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DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER MARCH 16, 2020
Hello Newsletter Readers. My latest SNA Visible Minorities column 8 has just come out. Excerpt:
==============================
No Free Pass for Japan’s Shirking Responsibility
By Debito Arudou
SHINGETSU NEWS AGENCY, March 16, 2020
http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2020/03/16/visible-minorities-no-free-pass-for-shirking-responsibility/
SNA (Tokyo) — There’s an oft-used expression in Japanese: sekinin tenka. Best translated as “passing the buck,” it’s a reflex of dodging blame for one’s own actions by transferring responsibility to others. For too long, Japan has done so on the world stage with impunity—even when it affects the world adversely.
Let’s start with, since it’s timely, the 3.11 Fukushima nuclear meltdown that took place nine years ago this month. While the earthquake and tsunami are not Japan’s fault, situating a nuclear power plant so perilously close to the coastline is; as is the perpetually-botched response of containment and leakage (even the willful dumping) of irradiated water into the Pacific Ocean.
Contrast that with the attention and criticism (and even a TV series) Russia got for Chernobyl, where the situation has finally been contained in a sarcophagus. In Japan, officials instead blamed world standards of safe radiation levels for being alarmist (adjusting them upwards for domestic political purposes) and declared Fukushima produce safe for consumption.
Even more timely is how sekinin tenka influenced Japan’s Covid-19 response…
Read the rest at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2020/03/16/visible-minorities-no-free-pass-for-shirking-responsibility/
Debito.org anchor site at https://www.debito.org/?p=15978
==============================
One more note: Nowhere else in Japan but an independent news press like the Shingetsu News Agency would publish an article like this. This article will be behind a paywall in a few days, so please chip in $5 a month (I pay more) at the venue for access.
Now on with the Newsletter:
Table of Contents:
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DIVERSITY AND ITS ADVERSARIES
1) 2020 Tokyo Olympics drops Ainu performance from its Opening Ceremonies, despite 2019 law officially recognizing and promoting them as an indigenous people in Japan
2) BBC: “Is Japan embracing diversity?” A Pollyannaish article highlighting a few celebrity examples without data on broad public attitudes or government policy re immigration
3) DF on Chugoku bank unlawfully demanding to check NJ customers’ visa stay durations and photocopy their Gaijin Cards, or face discontinuation of service
4) Senaiho “Hair Police” School Bullying Case Update 4: Civil lawsuit launched against school bullies, gaining traction with other international couples
5) “Gaikokujin Shimin”: Kawaguchi City Mayor Okunoki (kinda) answers a query about the racialized application of this term that officially makes Japanese into “foreigners” (UPDATED)
RECENT DEBITO COLUMNS
6) SNA Visible Minorities Col 6: “Carlos Ghosn’s Escape from Japan Was the Right Move”, Jan 20, 2020
7) My Japan Times JBC 118: “Remain calm when stopped by the police”, on what to do if stopped by Japanese police for an Instant ID Checkpoint, Jan 20, 2020
… and finally…
8 ) My SNA Visible Minorities column 7: “Japan’s Botched Response to the Diamond Princess Coronavirus isn’t Racism; it’s Stupidity”, Feb 17, 2020
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By Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
(debito@debito.org, www.debito.org, Twitter @arudoudebito)
Debito.org Newsletters are freely forwardable
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DIVERSITY AND ITS ADVERSARIES
1) 2020 Tokyo Olympics drops Ainu performance from its Opening Ceremonies, despite 2019 law officially recognizing and promoting them as an indigenous people in Japan
Guardian: Japan’s commitment to the rights of its indigenous people has been questioned after organisers of this summer’s Tokyo Olympics dropped a performance by members of the Ainu ethnic minority from the Games’ opening ceremony. Members of the Ainu community, originally from Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, had been expecting to showcase their culture to the world in a dance at the Olympic stadium, but learned recently that the plans had been scrapped. The Tokyo 2020 organising committee said the performance had been dropped from the ceremony due to “logistical constraints”. “Unfortunately, this particular Ainu dance performance could not be included because of logistical constraints related to the ceremonies,” it said in a statement to the Guardian.
COMMENT: Now that overseas media has finally decided to pick up this story, let’s open a dedicated blog entry to it. Debito.org’s take is that including the Ainu performance for the world to see would have too clearly contradicted the postwar-created and carefully-curated narrative of Japan as a homogeneous monocultural monoethnic society. In contrast to how numerous Opening Ceremonies elsewhere have showcased the diversity of the hosting country, this is an enormous slap in the face to the Ainu not only socially, but also legally, given the 2019 law that finally recognizes them as Japan’s indigenous people, and promises to help promote their culture. First chance they get, the GOJ fumbles it.
https://www.debito.org/?p=15947
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2) BBC: “Is Japan embracing diversity?” A Pollyannaish article highlighting a few celebrity examples without data on broad public attitudes or government policy re immigration
BBC: Ahead of the Rugby World Cup held in Japan last year, a Japanese sports magazine, asked the national team’s captain, “Why are there so many foreigners in Japan’s squad?” The 31-year-old captain, Michael Leitch, originally from New Zealand, answered (in Japanese), “Because that’s how Japan is today. The rugby national team reflects the reality of current Japan, and also anticipates the future of Japan. As a team, we can embody and show society just how important diversity is.”
[…]
In Japan, rugby is famous for the phrase “no-side”, meaning once the referee blows the whistle to end the match, there are no more foes, only fellow players. While this phrase is no longer widely used, it has lodged itself firmly in the national consciousness of Japan. Athletes there with foreign roots are still called “players from a foreign country”. But in a country where the concept of wa is considered a fundamental virtue, there is hope that an increasingly visible “other” Japan in a changing society can lead it to being the natural state of things.
COMMENT: Here we have another one of those hopeful “Japan is changing” articles we get from time to time. BBC Reporter Okazaki clearly starts from a tack and then works backwards to find evidence to support it. But as Submitter FB pointed out quite succinctly, the article “highlights a few celebrity examples without any data on broad public attitudes or government policy towards immigration. The fact that 3rd generation ethnic Koreans aren’t citizens is the most telling fact of intransigence towards diversity.” Touche.
So let’s just draw a line in the sand here with a clear litmus test: At a bare minimum, until Japan’s historical aberration of “Zainichi” status is finally resolved by the Japanese government, and “generational foreigners” are legally accepted as diverse AND Japanese, Japan can never claim to be truly accepting of diversity. Full stop. Do that, and then we’ll start talking about how “Japan is changing” for a news peg. For one cannot ignore the historical contributions and sacrifices of Japan’s minorities, particularly the Zainichi, no matter what cosmetic overtures one might make in public towards a few token Visible Minorities for the sake of overseas media consumption.
https://www.debito.org/?p=15953
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3) DF on Chugoku bank unlawfully demanding to check NJ customers’ visa stay durations and photocopy their Gaijin Cards, or face discontinuation of service
From time to time Debito.org gets sent information from NJ residents being harassed by Japanese officialdom and businesses for the most basic things. Such as checking into a hotel or using a bank. Or being treated as objects of mistrust in official “Blame Games”. Or being demanded unnecessary steps just to live their daily lives or conduct regular business. It encourages racial profiling even further, in addition to what you already have at Japan’s hotels and other public accommodation, police instant ID checkpoints, and tax agencies. (See here too).
Such as the following case below, where Chugoku Bank is demanding a Visa Check in order to maintain (not open; maintain) a bank account. (In their words, “we have elected to confirm the period of stay for customers whose period of stay and other details have not been confirmed” Meaning their nosying into somebody’s visa status is not even under the pretense of some legal requirement.) And of course, in this era of identity theft that even foreign governments warn you against, Chugoku Bank wants to make a photocopy of the person’s ID, it turns out, for no reason whatsoever but reflex.
Submitter DF: Hi Debito, I recently got the attached postcard from my bank, Chugoku Ginkou. It says that I have to go in and verify that I am in the country legally to keep using my bank account. I went in today and they wanted to make a photocopy of my card. Is this legal? They claimed that they are doing so at the request of the government, which I’m sure is true, and that they need a copy for “filing”, which I am not sure is true. I told them that the card can usually only be requested by a police officer or an immigration agent. I finally relented only after they explained that they also photocopy other customer’s driver’s licenses. I offered my driver’s license, but they declined. I noticed that other than my visa status (PR), there is really no info on there that they don’t already have. Who is in the right here, legally?
https://www.debito.org/?p=15881
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4) Senaiho “Hair Police” School Bullying Case Update 4: Civil lawsuit launched against school bullies, gaining traction with other international couples
Here’s the latest update from NJ resident Senaiho (previous updates three, two, and one here), whose daughter was not only bullied by school peers, but also had her hair forcibly cut by schoolteachers in public, causing her so much PTSD that she dropped out of school. This is yet another incident of Japan’s institutionalized school bullying of children of color that Debito.org has long called “the Hair Police”. Bullying is rife in Japanese education, but when it’s ignored (or even perpetuated) by officialdom, this feeling of powerlessness will leave children (particularly those NJ children with diverse physical features targeted for “standing out”) and their families scarred for life. (As discussed at length in book “Embedded Racism”, pg. 154-5.)
The difference now is that Senaiho has launched an actual civil court case. Over more than a year now Senaiho has tried other channels, such as taking it before school authorities and asking for criminal investigations, and all they have gotten is stonewalling and official coverup. So now he’s suing the bullies themselves. Let’s see what precedent this is going to set. Given that others are now standing up against insanely intrusive Japanese school conformity rules (“burakku kousoku”, including warmer clothes in winter, freedom of assembly or travel, and even the color of their underwear!), this may be a landmark case. Meanwhile, Senaiho offers an update with a newspaper clip below.
https://www.debito.org/?p=15932
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5) “Gaikokujin Shimin”: Kawaguchi City Mayor Okunoki (kinda) answers a query about the racialized application of this term that officially makes Japanese into “foreigners” (UPDATED)
As we’ve talked at length before (it even topped my annual JT Top Ten Human Rights Issues for 2019), city governments have been using a racialized definition of local residents, namely “Gaikokujin Shimin”, that officially classifies even naturalized Japanese citizens, Japanese children with foreign roots, or anyone with connections to a foreign land as “foreigners”. Submitter ABC below offers a letter sent to the Kawaguchi City Government asking for clarification of the uses and effects of this official term. Thankfully, Kawaguchi City Mayor Okunoki Nobuo answered Submitter ABC. I enclose the query, Okunoki’s answer, and my (updated) translation of the answer, below.
https://www.debito.org/?p=15921
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RECENT DEBITO COLUMNS
6) SNA Visible Minorities Col 6: “Carlos Ghosn’s Escape from Japan Was the Right Move”, Jan 20, 2020
SNA (Tokyo) — I have to admit more than a twinge of sympathy for Carlos Ghosn’s Great Escape.
Ghosn, the former CEO of Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Renault, was arrested in November 2018 on the initial suspicion of falsifying his compensation levels, and subjected to more than a year of Japan’s “hostage justice.” That is, he was held hostage to a judicial system that detains you until you confess to a crime, and subjects you to days, weeks, months, or conceivably even years of interrogation and tortuous conditions until you crack. Understandably, most do crack, and Japan’s conviction rate after indictment is famously more than 99%.
But as you have probably heard, at the end of December Ghosn suddenly turned up in Lebanon, one of three places he has citizenship. Out on bail in Japan, he made a daring escape that people are still trying to piece together, including man-sized musical instrument cases, an uncharacteristic lack of Japanese border security, and a mysterious visit to Lebanon’s president by Japan’s state minister for foreign affairs mere days before Ghosn jumped bail.
Ghosn is now making good on his threat to expose everything that happened to him while in custody. His multilingual press conference in Beirut two weeks ago was breathtaking to watch, full of documentation, pointed fingers, and hot-tongued accusations of the human rights denied to Japan’s incarcerated.
This has been covered exhaustively worldwide, so what more is there to say? My perspective comes as a person who also tried to change Japanese rules and practices, and found that The System similarly fought back dirty…
Debito.org anchor site at https://www.debito.org/?p=15907
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7) My Japan Times JBC 118: “Remain calm when stopped by the police”, on what to do if stopped by Japanese police for an Instant ID Checkpoint, Jan 20, 2020
JBC: Visible minorities in Japan are in a tough spot in a country where the police have a lot of arbitrary power and few enforceable checks (as we’ve been witnessing recently with the Carlos Ghosn case). As a result, we are facing two decades of police-promoted narratives of “the foreigner” as a visa overstayer and criminal. What follows is my advice on what to do if you face a sudden ID check on the street:
1) Ask why you are being stopped. 2) Ask to see their ID. 3) Use your phone (or ask a friend) to start recording. 4) Ask if compliance is optional, and/or ask for a warrant. 5) Above all, remain calm and polite. Arm yourself with the requisite vocabulary to do all this, contained in this article.
https://www.debito.org/?p=15914
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… and finally…
8 ) My SNA Visible Minorities column 7: “Japan’s Botched Response to the Diamond Princess Coronavirus isn’t Racism; it’s Stupidity”, Feb 17, 2020
The Diamond Princess cruise ship case (which has been discussed extensively on Debito.org this past week) fell within my SNA monthly column window this time, so here’s my take on it:
Visible Minorities: Japan’s Botched Response to the Coronavirus
By Debito Arudou, Shingetsu News Agency, Feb 17, 2020
SNA (Tokyo) — The drama of cruise ship Diamond Princess, currently moored at Yokohama and quarantined by Japan’s Health Ministry due to some of the 3,700 passengers and crew testing positive for the coronavirus, is a human rights crisis.
The Covid-19 outbreak that originated in China has killed more than 1700 people and sickened tens of thousands.
Here’s my take: Surprise! I’m not going to argue that the prison-ship conditions are due to racism, but more a matter of official stupidity…
Read the rest at the Shingetsu News Agency website at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2020/02/17/visible-minorities-japans-botched-response-to-the-coronavirus/
Debito.org anchor site at https://www.debito.org/?p=15942
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That’s all for this month! Thanks for reading!
By Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
(debito@debito.org, www.debito.org, Twitter @arudoudebito)
DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER MARCH 16, 2020 ENDS
======================
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5 comments on “DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER MARCH 16, 2020”
Did anyone else here already post this story?
Abe’s buddy’s scandal-ridden Kake Gakuen, a private school operator which owns several schools, seems to have been discovered to have committed Racial-Discriminatory Test-Rigging against Koreans (who had earned high-scores, one even almost 100%, in the written tests in Japanese) by Kake Gakuen dishonestly failing them using unprecedented “Interview Scores of 0/50”
~ according to a rightly outraged school official who leaked evidence while honestly admitting his school committed Discrimination:
https://archive.is/CvRuR#selection-547.0-526.23
https://archive.is/4YBkL#selection-513.1-521.287
The school official’s quote sounds authentic, regardless of the reputation of the newspaper that ran the story. Sounds to me like an actual human who risked his job to honestly (yet anonymously) tell the world about his school’s misdeeds which he discovered. Would that newspaper really take the risk of claiming their source sent them an internal document proving this 0/50 claim, if this was just a story to drum up readers? I think this is a real scandal which no other paper would touch due to fear of revenge from Abe.
Kake Gakuen replies via Mainichi, basically:
That article was incorrect, since we allowed 4 whole Koreans to pass this year, and we have 13 whole Koreans attending somewhere in our many schools (but we’re just merely claiming that something in that article was ‘incorrect’, and hoping you do the job of inferring our ‘incorrect’ rebuttal is thus denying the 0/50 interview tactic, which really we haven’t directly denied. We’re not going to directly comment about whether we did indeed fail some Koreans this year using 0/50 interview tactic, perhaps our vague misdirection ‘incorrect’ is only disputing the exact number of Koreans we did it to being 8 or not, and c’mon, even if we were to go so far as to make a direct denial, which we aren’t, why would you readers naively think we would admit the truth without sufficient perjury imprisonment pressure, since lying is so accepted by Japanese culture, and hey, we’re not on the stand, and we’re not going to be on the stand, since we’re friends with Abe, and since Japan hasn’t legislated a law against private companies committing nationality discrimination or racial discrimination.)
https://archive.is/aR2ih
Reminds me of the three universities discovered to have committed Gender-Discriminatory Test-Rigging against women, who admitted it (due to more reputable newspapers having had the courage to run the stories) yet still making illogical excuses for their inexcusable discrimination and none of the perpetrators receiving any actual penalties:
https://archive.is/Fgj3Y#selection-1601.66-1613.87
Just in case Coronavirus is distracting anyone from the ‘NJ fearmongering’ the J-police investigates a record number of NJ last year!
Let’s be clear; the article DOES NOT say that a record number of crimes were actually committed by NJ, rather that racist J-police naturally assumed that NJ were more likely to be guilty of something- anything!- and investigated more than ever.
https://japantoday.com/category/crime/japanese-police-investigated-11-000-foreigners-in-2019
Interestingly, Abe’s new ‘special visa’ category seems to be a ‘get out of jail card’. Politically convenient, that…
‘ There were no recorded investigations of people with the specified skilled workers visa, a new visa introduced in April 2019 to allow more blue-collar workers to enter the country.’
=========================
Crime
Japanese police investigated 11,000 foreigners in 2019: NPA
Japan Today/Kyodo April 4, 2020
TOKYO
Japanese police investigated 11,655 foreigners over various offenses in 2019, up 573 from the previous year but largely unchanged from recent levels, according to National Police Agency data.
The data, not inclusive of permanent residents, showed Vietnamese and Chinese nationals accounted for more than half of the total, with many of the former investigated over theft and the latter for fake visa and marriages as well as abuse of smartphone payment services.
By nationality, Vietnamese stood at 3,365, or 28.9 percent of the cases, and Chinese at 2,948, or 25.3 percent. They were followed by Filipino at 746, Thai, 509, Brazilian, 508, and South Korean, 454.
The number of foreign residents in Japan hit a record high 2.93 million by the end of 2019, with Chinese making up the largest proportion, followed by South Korean and Vietnamese. The number of foreign visitors also hit a record-high 31.88 million last year, according to government data.
The latest police data showed 5,563 were probed over criminal offenses, down 281 from a year earlier. Of them, 48 were investigated over murder.
A total of 6,092 were investigated over violations of special laws, with immigration law violations, such as overstaying visas, accounting for 4,279 of the cases.
By visa, temporary visitors accounted for the largest group at 2,437, or 20.9 percent, followed by students at 2,121, or 18.2 percent, and those here for technical intern training at 2,103, or 18.0 percent.
There were no recorded investigations of people with the specified skilled workers visa, a new visa introduced in April 2019 to allow more blue-collar workers to enter the country.
ENDS
Amidst the coronavirus pandemics, I just heard an eruption among NJ over a flighty LDP fly girl Kimi Onoda（小野田紀美）over a blatant racist drivel. Onoda, a half-Japanese, half-American, is an upper house diet lawmaker representing Okayama prefecture, who makes a bunch of tweets on government handling of COVID-19 especially in the last several days. On March 30, she dropped a bombshell, making an outrageous xenophobic tweet that says:
“マインナンバーは住民票を持つ外国人も持ってますので、マイナンバー保持＝給付は問題が生じます。”
“Equating My Number with condition for reception of emergency economic benefits is problematic because foreigners with resident certificate also have one.”
https://twitter.com/onoda_kimi/status/1244619519944867841
This sparked an outrage from both Japanese and NJ residents. Distraught with sudden raid of carpet tweet-bombing attacking her racist/xenophobism, Onoda and her staff chose to block all dissenters–not just media journalists but everyone who dares to disagree with her–on the twitter. It’s unusual to see any public official to shut down all voices of disagreement in this manner. Never I have seen any single politician or media journalist block any opposing view or disagreement like she just did.
Onoda is a typical right-wing flighty gal like Mio Sigita, Rui Matsukawa, and a super-clueless justice minister Masako ‘B@#chy DeVos’ Mori. She has a history of moronavirus symptoms starting from her hypocritical double-standard on dual-nationality. If you haven’t been blocked yet, you can see her twitter logs from here. https://twitter.com/onoda_kimi
A few days after this incident, people filed a petition to call for her resignation. If you are living in Japan and get affected by her xenophobic rant, I encourage you to sign up at your best convenience.
https://www.change.org/p/自由民主党-差別議員-小野田紀美-自由民主党-氏の議員辞職を求めます?recruiter=842277911&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=share_petition&recruited_by_id=fbe76770-dfe9-11e7-8368-d773cd6c9524&fbclid=IwAR0xBZB9tKA4q6SjnR8pUleMDcFkbOe2Q35y1IVrrMoO3HpRdyF_tWsrO2E
LRK, thanks for sharing that. I signed and shared it on my social media.
Obviously this woman is a racist nut who needs to be driven out of society, but I have a point I have to make.
She is not “half” anything. She’s 100% a terrible person, but she’s also 100% Japanese. She is mixed Asian and white if we need to mention her physical appearance, and her mother is a Wajin and her father a white American if we need to discuss her roots.
We have to hold ourselves to the exact same standards that we demand from the Wajin. How can we demand that Wajin stop slurring biracial or mixed race Japanese as “half” if we turn around and do the same thing? There’s a reason the words “biracial” and “mixed race” exist. It’s because calling somebody “half” something is not only factually inaccurate, it also inherently implies that the person is not a “whole” or “pure” person, which is degrading.
We don’t need to resort to slurs to make the case that Kimi Onoda has no business acting as a legislator and is an embarrassment for our nation.
On another note, it was actually really warming to the soul to see so many people criticize her hogwash remark. The people commenting can’t all be immigrants. This means that Wajin, however few in number, are proactively fighting for our rights. That is some of the best news I can imagine.
As an aside, I recently picked up a few social studies classes during spring break, and in one lecture I explained to the students that “Japanese” means a person with Japanese citizenship. They were visibly surprised to learn that people born and raised in Japan do not automatically get to acquire Japanese citizenship. I further went on to explain the naturalization process, and they laughed in shock when I told them that naturalization is decided at the whim of a bureaucrat, not by any objective, transparent rules. It was immediately obvious to them that letting such an important matter be decided arbitrarily by one random person is ridiculous.
I cannot stress this enough: the future of our nation will be decided by these children. It is of utmost importance for all of us to do our best to make a positive impact on the children whenever, wherever, and however we can.
In order to make that happen, you must achieve fluency in Japanese. The message will largely fall on deaf ears if it is only transmitted in English, all the more so because many, many Wajin adults believe truth itself to be relative to language. “Oh, that’s just the ‘”foreign” way of thinking/speaking,’ it doesn’t apply to the Japanese world.” This is especially apparent when you see Wajin translate ハーフ to “biracial,” as if they were the same. They are not. (This of course goes back to my original point.)
Thanks again for sharing, LRK.
I just wanted to share this. The EU Committee on Petitions discussed a petition about Japan‘s state sponsored child abduction. The title of the video is misleading, because the petitioners proposed suspending visa waivers for Japanese citizens as a sanction, but nobody in the committee agreed with such a measure and I‘m 100% sure that the EU will never invoke such drastic measures. But this is still a very important step, since all committee members sided with the petitioners and acknowledged the problem. They also promised to not only raise these issues with Japanese and European diplomats, but they will also inform the President of the European Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. So, even though the title of the video is definitely misleading, the video shows the full meeting without any cuts, so I wanted to share it here on Debito.org. I remember that Debito reported on this issue a few times on the blog here. I especially remember the blog post about the bullshit Sakura TV spewed a few years ago about this http://www.debito.org/?p=14937.
Without further ado, here‘s the video I‘m talking about: https://youtu.be/smtd-APaX-0
PS: I really liked how both vice chairmen (or chairwoman in the case of Cristina Maestre Martín de Almagro) mentioned that cultural differences aren‘t a valid excuse for Japan to commit human rights violations. I really hope that more people take such a stance, especially when it comes to racism. I‘m tired of hearing the „argument“ that Japan isn‘t racist and that we as foreigners have no right to impose our cultures and worldviews onto Japanese society. Yeah, sorry but Japan decided to sign the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by themselves. Nobody forced Japan to sign thise treaties. If you sign an international treaty about human rights, you should abide by it. It‘s unbelievable how Japan always gets a free pass on human rights because of „cultural differences“. I applaud both chairmen for seeing through Japan‘s bullshit.