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DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER MAY 23, 2022
Hello Debito.org Newsletter Readers. Here is an excerpt of my latest SNA column, out today.
This one discusses in part why journalism on Japan has historically had so many topical, “weird Japan” stories. Part of it is because some commentators on Japan remain willfully ignorant of the Japanese language. Others get duped by the industry of “Gaijin Handlers” designed to steer foreign perceptions of Japan in the “right direction”. And some commentators, like the late Henry Scott-Stokes, former Tokyo Bureau Chief at The Financial Times, Times of London, and New York Times, become willing abettors of the Japanese far-right, selling their reputations to maintain their privilege.
Have a read. It resolves one mystery I always felt when meeting numerous veteran foreign correspondents during the Otaru Onsens Case. They would often arrogantly question my standing to work within the Japanese system as resident, Japanese citizen, and activist. Yet they could barely read the menu. Time for me to question their standing too:
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Visible Minorities: Henry Scott-Stokes, Sell-Out to Gaijin Handlers
Shingetsu News Agency, May 23, 2022, by Debito Arudou
SNA (Tokyo) — Henry Johnstone Morland Scott-Stokes, patrician among Japan’s foreign correspondents since 1964, recently died in Tokyo at the age of 83, but not before he did untold damage by performing as a foreign handmaid to Japan’s fascists.
A man described as “tweedy” and “entertaining and congenial,” Briton Scott-Stokes was nonetheless a man of privilege, lucky enough to land in Japan as Tokyo bureau chief of the Financial Times only three years after graduating from Oxford.
Becoming bureau chief of a major newspaper at the wizened old age of 26 might seem odd today, but back then foreign journalism in Japan had lower standards, and the field was infused with neocolonial attitudes towards the “natives.” Fluency in your assigned country’s language was not required.
Nor was Japanese required at the other “Big Three” English-language newspapers in Japan, as Scott-Stokes later became bureau chief of The Times of London and the New York Times through the 1970s and early 1980s. For a man described as “someone who really understood Japan,” he spent his entire 58 years in Japan as a functional illiterate, unable to fluently read, write, or speak Japanese…
Most hacks in his station moved on to other countries or settled into a quiet life in Japan, living a harmless twilight existence as cottage consultants in their cups.
Scott-Stokes didn’t. He didn’t just continue to rely on his privileged access to Japan’s elite for his income; he decided to embrace their fascist tendencies…
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Entire article at
https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/05/23/visible-minorities-henry-scott-stokes-sell-out-to-gaijin-handlers/
Debito.org anchor site for commentary at
https://www.debito.org/?p=17038
Now on with the Newsletter.
Table of Contents:
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1) My SNA Visible Minorities column 32: “On the Naomi Osaka Heckling” at Indian Wells tournament (March 21, 2022)
2) Kyodo: “63% of people with foreign roots in Japan questioned by police”, part of systemic racial profiling by the National Police Agency
3) My SNA Visible Minorities 31: “Shintaro Ishihara: Good Riddance to an Evil Man”, an honest obituary. Feb 20, 2022
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By Debito Arudou, Ph.D. (debito@debito.org, www.debito.org, Twitter @arudoudebito)
Debito.org Newsletters as always are freely forwardable
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1) My SNA Visible Minorities column 32: “On the Naomi Osaka Heckling” at Indian Wells tournament (March 21, 2022)
Note: This is the column that caused a backlash because I’m a white man writing it, and that backlash inspired my latest column above. As Shingetsu News Agency President Michael Penn noted:
“Debito found a way to provoke them again, and I must say that I don’t understand the way a lot of people think these days. Those who read the article and interacted with what was written tended to say on social media that they largely agreed with it. But there was a more vocal cohort who, not really disagreeing with any specific arguments made, were outraged on the basis that Debito, a white man, had dared to give any advice to Naomi Osaka. Apparently, we are now supposed to live self-contained within our own little tribal identities, and universal humanity is no longer recognized as sufficient grounds to express an opinion, even for a news columnist whose job is to comment on public affairs.”
Here’s what I wrote:
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SNA: At a recent tournament in Indian Wells, California, Japan tennis champion Naomi Osaka was heckled by some troll in the audience who shouted out “you suck!” while she was playing on court. That reduced Osaka to tears. She asked the referee if she could address the crowd, then asked to have the troll ejected. Both requests were denied, and play resumed. Osaka then lost in straight sets.
In post-game comments, Osaka tearfully noted the distraction and compared her situation to a 2001 incident where Venus and Serena Williams faced crowd abuse, again at Indian Wells. The Williamses boycotted the venue for more than a decade after that. Fortunately, this time Osaka’s heckler was the outlier. The audience at the venue, fellow players afterwards, media and internet chatter were overwhelmingly supportive of her.
Still, others noted that Osaka needs to develop a thicker skin. I’m afraid I agree. Osaka has been around on this circuit for quite a while. She’s now 24, and obviously has the talent to be world champion. Now the question is, does she have the mettle to maintain it? […] At some point in time Osaka has to stop letting hecklers take her focus away. This is that point in time…
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The full text of the article is at https://www.debito.org/?p=17021
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2) Kyodo: “63% of people with foreign roots in Japan questioned by police”, part of systemic racial profiling by the National Police Agency
Kyodo: A total of 62.9 percent of people in Japan with foreign roots were questioned by police over the past five years, preliminary results of a recent Tokyo Bar Association survey showed, with the group saying the outcome is evidence of biased behavior by officers.
The survey on racial profiling drew responses from 2,094 people with roots in foreign countries. The association said it conducted the poll after receiving complaints that many such people had been questioned by police apparently due to their appearance.
Among individuals who were approached by the police over the past five years, 50.4 percent were stopped “two to five times,” while 10.8 percent were questioned “six to nine times” and 11.5 percent “10 times or more,” according to the survey conducted between Jan. 11 and Feb. 28…
In a free description section, some wrote that after officers learned of their foreign nationality, they showed “overbearing behavior” toward them. The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo had warned on its official Twitter account last year that it had been receiving reports of “suspected racial profiling incidents” with several foreigners “detained, questioned and searched” by the police.
COMMENT: More quantifiable grist for the mill for Debito.org’s longstanding substantiated claim that Racial Profiling is standard operating procedure for the Japanese Police. Bravo Tokyo Bar Association for getting us some citable statistics.
https://www.debito.org/?p=17026
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3) My SNA Visible Minorities 31: “Shintaro Ishihara: Good Riddance to an Evil Man”, an honest obituary. Feb 20, 2022
SNA: Former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who died February 1, was an evil man. Any honest obituary would admit as such. Unfortunately, the media’s retrospectives have tended to eulogize him, using weasel words so as to not speak ill of the dead.
But that’s the wrong reflex. Evil should never be whitewashed, especially when it comes to a person as evil as Ishihara, and by doing so they are complicit in historical revisionism. I will try to rectify that with this column by recounting Ishihara’s actual record…
A hateful man who poured his hate into concrete policies, Ishihara eventually found himself in a position of real power, elected multiple times to the governorship of the world’s largest and richest city. Ishihara installed Japan’s first neighborhood surveillance cameras specifically in areas of Tokyo he claimed were “hotbeds of foreign crime,” and went on TV at regular intervals to propagandize that Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and Roppongi at night were no longer Japan.
He also said that Japanese politicians who support more civil and human rights for foreign residents must have “foreign ancestors” themselves, and abetted political witch hunts and loyalty tests to root out politicians with international connections.
Essentially, Ishihara was trying to ethnically cleanse Japan, undoing the “internationalization” phase of the 1980s and 1990s of openness and tolerance. In its place, he sponsored overt racism and normalized xenophobia.
And it worked. To this day, entire political parties, candidates, and hate groups publicly rally for the expulsion of foreigners and the extermination of Koreans. That’s why current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida can’t easily lift the world’s longest, most draconian and unscientific Covid border policies–because polls say 57% of the fearful Japanese public want them kept…
Full article at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/02/21/visible-minorities-good-riddance-to-an-evil-man/
Anchor site for commentary on Debito.org at
https://www.debito.org/?p=17006
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Thanks for reading! Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER MAY 23, 2022, ENDS
21 comments on “DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER MAY 23, 2022”
I burst out laughing reading this article and seeing the picture. So 7 US citizens from Hawaii land in Japan to go on a „test tour“. And all of them are Asian of course (probably Japanese-American if I had to take a guess). Not a single Black or White person.
https://japantoday.com/category/national/7-from-u.s.-land-in-japan-for-1st-test-tours-before-tourism-reopening
You couldn‘t make this up. Japan is seriously done for. Reading all the reaction on Twitter and other social media is hilarious. Even the hard core Japanophiled are finally realizing what Japan really stands for.
I guess when Kishida said that Japan will soon introduce new border policies that will mimic other G7 countries, he actually meant North Korea instead of G7 countries.
Yet Japanese can travel the world and bring back all manner of diseases, plague, and pestilence, and the government even guarantees their privacy.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20220527_32/
“The ministry did not disclose the patients’ locations, ages, nor details of the symptoms they developed”
This is so screwy on so many levels.
Kishida effectively deputizes every disgruntled o-Yaji to police any NJ they stumble across regarding Japans non-existent ‘rules’ for wearing face masks (that he said only last week were unnecessary outside and didn’t wear himself when he met the ‘test group’ of Japanese-foreign tourists);
https://japantoday.com/category/national/kishida-says-foreign-tourists-should-follow-japan-face-mask-rules
Japanese society begins to grapple with microaggressions.
https://japantoday.com/category/national/feature-japanese-society-begins-to-grapple-with-microaggressions
The article should be titled, Japanese academia familiarize themselves with microaggressions.
Government is going to fight damage suit filed by Wishma‘s family.
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/05/ced26518a02c-japan-govt-to-fight-damages-suit-filed-by-kin-of-dead-sri-lankan.html
I‘m not even going to comment on this, except for saying „shame on them“.
“Her relatives have also filed a criminal complaint with the Nagoya District Public Prosecutors Office against the immigration center’s senior officials, accusing them of causing her death by failing to provide appropriate medical care.”
The criminal case is the real meat and potatoes of this. If they have enough evidence to proceed, it would be a real milestone. Criminal cases against the government almost never get anywhere. Expect the government to withhold evidence not in their favor, of course.
Three years after the introduction of the Specified Skills Visa system / 特定技能制度, the first NJ can finally bring their family into the country:
1st foreigner under new visa setup can bring family to Japan
The person in question (Weng Fei) has been through Japan’s labor door so many times, it’s a wonder he didn’t end up with motion sickness:
* He first landed in Japan in November 2010 and stayed for three years, then returned to China.
* He returned to Japan in May 2015 and did another three-year stint, then returned to China.
* He then returned to Japan again in November 2018.
Due to the ‘mileage’ he accumulated as a technical intern trainee, in 2020 he was able to switch tracks to the Class I category of the ‘specified skills’ visa. This allowed him to stay in Japan for for an additional five years without having to return to China.
He then spent about a year brushing up on his skills and thereafter passed a national exam pertaining to pouring concrete which apparently meant he could apply for the Class II category of the ‘specified skills’ visa. Two months after his application, he received the Class II category resident card.
All-in-all, he had worked in Japan for almost 10 years.
According to the president of the concrete company where Weng Fei works, two other Chinese workers are also gearing up their applications for Class II.
This is all fine and well: while Mr. Weng Fei will be able to renew his SSV2 / 特定技能2号 visa indefinitely, at the end of the day it’s still just a work visa: the fate of he (and soon, his family) in Japan are still ultimately decided by the GoJ.
As has been mentioned by others on Debito.org, in the run-up to the GoJ reopening Japan to foreign tourists, ‘test tours’ (with live NJ as the test subjects) have gotten underway:
7 from US land in Japan for 1st test tours before tourism reopening
Foreign test tour visits Japan’s Ibaraki Pref. to check virus measures
新型コロナ 訪日実証ツアー、参加者らが来県 感染対策を検証 ／茨城
日本ツアー第1陣が成田到着 観光客受け入れ再開に向け実証実験
【外国人観光客】受け入れ再開へ 実証事業参加ツアー客が到着
To echo what @Niklas observed, so far as I can tell, all the guinea pigs appear to be of Asian decent with no other ethnicities present. For regular readers of Debito.org, this should hardly come as a surprise: it’s yet another example of embedded racism at work (i.e. they LOOK Japanese and so are allowed to enter Japan).
Perhaps a better description of these tours would be ‘state-sponsored pseudo-scientific race-based tourism experiments’.
In any case, when the doors are opened again to NJ tourists on June 10th, inbound tourists will have a litany of hurdles to overcome, including…
a) being OK with their experience in Japan being constrained to guided package tours,
b) not coming from from a “yellow” or “red” country,
c) returning a negative COVID tests prior to departure,
d) adhering to non-existent mask rules,
e) having the money to travel while the world is experiencing historic levels of inflation.
This begs the obvious question: what sort of NJ tourists will actually want to come to Japan under these circumstances?
Well, if the ‘test tours’ are any indication, the ‘face’ of post-pandemic tourism in Japan will be decidedly different.
Update: a lab rat catches COVID forcing ‘scientists’ to shut down one of the 15 experiments:
Visitor on trial tour in Japan tests positive for COVID-19
Japan test tour by 4 Thai people canceled after COVID infection
訪日客が実証ツアーでコロナ感染 政府「予測内」、医療関係者は懸念
Rhetorical question: Will the sailing still be smooth after a monkeypox outbreak in Japan?
Narita arrivals have a smoother ride under eased COVID-19 rules / 海外からの旅客、スムーズに入国 水際の制限緩和で成田空港は
Ya think?!:
Japan gov’t bans intermediary body from introducing foreign trainees
ベトナム人実習生暴行 受け入れ仲介の監理団体、許可取り消し
Supervising body faces 5-year ban over abuse of intern trainee
ベトナム人実習生への暴行 監理団体の許可取り消し 相談に対応せず
In related news, the Asahi Shimbun has laid bare the shortcomings of both the technical intern training program and specified skilled worker program in the following op-eds:
EDITORIAL: Technical intern program needs prompt review by government
（社説）技能実習制度 政治の責任で見直せ
Alarmed by the declining stature of its universities, Japan is planning to shower up to $2.3 billion a year on a handful of schools in hopes of boosting their prominence. The new plan “aims to provide young promising scholars with the research environment that the world’s top universities are supposed to offer, to dramatically enhance international collaborations, and to promote the brain circulation both domestically and internationally,” says Takahiro Ueyama, a science policy specialist on the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CSTI), Japan’s highest science advisory body, which was heavily involved in crafting the scheme.
But Guojun Sheng, a Chinese developmental biologist at Kumamoto University in Japan, is skeptical. “I am not very optimistic that this [plan] will do much to curb the slide in the ranking of Japanese research activities or international competitiveness,” he says.
Sheng says the new plan does not address fundamental problems at Japanese research institutes: too few women and foreign scientists, a fear of change, and lack of support for young scientists.
To get better results, “Japan has to change its research culture,” he says.
The entire article can be found here.
Behind China is bad enough, but behind INDIA? That must really sting.
After the J-gov has told Japanese people they don’t have to wear masks;
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/05/20/national/japan-outdoor-mask-advice/
The J-gov tells NJ tourists they must wear masks all the time;
https://japantoday.com/category/national/japan-to-ask-foreign-tourists-to-wear-masks-take-out-insurance
Presumably because they seriously believe that there are 20,000 NJ per day who are desperate to get into Japan for a N. Korea style 100% guided group tour right now during a global cost of living crisis and threat of recession.
But hey! There’s an election coming up so gotta panda to the myth that NJ are dangerous and need controlling and also a health risk.
Next step will be NJ residents being hassled by random Japanese for not wearing masks outside and denied service, all on the assumption that they are rule breaking tourists.
Masks mandatory at all times for NJ tourists. Hang on, I’m having flashbacks to another group of people made to wear something highly visible so that the people around them could identify them as ‘others’. Something in Germany, around 110 years ago…Gee, what could that be?
“But hey! There’s an election coming up so gotta panda to the myth that NJ are dangerous and need controlling and also a health risk.”
@Jim Di Griz, indeed: tourists need their travel agencies to enter their travel information such as names, passport numbers and their place of stay on the country’s immigration registration website (and also apparently, Japan’s ‘health ministry system’) before applying for and obtaining visas. Additionally, the agencies will keep records of the tours, including places visited and where tourists sat on public transportation. Participating tourists found infected with the novel coronavirus will be taken to medical institutions swiftly.
At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if the GoJ mandated underwear and hair color checks.
References:
Japan starts visa process for restart of tourism as COVID worries wane
FOCUS: Travel firms thrown in confusion as Japan reopens to foreign tourists
Given Japan’s current trajectory, that would be a sight to behold.
Life in Japan: Embracing ethnicity and diversity
日本語の息子に配達員「プリーズ…」 英誌元特派員が見た民族性
Well, this is encouraging…some consequences perhaps?:
ベトナム人技能実習生を暴行疑い、元従業員ら書類送検 岡山県警
ベトナム人実習生を暴行容疑、元従業員4人を書類送検 岡山県警
Authorities decide not to prosecute immigration officials after the death of Wishma Sandamali. Not surprising at all, unfortunately. There is no justice in Japan.
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASQ6J73M9Q6JOIPE00Z.html
You see, it’s not murder when government employees do it (in fact, it’s not even a crime).
https://japantoday.com/category/crime/charges-dropped-against-japan-officials-over-sri-lankan-woman's-death
#Something about a tennis player and minorities lives matter.
“Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution” is a group of retired former prosecutors whose job it is to “oversee” the actions of government prosecutors. What a farce! They are the equivalent of a “dai III sha innkai” which is just a rubber stamp/deflection of criticism/smoke and mirrors/lets make it look like we are doing something without really doing, anything, wisp of gas.
“The actual cause of Wishimas death could not be determined” Of course not! When you dont want to find something, it IS difficult to find.
Looks there aren’t many interested in a DPRK-style tour of Japan; only 1,300 apply for Japan entry since tours reopen as COVID fears ease.
In other news, come October, NJ will be able to cut hair in Tokyo:
Tokyo to allow foreigners to work as beauticians, 1st in Japan
日本は「美容鎖国」だった…都が新事業、外国人美容師も就労可能に