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Hello Blog. Sorry for the delay — latest book revisions taking up a lot of time. I thought we’d go back to the archives today and look at a twenty-year-old article that appeared in Honolulu’s late, great alternative newspaper (which folded only recently), that has as much to say about the present situation of human rights for NJ residents of Japan as it did when it came out about a generation ago. In retrospect, it’s amazing how little has changed. Have a read. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
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PRINTS OF DARKNESS
When civil-rights activist/missionary Ronald Fujiyoshi refused to be fingerprinted in compliance with Japan’s Alien Registration Law in 1981, he launched a personal attack on the Japanese government which still hasn’t ended.
February 9, 1994. Honolulu Weekly magazine, by David Flack
For Ronald Fujiyoshi, the Japanese government’s abusive fingerprinting requirement for foreign residents is only part of a vast matrix of institutionalized racial discrimination and totalitarian social control.
PHOTO: Fujiyoshi holds a press conference during his 25-day hunger strike.
Perhaps few people in Hawaii are watching Japan as closely as Ronald Fujiyoshi. His primary interest is the way the new government is officially dealing with racism. On this issue Fujiyoshi is fervently and outspokenly critical of Japan, and he speaks from experience. Living there for 15 years, working as a missionary in Osaka in the Korean-Japanese community, he engaged in an act of civil disobedience when he refused to be fingerprinted — as all foreign residents were then required by the government to do. Compelled to leave Japan in 1988, he is allowed to return only to attend court hearings for his trial, which is still in progress.
Last summer Japan embarked on what may be its most important transition period in recent history. Fed up with the “business as usual” tactics that have led to rampant corruption in Japan’s political circles for the last several years, on July 18 the country’s voters deprived the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of its majority in the Japanese Diet for the first time since World War II. The resulting coalition, a curious collection of opposition parties from both the left and right of the political spectrum, took the helm of the world’s second largest economy with little more than high hopes as its guide. Many experts predict the alliance’s demise before the end of 1994.
Fujiyoshi is keeping his fingers crossed that real change is in the air. After waging his own personal battle against the Japanese government for the greater part of the last two decades, the 53-year-old Hilo resident is hopeful that the recent change in government is a sign that the Japanese people have at last begun to fight back against what he contends is a sinister system which has been unjustly subjugating them for centuries.
Fujiyoshi’s personal beef is Japan’s latent racism, which he maintains is knowingly cultivated by the country’s ruling circles in order to foster an “us vs. them” mentality. Japan’s alien-registration laws are widely known to be among the most rigid and strictly enforced in the world. It has long been a complaint among non-Japanese immigrants in Japan that the laws are also part of a greater government scheme to prevent them from feeling completely at ease in their adopted homeland, withhold full citizenship rights and relegate them to positions of permanent underclass status in the overall economic tapestry of the nation.
Especially onerous to Fujiyoshi was the Japanese government’s longstanding policy of insisting that all foreign residents and criminal suspects in Japan submit fingerprints for identification purposes.
Being grouped with criminals and thus treated as undesirables created acute resentment in the Korean-Japanese community, over 700,000 strong and representing roughly four out of five of Japan’s foreign residents. Many of them have lived in Japan for several generations; their relatives were originally brought there forcibly during World War II as military conscripts or factory workers. They are still treated as outsiders, and their “alien” status frequently denies them jobs, housing and scholarships. Fujiyoshi contends that the fingerprint policy is both unconstitutional by Japan’s own admitted standards and an abhorrent violation of the United Nations International Covenant of Human Rights, to which Japan is a signatory.
Bowing to pressure which Fujiyoshi helped to apply, the Japanese Diet finally dropped the controversial fingerprinting clause for those non-Japanese who were bom and raised in Japan.
Despite being widely recognized as a front man for the grass-roots movement to have the law overturned, Fujiyoshi is hesitant to claim much credit personally for the Diet’s decision to repeal the statute. “You must remember that I was not the only person who refused to be fingerprinted,” he says. “Since 1980 nearly 15,000 people have done it.” Neither was he the first to disobey the law; several Japanese of Korean ancestry preceeded him. Most will agree, however, that among those who did protest, Fujiyoshi was certainly among the most energetic — and, as a result, emerged as a leader and spokesman for the movement.
Fujiyoshi has long been involved with civil rights. Bom in Los Angeles and raised on Kauai, he moved to the Big Island with his family when his father was transferred to Hilo by his chuch. As a young man in his 20s, Fujiyoshi left Hawaii in 1963 to attend the Chicago Theological Seminary, the same institution that Jesse Jackson would join a year later. The two became good friends; Jackson visited him in Japan in 1986. Fujiyoshi spent much of his seminary service in Chicago working in a black ghetto on the city’s west side. “Can you imagine me,” he says, “a local boy fresh off the Big Island, going from here to a Chicago ghetto? That was a real baptism.”
Fujiyoshi first journeyed to Asia in 1968 on a fellowship in Singapore with the World Council of Churches. He remained in Southeast Asia for five years, working as a lay missionary and slowly gaining notoriety for his activist, hands-on approach to organizing and helping groups of industrial workers in economically distressed communities. “The Church was saying all the right things on Sunday mornings,” he says, “but the world was not changing. I became more interested in learning the skills necessary to actually solve some of the problems.”
His reputation for problem solving in the real world grew. In 1973 the Korean Christian Church asked him to relocate to Japan to help improve the living conditions of the sizable Korean population there. He took up residence in Osaka’s Ikuno Ward, home of Japan’s largest Korean community, where he spent the next 15 years living and working, voluntarily subjecting himself to the same long hours and low wages of the people he had come to help. Eventually he was able to earn their trust.
Fujiyoshi’s first open clash with the Japanese government came in 1981. Claiming that it was a violation of his basic human rights, he refused to comply with the fingerprinting requirement of Japan’s Alien Registration Law. He was indicted in 1982 and embarked on a civil-rights campaign within Japan’s court system which soon became a twisted game of cat-and-mouse. Four years after his initial indictment, Fujiyoshi was found guilty by the Kobe District Court but fined a mere $70. He faced another token fine after his appeal was rejected at the Osaka High Court. “It was just a slap on the wrist,” Fujiyoshi says of the fines, which were deliberately set at levels low enough for him to be able to afford. “They wanted to make sure that the decision was ‘guilty’ but also give the impression that the Japanese government is very benevolent.”
This face-saving charade was finally abandoned when the Japanese government refused to grant Fujiyoshi a permit that would have allowed him to re-enter Japan after returning to the U.S. to visit his ailing father-in-law. He responded to this action by embarking on a 25-day hunger strike aimed at publicly embarrassing the intransigent Japanese officials. He has since been given a special visa which allows him to return to Japan — but only to attend his own court hearings. Though he has been back in Hawaii since 1988, it is clear that his thoughts still lie in Japan. “I don’t feel like I ever left,” he says. “As long as my case is still being tried by the Japanese courts, I cannot separate myself from Japan.” Fujiyoshi has appealed his case to the Japanese Supreme Court, where it currently sits in quiet and secret deliberation. The process can take years, and a decision can come unannounced at any time. Feeling certain that his appeal will eventually be rejected by Japan’s highest court, he is already planning his next move. “If I lose this appeal,” he says, “then I will conclude that the Japanese judicial system cannot give me the justice I deserve. It is then my right to appeal the decision to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.” This might prove to be Fujiyoshi’s most powerful weapon. At a time when Japan is struggling with itself and the rest of the globe to find its appropriate niche in the world community, Fujiyoshi’s charges of racism and his refusal to be silenced could be a severe embarrassment to the Japanese government.
Those in power in Japan attempted to render the entire issue moot after the Showa emperor Hirohito’s death. In his honor an Imperial pardon was promulgated which granted amnesty to most of the defendants of fingerprinting cases still in litigation. It was purely a political move, Fujiyoshi asserts, a feeble effort to diffuse the issue before it could gain a measurable amount of publicity outside the country. With Fujiyoshi’s assistance and encouragement, other fingerprint refusers declined the offer and instead called a press conference to denounce the pardon. “The court’s acquittal of the refusers presumes that they are guilty and should be judged,” Fujiyoshi points out, “when it is the government and the emperor’s system that need to be examined.”
Fujiyoshi’s disdain for Japan’s governing institutions extends beyond the fingerprinting issue. The system in place in today’s Japan, he asserts, is the direct descendant of the nationalistic bodies that evolved following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, when the country emerged from a prolonged period of political chaos with a reinvigorated sense of national identity and a perceived “divine right” to culturally convert other Asians and make them loyal citizens of Japan.
Fujiyoshi characterizes Japan’s approach to its minority peoples as one of “assimilation and control.” He has argued in court that the Alien Registration Law is part of a larger Japanese government policy of controlling other Asian and Pacific peoples by forcibly “Japanizing” them: compelling them both directly and indirectly to conceal their ethnicity. This system of assimilation and control results directly in the exploitation of Asians by relegating them to the lowest echelon of the country’s economic caste system, he contends. He sees it as a continuation of repressive prewar policies which forced colonial subjects to adopt Japanese names, speak Japanese exclusively in public, wear Japanese clothing and worship only at Shinto shrines.
Fujiyoshi lambasts the myth painstakingly cultivated by the government that the Japanese are descendants of a pure race. “The people in authority perpetuate the myth that Japan is a homogeneous society,” he claims. “It provides strong socialcohesiveness, and people can then be more easily controlled. And by keeping the people controlled, the government can also keep control of the economy.”
Therein lies the import of Fujiyoshi’s thesis, that the core issue is not merely a dispute between the central government and its peripheral minorities; the policy affects all of Japan’s citizens in equally disastrous ways. The Japanese nation can be compared to a crowded boat, the theory goes, and if too many more are allowed on board, the boat will capsize and everyone will drown. It stands to reason that the few who are permitted on board will be those whom the Japanese government deems to be of little threat to its fostered image of Japan as a single-race country. “Discrimination against the Korean people is not just a holdover of some misunderstandings of history, and it’s not a part of a modem ideology to control non-Japanese people,” Fujiyoshi warns. “It is an attempt to control the Japanese people themselves.”
For Fujiyoshi, state-sanctioned racism is bad enough, but even more repugnant is the denial of its existence by most Japanese. He maintains that the power structure, for its own purposes, is using its tremendous control over the media (and consequent influence on public opinion) to perpetuate the traditional notion that there are only three major races in the world. “According to this view, all there are are Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid stocks,” says Fujiyoshi, recounting the argument he has heard more times than he cares to remember. This belief is worse than oversimplistic: It makes it possible for the Japanese government to exclude from the category of racial discrimination its dealings with other Asian and Pacific peoples living in the country. Japan can safely perceive itself as a country of only one race and sincerely believe that the racial conflicts plaguing the rest of the world can’t happen there.
According to Fujiyoshi, the primary flaw in this reasoning is that it completely disregards ethnicity: vast differences in culture, language and religion among peoples of the alleged three major racial stocks. And in the process it allows Japan to impose a bureaucratic system for other Asians living within its borders which, practically anywhere else in the world, would be denounced as institutionalized racial discrimination.
The Japanese government is a manipulative entity, Fujiyoshi asserts, which must be forced to confront the falsehoods it has been knowingly (and unknowingly) propagating. Sadly, the problem did not go away with the change in the country’s fingerprint laws. Now that Japan’s resident Koreans have had their burden partially lifted, the recent trend in the country has been to target South Asian peoples whose appearance is more easily discernible from their Japanese hosts. With the current economic slowdown proving to be stubbornly resilient, Fujiyoshi fears that these newer immigrants will become the scapegoats of the recession. “The assimilation and control policy attempts to stamp out the identity of long-term Asians and replace it with Japanese identity,” he says. “Until the Japanese government’s policy is ended, no real solution is in sight. Until their internal economic colony is eliminated, the other Asian and Pacific people in Japan will continue to be exploited because they are considered inferior. Until the national state ideology is exposed for what it is, the Japanese people will continue to be indoctrinated with a hidden racism toward other Asian and Pacific peoples.”
The coalition that assumed control of Japan a few months ago has the potential to effect profound changes rather than mere cosmetic modifications to enhance the government’s image. Fujiyoshi fears that even if his motives are genuine, the newly elected prime minister, Morihiro Hosokawa, may not be powerful enough to make a real difference. But his early actions show some promise. In an attempt to distance himself from past LDP bungles, Hosokawa has already delivered several sincere apologies for Japan’s controversial actions in World War II. Specifically mentioned were the “comfort women” of Asia who where forcibly conscripted and supplied to Japanese soldiers on the front lines during World War II. “Up until now the Japanese government wouldn’t admit its complicity,” Fujiyoshi says. “With the comfort women, once they admit what they are capable of, an entire can of worms is opened. Any official statement that relates to their attitude toward foreigners is significant. After that their treatment of all foreigners can then be called into question.” Now that the fingerprinting requirement has been abolished for permanent alien residents of Japan, does Fujiyoshi see a fundamental shift in the Japanese government’s way? “If the government was halfway repentant,” he says, “they would have done away with fingerprinting entirely.
If they were truly repentant, they would do away with the entire policy of assimilation.” Fujiyoshi’s brightest hope is the Japanese people. Now that Japan has emerged as one of the world’s most affluent nations, the Japanese are traveling abroad in record numbers. Young people are venturing overseas and experiencing other cultures. Many become exchange students. Fujiyoshi predicts severe conflict in the years ahead as the Japanese people become more accepting of other cultures on the one hand, and the government continues to espouse its hard-line stance on the other. “To be honest, I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out,” Fujiyoshi admits, “but if this new coalition can hold together, it will be very significant.” The leadership of the country, after all, will still be in control of education and the media. “Japanese history books refer to Korea as a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan. Just think how different it would be if Korea was instead viewed as a bridge connecting Japan to the wealth and riches of other Asian cultures.”
Now that he has all but exhausted his options in Japan’s legal system, Fujiyoshi’s passions are turning toward the recently formed United States-Japan Committee for Racial Justice, which assigned to itself as one of its first missions the daunting task of formulating a set of guidelines to help prevent potential future racist confrontations between the two countries from erupting into uncontrollable conflagrations of hate.
Despite these recent changes, Fujiyoshi still remains cautiously pessimistic about long-term prospects for United States-Japan relations. Racism is alive and well in both countries, he declares, evidenced by the lack of sensitivities on both sides of the Pacific during the 50th-anniversary observations of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. America exploited the anniversary as an opportunity to boost patriotism at a time when the U.S. government and economy had both come down with symptoms of terminal gridlock. Japan used the occasion to further alienate itself from America and the rest of Asia by not only refusing to apologize for the attack but even suggesting that Japan may not have been entirely responsible for the war in the Pacific. Fujiyoshi sees the possibility of an alarming increase of similar misunderstandings in the future as the once-solid friendship between the United States and Japan is further taxed by the economic slowdowns currently sapping both countries. “We need to adjust to the changes that are occurring,” he says, “and to join with others in dealing with some of the fundamental contradictions that remain in our societies. Only when people feel proud of what they are can they work well with others.”
ENDS
Postscript: Ronald Fujiyoshi now lives on Big Island and continues his human rights work there.
8 comments on “Honolulu Weekly Feb 9 1994: “Prints of Darkness”: Ronald Fujiyoshi, Hawaiian fighter of GOJ fingerprinting of NJ, 20 years ago says prescient things about future Japan”
This guy Fujiyoshi gets it. Imperial era ideology survives at the highest levels of policy making.
This, however, is (the journalists?) fail;
‘At a time when Japan is struggling with itself and the rest of the globe to find its appropriate niche in the world community’.
Japan is struggling to find ‘it’s niche’ because policy makers believe that Japan should be a key player, and global influencer, not a ‘niche’ player.
But this is entirely accurate;
‘The Japanese government is a manipulative entity, Fujiyoshi asserts, which must be forced to confront the falsehoods it has been knowingly (and unknowingly) propagating.’, and Japan should be challenged on these falsehoods constantly.
As an addendum to my above, I’d say that ‘Japan is struggling with itself and the rest of the globe to find its appropriate niche in the world community’ because it’s leaders have never given up on imperial ideology.
During the bubble years they could kid themselves that they ‘lost the war, but won the peace’, but since the Fujiyoshi piece was written, they can’t even kid themselves of that; they are humiliated by the idea that they ‘lost the war, and the peace’. The very ideology that drove Japanese soldiers to inhumane acts of violence when defeat was on the cards, is now the same ideology that in a shrinking, collapsing ponzi economy forces Abe’s right-wing to try and act out on all of it’s fascist fantasies.
So, I went to the city hall today, to do what the legislators wrote:
Show my Juminhyou, which shows that I live with my 4 children,
so that we continue to receive the child allowance, of course.
Once again, the letter from the city hall continues to try to fool weak foreigners who don’t know the law into thinking that “Foreigners (uh, meaning actual foreigners and people who appear to us to be foreigners) have to show MORE! Foreigners must show MORE, yeah, MORE proof of being law-abiding residents, MORE than Japanese Citizens are asked to show. And if you Foreigners don’t show us MORE, we will refuse to give you this legislated child allowance money!”
Once again, I absolutely refused to show one document more than the legislators actually legislated.
Passport Check?
Okotowari shimasu.
Health Card Check?
Okotowari shimasu.
Pension Card Check?
Okotowari shimasu.
Zairyu Card Check?
Okotowari shimasu.
They admitted that just as I told them,
it all was “nin’i”
(nin’i is Japanese for voluntary,
meaning you are not obliged to do it,
which means you can’t be penalized for not doing it,
this goes back to the whole illegal police requests subject,
so remember the word “nin’i” folks. And the phrase “Okotowari shimasu.”
Japan loves to use the “Gaikokujin Okotowari Shimasu” phrase.
I love to use the “Ihou na kyousei wa Okotowari Shimasu” phrase.
“Kokkaigiin no kaita houritsu ni yorimasu to, kore wa nin’i, desu no de, Okotowari Shimasu!”
It feels good to see them back down and admit that they were just trying to fool weak suckers into thinking things are required which really are NOT legally required.
I wish that worked as well as you claim it does Anon…
I think I know what you are referring to: as I recall, two Shibuya Hachiko Koban police officers pressured you into voluntarily verbally admitting you were a foreigner, and then subsequently pressured you into voluntarily showing proof of being innocent of the accusation of the crime of not having a valid visa.
And, as I recall, these two Shibuya Hachiko Koban police officers, while violating the Police Duties Law Article 2 (Keisatsu Hou, Dai Ni Jou” (which requires first having Probable Cause to reasonably believe you committed a crime, which they didn’t have) they also told you on film that you don’t have the right to film them (which you do, since public workers have no privacy, and as all people in public have no privacy.)
So you were up against some obviously law-violating cops, specifically the worst kind: Shibuya law-violating cops. They didn’t back down as they should have. I remember feeling bad for your loss there. But, let’s remember, you were using different phrases there. As I recall, you attempted to use some good phrases, but not this newly recommended “Nin’i desu no de, Okotowari Shimasu” combination statement-of-law phrase.
All I can say is, this phrase helped me successfully change the city hall workers from claiming that “Foreigners need to show MORE proof of law-abiding-ness, or lose these benefits!” to “Actually, yes, all of these extra things we are asking for are merely requests, onegais, and they are as you say point out merely voluntari, nin’i, so you don’t have to show them nor even answer yes or no on the application form about whether you are enrolled or not, you can refuse to answer these questions and thus you can refuse to show proof about them, and we are not actually allowed to refuse your application based on you refusing to answer these questions and refusing to comply with these requests.” 🙂
I don’t know how I would fare against law-violating Shubuya-cops, but I am happy to report that knowing the law and stating it strongly works with the city office folks in my area. 🙂
Wait, what?
No, that was a different person, not me. However, I’ve had similar problems with the police.
I’m curious how you changed the city hall workers policy. How do you know the policy was changed? If so that is great, but it could have been just you.
OK B, my apologies, I got your law-violating-police-officer experience confused with RS’s law-violating-police-officer experience http://www.debito.org/?p=12138
Now, in my post above, I didn’t say that I changed the city hall workers policy. Please re-read my post.
But actually, now that you bring up that question, I actually HAVE changed their policy over the years. But more improvement is needed.
If you want the details, read on, I’ll explain the gradual changes for the better which my complaining has scared them into doing. And I’ll explain what I expect their 2016 letter must state.
First off, I simply stood up for my rights, once again, and won another personal victory, because I personally once again did NOT allow myself to bend over and voluntarily do anything which is not required by law.
2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, each year I absolutely have refused to show them anything beyond the bare minimum legislated requirement: namely the Juuminhyou which proves my 4 children live with me. Period.
The less-courageous less-knowledgeable folks continue to bend over and agree to do whatever is asked, which makes everyone (both the Koumuiin Kagaisha and the Juumin Higaisha) begin to assume that people MUST do whatever is asked. Here are some things which suckers continue to do:
* agreeing to verbally testify about themselves when not required (meaning answering ANY questions posed to them by public workers on illegal fishing expeditions)
* agreeing to verbally testify specifically about their lack of Japanese citizenship (meaning admitting to being a foreigner in the first place, why on earth would you do that?)
* agreeing to show proof about their visa status (meaning showing their Alien Registration Card in the past, Zairyuu Card in the present, even when the officers are acting outside of the well defined Police Duties Law.)
* agreeing to show further proof of law-abiding-ness (meaning showing Nenkin proof and Health proof to Kodomo Teate workers, and agreeing to searches by police officers without search warrants, agreeing to making all sorts of statements to police officers in general even though all smart lawyers tell you to NOT answer questions, and the ultimate mistake: agreeing to walk to the police station when merely requested to by police officers without arrest warrants.)
etc.
To win a little personal victory like this takes a combination of Japanese language ability, knowledge of legislated laws, and justified outrage at all public workers attempting to violate legislated laws.
The legislated law in this case states that all proven residents living with children (as proven by the Juuminhyou, the only required document) have a right to Kodomo Teate Child Allowance. Period.
From 2011, the non-elected bureaucrats decided they didn’t like that simple law, they wanted to reduce the total annual legislated child allowance payments, so they wrote some “guidelines” which the city hall workers blindly follow, which push for more.
These guidelines have prompted the city hall workers to do the following things:
#1 In the city hall office written letter, which goes out to all residents with children, inviting them to come do the annual Juuminhyou presentation, the letter threatened foreigners specifically “Foreigners must show MORE than Japanese citizens: Foreigners must show their passports, to prove they are not doing anything illegal like taking a vacation outside Japan, and thus spending any portion of this money outside Japan, and Foreigners who do NOT show their passports will NOT receive the child allowance (and the 2011 version even went so far as to state that to receive the child allowance EVERY foreigner at that address must show their passport as well.) This was written in Japanese, in the standard letter, plus in English (and Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, etc.) in their translation letter.
#2 At this annual “Show Juuminhyou everybody, PLUS you foreigners show us MORE” ceremony, the paper annually pushed in front of each person (both foreigners and citizens) to fill out and sign also contained various pushes for further information which is not required. This paper fools almost ALL people (both foreigners and citizens) into thinking the following boxes must be filled in:
A) home phone number
B) enrolled in health
C) enrolled in pension
#3 Back to the invitation letter mentioned in #1 above, the Japanese-language version and the foreign-language version also claimed that showing proof of health enrollment and showing proof of pension enrollment were both required.
Now, in addition to successfully refusing to show anything more than the Juuminhyou every year, and in addition to successfully refusing to testify verbally or in written form about whether or not I am enrolled in health and pension, this year I got the head of the Kodomo Teate division to admit that ALL of those things are indeed voluntary, just I have been telling them (and showing them through my actions) for years.
Now, in addition to personally winning, how has my winning helped change the city hall officers’ actions to people in general?
From 2011, both the Japanese-language version and the foreign-language version claimed that Foreigners were to required to show passports. Well…
Thanks to my strongly making clear (every single year over the past 5 years) that the statement “Passport submission is required by one particular group of residents” is simply not true (and that if such a “requirement” guideline actually exists which “requires” one group of residents to show MORE than another group of residents, that guideline would be patently against the constitution) guess what? This year they stopped writing that sentence on the Japanese version. Yay!
Yep, they stopped writing that illegal bluff on the Japanese version. They finally changed it this year to saying in Japanese that “There is a chance that SOME people might be REQUESTED to show Passports.”
But, the thing which I continued to complain about strongly this year, is that even though they now are admitting in that Japanese letter (and verbally to me) that it is just a REQUEST (a “request” which fools 90% of the population into thinking that it is a requirement) the unforgivable fact is that the foreign-language letter (which is supposed to be a translation of the Japanese-language letter) CONTINUES to state “Foreigners are REQUIRED to show Passports.”
Yep, immediately after the head of Kodomo Teate verbally admitted that it is just a request, that compliance is voluntary, that the city hall workers can’t REFUSE to give you your child allowance money just because you REFUSE to show your passport, I pointed out that the 2015 English “translation” letter still stated “Foreigners are REQUIRED to show Passports”: she acted shocked and surprised, as if it were a mistake. I told her that this “mistake” is going to cause this city to have to pay a penalty in court because this city-written 2015 English “translation” letter is proof of a law-violating city-policy against a certain group of residents.
I really started making my stance clear here, again, by saying , “Does the legislated law require Burakumin residents to show extra proof of obeying the law?” She replied, “No, of course it doesn’t.”
Always bring up Burakumin, when pointing out jinshu-sabetsu. The horrified, embarrassed look on their face, when they realize their past (and present) behavior towards that group is known and admitted to be jinshu-sabetsu.
“Correct, because that would be unconstitutional jinshu-sabetsu. Next, does the legislated law require Ainu residents to show extra proof of spending this money within Japan?” She replied, “No, of course it doesn’t.”
“Correct, because that would be unconstitutional jinshu-sabetsu. Next, does the legislated law require Ryuukyuu residents to show extra proof of spending this money within Japan?” She replied, “No, of course it doesn’t.”
“Correct, because that would be unconstitutional jinshu-sabetsu. Next, does the legislated law require “haafu” residents, like my children, to show extra proof of spending this money within Japan?” She replied, “No, of course it doesn’t.”
“Correct, because that would be unconstitutional jinshu-sabetsu. Next, does the legislated law require foreign residents to show extra proof of spending this money within Japan?” She replied, “No… it doesn’t. We are merely REQUESTING for SOME people to show extra proof of spending this money within Japan. Look here, the new Japanese version clearly states “ある人” and ”お願い”. See?”
“Yes, I see you no longer write 外国人 on the Japanese version, wonderful, that is obviously because since 2011 I have been threatening to show this official city written document to the Supreme Court of Japan to have this city financially penalized for requiring a group of residents to show extra proof. So congratulations on having finally made your Japanese-language letter come close to being within the confines of the law. But your foreign-language version is still patent evidence of unconstitutional jinshu-sabetsu, because it still states “Foreigners are REQUIRED to show Passports, or will not be granted child allowance.” And since we’re talking about your law-violating actions, let’s also remember that you still are writing on the Japanese-language version that EVERYBODY is REQUIRED to show proof of health enrollment and proof of pension enrollment, which you yourself have admitted today is NOT required.”
“So you are violating the laws of Japan, yes you, as head of the Kodomo Teate division, who approved both these illegal letters (both Japanese-language and foreign language) and you should be investigated by the Koan-iinkai and the courts just like all police officers who violate Keisatsu Hou Dai Ni Jou. Do you really think the Koan-iinkai and the courts are going to allow your law-violating actions to go unpenalized? The Japanese courts awarded Debito Arudou 100man for this illegal jinshuu-sabetsu which you thought was legal ‘kubetsu’. And the Japanese courts awarded Ana Bortz 150man for this illegal jinshuu-sabetsu which you thought was legal ‘kubetsu’. Let me make it perfectly clear to you: when the constitution of Japan states that the government must treat all people equally, and when the law written by the legislators of Japan says that Juuminhyou is the only proof required, it does NOT matter whether or not you received an illegal guideline from your boss telling you write a letter which claims MORE is required. Have you actually READ the constitution? Have you actually READ the Kodomo Teate Law written by the elected legislators of Japan the Kokkaigiin? Your letters, written by your division, are in violation of those laws, and since I have been informing of that every year since 2011 you can not even claim ignorance of the law. You are attempting to obey guidelines written by unelected officials, and when these guidelines conflict with the LAWS of Japan, they are ILLEGAL GUIDELINES. And if you continue to obey these ILLEGAL GUIDELINES which prompt you to write and send out ILLEGAL LETTERS with fraudulent claims about anything other than the Juuminhyou being required, then I am going to ask my Diet-Member cousin to recommend the best human rights lawyer in Japan and this city is going to be taken to the supreme court of Japan, this city is going to have to pay using city taxes a large financial penalty, this city is going to be the embarrassment of Japan. So congratulations on having stopped writing the word 外国人 on the Japanese-language letter, wonderful, now next year 2016 you had better stop writing “Foreigners must show Passports” on the foreign-language translation letter, and you had better stop writing “Health Card required” and “Pension Card required” on all of your letters, you are the Kodomo Teate Child Allowance section, the ONLY thing that you can legally require is the Juuminhyou, you are NOT legally able to threaten taking away child allowance from residents living with their children. You do NOT have the powers granted to police officers, immigration officers, health officers, nor pension officers. The legislators of Japan do NOT want your division to be able to see the information held over in the health section and the pension section. There is a legislated wall of privacy between all of these various sections within city hall. I understand how you WANT to see who is paying into health and who is paying into pension. I understand you WANT to deny child allowance to those bad residents who aren’t in those programs, or who aren’t fully paid up in those programs. But since the legislators do not allow you to access those databases, and since the legislators wrote that having children is the only requirement to receiving child allowance, you MUST follow the laws of Japan. If you write another illegal letter next year, in either Japanese-language or a foreign-language, I WILL get a 100man loan from my Dad who is very interested in penalizing law-violating public workers like yourself, and you WILL become rightfully mura-hachi-bu’d (shunned by the community) for having committed easily provable law-violations which ends up wasting millions of yen of city tax money when the Supreme Court sees your 2016 letters. Don’t want to be penalized? Don’t want to hear me complain anymore? It’s simple: don’t write any more illegal sentences. See you next year.” 🙂
Sorry to do some semi-topic hijacking, but renowned security expert Bruce Schneier has done a good analysis on a recent hack in the US government system that shows just how vulnerable fingerprinting as identification is.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/10/stealing_finger.html
Bottom-line: There are now 5.6 million sets of fingerprints of the most trusted US policy makers, some of them doubtless involved in the US-Visit program (poetic justice) out on the internet, ready for duplication. Anywhere these duplicate fingerprints get flagged (including Japan), the real people are in for a lifetime of trouble they cannot do anything to change (unlike passports, which you simply replace). It’s that simple.