intern Training Program, following the related legislation’s passage through the Upper House.
The change is expected to lead to an increase in the number of foreigners working as nursing caregivers in Japan, where demand for such services is expected to grow as the population grays.
Japan introduced the training program for foreign nationals in 1993 with the aim of transferring skills to developing countries. It currently covers 74 job categories chiefly in construction, manufacturing, agriculture and fishery industries.
But the scheme has faced charges both within and outside Japan that it is a cover for importing cheap labor. There have been reports of harsh working conditions, including illegally long work hours and nonpayment of wages.
To tackle such illicit handling of foreign trainees, Japan will establish a body to carry out on-site inspections at companies and organizations using the program and offer counseling services for participating workers.
Since August, the Justice Ministry has instructed more than 200 mediator groups to stop using phrases such as “securing labor” in their advertisements calling on companies to accept foreign trainees. The government says the mediator groups bear the task of making sure the firms are accepting the trainees to transfer technical skills and make international contributions.
According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, about 70 percent of some 5,200 companies and organizations that accepted trainees last year were found to have violated laws, with offenses including having trainees work illegally long hours.
A 26-year-old Vietnamese man who is trained for machinery use in Gifu Prefecture said some of his friends left companies after suffering violence from Japanese employees.
Under the new law, penalties will be imposed to ban employers from confiscating foreign trainees’ passports against their will and restricting their movements.
Companies that are judged as treating foreign trainees fairly will be allowed to have them work for up to five years, instead of the currently allowed three-year maximum.
When nursing care services are encompassed by the training program, it will be the first time that foreign trainees will be engaged in offering services directly to other people.
The government is planning to require the trainees to have a certain level of Japanese language skills to prevent communication problems when dealing with co-workers and people in their care.
ENDS
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From: XY Subject: MOJ NJ Survey Date: November 14, 2016 To: debito@debito.org
Dear Debito,
I am XY, a long year NJ resident. First I want to thank you for the great work you do to enhance human rights in Japan. I learned most of the discrepancies between law and practice (especially Hotels *cough*) from your blog. Great work.
So that’s why I approached these new surveys for “Foreigners Living in Japan” (as opposed to “Non-Citizen Residents of Japan”) from the Ministry of Justice Human of Human Rights (BOHR), Center for Human Rights Education and Training, with some trepidation. Especially given the BOHR’s longstanding record of unhelpfulness and abdication of responsibility (see also book “Embedded Racism“, pp. 224-231). But let’s take a look at it and assess. Here is a sampling of pages from the English version in jpg format (the full text in Japanese and English is at the above pdf links).
First, two pages from the statement of purpose from the Cover Letter, so you get the tone:
Next, here’s the odd very first question. It inquires whether the foreigner being surveyed actually interacts with Japanese, or lives as a hikikomori hermit inside a terrarium. (It’s a bit hard to envision this kind of question coming from other governments. In a question about discrimination towards NJ, why is this the first question? Is it a means to discount future responses with, “Well, it’s the foreigner’s own fault he’s discriminated against — he should get out more”?). Anyway:
Skipping down to the next section, we see that they get to the discrimination issues (housing first, and that’s a major one) pretty systematically, and with the possibility of open-ended answers. Good.
Same with discrimination in employment:
And then discrimination in access to services and in daily interactions:
Then we get to the subject of what to do about it. The survey starts off with the typical boilerplate about “cultural differences” (the regular way of blaming foreigners for “being different”, thereby deserving differential treatment), but then by item 6 we get a mention of a law against preventing “discrimination against foreigners” (as opposed to racial discrimination, which is what it is). So at least a legislative solution is mentioned as an option. Good.
The rest talks about what measures the surveyed person has taken against discrimination using existing GOJ structures (the BOHR). Then it concludes some background about the surveyed person’s age, nationality, visa status, home language, etc. (which is where that funny first question about “how much contact do you have with Japanese?” should have come; putting it first is, again, indicative.)
CONCLUSION: In terms of a survey, this is an earnest attempt to get an official handle on the shape and scope of discriminatory activities in Japan, and even mentions the establishment of anti-discrimination laws as an option. Good. It also includes the first real national-level question about discrimination in housing in Japan, which hitherto has never been surveyed beyond the local level. I will be very interested to see the results.
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Hi Blog. Book “Embedded Racism” notches up another positive review in academic circles (see another one by Tessa Morris-Suzuki here), this time from the Japan Studies Association of Canada. Opening paragraph follows. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
JSAC: “From the immigration crisis in Europe to the growing tensions around racism and law enforcement in the United States, discussion of institutionalized racism, exclusionary rhetoric in the media, and legal barriers to equality seems essential now more than ever. In his most recent book […] cultural critic, activist, and scholar Debito Arudou attempts to spark just such a discussion. A critical analysis of Japan’s treatment of visible minorities (people living in japan who do not display phenotypical Japanese traits) and the legal, political, and social mechanisms that perpetuate the exclusion of such minorities from various aspects of Japanese society, Embedded Racism is extremely well timed. Arguing that racism operating through various institutions in Japan is akin to experiences of racism in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, Arudou’s carefully constructed work attempts to debunk the dominant narrative of Japanese exceptionalism, which he claims provides an escape from accountability to the rest of the world. Describing how structural racism behind institutional, legal, social, and media narratives influences the degree to which “outsiders” are constructed and consequently excluded from essential social and legal protections, Embedded Racism is an important contribution to the fields of geography, cultural, and area studies […]” (Natasha Fox, Japan Studies Association of Canada (JSAC) Newsletter, Fall 2016) (read full review)
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The Justice Ministry will conduct its first large-scale survey on racism in Japan as discrimination becomes a growing social concern, a report said Sunday.
The survey will cover 18,500 foreign residents 18 or older, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said, adding that the results will be released by the end of March and reflected in new policies.
The poll will be conducted in 13 languages ranging from Japanese and English to Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Portuguese, the vernacular daily said.
The questions will ask whether respondents have experienced or seen racial discrimination in daily life or in the workplace, and what action they want the government to take to eliminate it, the report said.
The number of foreign residents has grown in recent years, but their ratio to the total population still stands at less than 2 percent, according to ministry data.
No comment on the report was available from the ministry Sunday.
Incidents of hate speech directed against specific ethnic groups on the streets or online have broken out in recent years. Most are directed at ethnic Koreans who ended up in Japan when the Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945, and their offspring.
In a rare court ruling against racial discrimination, a vocal anti-Korean group was ordered in 2013 to stop its hate speech campaign against a Pyongyang-linked school and pay some ¥12 million in damages.
The Diet in June brought in legislation promoting efforts to eliminate discriminatory speech and behavior against non-Japanese people.
ENDS
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When Japan’s first actual law against hate speech was passed in January this year, critics (naturally) decried it as a means to stifle freedom of speech. I took exception to that, saying that it was a step in the right direction, at least. Recent articles in the Mainichi Shinbun seem to bear that out. Here is is the second of three (the first is here), talking about the positive effects of the law, where once-daily hate rallies are down, xenophobic language is softened and made less normalized, administrative organs now have means of enforcement, and even court cases are ruling in favor of targeted victims. Good. Read on. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
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Effect of new anti-hate speech law spreads to executive, judicial branches
Bulletin boards at the Ministry of Justice in Tokyo’s Kasumigaseki district are filled with 49 posters calling against hate speech campaigns, in this picture taken on June 3, 2016. The anti-hate speech law went into force that day. (Mainichi)
A new law aimed at eliminating hate speech campaigns, which instigate rejection of specific racial or ethnic groups from local communities, came into force on June 3. While the legislation has proven effective in some parts of the country, such as in Kawasaki where the court handed down a provisional injunction banning a hate speech rally in an area home to many Korean residents, there remain challenges that need to be addressed.
【Related】NPA to crack down on hate speech demonstrators through existing legislation
【Related】Court bans planned anti-Korean hate speech rally in Kawasaki On June 5, a hate speech demonstration in Kawasaki was called off after participants were surrounded by hundreds of citizens protesting against the rally and police urged them to discontinue the event. The organizers terminated the rally after demonstrators paraded only about 10 meters down the road, in what was going to be the country’s first such demonstration since the anti-hate speech law came into effect.
The incident came three days after the Kawasaki branch of the Yokohama District Court issued a provisional injunction prohibiting a hate speech demonstration within a 500-meter radius of the office of a social welfare organization supporting Korean residents in the city. The decision forced organizers of the June 5 rally to change their plans, including the location for the event.
In October 2013, the Kyoto District Court handed down a ruling banning the Zaitokukai (Citizens against the special privileges of Korean residents in Japan) from staging hate speech demonstrations near the then Kyoto No. 1 Korean Elementary School and ordered the group to pay compensation. The ruling accused those demonstrations of “racial discrimination” in light of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The ruling was later finalized by the Supreme Court.
The June 2 provisional injunction issued by the Yokohama District Court’s Kawasaki branch also quoted the same international treaty, as well as the anti-hate speech law that had just been enacted in May. The ruling called hate speech rallies “illegal actions that infringe upon the personal rights for leading a peaceful life” and pointed out that grossly illegal hate speech campaigns, such as repeating loud chants with bullhorns, lie “outside the bounds of freedom of assembly and freedom of expression guaranteed under the Constitution.”
“The ruling conveys the court’s indignation over hate speech,” said a senior official at the Ministry of Justice about the provisional injunction going as far as to ban a planned hate speech demonstration in advance. The ministry was behind the submission of the anti-hate speech bill to the Diet.
Signs of change are also emerging in police responses over the issue. In step with the anti-hate speech law coming into effect, the National Police Agency issued a notice to prefectural police departments across the country asking them to strictly respond to hate speech demonstrations by making full use of existing legislation such as that against defamation and contempt.
Because the anti-hate speech legislation does not have any punitive provision or clause prohibiting such activities, it is impossible to crack down on hate speech with the law alone. It is said the use of roads for any demonstration must be granted in principle. Nonetheless, hundreds of riot police and other officers from Kanagawa Prefectural Police were mobilized at the site of the June 5 rally to prepare for any emergencies.
Yasuko Morooka, a lawyer who authored a book titled “Hate Speech towa nanika” (What is hate speech?), hails the anti-hate speech legislation, saying, “The law provides support for courts, local bodies and police in making a decision on their strict responses to hate speech.”
The new law, however, has its own limits. In order to provide relief to victims who suffered damage from hate speech, they still need to prove in detail violations of their personal rights and defamation, just as they needed to before the law came into effect. The June 2 provisional injunction banning a hate speech rally became viable as there existed crystal-clear damage in Kawasaki, where the organizers of the planned rally had repeatedly staged similar demonstrations on about a dozen occasions.
A senior Justice Ministry official said, “The court decision could be different if the expression used in the announcement for a hate speech demonstration was different. I’m not sure if the courts would issue a similar provisional injunction in other cases.”
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BOOK REVIEW Debito Arudou, Embedded Racism: Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination By Tessa Morris-Suzuki. Reproduced with kind permission of the author.
To cite this article: Tessa Morris-Suzuki (2016) Debito Arudou, Embedded Racism:
Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination, Japanese Studies, 36:2, 277-279,
Debito Arudou, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015, xxvi, 323 pp. + notes, bibliography, index, ISBN 978-1-4985-1390-6 https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498513913
Japan is somewhat usual amongst developed countries in not having a law prohibiting racial discrimination. The postwar constitution states that ‘all of the people are equal under the law’, but, as Debito Arudou points out in this book, in the Japanese-language version of the text, ‘people’ is rendered as kokumin (nationals), thus excluding foreign residents. It is also true that in May 2016 the Japanese parliament passed a ‘Law on Measures against Hate Speech’ (Hētosupīchi Taisaku Hō) to combat the inflammatory expressions of hostility towards ethnic minorities: a hostility which has become an all-too-familiar feature of far right political discourse in recent years. But this law makes no provision for legal sanctions against perpetrators of ‘hate speech’, instead merely encouraging educational measures by the government and other public bodies; and since the law focuses on overt expressions of ‘hate’, it will presumably be powerless to discourage quieter forms of discrimination, such as the continuing practice by some landlords of refusing to rent properties to foreigners.
Embedded Racism confronts these ongoing issues of racial prejudice in Japanese society, focusing particularly on discrimination against people assumed to be foreign because they are visibly different from the standard phenotypical image of ‘Japanese’. The author, a naturalised Japanese citizen of American origin, has been engaged for years in campaigns to combat these forms of discrimination, and draws on his experience as a campaigner and as a long-term resident in Japan to create a persuasive and alarming dossier on the widespread existence of racial discrimination in Japanese society. A central issue which recurs throughout the book is the deep-seated assumption that race, ethnicity and nationality must coincide, and therefore that those who do not ‘look Japanese’ must therefore be foreign nationals. Particularly telling anecdotes include an instance where the author and one of his children (who is of relatively ‘Caucasian’ appearance) were refused entry to a hot spring bath while his wife and another child (who happens to be of more ‘Japanese’ appearance) were accepted, despite all being equally Japanese citizens.
This book, though, is more than a narrative of instances of discrimination and campaigns for redress. The author also seeks to explore the roots of the problem, which he locates in the legal apparatus of nationality, the workings of the court system, the lack of serious official mechanisms to combat discrimination, and stereotypes perpetuated by the mass media. Like other scholars of discrimination in Japanese society, Arudou identifies key problems as arising from Japan’s ius sanguinis (bloodline) nationality laws, which bestow Japanese nationality only on those descended from Japanese citizens. He also highlights the impact of the koseki (family registration) system, which relegates foreigners who marry into Japanese families to a marginal and subordinate status. These problems were compounded by the jūminhyō (resident registration) system, which excluded foreigners and rendered them statistically invisible, and by the alien registration system, under which foreign residents in Japan are required to carry their registration cards at all times and show them to the police on request. As Arudou notes, important changes to these systems were introduced in 2012, with foreigners being incorporated into the jūminhyō system, and visa and registration processes being overhauled. Yet these reforms have gone only a small way towards addressing the complex systems of exclusion affecting members of Japan’s ‘visible minorities’, while rising fears of crime and terrorism have if anything increased official scrutiny and suspicion of foreign residents and border-crossers.
Particularly powerful sections of the book detail the way in which racial profiling by the police, embodied in repeated reports on the problems of ‘foreigner crime’, have helped to embed exclusionary attitudes in Japanese society. Such reports, which often convey a misleading impression of trends in crime rates and of the proportion of offences committed by ‘foreigners’, feed into sensationalised media headlines and into the rhetoric of far right politicians. Though victims of discrimination theoretically have avenues of redress both through the courts and through the Ministry of Justice’s Bureau of Human Rights (BOHR), Arudou argues persuasively that neither has proved an effective source of protection for the rights of visible minorities. The courts have a very mixed record of upholding claims for equal treatment, while the BOHR has only very limited advisory powers, and often seems extremely cautious in exercising such powers as it does possess.
The picture is not wholly negative. Arudou notes the good work performed by Japanese NGOs and legal networks, and by some trade unions and local governments, which have made efforts to reduce barriers to the inclusion of foreign residents and have worked to combat prejudice and discrimination. All the same, he concludes that Japan remains a complex patchwork of overlapping categories of exclusion, where formal nationality and visible difference combine to create multiple dimensions of embedded racism.
This book is an important addition to the literature on problems of citizenship and minorities in Japan, particularly because it highlights the distinctive problems of visible minorities, rather than focusing on the large ‘invisible minorities’ (Zainichi Koreans and Chinese, etc.) who have been the subject of much existing research; but this focus does open up some problems which could be explored further. A particularly complex set of issues surround the marginalisation of Ainu and Okinawans – indigenous minority groups who exist on the borderline between visibility and invisibility. Most Ainu and Okinawans are not identifiable as ‘different’ in terms of physical appearance, and yet stereotypical images of the physical difference of these groups survive and sometimes play into the language of prejudice and the practice of discrimination. Although these issues are alluded to in Embedded Racism, they are not drawn out in any detail. Further discussion of the problem of these invisible/visible indigenous minorities might help give further depth to the notion of ‘visibility’: a phenomenon which is constantly created and re-created, not just by external realities, but also by images in the eye of the beholder.
Another area where there is scope for further discussion is the relationship between Japan’s embedded racism and that of other countries. As Arudou points out, for example, Japan’s former colonies Korea and Taiwan have inherited family registration and nationality systems that in part resemble Japan’s (though with some significant variations). Korea too, like Japan, has long-cherished myths of ethnic homogeneity. How are countries like South Korea and Taiwan dealing with the challenges of dis-embedding racism from their twenty-first century societies? Answers to this question might help to clarify the peculiarities of the problems faced by Japan, and open up ways for East Asian countries to share proposals for undoing the legal and conceptual barriers to the creation of more ethnically and racially inclusive societies.
In the final sections of Embedded Racism, the author looks to the future, without great optimism, but with some clear and cogent suggestions for steps that the Japanese government should take if it truly wishes to make Japan a more open society. These include passing strong and effective laws against discrimination, strengthening the powers of the Bureau of Human Rights, reforming the citizenship and family registration systems, and legalising dual nationality. Arudou also argues for the involvement of non-citizens in the processes of creating new policies affecting foreign residents. He expresses little confidence that the Japanese authorities will respond to such ideas, but his critique of Japan’s embedded racism and his proposals for change certainly deserve to be read by policy makers, as well as by scholars of Japan. This is an important, courageous and challenging book, and it casts a sharp light on problems which are often ignored or veiled, but which have profound consequences for the present and future of Japanese society.
“Embedded Racism” has been discounted 30% for a limited time to $34.99 in paperback and Kindle if bought through publisher Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield directly.
Nearly 100 of the world’s major research libraries (including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Cornell, Columbia…) have made “Embedded Racism” part of their collections (according to WorldCat).
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Hi Blog. When Japan’s first actual law against hate speech was passed in January this year, critics (naturally) decried it as a means to stifle freedom of speech. I took exception to that, saying that it was a step in the right direction, at least. Recent articles in the Mainichi Shinbun seem to bear that out. Here is one of three, talking about the positive effects of the law, where once-daily hate rallies are down, xenophobic language is softened and made less normalized, administrative organs now have means of enforcement, and even court cases are ruling in favor of targeted victims. Good. Read on. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
“The thinking of those putting out hate speech and the (essential) content of what they say may not change, but at least on the surface we can see the effects of the countermeasures. It seems (for example) that the organizers are not allowing demonstrators who often say extremist things to have bullhorns.”
“Preventing hate marches through the law thus depends not on cracking down on such actions, but on government policies that put a stop to discrimination.”
Seems like the law is doing a decent job of treating the symptoms, but is obviously unable to deal with the underlying problem due to the absence of an anti-racial discrimination law on the books.
A protest banner reading “sever Japan and South Korean relations” and a counter “anti-racism” protest’s banner written in English are seen in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, on June 19, 2016. (Photo credit: Mainichi)
A citizen’s group that accuses the Osaka ordinance of “discriminating against Japanese” and was planning a demonstration in front of the Osaka Municipal Office on July 12 listed the following among its notices for its demonstrators: “Please don’t use placards with extreme content,” and “No flags with swastikas or other things that will invite misunderstanding.”
The demonstration was canceled due to rain, so what exactly was meant by “extreme content” is unknown, but it seems likely the group was trying to limit language that insults and rejects ethnic Koreans in Japan.
Mun Gong Hwi, an ethnic Korean, is head of the secretariat of “Hate Speech o Yurusanai! Osaka no Kai” (don’t allow hate speech! Osaka group), which has applied based on the Osaka ordinance for recognition as a target of hate speech. Mun says, “In a street demonstration by a hate group in April, there was a moment when one participant started to use blatantly offensive language to attack Koreans, and the organizers hurried to stop them. The number of hate demonstrations has also fallen greatly since around the time of the ordinance taking effect.”
Under the Osaka ordinance, if the mayor authorizes it, individuals or groups that have conducted hateful behavior toward others can have their names publicized, but so far this aspect of the ordinance has not been used. Mun adds, “The drop in (hate) demonstrations may just be because they are watching to see how things develop.”
In Ginza, Tokyo, where since around last year there has been a marked increase in hate demonstrations, there have also been changes since the new legal measures. During a demonstration on June 19, instead of banners insulting Koreans, protesters carried banners calling for severing relations between Japan and South Korea, apparently having chosen to avoid ethnically-charged language and instead place emphasis on their political argument.
Masayuki Watanabe, associate professor at Daito Bunka University, who has been urging Ginza commerce and industry associations and the ward assembly to take action against hate speech, says, “The thinking of those putting out hate speech and the (essential) content of what they say may not change, but at least on the surface we can see the effects of the countermeasures. It seems (for example) that the organizers are not allowing demonstrators who often say extremist things to have bullhorns.”
The response of police and the government administrations to hate marches has also changed. On June 5, just after the execution of the new law, the Kawasaki Municipal Government refused to give permission for a park to be used for a protest targeting the social welfare corporation “Seikyu-sha,” which gives support to the many ethnic Koreans living in the city’s Sakuramoto district. Additionally, the Kawasaki branch of the Yokohama District Court called the hate speech demonstrations “an illegal violation of human rights” and prohibited them from being held near the Seikyu-sha building.
Kanagawa Prefectural Police gave permission for the demonstration to be held in a different street location, but protesters staged a sit-in. The police urged the organizers to call off the demonstration for safety reasons, and it was canceled.
Tomohito Miura, the head of Seikyu-sha’s secretariat, says, “Before the anti-hate speech law was created, the police wouldn’t even tell us the routes planned for the demonstrations, and it was we who were treated like an illegal group. The police wouldn’t protect us from hate demonstrations in our neighborhoods, and government services would say, ‘There is only so much we can do under the current law.’ We were on the receiving end of these three layers of damage.” He was complimentary, however, toward the efforts of government organs, the judiciary, police and citizens since the passage of the law, saying, “It is a definite step forward that we were able to stop the demonstration.”
While vulgar insults from these hate marches may be disappearing from the streets, the question remains whether the new law will be effective in combatting discrimination. In deference to the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech, the law does not forbid anything or include any punishments, but it makes it the national government’s responsibility to set up help for victims of hate speech and to work to educate and provide awareness to the public to stop the speech from occurring. It also calls on municipal governments to work toward these goals. Preventing hate marches through the law thus depends not on cracking down on such actions, but on government policies that put a stop to discrimination.
The Ministry of Justice’s Human Rights Bureau dispatched employees not only for the planned Kawasaki demonstration, but also for ones in the cities of Fukuoka and Osaka after the new law went into effect. Using tools such as videos and posters, they are trying to educate people about hate speech. However, the bureau emphasizes, “The law does not involve applying any kind of legal effect when there is a case of hate speech.”
Following the implementation of the new law, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology instructed prefectural boards of education to take “appropriate responses.” When asked what kind of education is an appropriate response to the law, the ministry’s Social Education Division said, “Efforts that are adapted to the circumstances, such as whether there are many foreigners in an area, are needed. However, we mustn’t stir up settled problems through this education.” While there is some truth to what the division says, it does seem they are still trying to find their footing on how to proceed.
Will other parts of Japan do the same as the Osaka Municipal Government and establish local ordinances against hate speech? When asked about specific future policies on hate speech, the human rights and gender-equality section of the Kawasaki Municipal Government was tight-lipped, saying its policy was being carried out “at the discretion of the mayor.” When pressed, a representative said, “Regarding things like refusing permission to allow use of the park (for the hate demonstration), I hear there is a movement to sue the municipal government for discriminating against Japanese people. We don’t want to reveal our plans.” Apparently, like the demonstrators, the government side is watching to see what the other does.
If another hate demonstration is planned in Kawasaki, will the citizens have no choice but to stage a sit-in and wait for police intervention? Miura says, “The fact that police gave permission for the June demonstration to be held in the street shows the current limits (of the law). We can’t ask the police and government services to do everything. Next time, we will have to stop the demonstration in a different way. The work to overcome the limits of the law has just begun.”
Not limited to just fighting against hate speech, Miura says Seikyu-sha will work with the municipal government to advance effective ordinances and guidelines that promote the coexistence of different cultures.
Regarding the city of Osaka, which has its own anti-hate ordinance, Mun says, “We don’t yet know the extent of the effects of the anti-hate law or the ordinance. This is why we want to use the ordinance as much as possible and discover exactly what it can do and what it can’t. Based on that, if necessary, we want to pursue revision of the ordinance to restrict hate speech itself.” This position of wanting to observe what happens and then compensate for any deficiencies in the anti-hate legislation is one shared by Miura and the others at Seikyu-sha.
Always accompanying the hostile feelings of the hate demonstrations is the shadow of war. The targeting of the Sakuramoto area was triggered by a protest in September last year by elderly ethnic Koreans against the bills for the new security laws. Wearing traditional Korean garb, the protesters were based out of the “Fureai-kan,” a facility managed by Seikyu-sha.
“The hate demonstration was clearly in revenge for that,” says Miura.
One of the participants in the anti-security laws protest, first-generation Korean immigrant Kim Bang Ja, 85, is also a student of literacy at the Fureai-kan. She was about 5 when she came to Japan, following her father who worked in a coal mine in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Busy with looking after her younger sister and doing household chores, she says she was only able to go to school for about one year. When the anti-hate law was passed in May this year, she was sitting as an observer in the Diet. She wrote her impressions about the law in a composition in her literacy class.
After describing how she disliked being insulted with foul language, she wrote, “Let’s stop doing that kind of thing and get along.” Although overall the writing was inconsistent, for this part alone it was particularly large and strong.
“My hand was shaking because I was writing in ink,” says Kim, adding, “If people talk they can come to an understanding. We have to get along with each other and not hate others.”
Will these words get through to those who participate in the hate demonstrations? The first step to realizing the ideals put forward in the anti-hate law is surely having communication between the two sides.
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Hi Blog. ABC NewsRadio Australia interviews me again, this time about Yoshikawa Priyanka, second winner in a row (the first being Miyamoto Ariana last year) of a major national beauty pageant in Japan with mixed roots. Have a listen. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
========================= Japan in Focus: The winner of Miss World Japan prompts another racial debate and Japan warns that its businesses may withdraw from the UK after Brexit http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/content/s4535998.htm Duration: 14:48, posted Sept. 12, 2016
ABC NewsRadio’s Eleni Psaltis presents Japan in Focus, a new program that takes a close look at significant political and cultural developments in Japan.
This week: For the second year in a row a bi-racial woman has won a beauty pageant in Japan, prompting a racial debate; Japan has issued a warning that its businesses may withdraw from the UK once it leaves the European Union; and the Japanese telecoms giant Softbank has bought the British smartphone chip-designing company ARM for more than $30 billion.
Eleni Psaltis speaks to Dr Debito Arudou from the University of Hawaii; Nigel Driffield, a Professor of international business at Warwick business school in the UK; and Dr Harminder Singh, a senior lecturer in Business Information Systems at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.
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JBC marks 100 columns and a million page views By Debito Arudou Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE column 100 September 5, 2016
JUST BE CAUSE
The day I proposed this column to my editors back in 2008, I knew it would be a hard sell.
Fortunately, I had a track record. I had been writing Zeit Gist articles (45 of them) every two months or so for the Community Page since 2002, and the JT was looking for new ways to serve the community beyond pages commemorating “Swaziland Independence Day” (which is Tuesday, incidentally). International goodwill and advertising revenue are all very well, but what about offering practical information for non-Japanese (NJ) residents making a better life here, or drawing attention to emerging domestic policies that affect them?
So my pitch was that the JT needed a regular columnist on human rights and issues of social justice. And I was convinced there was enough material for a monthly. They weren’t as convinced, and they were especially nonplussed at my suggestion for a column title: “Just Be Cause”!?
But shortly afterwards JBC got the green light, and on March 4, 2008, the first column was published — on why activism is frowned upon in Japan (because it’s associated with extremism). And off we went.
Nearly 10 years and 100 columns later, it is clear that, like the Debito.org archive (started 20 years ago, one of the oldest continuous personal websites on Japan) and daily blog (now 10 years old), JBC is in it for the long haul.
In this special anniversary column, let’s look back at what JBC has covered. The themes have been, in order of frequency:
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Hi Blog. Great article from The Japan Times talking about how multiethnic Japan (including immigrants and Visible Minorities) is presenting a strong showing at the Rio Olympics. Timely and informative, and too early to note caveats (except that we’ve had multiethnic Japanese Olympians face large hurdles in the past; let’s hope the numbers of them this time have reached a tipping point). Have a look. Here’s the intro. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
Japan and Brazil’s ties go back to the early 20th century, when the first Japanese immigrants arrived as farmers in the South American country. Brazil is home to the largest Japanese community outside Japan — 1.5 million of the country’s 205 million people identify themselves as Japanese-Brazilian, including a handful of members of the Brazilian Olympic team.
But although the host countries of the current and next Summer Olympics share cultural bonds, compared to Brazil, where nearly half of people consider themselves mixed-race, multiculturalism remains elusive in Japan, where ethnic homogeneity is often held up as something to be proud of.
Though Japan is home to the second-largest Brazilian community outside of Brazil, only 2 percent of the country’s population was born overseas. Compared to most other developed countries, immigration to Japan is negligible. However, despite having to deal with an aging, shrinking population, the majority of Japanese seem to prefer it this way. In a recent Yomiuri Shimbun poll, only 37 percent said they felt that more non-Japanese should be accepted to fill the gaps in the country’s labor market.
Japan is home to 2.2 million foreign residents, and like it or not, a growing number of them are marrying Japanese citizens. The number of international marriages increased tenfold between 1965 and 2007, with registered new multiracial couples peaking at 40,272. Due to tighter immigration rules, the number has since dropped considerably, but marriages between Japanese and foreign nationals still make up roughly 1 in 30 unions — and around 1 in 10 in Tokyo.
However, no matter how common international marriages are today, Japanese society still sets the children of these couples apart. They may have grown up as Japanese citizens or be fluent at the language, but many complain of feeling excluded or discriminated against because of their backgrounds. These individuals’ struggles in dealing with their classification as hāfu (half) have been recounted numerous times in the media, particularly by bicultural figures in the public eye.
Some of these children, however, grow up to be Olympians — flying the flag for Japan and challenging the conventional definition of what it means to be Japanese. At the Rio Olympics, more than any before, multicultural Japanese athletes have been a notable presence in the stadiums. Here are profiles of some of these athletes — those who have given their all in Rio for Team Japan, broken the glass ceiling and possibly even opened up minds in their homeland.
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Hi Blog. Jeff Krueger interviewed me a few days ago, and put up this podcast. He did a lot of research for this podcast, including reading 400-page book “Embedded Racism: Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination” in three sittings, and investigating much of the anti-activist narrative in Japan. I had a listen to it this morning, and think it’s probably the best interview I’ve ever had done. Please have a listen and support his channel, even leave a review up at iTunes.
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Podcast: Deep in Japan, by Jeff Krueger
Title: “Debito: Racism in Japan”
Released: Aug 14, 2016
In this podcast, I interview writer, researcher, activist, Japan Times columnist, naturalized Japanese citizen and, most recently, author of the amazing book, “Embedded Racism: Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination,” Dr. Arudou Debito. If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Debito’s books and articles, visit his award-winning blog at www.debito.org. As always, sounds provided by www.bensound.com/
UPDATE AUGUST 18: Podcast goes viral in… Poland! (Thanks to this popular vlog.) Now at 6700 listens on Soundcloud alone! Thanks!
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Do you like what you read on Debito.org? Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? We are celebrating Debito.org’s 20th Anniversary in 2016, so please consider donating a little something. More details here.
Do you like what you read on Debito.org? Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? We are celebrating Debito.org’s 20th Anniversary in 2016, so please consider donating a little something. More details here.
Do you like what you read on Debito.org? Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? We are celebrating Debito.org’s 20th Anniversary in 2016, so please consider donating a little something. More details here.
Being the Wry Eye Witness Chronicle of Rookie American Cultural Diplomat Ivan P. Hall.
As a fragile peace in Afghanistan breaks down once again in 2016, and as machete murders in broad daylight of progressive intellectuals by radical zealots erode the rare heritage of religious toleration in secularist Bangladesh, Ivan Hall with grace and wry wit brings back to life for us today – in a chronicle penned then and there – the now totally counterintuitive “Happier Islams” he experienced as a young cultural officer with the U.S. Information Service, sent out in 1958-1961 to promote America’s good name in Muslim South Asia.
In Kabul a half century ago Islam though forbiddingly traditional was still politically quiescent. In Dacca, East Pakistan (today’s Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh) a less rigid type of Islam had long accommodated its large Hindu minority. And a “Happier US,” too, as American diplomats worked in lightly guarded embassies, personal safety taken for granted, enjoying an individual and political popularity unthinkable throughout the Muslim world today.
Rare as a memoir by an active embassy officer (rather than scholar or journalist) about a still dictator-run Afghanistan totally at peace in the late 1950s, Hall’s story also offers a unique glimpse into Dacca’s lively America-savvy intelligentsia as of 1960. Illustrated by 200 color photos taken at the time, and updated with geopolitical backgrounders for his two posts then and now, Hall’s narrative also casts a critical eye on the bent of his USIS employer at the height of the Cold War for short-term political advocacy at the expense of long-term cultural ties. By way of contrast his prologue and epilogue limn the heartwarming American genius for private sector “cultural diplomacy he witnessed or took part in during his years “before and after,” in Europe and Japan.
Crawling onto the Great Buddha’s head at Bamian. Mounting the first modern art exhibition in Afghanistan. Picnicking on mountain meadows later pummeled by Soviet gunships. Capturing on camera those remote mood-laden landscapes, those stunning Afghan juxtapositions of verdant and austere. Directing Broadway hits with young Pakistani actors destined to become Foreign Secretaries and top ambassadors of Bangladesh. Flying lessons with the Pakistan Air Force. Living it up in Calcutta. The nagging moral conundrum of that extraordinary artistic sensibility throughout Bengal cheek-by-jowl with material poverty and physical pain never seen before or after on such a vast and poignant scale. Rousing welcomes for his talks on Faulkner or the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon campaign at Muslim Libraries and Assembly Halls. A heady and nostalgic anecdotal romp through worlds long since lost.
Ivan’s Bio reads as follows:
Ivan P. Hall’s passion for straddling cultural gaps dates from his birth on the Protestant campus of the American College of Sofia in Orthodox Bulgaria in 1932. Following his Princeton B.A. in European History in 1954, he served with the U.S. Army as a German language interpreter in military intelligence in Bavaria and as a ‘cellist with the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart, took an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and was stationed with the U.S. Information Service in 1958-1961 as a rookie cultural officer in Afghanistan and East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh), including a heady stint at 27 as acting U.S. Cultural Attaché in Kabul.
Turning then to East Asia with a Ph.D. from Harvard in Japanese History, Hall went on to author three books on Japan’s always fascinating if ambivalent intellectual ties with the outside world including a biography of the controversial Meiji westernizer Mori Arinori (1973); Cartels of the Mind: Japan’s Intellectual Closed Shop, chosen by Business Week as one of its Ten Best Business Books of 1997; and Bamboozled! – How America Loses the Intellectual Game with Japan and its Implications for Our Future in Asia (2002).
Hall has taught courses in English and Japanese on Modern Japan, Japanese Intellectual History, American Intellectual History, Political Ideology, and International Cultural Relations as a professor at The Gakushuin and visiting professor at Keio and Tsukuba Universities in Japan and as a lecturer at Tokyo University, Yonsei and Renmin Universities in Seoul and Beijing, and the Harvard Summer School. From 1977-1984 he was the Tokyo-based Associate Executive Director of the federally funded Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission for scholarly and artistic exchanges between those two countries. He now makes his home in Thailand.
I urge anyone who is interested in either Ivan’s view of the world, or how the world was quite a different place vis-a-vis the Cold War’s relationship with Islam a mere half-century ago, to download and read “Happier Islams” on Amazon Kindle. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
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But that poster has three great big stripy lies: 1) “Every foreign guest must present their passport” 2) “which must be photocopied” 3) “under the Hotel Business Law” — which states none of these things. Not to mention that Japan’s registered foreign residents are not required to carry around passports anyway.
What’s particularly egregious about this sign is that the Japanese police know better — because we told them so a decade ago.
“After we sought clarification, according to the Environmental Health Division, Health Service Bureau, Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the new registration procedure at lodging facilities does not apply to foreigners who are residents of Japan but only to tourists and temporary visitors. If you write a Japanese address on the check-in sheet, hotels are not supposed to ask for your passport.”
Right. So why do the Ibaraki police still feel they can lie about the laws they are entrusted to uphold?
Because … Ibaraki. I’ll get to that shortly…
But back to Onur, who also took action. He stayed an extra day in Mito and raised the issue with local authorities:
“I went to Mito City Public Health Department (Hokensho), who were very helpful, and confirmed that as a resident I need not show ID at hotels. Then I showed them the poster from the Ibaraki police department. Surprised, they said they had never seen this poster before, and the police had not contacted them about it. They said it is clearly different from the real law, especially the bit about ‘every foreign guest.’
“The Hokensho added that the police have become stricter because of the G-7 (Ise-Shima) summit and 2020 Tokyo Olympics. They said they would check the hotel and inform me of the result.”
But Onur wasn’t done yet: “Then I talked with two officers at the Mito City Police Department’s Security Division. They listened without making any comments. I showed them an official announcement from the Health Ministry and said that their poster is clearly different.
“The police read the ministry announcement and took notes like they were unaware of the law, asking questions like ‘Do the other hotels in other parts of Japan ask for your ID card?’ and ‘Isn’t checking the ID card necessary to confirm that a foreigner really has an address in Japan?’ I offered the contact number at Health Ministry for more information, but they said it wasn’t necessary. Finally, I asked them to fix their poster. They said they would check the law and behave accordingly.”
Shortly afterwards, Onur got a call from the Hokensho: “They checked my hotel and saw the poster was now changed. It seems the Ibaraki police had printed a new one and distributed it to all hotels within a few hours! The Hokensho said the new poster clearly states ‘foreign nationals who do not possess an address in Japan,’ which follows regulations. They said the police warned the hotel not to make the same mistake again. Finally, they thanked me for informing them about this problem.”
Well done. It’s satisfying to have others retrace our steps and get even better results. It’s just a shame that he should have to.
However, two issues still niggle. One is that photocopying requirement, which, according to The Japan Times’ own legal columnist, Colin P. A. Jones, may also be questionable:
“According to the Personal Information Protection Act (Kojin Joho Hogo Ho), the hotel should explain to you why they are collecting personal information from you, which is what they are doing if they take a copy of your passport,” Jones said in an email. “So if they can confirm that you are a resident of Japan by looking at your residence card or driver’s license, they do not need to take a copy because they have confirmed that the Hotel Act no longer applies. If they take a copy they are collecting personal information beyond what is necessary for the expressed purpose. In my experience, once you point this out, hotel staff then start mumbling about ‘their policies,’ but of course those don’t trump the law.”
Second issue: Ibaraki.
Ibaraki is where cops take local grumps seriously when they report a “suspicious foreigner” standing near JR Ushiku Station — seriously enough to arrest him on Aug. 13, 2014, for not carrying his “gaijin card.” Well, that “foreigner” turned out to be a Japanese, and Japanese are not required to carry ID. Whoops.
Ibaraki is also the site of a mysterious and under-reported knife attack on Chinese “trainee” laborers (the Japan Times, Feb. 23, 2015), which resulted in an as-yet-unresolved[*] murder. (Funny that. Imagine the media outcry if foreigners had knifed Japanese!)
Do Ibaraki police have anything to do with this? Actually, yes.
Ibaraki police have posted in public places some of Japan’s most militantly anti-foreign posters. I mean this literally: Since 2008, at least three different versions have depicted cops, bedecked in paramilitary weaponry, physically subduing foreigners. The slogan: “Protect (Japan) by heading (foreigners) off at the shores.”
Therein lies the point I keep banging on about in this column: What happens when racial discrimination is left unrestrained by laws? It just gets normalized and embedded.
Treating people badly without official checks and balances eventually makes abuse tolerated and ignored — like background radiation. And, fueled by the innate fear of The Outsider, the abuses just get worse and worse. Because they can.
In this case, the unfettered xenophobia radiating from the Ushiku Detention Center, Ibaraki’s fast-breeder reactor of foreigner dehumanization and abuse, has clearly corroded Ibaraki police’s judgment — to the point where they feel they can outright lie about the laws they are supposed to enforce, and have their propaganda irradiate hotels, street-corner busybodies and the general public.
It’s time for people to realize that Japanese police’s free rein to maintain our allegedly “safe society” has limits. For officially treating an entire people as potentially “unsafe” is dangerous in itself.
Ibaraki Prefecture thus offers a fascinating case study. Of what happens to a neighborhood when xenophobia goes beyond the occasional international summit or sports event, and becomes regularized into official extralegal standard operating procedure.
[*] Correction: According to Chinese media translated into Japanese, the abovementioned knife attack and murder of Chinese “Trainees” has resulted in the arrest of 5 Vietnamese nationals:
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Hi Blog. A first step towards Debito.org’s overarching goal — a law against racial discrimination in Japan — happened yesterday: Some kind of legislation to curb public expression of racism, in the form of a law against hate speech.
Now, Debito.org cannot wholeheartedly support this law for the reasons noted in the article below: It defines “hate speech” only narrow-band (only covering legal residents of Japan), it doesn’t actually encode punishments or penalties, and it joins all of Japan’s other laws that ineffectually ban things only in principle and get ignored in practice (such as Japan’s Equal Employment Opportunity Law, which has not curbed male-female wage and promotion differentials one whit outside of a lengthy and risky Japanese court process). It is, as critics say below, mere window-dressing to make Japan look like a “civilized” country to its neighbors. That said, I’m going to opt that it’s better to have some law that acknowledges the existence of a problem (as opposed to what’s been going on before; even the article indicates below there was a hate rally on average more than once a day somewhere in Japan). Let it potentially chasten xenophobes and indicate that minorities in Japan are here to stay and deserve dignity, respect, and the right to be unstigmatized. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
Japan’s first anti-hate speech law passed the Diet on Tuesday, marking a step forward in the nation’s long-stalled efforts to curb racial discrimination.
But the legislation has been dogged by skepticism, with critics slamming it as philosophical at best and toothless window dressing at worst.
The ruling coalition-backed law seeks to eliminate hate speech, which exploded onto the scene around 2013 amid Japan’s deteriorating relationship with South Korea.
It is the first such law in a country that has long failed to tackle the issue of racism despite its membership in the U.N.-designated International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Critics, however, have decried the legislation as ineffective.
While it condemns unjustly discriminatory language as “unforgivable,” it doesn’t legally ban hate speech and sets no penalty.
How effective the law will be in helping prevent the rallies frequently organized by ultraconservative groups calling for the banishment or even massacre of ethnic Korean residents remains to be seen.
Critics including the Japan Lawyers Network for Refugees have also pointed out the law is only intended to cover people of overseas origin and their descendants “who live legally in Japan.”
The law’s mention of legality, they say, will exclude many foreign residents without valid visas, such as asylum seekers and overstayers.
Submitted by lawmakers from the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, the bill initially limited its definition of hate speech to threats to bodies, lives and freedom of non-Japanese as well as other incendiary language aimed at excluding them.
But at the urging of the Democratic Party, the scope of the legislation was expanded to cover “egregious insults” against foreign residents.
The law defines the responsibility of the state and municipalities in taking measures against hate speech, such as setting up consultation systems and better educating the public on the need to eradicate such language.
The Justice Ministry’s first comprehensive probe into hate speech found in March that demonstrations organized by the anti-Korean activist group Zaitokukai and other conservative organizations still occur on a regular basis, although not all involve invectives against ethnic minorities.
A total of 347 such rallies took place in 2013, while 378 were held in 2014 and 190 from January through September last year, the Justice Ministry said. ENDS
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This is good news. Usually when an academic book comes out in hardcover, the paperback version is not released for a year or two in order not to affect sales of the hardcover. (The hardcover is, generally, intended for libraries and must-have buyers).
However, sales of the hardcover have been so strong that the publisher anticipates this book will continue to sell well in both versions.
So, just in time for Fall Semester 2016, “Embedded Racism” will be coming out over the summer for university classes, with an affordable price of $49.99 (a competitive price for a 378-page textbook, less than half the price of the hardcover).
Please consider getting the book for your class and/or adding the book to your library! Academics may inquire via https://rowman.com/Page/Professors about the availability of review copies and ebooks.
Hardcover version: November 2015 (North America, Latin America, Australia, and Japan), January 2016 (UK, Europe, rest of Asia, South America, and Africa), 378 pages ISBN: 978-1-4985-1390-6 eBook: 978-1-4985-1391-3 Subjects: Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General, Social Science / Minority Studies, Social Science / Sociology / General
Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
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Debito.org has won numerous awards, been cited in publications worldwide, and its work noted in reports from organizations such as the US State Department and The United Nations. With thousands upon thousands of documents and reference materials, Debito.org remains one of the oldest continuously-maintained websites on Japan. It is THE website of record on issues of racial discrimination and human rights for Visible Minorities in Japan, and, for some, advice on how to make a better, more stable, more empowered life here. It has outlasted at least two stalker websites, a faux threat of lawsuit, an insider attempt to artificially set its Google Page Rank at zero, and cyberhackings. And it will continue to go on for as long as possible.
I just wanted to mark the occasion with a brief post of commemoration. Thank you everyone for reading and contributing to Debito.org! Long may we continue. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
P.S. Let us know in the comments section which part(s) of Debito.org you’ve found helpful!
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Do you like what you read on Debito.org? Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? We are celebrating Debito.org’s 20th Anniversary in 2016, so please consider donating a little something. More details here.
