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Hi Blog. What’s happening these days in Japan under PM Abe, i.e., the ramming of new security guidelines through the Diet, will have ripple effects for years, particularly in terms of Japan’s legislative practices and constitutional jurisprudence. Not since the days of Abe’s grandfather doing much the same thing, ramming through the US-Japan Security Treaty more than five decades ago (which also did remarkable damage to Japan as a civil society), have recent policy measures been given the potential to undermine the rule of law in Japan. And I say this with all the disappointment of a Japanese citizen, voter, and Japanophile. The Japanese Government has truly shamed itself as a proponent of its own civilization, and its short-sighted voting public has done too little too late to prevent a self-entitled single-minded person as awful as Abe being given a second crack at governance (this time with a majority in both parliamentary houses, no less).
Debito.org, with its focus on life and human rights in Japan as relates to NJ and Visible Minorities, isn’t really in a position to comment on this until it becomes clear how these policy outcomes will affect them. Right now, all can say is that I told you this would happen. Consider my record in real time in my previous Japan Times columns on the rise of Abe and Japan’s looming remilitarization (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Meanwhile, I’m not one to speculate further without more concrete evidence.
Speculation, however, can be your job. What do Debito.org Readers think the future is for NJ and Visible Minorities under this new Japan where fundamentally-pacifist policy underpinnings are being undermined and circumvented? (We can see the forthcoming attitudes within LDP propaganda very sharply critiqued by Colin P.A. Jones recently in The Japan Times.)
Your turn to crystal-ball. Opening this up for discussion. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito
8 comments on “Discussion: Abe rams through Japan’s new security guidelines: How will this affect NJ and Visible Minorities in Japan?”
I think the LDP will do bad in the election for the Upper House next year, as Abe’s popularity goes down and the opposition is united.
However, I think the LDP is hoping voters forget what happened.
Hopefully more voters will vote next time around.
Abe has been successful due to voter apathy.
What was the turnout in the election last year? Was it about 48%?
The impact of the legislation has nothing to do with minorities immediately, but it may have extremely deleterious consequences down the line. This particular domino could topple others leading in different directions, ultimately proving the thin edge of a wedge leading to a society of top-down consensus created corporate fascism.
(Excuse me, weren’t we already down that road?)
A partial normalization of Japan’s military posture in line with those of other sovereign states will not be followed by rearmament yet as there is no need with the U.S. security guarantee. I personally am very unworried about this.
If SDF cannon fodder does get put through the grinder servicing one of the U.S.’s many wars, invasions, secret and illegal interventions (the paramilitary wing of the CIA seems to have a licence to fuck people just about anyway) it may well lead to such an outcry that there will be strong pressure to even reverse stuff.
On the other hand, corporate and government media managers and their lackeys in the mainstream press can be extremely complicit in propounding absurdities and not fighting them. Japanese involvement abroad will very likely lead to blowback, which could be skilfully used to not only create a climate of fear and skapegoating but lead to the further disentitlement of foreigners here. We are already treated as no more than potential criminals, fingerprinted and tracked, and we are not deemed important enough to deserve the benefits of strong anti-discrimination laws, which has become the benchmark for most advanced industrialised nations in support of minorities.
After all people can be convinced to believe the most absurd lies, or ignore the most obvious truths, and manoeuvred for voting against their own interests. I have noticed a curtailing over last year or two of the racist scaremongering in the press and on TV about a non-existent gaijin crimewave.
I once had a long discussion with a junior executive of Secom (知っていますか）who was proposing to the government that foreigners should be put into camps or segregated areas, and be chipped for control, monitoring and quarantine purposes. This was about ten years ago during the artificial hysteria whipped up about illegal immigrants and crime.
Still, then, the MOJ decided to criminalise all NJ by fingerprinting them and ripping biometric data from them along with that other great democracy, the U.S.
What worries me is that Japanese embroilment in the U.S.’s sorrows of Empire, terrorist and reprisal attacks on Japanese and then domestic scaremongering, crackdowns and so on really can’t do much more to us that hasn’t been done already. We are already fingerprinted and discriminated against and treated as perpetual guests. It’s that the crackdowns and scaremongering will be used to avoid change.
The other thing that scares me is Abe’s constitutional proposals for returning to a Meiji-like “paternalistic” (a polite word for semi-fascist) constitution emphasising the duties of the citizens to Emperor and state, and not citizens rights. I don’t honestly think Abe can turn the clock back, as so many of the spoilt ruling classes would prefer, but that won’t stop this extremely unpleasant weirdo with an extremely strong sense of his is own entitlement from trying.
Whatever effect these new laws will have on NJ will probably occur because of the extent to which Abe has been able to ignore the will of the majority of Japanese citizens. Will these laws embolden the government to ignore the rule of law in other ways which might have an impact on NJ? Time will tell.
We’re yet to see the potential impact of revised national security bills on non-Japanese and visible minorities so far. All I can say is that this is just the beginning, and we still don’t know what trump cards the Abe administration has in their hands. If they started introducing something that would target green card holders and long-term NJ residents(and even naturalized citizens) such as voter ID law under the pretext of election fraud protection by suspicious non-voters or something similar to The Alien Sedition Act/Alien Enemies Act, I think it will give us a warning.
Just posting here what was posted in the other thread:
Jim: “I’m interested to know your opinion on what Abe’s blatant disregard for the rule of law implies for us NJ.”
http://www.debito.org/?p=13395#comment-1001859
Anon: “I’ll just go ahead and say: you are 100% right Jim, Japan’s blatant disregard for the rule of law is dangerous for NJ.
If Japan’s majority allows THIS action to happen to THEM, they will allow ANYTHING to happen to Japan’s MINORITIES.
Logically, of the Japanese citizens drafted into a war, “half-breeds” will be disproportionately sent to the front lines.”
http://www.debito.org/?p=13395#comment-1002227
And yes, my speculative guess about “half-breed-Japanese” being disproportionately used as fodder is mere speculation.
But bottom-line: halfs, quarters, non-Japanese, and ALL minorities in Japan require protection from the Japanese majority.
As Jim wisely brought up, if a leader can break the constitution, the J-majority will break any minority protection laws. 🙁
“NJ (voting, other) rights…may violate the Constitution by undermining the principle of sovereignty of the Japanese people.” Says Abe and LDP.
So this is just part of the overall constitutional package which “nationalizes” Japan and also takes Japan back to Abe”s fantasy time of the imperial era or at least the glory days of the 80s, in which NJs are guests with Japanese guides, under supervision, who “leave when they are supposed to” to quote one of Debito’s favorite musicians.
Ditto Njs will never get any kind of local vote under a revisionist Japan constitution:
“In the latest controversial move, Abe’s Cabinet discouraged local governments from passing an ordinance that would give non-Japanese residents a right to vote in municipal referendums.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party had previously distributed a brochure in 2011 urging its local chapters not to pass such an ordinance, after party members became alarmed at the increasing number of municipalities across the country that had introduced — on a permanent basis — non-Japanese-inclusive polling systems as a means of reflecting the public will.
The LDP said it had advised its prefectural chapters in June once again to abide by that earlier recommendation.
The ruling party says that more inclusive local-level voting rights give non-Japanese citizens an unduly generous say in the nation’s politics, and point out that this may violate the Constitution by undermining the principle of sovereignty of the Japanese people.”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/08/20/national/politics-diplomacy/debate-foreigner-voting-rights-reignites-ahead-2020-olympics/
Still, we can have a cynical laugh about this as apparently this is ” amid Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s drive to attract more foreign workers to the country’s shores ahead of the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2020.”
LOL. So it’s “Come to Exotic Japan to be a trainee stadium laborer, we got that anime you want, and the delicious food and Safety, but we need you to do that 3k job, maybe up north east in a “certain clean up operation. But, Japanese custom, you lose some rights so no cell phones allowed, curfew etc on the inaka farm room you ll be staying with several other trainees “. (ok, a bit cynical but not entirely in the realms of fantasy considering the horrific conditions most of these trainees work under).
I don’t know about the effects of the visible minority in Japan, but for the invisible ones in Japan, like the ethnic Koreans, there is now a huge rumor going around the Japanese internet that the new law will be in effect soon in which the Zainichi Koreans who are permanent residents of Japan after WWII ended, and who have not naturalized will be deported forcibly from Japan. This could be just a rumor made up and gleefully spread by those who badly want to see this happen, but even such suggestions going around so popularly shows you where Japan’s national mood is at currently that could make this rumor into a reality in the future.
Make no mistake about it, Japan is increasingly making fascist ideals popular and starting to flirt with fascism.
@ #6
Abe and Co. think NJ voting may be unconstitutional… oh, the irony!