Debito’s SNA column 74: “Life under a mad king”. Subtitle: Everyone is learning what happens when the world’s most powerful man goes crazy (April 7, 2025)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Intro: The world is living under a rogue regime — or rather, a rogue individual — who is wielding unprecedented power.

Think about it: Donald Trump is Commander-in-Chief over the world’s mightiest military in history, and deployed it worldwide far beyond the empires of yore (Roman, Persian, Ottoman, British, Russian, Chinese…). He also has his finger on the button of the second-largest (if not the world’s best-maintained) arsenal of nuclear weapons. He also presides over the world’s largest economy, the world’s reserve trading currency, and the world’s largest global market capitalization in its stock markets.

One would think that the United States, as the world’s steward of the world’s postwar order and the most powerful economic and security agreements, would have a chief executive’s steady hand on the tiller.

But as you know, it’s been more a hand in the till. Trump and his minions have made billions peddling their influence in international negotiations in ways never seen before. Everything that happens in that world is transactional and self-profiteering. And with Trump’s mastery of media manipulation and “flooding the zone with shit,” with at least four media networks piping out supportive propaganda, every action by this rogue regime is supported by at least a quarter of the polled American public, no matter the contradictions, lies or hardships.

After than a decade of unrelenting control over the American mind space, a new normal has settled. This column is a letter about daily life in America under a crazy king, speaking as a professional political scientist who for professional reasons cannot look away…

“Internationalisation in Name Only: What Japan’s ALT System Reveals About Structural Limits in Education Reform”. Book summary of “More Than an Assistant”, by Nathaniel Reed (Amazon KDP, Global Classroom Author, 2026)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Summary: For decades, Japan has presented itself as an increasingly international society, and its education system has been one of the most visible sites of that effort. Tens of thousands of non-Japanese educators have been recruited into public schools to support English language learning, often framed as part of a broader commitment to global engagement. On paper, this appears progressive. In practice, it reveals a more constrained and carefully bounded model of internationalisation.

The Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) system is frequently described as a success story of exchange and cooperation. After nearly two decades working in and around Japanese public schools, I have come to see it less as a model of integration and more as a case study in how internationalisation can be implemented without altering underlying institutional structures. The issue is not simply how ALTs are treated, but how their role is defined and limited from the outset.

At the centre of this is the designation “assistant.” ALTs are not recognised as teachers, regardless of qualifications or experience, and are positioned outside the formal professional hierarchy. This is not merely a matter of terminology. In Japan, full teaching status is tied to licensure systems that are, in practice, closely linked to nationality and long-term institutional integration. While there are technical pathways for non-Japanese individuals to obtain teaching credentials, these are limited in scope and rarely align with the roles created for international hires. The system therefore recruits international staff into positions that are structurally excluded from advancement.

This is where the discussion moves beyond workplace experience and into institutional design. The ALT role does not sit on a pathway toward professional recognition; it is designed to remain adjacent to it. By maintaining the assistant designation, the system avoids the legal and administrative implications of recognising foreign educators as full participants, while still benefiting from their presence in classrooms.

The commonly cited phrase “ESID” (Every Situation Is Different) reflects how this structure is experienced on the ground. ALT roles vary widely between schools: some are actively involved in lesson planning and delivery, while others are confined to peripheral tasks. This variability is often explained as a cultural or logistical reality. In practice, it is a predictable outcome of decentralised governance. Local Boards of Education retain significant control over implementation, and there is limited national standardisation in training, evaluation, or role definition. Flexibility, in this context, becomes a mechanism through which inconsistency is normalised.

What is often overlooked is that this ambiguity operates within clear boundaries. ALTs may be given informal responsibility, but not formal authority. They may be relied upon in practice, but are not institutionally recognised. The system allows for variation in what ALTs do, but not in what they are.

This distinction matters because it shapes how internationalisation itself is understood. In many contexts, internationalisation implies structural change: the integration of international staff into existing professional frameworks, with corresponding rights, responsibilities, and career pathways. In Japan, the term often operates differently. It refers less to integration than to the visible presence of international elements within existing structures. The system appears globalised, while its underlying design remains largely unchanged.

Legal and administrative frameworks reinforce this stability. Public school teaching positions are embedded within a broader system of civil service employment, certification, and registration that is not easily reconfigured. Expanding full professional inclusion for international educators would require changes not only to hiring practices, but to licensure systems, employment categories, and, more broadly, how membership within institutional structures is defined. These are not incremental adjustments; they are structural questions.

The result is a model of internationalisation that is both functional and limited. The ALT system works in the sense that it delivers visible international presence and supports aspects of language education. At the same time, it maintains clear boundaries around authority, recognition, and long-term integration.

Japan is not alone in facing tensions between international recruitment and institutional inclusion. However, the scale and longevity of the ALT system make these dynamics particularly visible. After nearly forty years, its core features remain largely intact, suggesting that what appears as flexibility or ambiguity may in fact be a stable and deliberate configuration.

This raises a broader question. If internationalisation does not lead to structural inclusion, what is it intended to achieve?

These issues are explored in greater detail in More Than an Assistant: ALTs, Inclusion, and the Future of Educational Roles in Japan, which uses the ALT system to examine how education systems define roles, distribute authority, and maintain continuity even where inconsistencies are widely recognised.

Japan Times, “What you need to know about Japan’s new joint custody system: Advocates say that the changes will allow both parents to remain involved in the raising of their children”, March 24, 2026. On landmark legislation that came into effect on April 1, about 25 years too late for our generation of parents

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Intro: Joint custody for divorced parents will be allowed from April 1 in Japan — one of the few jurisdictions in the world where custody has been granted to only one parent — in one of the biggest reforms to the country’s family law in decades.

For the first time ever, revisions to the Civil Code and related laws will allow parents to choose between sole custody or joint custody following a divorce. The Justice Ministry says the reform is aimed at placing “the best interests of the child” at the center of post-divorce arrangements.

Until now, sole custody was the only option a divorced couple had, in contrast with many Western countries where joint custody is commonplace. The system has long drawn criticism from foreign organizations — particularly in cases involving international marriages and cross-border custody disputes — because it robs the noncustodial parent from having any legal authority over major life decisions for the child.

Advocates say that the changes will allow both parents to remain involved in the raising of their children. However, critics warn that it could expose abuse victims to continued control by their former spouses and effectively cut off their only route of escape. Others say it places too much power in the hands of the family court, which decides whether or not to grant joint custody if the divorcing parents can’t come to an agreement on their own.

Other revisions to legislation include allowing trial visitation periods and having clearer procedures for the seizing of assets for a parent’s nonpayment of child support. Here’s what you need to know about the changes that take effect from April 1, 2026:

Debito’s Shingetsu News Agency col 73, “Revolution is Due in America” (March 1, 2026). Democracies happen because of a Middle Class, but you have to keep it fed and watered.  America is no longer doing that.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Conclusion: Despite its 250th anniversary, American democracy has always been a bit creaky, with norms instead of laws that a chief executive could exploit.  Countries that used the American model for their Nation-State wound up with autocratic executives.  America didn’t because it got lucky.  And because of that it never learned the outcomes of populism like France did.  “It couldn’t happen here” has always been America’s blind spot.

But it IS happening here. America is experiencing crisis after crisis, and I predicted in an earlier column that there will be blood before this phase passes.  ICE has already drawn blood without consequence.  As in days of yore, the President and his henchman have a king’s immunity from accountability.

So where is the breaking point? Time for another prediction:

A draft executive order made public a few days ago dictates that Trump will declare a national emergency to take control of the 2026 Midterm Elections (for example, feds seizing ballot boxes and counting the votes themselves).  This despite the administration of American elections being constitutionally delegated to the states.

I predict the breaking point will be when state and federal forces skirmish. 

Already California’s Middle Class pays by far the most taxes to the federal government and gets the least back.  This is basically true of 19 other mostly left-leaning states.  Proposals have been floated to just not pay the feds—called “soft-secession”—and do better things with the $800 billion California would save.  And that’s where the Democratic-leaning “blue states” are headed. Why should they pay the federal government to suppress them?

This is how the Middle Class is fighting back.  As, historically, it always does when it is over-taxed and feeling like it’s not getting anything back.

Democracy exists for a reason.  Compared to all the other governing systems, it is actually the best way to allocate resources over time.  Let’s see if people in democracies can learn from history and change course.

But I’m not sure that’s going to happen in America.  Trump has the most personal power of any president in American history, and he rules with complete historical incuriosity.  His toadies only study historical examples of how to advance their power.  They don’t study the backlash because they are so cocksure they can suppress it.

But there will be backlash—because the Middle Class aren’t powerless peasants.  So, sadly, there will be more blood.  Where it all ends up remains uncertain, but the conclusion of my lifelong learning is that I don’t think the American Nation-State can survive in its present form.  Revolution is due.

DEBITO.ORG READERS’ ISSUES OF CONCERN, POST-ELECTION FEBRUARY 2026

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

I write Debito.org SNA “Visible Minorities” columns once a month (SNA website here) and send Debito.org Newsletters to subscribers sporadically.  After sending, I archive them here, and below, Debito.org Readers have been adding recent issues and articles that concern them regardless of the content of the post over the past several years.  It’s been a good way to allow Readers to be heard and engaged.

I still put out Debito.org Newsletters, but since I’m only posting on Debito.org approximately once a month, there’s only one article to repost (my SNA column), and I have it here as Debito.org post anyway.  So it’d only be a repeat if I dedicated another post to the Newsletter.

But I don’t want to deprive Readers of a forum, so let me continue this “Issues of Concern” section (still categorized under “Newsletters”) and let it be a free space for articles and comments germane to the mission of Debito.org.

Past “Issues of Concern” pages are getting filled with comments that are running farther afield than the original title, so let’s create a new one now. This month, after the landslide election in favor of the LDP under a PM pandering to xenophobia, I think Debito.org Readers should be particularly concerned about where life is going.

Thanks as always for reading and contributing to Debito.org

My Shingetsu News Agency Visible Minorities column 72: “Confronting AI in Higher Education”, with decent primary source data on the harm being done to universities — by enabling students in the Social Sciences to cheat.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Excerpt: I teach Political Science, and have an express zero-tolerance policy towards the use of AI in students’ submitted assignments.  Two semesters ago, my policy was to give zeros on assignments in the first instance and Fs in the course for repeat offenders.  But last semester, this became untenable as AI reached the event horizon.  AI went from something students were still discovering to being a regular part of their toolbox.  Colleges were suddenly even encouraging them to use it. What this has signaled to students nationwide that they now have an alternative to doing the fundamental work of doing research—i.e., formulating a research question, gathering evidence to answer it, and presenting it for review in a coherent and convincing manner.  Now you could ask a computer to do all that.  And then copy-paste.

I have a strict rule against using AI in classes.  Zero tolerance.  Why?  Because if I don’t enforce that, the flood gates open.  Students who actually do their own work will grumble about being graded via demanding rubrics, while students who cheat their way through college will get away with high grades on something they didn’t create.  This gives incentives for everyone to cheat, because why bother putting the effort in?  And that in term moots the development of fundamental college skill sets of researching and writing. It also cheapens students’ degrees.  Like getting a degree from a ‘party school,’ if the college becomes known as a degree from an ‘AI school,’ employers and the academy will discount student credentials even if they put in the work to get them.  Guilt by association.  Despite some colleges short-sightedly adopting AI as a tool, I see AI technology now undermining the very act of getting an education. 

AI is not seen as cheating in all fields. For example, Math and Computer Sciences are all-in and don’t see it as a threat—more as a competitive advantage.  AI saves them a lot of time and work, especially for computer programmers writing code or training to be cybersecurity analysts.  But for us in the Humanities and Social Sciences, where we are trying to teach skills essential to basic critical thinking, AI is generally seen as a short-circuit. This divisiveness is why it’s been difficult for universities to come up with an official policy regarding AI use.  So professors are left to decide their own policies. And zero tolerance is mine. This column gives statistics from teaching hundreds of students a semester to assess how effective this policy is at stemming the tsunami of cheating.

DEBITO.ORG READERS’ ISSUES OF CONCERN, JANUARY 2026

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

I write Debito.org SNA “Visible Minorities” columns once a month (SNA website here) and send Debito.org Newsletters to subscribers sporadically.  After sending, I archive them here, and below, Debito.org Readers have been adding recent issues and articles that concern them regardless of the content of the post over the past several years.  It’s been a good way to allow Readers to be heard and engaged.

I still put out Debito.org Newsletters, but since I’m only posting on Debito.org approximately once a month, there’s only one article to repost (my SNA column), and I have it here as Debito.org post anyway.  So it’d only be a repeat if I dedicated another post to the Newsletter.

But I don’t want to deprive Readers of a forum, so let me continue this “Issues of Concern” section (still categorized under “Newsletters”) and let it be a free space for articles and comments germane to the mission of Debito.org. Thanks as always for reading and contributing to Debito.org.

Mainichi & Asahi: 40% of Japan’s local govts received complaints about their policies designed to help NJ Residents. This fits a history of coordinated efforts from Far-Right internet trolls nationwide to stymie conscientious public policy. Hence being the “Good Gaijin” will not help you assimilate in this political climate.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

I post these two articles because they offer evidence that becoming a part of Japanese society isn’t just a matter of being “Good Gaijin”, e.g., contributing and behaving until “your outward appearance causes no particular problems”.  These are good things to do, of course, but they are not a panacea, because the Netto Uyoku (Far-Right Internet Xenophobes and Trolls) in Japan are so well organized and will not accept NJ as Residents under any circumstances.  

There is in fact a long history of the Netto Uyoku and helpful local government policies shot down one after another due to a storm of “complaints” like these (many of which aren’t even from local residents; see the Asahi article below the Mainichi in Japanese), as seen in this case study from 2013 about Tottori Prefecture passed, then UN-PASSED, a human rights ordinance.  This is how the structural barriers to NJ Residents remain, and will not be removed until governments stand up to racists and trolls like these.  

Mainichi: A Mainichi Shimbun survey covering 67 local bodies — 47 prefectural governments and 20 ordinance-designated cities — found that 40%, or 26 of 65 bodies responding to the survey, had instances of complaints, protests and opinions streaming in regarding foreigner policies over the past year. […] Several local governments indicated that complaints were driven by unverified or false information on social media. Of the 26 governments, 19 reported feeling burdened by handling complaints, with Miyagi Prefecture noting instances requiring 1 1/2 to 2 hours to respond and Shizuoka Prefecture revealing that staff were subjected to verbal abuse, causing them to feel scared of answering calls. While most governments said there was no impact on their policies from a rush of baseless complaints, Shizuoka Prefecture noted increased caution in sending out information on multicultural coexistence policies to avoid complaints. Nara Prefecture, while admitting there were cases where complaints, protests and opinions flooded in, refrained from responding to the survey due to concerns about similar incidents arising from media coverage.

Asahi: Miyagi Governor Yoshihiro Murai abruptly scrapped a plan to build burial sites for Muslims on Sept. 18, citing unanimous oppositiion from local mayors–just weeks ahead of the gubernatorial election. […] The proposal, which had been under consideration since late last year, sought to accommodate religious burial practices for foreign workers—but faced strong public opposition and political resistance. Murai revealed that between Sept. 13 and 17, he had called every mayor in the prefecture to confirm their position. “All of them said they could not accept the plan, even if the prefecture formally proposed it,” he said. […] When media reported in late December that Murai was considering building burial sites, the prefectural office was flooded with calls and emails expressing concern and opposition. […]

The prefecture has received more than 2,000 emails and phone calls to date. Approximately half of these reportedly came from outside the prefecture.

Despite the backlash, Murai initially stood firm. He said the plan was based on requests from Muslim residents and argued, “If we talk about multicultural coexistence, but ignore (burial) needs, that’s a failure of governance. Even if criticized, we must move forward.” In March, Murai condemned discriminatory social media posts targeting Muslims and reiterated his commitment to the burial site plan. […] The sudden reversal has sparked speculation that Murai’s decision was politically motivated. He is currently serving his fifth term and plans to run for a sixth. […] While the burial site plan was never part of his official campaign platform, some candidates voiced opposition, saying it could lead to increased immigration and should not be led by the prefecture. […] [T]he Muslim populations in the prefecture–once made up primarily of international students–now includes workers in the automotive and construction industries, reflecting both steady growth and increasing diversity.

My SNA Visible Minorities column 71: “Karen Hill Anton’s Willful Ignorance of History” (Dec 1, 2025), on how a self-declared spokesperson on behalf of Japan’s Visible Minorities is hurting them by deliberately ignoring info counter to her narrative

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

If you’ve never heard of author and memoirist Karen Hill Anton, her accomplishments are impressive.  After five decades of living in Japan, Anton has been hired for diversity training consultancies at corporations such as Shinsei Bank, Corning Japan, Eli Lilly, and Citigroup.  A Freeman Foundation Fellow and Plenary Speaker at JALT 2022, Anton has also been a member of the Jun Ashida Educational Foundation, the Shizuoka Human Rights Association, and the Board of Overseers at Temple University, Japan.  Her gigs include 14 years writing the “Crossing Cultures” column for the Japan Times, and another 15 writing the “Another Look” column for the Chunichi Shinbun. She has even advised the highest levels of the Japanese government, serving on the Internationalization in Education and Society Advisory Councils of Prime Ministers Obuchi and Hashimoto. 

But in a recent essay, where she offered herself up as an example of how Visible Minorities live in Japan, she showed not only a willful ignorance of what other Visible Minorities have done to combat discrimination in Japan, but also essentially denied racial discrimination happens in Japan because it doesn’t rise to the level of racial discrimination in America. This needs to be called out, because when a prominent spokesperson for NJ in Japan tries to overwrite history (especially one I’ve painstakingly curated) as a self-promotion marketing gimmick, by minimizing, ignoring, denying or even deleting facts and other historical case studies because they don’t fit her narrative, that’s not just dogmatism.  That’s dishonesty.  And as people have been writing me since I first put this up on Debito.org, it’s hurting them.

It’s also one reason why it’s been difficult to get “Newcomer” Visible Minorities to unite and speak with one voice in the form of, for example, domestic anti-defamation leagues.  (The “Oldcomer” Zainichi ethnic Koreans and Chinese do it much better.)  Because spokespeople within the minorities’ own ranks undermine any potential social movement and self-disempower — by saying that all we have to do is cooperate and behave.  After all, it worked for these spokespeople.  They made a life out of it.

Denialism may be Karen Hill Anton’s survival strategy in Japan, but ultimately it’s not going to help Japan’s Visible Minorities, the very group she claims to speak for.  Current Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi recently rose to power in part by blatantly lying about foreigners kicking park animals, and Cabinet minister Kimi Onoda (who herself was a dual citizen of Japan and America until she too was called out) promises to find new ways to scapegoat NJ Residents for Japan’s ills.  All this pandering by the likes of Anton will mean little in the end. The powers-that-be will still treat you as second-class citizens and residents no matter how hard you try to assimilate. 

Here’s the issue: The onus is not on NJ to scrape for acceptance, as Anton essentially advocates.  The onus is on Japanese society and legal structures to treat all of its legal residents, regardless of citizenship, as human beings with equal rights. Karen Hill Anton’s methodology doesn’t lend itself to pushing for that.  It’s certainly been an effective survival strategy for her, as she’s accomplished a lot for herself.  But it should be seen for what it always has been:  An isolated sample size of one.  Not a template.  And as she keeps on keeping on, vigilance:  Anton should not be permitted to continue minimizing, ignoring, dismissing, or overwriting the history of other NJ in Japan.

Japan commentator Karen Hill Anton writes on “What Racism is — and isn’t — in Japan” (her Substack, Nov 12, 2025). I critique, as it’s under-researched and willfully ignorant of the historical record. UPDATE: Karen responds on her Substack to say anyone is “free to disagree” with her, then deletes all of our correspondence from her Substack (which I archive as screen captures here)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Karen Hill Anton, a memoirist, writer, and longtime columnist and commentator on Japan I respect a great deal (and have met in person), recently wrote something on her Substack that I take great issue with. It’s not only poorly researched.  It misrepresents history, distorts the science, and even winds up disrespecting the activists who invested so much of their lives into this issue.

For example, she concludes her essay with: “There was an incident a some years ago in Japan when racism was charged in a civil suit against a shopkeeper who did not want a Brazilian woman in his jewelry store. The woman, who filed a discrimination lawsuit, and won — as well she should have — was described by a foreign journalist as “the Rosa Parks of Japan. Rosa Parks? Surely not the same Mrs. Rosa Parks, revered by Americans and people of conscience worldwide, for her courage and principled stance in literally sitting down while standing up to injustice. She succeeded in galvanizing a nation in challenging hundreds of years of oppression and institutionalized racism, protected by law, in the most powerful country on earth. That Rosa Parks? I don’t think so.”

Note what was left out by ending the essay there.  No mention of the Otaru Onsens Case, which we took all the way to Japan’s Supreme Court, and where lower courts unanimously ruled that “Japanese Only” signs ARE “racial discrimination” (jinshu sabetsu).  Or the Steve McGowan Case, where an African and African-American were refused entry to a store, and we caught the manager on tape expressly saying he refused Steve because he is black and he personally hates black people.  Or the Yener Case.  Or the Aigi Golf Club Case. Or any mention of the umpteen other lawsuits, many successful, regarding racial discrimination? How disrespectful to them!

I critique the rest of her essay in full because I don’t feel that an influential commentator should ignore and overwrite history just because it doesn’t fit her personal narrative on Japan.

UPDATE: I notified Karen that I critiqued her essay by posting to her Substack. She responded. But soon she just deleted my post to her Substack completely. All of that is substantiated with screen captures on this blog. My takeaway from this event is that willful omission is the MO behind this world view.  A deliberate short-sightedness.  No mention again in Karen’s response of the Otaru Onsens Case or anything any other case I mentioned beyond Ana Bortz.  To Karen, as long as you put in the effort to contribute to your community, anything bad that happens is I guess your fault because you didn’t put in enough effort somehow.  No amount of clear-cut examples to the contrary shall be factored in.  They’ll even be deleted.

But for someone who continuously holds herself up as a template for how to live in Japan, both in writing and in her public speeches to places like JALT, this is dangerous behavior.  I’ve already had one person contact me directly to say, “As a darker skinned minority whose kids were brutally bullied, who has experienced real racism, her platform and narrative allows real concerns to be dismissed.”

My SNA Visible Minorities column 70: “Takaichi’s PM Election Changes My Projections”, on how I have to recant my previous column because this new LDP party leader and probable PM is bad news (Oct 8, 2025).

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Excerpt: PM Ishiba has since resigned his post and the LDP has had new elections for party leader.  Stump speeches between successor candidates fell for the anti-foreigner hype and launched a foreigner-bashing olympics.  Eventually the extremist candidate won, despite her weird past policy positions, overtly racist statements, and lying about, of all things, foreigners assaulting deer in a park.

Say hello to Sanae Takaichi, the LDP’s new leader and likely Japan’s first female PM.  

But don’t celebrate Japan finally choosing a female.  In Japan’s long history of women vying for the PM post — from opposition party leader but panderer to the LDP Takako Doi, to outspoken reformer but alleged foreigner Renho — Takaichi has prevailed.  The problem is, her world view has been warped by Japan’s systemic sexism, and her policies ironically will only make things worse for her ilk.

Consider the Japanese metaphor (from the opening frame of “Barefoot Gen”) of how if wheat gets trampled down constantly, it eventually shoots back up with even stronger roots.  In a society where women of talent have to work twice as hard to get half of what men do, women like Takaichi emerge far more resilient and studious of the rules of engagement in male-dominated societies.  

That’s why Takaichi is particularly scary.  Not only because she clearly can play the game, but also because, in her thirst for power, she learned the authoritarian playbook better than most…
Rest at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2025/10/08/visible-minorities-takaichis-pm-election-changes-my-projections/

DEBITO.ORG READERS’ ISSUES OF CONCERN, SEPTEMBER 2025

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

I write Debito.org SNA “Visible Minorities” columns once a month (SNA website here) and send Debito.org Newsletters to subscribers sporadically.  After sending, I archive them here, and below, Debito.org Readers have been adding recent issues and articles that concern them regardless of the content of the post over the past several years.  It’s been a good way to allow Readers to be heard and engaged.

I still put out Debito.org Newsletters, but since I’m only posting on Debito.org approximately once a month, there’s only one article to repost (my SNA column), and I have it here as Debito.org post anyway.  So it’d only be a repeat if I dedicated another post to the Newsletter.

But I don’t want to deprive Readers of a forum, so let me continue this “Issues of Concern” section (still categorized under “Newsletters”) and let it be a free space for articles and comments germane to the mission of Debito.org.

Past “Issues of Concern” pages are getting filled with comments that are running farther afield than the original title (such as last July’s UH Elections), so let’s create a new one now.

Thanks as always for reading and contributing to Debito.org.

My SNA Visible Minorities col 69: “Japan’s Rightward Swing is Overblown” (Aug 24, 2025), on how the emergence of Sanseito shouldn’t be ignored but it doesn’t deserve the media hype, as its ideas are neither new nor well-planned

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Excerpt: By the time I completed my column last month, Japan had held its July 20, 2025, Upper House elections. They deserve comment in this space, but not for the reasons you might expect.

The major takeaway was that the ruling conservative parties (the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito) lost seats, while opposition parties on the right, left, and center generally gained. Notably, for the first time since the LDP was founded in 1955, the party lost its ruling majority in both the Upper and Lower Houses of the National Diet. This meant they had to expand their coalition to stay in power, which they did—Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba remained in office.

So, my take is that we’ll have to wait and see whether Japan’s parliamentary system will become as fragile as, say, postwar Italy’s, with frequent elections (until recently) as coalitions fail. My read is pretty milquetoast. But that’s not what the media shouted about.

The headlines were dominated by the rise of a new far-right party called Sanseito, a “burgeoning” “election force” that “won big” and became “the talk of the town.” Sanseito openly trumpeted Trump-like themes, campaigning on a Japan First strategy, singling out foreigners as the cause of Japan’s woes, and promising xenophobic policies to disenfranchise, penalize, limit, or even expel non-Japanese. Their core stance is that foreign residents aren’t real members of Japanese society—even if they naturalize—and should never have equal access to taxpayer-funded services or constitutional guarantees.

One might expect me to “do a Debito” here, sounding the alarm about a new fascist era in Japan. But I’m going to argue the froth is overblown. I won’t tell people to ignore Sanseito, but this election is more a case study in media hype than a definitive political shift. Sanseito is saying nothing new and still lacks real power…

Some Q&A with a reporter about Japan’s xenophobia, before the July elections. Do my claims still hold water?

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

More than a month ago a reporter asked me some questions about the state of Japan in the run-up to the July 20 Elections.  With permission, I gave some pretty thorough answers.  They didn’t end up getting used, so I’ll publish them here. Since my next SNA column will probably develop the thoughts of my answer to Question 4 below, I’m open to your feedback.  Thanks.

4) Do you think that anti-immigration sentiment is a bigger problem in Japan than it is in other countries, and do you think that we are witnessing the early stages of significant populist, anti-foreigner movements in Japan?

DEBITO:  My current field of study is the erosion of democracies worldwide. If we’re comparing Japan to other countries, the alarmism in Japan seems a bit more muted. Japanese democracy might seem a bit more robust because, even after a good three decades of racist demagogues, the all-powerful bureaucracy in Japan is still steadfast against the populist erosion of state power. And people tend to trust government as a problem solver more in Japan than other societies.

Do I see a Japan-styled Trump taking power? I have seen plenty of wannabes in Japan’s online trolls and fringe political parties, and with this election on July 20, populist xenophobia in stump speeches is more overt than ever. But all of those slogans have been said before in previous elections–and even by elected representatives in the ruling party afterwards.

What’s different now is that there are more parties making xenophobia their main party plank, offering voters a feeling of outside choice. For some, it’s better than voting the same old parties who will as usual forget their slogans once elected. But so far I see more media focus on old slogans as if they’re something new. This time the media has a clearer peg to hang a story on with the rise of fascism within Japan’s closest geopolitical ally.

But the fact still remains that in Japan, plenty have tried the Trumpist playbook, but none have succeeded compared to other democracies. None have coalesced into a coherent and unified social movement with clear plans to dismantle institutions, as compared to Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Britain, France, Italy, The Netherlands, or the United States. If that changes, I don’t think it’ll be triggered by foreign migration or tourism. It’ll be due to an external threat like a saber-rattling North Korea or an expansionist China, as it always has in Postwar Japan. But July 20 will be a litmus test of this theory. Until then, that’s the best assessment I can offer.

My SNA Visible Minorities 68: “Viewing Trump’s ‘DOGE reforms’ from the inside”, where I interview a civil servant in the US Government on how the bureaucrat purge is affecting them (July 21, 2025)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Intro: President Trump has been on a mission of sorts to reform the Executive Branch of the American Federal Government.  To do so, for a while he appointed billionaire CEO Elon Musk and a number of shady computer experts to fire as many civil servants as possible under a pseudo-department called DOGE, for “Department of Government Efficiency”.  SNA talked with one civil servant, whom we will call “Sam” (a pseudonym) via email to get an insider’s perspective on what’s going on.  Due to the difficulties of finding time to talk in a turbulent time, this interview took place piecemeal over the past few months. […]

SNA:  Alright, let’s deal with the main argument head-on.  Your adversaries see you as part of the “deep state.”  Put charitably, they claim you bureaucrats thwart any real reforms because you’re inherently politicized, or, as per Milton Friedman, you’re a problem just because you exist.  There are plenty of people who also see government and its growth as naturally inefficient, because you’re spending other people’s money so you have no incentive to be efficient.  To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, you’re not the solution to a problem but “the problem” itself.  Some people don’t trust bureaucracies under any circumstances.  What would you say to them?

SAM:  It’s probably the case that people who are hired in to work on a program want to support it and improve it, and have gotten to hear many stories of people who have benefited from the program services and the people who advocate for them. However, when it comes to process or procedure, there’s a focus on consistency and fairness, treating everyone equally and advantaging no one. Different than elected politicians, I think most career civil servants pride themselves on their professionalism in doing so. Some politicians or political appointees may feel thwarted by this, and the public or grantees may be frustrated by the slowness or opaqueness of some advice or actions. However, a lot of effort is put into restraining Federal “overreach” on states and a lot of national programs are rather leanly staffed with a ratio of thousands of grantees and even hundreds of thousands of grant beneficiaries per hired civil servant. Even with dedicated administrators, it’s hard to get the balance of capacity right, and work can fluctuate due to funding and policy changes by Congress and the administration. While people interested in public service probably are motivated to help other people and may have progressive leanings, the “deep state” is overhyped. If only we could coordinate across programs and agencies that easily and effectively! […]

SNA:  How are you viewing the arguments that these are “cost-cutting, efficiency-promoting” measures on the part of DOGE?

SAM:  I think many of us have observed inefficiencies in processes and procedures and staffing across our larger offices or agencies. It would have been more productive to have a discussion with career managers and regular staff to understand that better. As for “government inefficiency,” decisions can be inexplicably slow in being made or even in staff from one office getting a response from another office. While not quite the 20-80 rule since everyone has particularly busy times of the year, and as with any large agency or organization, there’s no question that some people do more than their share of the work and others do not, with an understandable exception for new employees learning the ropes and moving up the GS grades as they do. Government decisions can have widespread impacts on many people, so decision-makers want to avoid mistakes and are probably extra-cautious. On the other hand, there are people willing to stick their necks out and take risks and do more than they have to in order to help more people. it’s been thrilling to work with people who work very hard, some of whom may also be political appointees. So much can be and has been accomplished…

DEBITO.ORG READERS’ ISSUES OF CONCERN, JULY 2025: ELECTION SPECIAL

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Hi Blog.  I write Debito.org SNA “Visible Minorities” columns once a month (SNA website here) and send Debito.org Newsletters to subscribers sporadically.  After sending, I archive them here, and below, Debito.org Readers have been adding recent issues and articles that concern them regardless of the content of the post over the past several years.  It’s been a good way to allow Readers to be heard and engaged.

I still put out Debito.org Newsletters, but since I’m only posting on Debito.org approximately once a month, there’s only one article to repost (my SNA column), and I have it here as Debito.org post anyway.  So it’d only be a repeat if I dedicated another post to the Newsletter. But I don’t want to deprive Readers of a forum, so let me continue this “Issues of Concern” section (still categorized under “Newsletters”) and let it be a free space for articles and comments germane to the mission of Debito.org.  

With the July 20, 2025 election with all its xenophobic rhetoric, I think there will be much to say all around. Past Reader comments on the election here and here. Thanks as always for reading and contributing to Debito.org.

My Shingetsu News Agency Visible Minorities column 67: “Int’l tourism has been good for Japan” (June 19, 2025), where I argue that short-sighted criticisms about Japan being “overtouristed” may spoil things, so don’t let the debate backfire into racialized policymaking

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Excerpt: The rate of growth of Japan’s tourism from overseas has indeed been startling, tripling from under 10 million to over 30 million foreign visitors in about a decade.  

From that has sprung a lot of hoopla about Japan is becoming “overtouristed.”  A quick Google will find much griping and sniping:  overcrowding, traffic congestion, bad manners, garbage, luggage, noise, intrusive photography, etc.  Some even call it an “invasion.”  

That’s the blame reflex.  But let’s keep things in perspective.  

First, Japan is still a relative laggard compared to other countries.   It doesn’t even make the top ten.  According to World Population Review, the most-visited countries in terms of international tourist arrivals are predicted to be (in descending order, 2024):  France, Spain, the US, China, Italy, Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, Germany, and the UK.  

Japan bubbles under at #11.  No doubt those rankings will change as the US self-sabotages its tourist economy, but Japan’s numbers are still less than half the totals of each of the top five.  And yet they somehow manage their foreigner “invasions” with a lot less grumbling.

Second, it’s important to note that most tourism in Japan does not involve inbound foreigners.  According to Statista, more than 80% of tourism in Japan over the past decade has been domestic.  So when you talk about a tourist in Japan, they’re overwhelmingly likely to be a Japanese…

Nevertheless, locals grumbled to me how the tentacles of foreign tourism were killing off their special Japan.  Whereupon I noted that, again, most tourism in Japan is still overwhelmingly domestic, done by residents of Japan, including crowds and pollution.  We basically hear about foreign culprits because they’re more easily targeted by media.  Their retort was basically yeah but still. 

Unfortunately, the Japanese Government is falling into similar logical fallacies.  Local governments are already instituting higher fees starting in July at some places (such as Hokkaido’s Niseko ski resort), where the policy rubric is “foreign tourist” vs “Japanese residents.”  Again, where do foreign residents fall?  

It’s also important to remember why we are in this situation.  The government and by-and-large the locals wanted this.  And they got it.  Now live with it and tweak it.  Don’t make a xenophobic meal out of it.

The bottom line is that the tourism boom has been a net positive.  It’s stimulating the economy, enriching both guest and host, made people more flexible about dealing with diversity, and made Japan more accessible and less inscrutable.  

My Shingetsu News Agency VM column 66: “How Trump survives scandals”, where I offer a theory for the longstanding question, “How the hell does he get away with all this?” (April 30, 2025)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Intro: The Trump Administration has just finished its first 100 days.  It’s a good time to look back on what’s been done during a president’s “honeymoon period”, the high water mark of his political momentum; and b) it’s a bellwether for the pace and direction of the rest of the presidency.  

So far the report card is not good.  

Trump’s approval rating at this point in his presidency is the lowest of any modern president (except himself last time).  His systematic yet shambolic dismantling of institutions and agreements has alarmed allies and delighted adversaries.  His tariffs are ungrounded in reality and applied in ways that help nobody except insider traders on the stock market.  His hiring of incompetent people in the name of “meritocracy” have caused scandal after scandal, which would be grounds for impeachment for any other president.  And so on. 

Anyone following the news knows all this and probably skipped the last paragraph.  So what new insights could I possibly offer?  

Well, one mystery has always been, “How can he get away with all this?”  How does Trump survive scandal after scandal?  

Political Science may have an answer….

DEBITO.ORG READERS’ ISSUES OF CONCERN, APRIL 2025

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Hi Blog.  I put out Debito.org Newsletters once a month.  After sending, I archive them here, and below, Debito.org Readers have been adding recent issues and articles that concern them regardless of the content of the post over the past several years.  It’s been a good way to allow Readers to be heard and engaged.

I still put out Debito.org Newsletters, but since I’m only posting once a month, there’s only one article to repost (my SNA column), and I have it here as Debito.org post anyway.  So it’d only be a repeat if I dedicated another post to the Newsletter.

But I don’t want to deprive Readers of a forum, so let me continue this “Issues of Concern” section (still categorized under “Newsletters”) and let it be a free space for articles and comments germane to the mission of Debito.org.  Thanks as always for reading and contributing to Debito.org.  Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

My SNA Visible Minorities column 65: “Letter from Canada”, where a country weirdly threatened by its southern neighbor, including racist/secessionist merchandise from FBI Director Kash Patel, is somehow taking it all in stride (April 1, 2025, and it’s not an April Fools’ article)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Excerpt: According to the CBC, support for Canada becoming part of the US is highest in Alberta, at 15 percent surveyed, as opposed to nine percent nationwide. That’s why MAGAts target Alberta for annexation.  They’ve worked with Canadian separatists for quite some time, with regular networking and megaphoning on social media.  But they’ve also been involved in secession rehearsals. In 2022, a monthlong Canadian “Freedom Convoy” of truckers protesting Covid mandates set up blockades across Canada and obnoxiously occupied the center of Ottawa. The Convoy turned out to be more than half funded by American donors.  The Canadian government also seized an arsenal near the an Alberta-Montana border crossing that was set up by an Albertan militia “supportive of a war with police.”

But now it’s gone beyond funding into actively fomenting.

Shortly after I arrived in Canada, I found in my Twitter feed advertisements for an online store called “Based Apparel” (in Canada, https://thebasedco.com) offering T-shirts and other xenophobic merch.

This includes an American flag in the shape of Alberta entitled “Alberta, USA.”  MCGA/MAGA caps with the Canadian maple leaf overlaid with the American flag.  A US flag with a maple leaf in the blue field next to a slogan of “US-EH” (a pun on “USA” with the stereotypical Canadian “eh” sentence ending).  Coffee cups saying “Singh Horton’s” instead of “Tim Horton’s,” implying they’re no longer a Canadian institution because Sikhs run franchises. Or if that’s not racist enough, you can get shirts with parody Community Chest “Go Directly to Jail” Monopoly game cards showing a cop dragging a Sikh saying, “Do not pass go, do not collect pension.”  A meme from the “Oregon Trail” video game shows a covered wagon with the caption, “You have died of diversity” (as opposed to “dysentery”).  Or you can just settle for a less subtle T-shirt depicting an American eagle f**king a Canada goose. (Screen captures of all merchandise in the blog entry.)

Who owns Based Apparel?  Kash Patel, the current Director of the FBI.  An official at the highest levels of American government, in charge of federal police investigations, is directly profiting from sowing secession in another country.

My latest SNA VM 64: “It can only end in violence” (Feb 26, 2025): On how ignoring the rule of law will mean somebody’s going to get hurt, and in a society that goes to extremes like America does, only extreme blowback is going to make the pendulum swing back.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Excerpt: [Header] WE LIVE IN EXTREME TIMES…

The postwar order of interlocking trade that made the world generally rich and peaceful looks mortally wounded.  All thanks to one man, believing his place is secure in the “Great Man theory” of world history, who doesn’t understand the concept of consequences for his actions because he has never faced any in his life.  He invokes a turn-of-the-century President (William McKinley) as his template while ignoring that era’s unstable world order, where a few people’s emotions led to stupid public policies, culminating in global conflicts ultimately costing close to 100 million lives.  

Why is this happening?  
THE ROOT CAUSE:  AMERICA’S NATURAL-BORN EXTREMISM…

HNY 2025: My SNA VM column 63: “Trump’s Weak Mandate” (Jan 20, 2025), on how 47’s victory was in fact a narrow one, and arguably not because people support his authoritarianism. More a worldwide election trend against incumbent parties. Don’t fall for 47’s ploy.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Excerpt: Donald Trump has been sworn in today as the 47th American president, returning to power in what is being built up in politics and media as popular legitimacy for his authoritarianism.

Since November, his supporters have claimed that he was re-elected by “a massive margin” (Vivek Ramaswamy), giving him “an overwhelming mandate” (Spokesman Steven Cheung and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise), as a repudiation of “progressive parties who have lost touch with voters’ concerns” (Editorial, The Observer (UK)).

Sure seems that way. Both chambers of Congress and the corrupted Supreme Court (which granted Trump immunity for anything he does as official duties while in office) are in the hands of the Republicans. In poker, that’s pretty much a royal flush.

But I still say, “Not so fast.” By assuming this victory entitles him to do whatever he wants, because apparently that’s what the voters want, we’re giving him more power than he deserves in a democracy. And his victory was certainly not an “overwhelming mandate” by any measure.

This essay will break down the numbers in terms of Congressional support, popular vote support, why it’s important to not buy into Trump’s authoritarian ploy of spinning this as an “overwhelming victory”, and what you can do to help preserve democracy.

DEBITO.ORG READERS’ ISSUES OF CONCERN, JANUARY 2025

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

I put out Debito.org Newsletters once a month.  After sending, I archive them here, and below, Debito.org Readers have been adding recent issues and articles that concern them regardless of the content of the post over the past several years.  It’s been a good way to allow Readers to be heard and engaged.

I still put out Debito.org Newsletters, but since I’m only posting once a month, there’s only one article to repost (my SNA column), and I have it here as Debito.org post anyway.  So it’d only be a repeat if I dedicated another post to the Newsletter.

But I don’t want to deprive Readers of a forum, so let me continue this “Issues of Concern” section (still categorized under “Newsletters”) and let it be a free space for articles and comments germane to the mission of Debito.org.  Thanks as always for reading and contributing to Debito.org.

Debito’s SNA Visible Minorities 62: “Electing the Joker” (Dec 10, 2024), on how a trend over the past decades to depict the “villain as hero” in popular culture has influenced politics downstream and made Trump more electable

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Opening: I read an inspiring column in the New York Times, “The Supervillain is the Hero Now” (Nov 23), by cultural critic A.O. Scott.  It surprisingly offered me a plausible theory as to why Trump got re-elected.

Scott’s thesis was that popular culture and politics are linked, in that politics is downstream from culture.  That is to say, metaphorically speaking, what condenses in the snowpack of a society’s culture is eventually reflected downstream in the meltwater of its politics.

Suffice it to say, America’s politics have shifted, where it seems that the bad guys triumph, there are no truth or consequences for any actions, and you can do anything as long as you win.  

The cause is that American popular culture has justified it—over the past decades, according to Scott, the “villain” of a story is portrayed as the “hero.”  

For those who still can’t wrap their head around how Trump won despite all the baggage, this column offers a cultural theory rooted in decades of attitude shift in favor of the bad guys.  To the point where being bad has become a sales point…

Full text with links to sources follows. Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2024/12/10/visible-minorities-electing-the-joker/

DEBITO.ORG READERS’ ISSUES OF CONCERN, DECEMBER 2024

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Hi Blog.  I put out Debito.org Newsletters once a month.  After sending, I archive them here, and below, Debito.org Readers have been adding recent issues and articles that concern them regardless of the content of the post over the past several years.  It’s been a good way to allow Readers to be heard and engaged.

I still put out Debito.org Newsletters, but since I’m only posting once a month, there’s only one article to repost (my SNA column), and I have it here as Debito.org post anyway.  So it’d only be a repeat if I dedicated another post to the Newsletter.

But I don’t want to deprive Readers of a forum, so let me create this “Issues of Concern” section (still categorized under “Newsletters”) and let it be a free space for articles and comments germane to the mission of Debito.org.  Have at it.  And thanks as always for reading and contributing to Debito.org.  Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

My SNA Visible Minorities 61: “An Obituary for Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori”: As Trump is set to take the US Presidency again, let us consider the damage wrought by mixing political machines with family ties (Nov 2, 2024)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Intro: Raise your glass.  Another authoritarian is worm food.  

I’m trying not to make a habit of writing obituaries, but people who affected policymaking in Japan just keep dying.  I’ve done ruminations on the deaths of Shinzo Abe, Shintaro Ishihara, Henry Scott-Stokes, and even on positive influences such as Ivan Hall and Chalmers Johnson.  Now it’s Alberto Fujimori’s turn.

Alberto Fujimori, who died last September aged 86, was the President of Peru from 1990 to 2000.  He was the first person of Japanese ancestry to assume that office, part of the wave of Japanese immigration to North and South America more than a century ago, assimilating into Peruvian society fully enough to be elected their national leader.  

This sounds like a paragon of tolerance and openness to outsiders, but what Fujimori did with that power became a cautionary tale—of how an outsider, once let in, can corrupt everything. For when governmental leadership structures centralize around families, horrible things happen. And it’s a cautionary tale for letting the Trumps back into power in the United States…

Debito’s SNA VM 60: “MAGA’s roots in Japan” (Oct 3, 2024), where I argue the GOP’s targeting of non-citizens as “pet-eating illegals” in Springfield OH would be rather quaint in Japan. It’s straight out of the quarter-century-old playbook of the Far-Right “Netto Uyoku”

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

It’s been called the “silly season” in American politics:  The last weeks before the November election, when politicians sling whatever mud comes to mind and hope something sticks.  Use the media to define your opponents before they define you.  And if innocents get caught in the crossfire, oh well.  Too bad.  That’s politics.

This season’s most insidious indictment of innocents are the false claims, by candidate Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance, that illegal Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.  No matter how much debunking has been made by local authorities and the credible media, they have kept on repeating the lies, disrupting services and terrorizing Springfield with Far-Right marches and death threats.

This bad-faith libel is horrifying, but I’m actually rather inured to it.  It’s a tactic I’ve seen in Japan for decades, and it’s been imported by America’s Far-Right:  Fearmonger about foreigners to generate a social movement…

BLOG BIZ: Devoting my waking hours to teaching these days, so please be patient with monthly updates

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Hello Debito.org Readers.  I am generally posting around once a month here.  Not because of a lack of interest on my part, but because I am working full-time these days at the university level, teaching more credits than ever before on multiple campuses.  

All of my energies are currently being devoted to my hundreds of students.  If I’m not preparing a lecture or giving one, I’m grading papers or sleeping.  That leaves very little time for blogging.

I anticipate this will be my life until retirement.  Good news is, I love teaching and am happy to devote the remaining years of my career to it.  

So if you think Debito.org is signing off, that’s not the case.  But my first priority is to my students, so please be patient.  I will continue to at least write monthly columns for the foreseeable future, and approve your comments every few days.

Thanks as always for reading and commenting to Debito.org!

My SNA Visible Minorities column 59: “Kamala Harris and Shorter US Elections”, on how the US, as the “arsenal of democracy” has to do something about its wasteful election system; could Harris have inadvertently provided a template? (Sept 2, 2024)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Intro: I love elections. It’s not just that they are the quickest and most effective way for people to select their representatives. It’s also that elections are a fascinating reflection of how leaders are held accountable in a society, and how often the ruling elites feel they have to listen to the public. Put simply, without good elections, you don’t have a democracy.

As a Political Science professor and nerd, I’ve had the great fortune to not only observe democratic elections firsthand in multiple countries, but also the honor to vote in two (first the United States, later Japan). Election days anywhere are like an extra Christmas—or perhaps (Ballot) Boxing Day—where I sit in front of the TV with a stiff drink watching the presents open. Bonus points for how the country’s media visually explains how things work as clearly and concisely as possible, lending legitimacy to the process. (Japan’s TV networks even make elections look cute!)

But I think the United States could do much better. American elections come up woefully short compared to those in, say, Canada, Great Britain, and Japan. Even a logistical mess like India (proudly the world’s largest democracy) is peerless at making polling stations available to its 900 million constituents.

That’s the subject of this month’s column: What the United States gets wrong. As the oldest modern presidential system and the self-styled “arsenal of democracy,” the Americans must do better. It’s not like the Americans haven’t had enough practice. They hold the most elections in the world…

Debito’s SNA VM column 58 “Japan’s Census Shenanigans”: How Japan’s registry system and accounting of foreign residents has led to statistical inaccuracies and exclusionary politics (July 30, 2024)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

SNA: A fundamental issue for any country is knowing who lives there, and this is generally measured by a national census every ten years. 

Censuses are serious things.  They should accurately reveal in granular detail who people are, where they live, and how they live, in order for public policies to effectively target social services, health and welfare.  Censuses even have international standards, with the United Nations’ Statistics Division providing a template. 

In 2020, the UN approved the “World Population and Housing Census Programme,” which “recognizes population and housing censuses as one of the primary sources of data needed for formulating, implementing and monitoring policies and programmes aimed at inclusive socioeconomic development and environmental sustainability.”

The UN notes that, “Disaggregated data are fundamental for the measurement of progress of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, especially in the context of assessing the situation of people by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographic location, or other characteristics.”

Yet a seemingly simple act of a headcount is subject to nasty political tugs-of-war…

Debito’s SNA VM column 57: “Overtourism as racism” (July 1, 2024). Most media on too many foreign tourists in Japan ignores how xenophobes are using “overtourism” to bully foreigners. Debito.org even argues it’s producing discriminatory policies worse than “Japanese Only” signs!

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Excerpt: “Overtourism” has become a trendy word to describe Japan attractions (e.g., Shibuya Scramble, Hachiko, Ginza, Kyoto, Senso-ji, Mount Fuji) being overrun by tourists.  But in Japan the word is specifically associated with “foreign tourists,” i.e., mobs blocking traffic, disrupting local businesses and mores by littering and chattering away in their foreign languages.

I don’t dispute that “overtourism” can happen.  Too many people crowding into a place can produce problems of noise, pollution, disruption, and property damage.  But be careful about associating it with “foreigners.”  As evidenced by the Karen-esque confrontation at Yasaka Shrine, it’s giving license to Japan’s busybodies, bullies, and xenophobes.

This column will argue that “overtourism” is not only becoming the latest incarnation of racialized bullying, it’s also producing reactionary public policies that are actually worse than the “Japanese Only” signs of yore!

DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER JULY 3, 2024

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Table of Contents:

1) Robert Whiting on “Slaughter in Saitama adds to list of foreigners murdered in Japan, shines light on social issue”, on the Bishop Family Murder Case, an underreported event in 2022 that I consider to be a hate crime

2) Incidents of confrontationalism toward NJ are on the rise. Debito.org argues that this is standard social bullying of foreigners being disguised as a reaction to alleged “overtourism”. Push back at it.

3) My SNA Visible Minorities column 56: Addressing Japan’s Child Abduction Problem (on the recent bill passed to allow joint custody after divorce (May 27, 2024)

4) After decades of international exposure, embarrassment, broken treaty promises, xenophobic and racist tropes, and deprived children, Japan finally changes its laws to allow joint custody of children after divorce, taking effect in 2026.

5) Reuters: Biden calls ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with rivals China and Russia (May 2, 2024). Bravo Biden!

6) My SNA Visible Minorities col 55: “From Dancing Monkey to Symbol of Hope”: Interview with Ibaraki Prefectural Assemblyman and naturalized Canadian-Japanese Jon Heese (May 2, 2024)

7) Debito cited in article, “Japan is becoming more diverse. Will its government?” Christian Science Monitor, April 12, 2024. As are several other naturalized and elected Japanese citizens originating from Canada, Uzbekistan, Syria/Egypt, and Bolivia.

8) My SNA Visible Minorities 54: “Non-Japanese Residents claim political power” (Mar 31, 2024), where I argue the power of the vote matters whether you are a candidate or part of the electorate; the J Govt tries hard to make sure neither happens for Japan’s Immigrants.

… and finally…

9) Kyodo: “Record 3.4 million foreign residents in Japan as work visas rise” in 2023. Only a brief reference to foreign crime (i.e., overstaying) this time. Fancy that.

Robert Whiting on “Slaughter in Saitama adds to list of foreigners murdered in Japan, shines light on social issue”, on the Bishop Family Murder Case, an underreported event in 2022 that I consider to be a hate crime

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Whiting: Tokyo was stunned in late December by the news of the brutal killing of longtime Japan resident William Bishop, a 69-year-old U.S. national, his 68-year-old wife Izumi Morita, and their daughter Sophianna Megumi Morita, 32. All three were found dead outside their residence in Hanno, Saitama, with multiple wounds early Christmas morning.

Later that day, prefectural police arrested the Bishops’ neighbor, a 40-year-old Japanese man named Jun Saito, at his residence around the corner believing he had bludgeoned the Bishop family to death with what was believed to be a hammer. Saito had barricaded himself in an upstairs room, and the police had to force their way in to apprehend him. […]

Although all the facts are not yet in, the suspect appears to be part of a troubled generation suffering from mental disorders, who dropped out of school and work in droves in the ’80s and ’90s, when Japan’s economic bubble burst, Japanese firms retrenched and downsized, and jobs were not readily available. The Japanese government has identified over half a million of these, so-called hikikomori, social recluses, who live at home, passing their time on the Internet — the rise of which has contributed to their continuing isolation, remaining economically dependent on their parents, who, in turn, do not know what they can do to help their offspring find their footing outside of the household and try to hide what they view as an embarrassing situation. Hikikomori have failed to develop necessary social skills and are unable to adjust in a society that is very structured and sensitive to social stigma, one which fails to provide for social resources and professional treatment for mental illness, primarily because parents are too ashamed to seek it for their offspring. […]

Murder is rare in Japan compared to other countries. Social civility and strict hierarchical codes of conduct are often cited as reasons for the low incidence of violent crimes in Japan. However, Japanese assaults on foreigners are not new in in the long history of Japan’s relations with the West. […] The most prominent such incident was the murder was of British citizen Charles Lennox Richardson in 1862…

Incidents of confrontationalism toward NJ are on the rise. Debito.org argues that this is standard social bullying of foreigners being disguised as a reaction to alleged “overtourism”. Push back at it.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

We’ve had plenty of reports in recent months of people being confrontational towards NJ (Resident and Tourist), or people who look like NJ, accusing them of all manner of cultural slights and faux pas. In recent weeks, we’ve had a confrontation at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto, and enough tourism in Kyoto and Mt Fuji to warrant bans on people going to certain places — even the recent overkill of a local government putting up a screen to block a view of Mt Fuji around a convenience store, with predictable accusations that foreigners are spoiling everything.  Halloween in Shibuya even became a target, with drinking in the street made out to be a foreign-imported problem (seriously?!).

Some of this is inevitable.  For quite some time now we’ve had grumbles about Chinese consumers’ spending habits in places like Ginza.  And whenever foreigners are about, they tend to be the first people blamed for any problem due to “cultural differences” that are automatically at odds with Japan’s putative “uniqueness”.  They’re a soft target. And “overtourism” is now being used as a means to empower bullies who want to push foreigners around.

It even happened to me yesterday in front of Tokyo Station, when some ojisan decided to jump the line in front of me for taxis and then curse me out for saying something. Mayhem ensued…

My SNA Visible Minorities column 56: “Addressing Japan’s Child Abduction Problem”, on the recent bill passed to allow joint custody after divorce (May 27, 2024)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

SNA: It has been one of Japan’s worst-kept secrets.  It has shattered lives and caused enormous international embarrassment to Japan’s reputation as a nation of laws.  It has caused untold misery to countless children and families worldwide.  And amongst all the G7 “developed” nations, it only happens like this in Japan.  

I’m talking about Japan’s issues with child custody and access after divorce.  

Japan has something called the Family Registry (koseki) system.  It serves the important purposes of not only conferring Japanese citizenship, it also prioritizes the family unit over the individual.  A throwback system unamended for more than a century, the Family Registry has a major bug:  If you get divorced, the bureaucracy forces the couple as a registered family unit to cleave back into two unconnected individuals with completely severed family ties. 

The problem is that children are likewise forced into one severed family registry or another,  This means they lose all legal ties with one parent, and that parent (usually the father) has not rights of joint custody or child visitation.  This means that divorce in Japan completely disappears a “Left Behind Parent’ (LBP) from a child’s life. This invisibility is enforced by the rest of society too…

After decades of international exposure, embarrassment, broken treaty promises, xenophobic and racist tropes, and deprived children, Japan finally changes its laws to allow joint custody of children after divorce, taking effect in 2026.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Debito.org has been quiet on these developments until they actually came to fruition, and now that they have, it’s time to cheer.  Japan has finally gotten around to fixing one of its worst-kept secrets:  Child Abductions after divorces.  After years of international pressure (and all manner of racist justifications of the status quo, including even the Foreign Ministry accusing foreigners of being naturally violent, and Japan offering safe haven for international child abductions despite signing an international treaty against it), the Diet has just passed legislation allowing for joint custody after divorce.  Meaning both parents now have the ability to have a say in raising a child even if the relationship falls apart.  It comes into effect in 2026 and will be reassessed five years later.

Debito.org has talked about this issue for decades (since I too lost all contact with my children after my divorce, which is in fact the norm in Japan, thanks to the Koseki Family Registry system forcing split couples to sever all legal family ties and thus all rights to any contact).  Not only because NJ are particularly vulnerable to becoming “Left Behind Parents” in intercontinental relationships (since the J spouse can either make off with the child back to Japan or deprive you of a Spouse Visa), but also because this situation affected ALL divorces in Japan, regardless of nationality. It left all children in Japan vulnerable to being used a pawn used to punish one parent out of spite. And that would often carry on into adulthood, with the adult offspring hating the LBP parent without ever hearing both sides of the story or knowing the LBP cares about them.  This is not normal even in peer countries.  As the Mainichi notes below, “Japan had been the only country among the Group of Seven industrialized nation with no joint custody system, according to a Justice Ministry survey of other countries released in 2020.”

Anyway, this is an extremely positive and long overdue development, and it’s another example of Japanese domestic law not changing without international shame and pressure.  It’s just a shame it couldn’t have happened decades ago when it would have made a difference to me and my divorced friends. Let’s hope this brings more reality to future relationships.  Divorces are complicated.  Adding more child abuse into the mix (and by this I mean the child abuse that is inherent in an automatic severance of custodial ties) just made it worse.

Reuters: Biden calls ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with rivals China and Russia (May 2, 2024). Bravo Biden!

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Reuters: U.S. President Joe Biden included ally Japan along with rivals China and Russia in a list of countries he called “xenophobic” on Wednesday, in a speech at a campaign fundraising event in Washington. Biden reiterated remarks he made last month linking China’s economic woes to its unwillingness to accept immigration. […] “You know, one of the reasons our economy is growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants,” Biden told Asian American and Pacific Islander donors Wednesday. “The reason — think about it — why is China stalling so bad economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia, why is anyone? Because they’re xenophobic, they don’t want immigrants.”

COMMENT:  Debito.org says “Bravo Biden!”, for obvious reasons we’ve covered on Debito.org since its beginning back in 1995.  For generations now Japan has gotten a free pass on its racial discrimination (about which I’ve written entire books) simply because it’s an ally.  It’s about time somebody in leadership chided things in the right direction, Unfortunately, geopolitics and human rights do not mix, and the latter has taken a back seat to the former for too long. The reaction will be predictable and obvious.  There will be the handwringing from the diplomats and media, and the knee-jerk reactions from the ethnostatists defending Japan’s putative ethnic purity or sovereignty in various comments sections (although human rights supersede pat claims of sovereignty if you’ve signed the CERD, which Japan did nearly 30 years ago and still has not passed any laws against racial discrimination).  Whatever.  It’s long overdue to state the fact that Japan as a polity simply will not keep its international promises, and Debito.org agrees with Biden that Japan’s lack of any official immigration policy hurts Japan as a society both economically and demographically.

My SNA Visible Minorities col 55: “From Dancing Monkey to Symbol of Hope”: Interview with Ibaraki Prefectural Assemblyman and naturalized Canadian-Japanese Jon Heese (May 2, 2024)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

BIO:  Jon Heese is becoming an old hand in Japanese politics, having served 13 years at various levels of government. He is presently one of five councilors representing Tsukuba (60 km NE of Tokyo) in the Ibaraki Prefectural Assembly—similar to a state or provincial legislature. After winning four terms at the city level, Mr. Heese leveled up in December, 2022. He is the first foreign-born politician to ever serve at the regional level.  He sat down for an interview with Debito Arudou for his Visible Minorities column in April 2024.

SNA:  Let me open with an argument:  I make the case in one of my recent columns that we don’t see enough former Non-Japanese running for office because the Japanese government doesn’t want them to.  With no immigration policy, the GOJ doesn’t just encourage NJ to become voters and citizens, they make it hard to graduate up to Permanent Residency and citizenship.  Would you agree with that assessment?

Heese:  No immigration policy? Do you mean “no policy to import labor willy-nilly à la every western country?” The question is already loaded. As for policy to prevent naturalization, thereby enfranchisement, I do not see any active policies intending to keep NJ from getting citizenship. Overall I see their immigration policies as an attempt to ensure that only contributing foreigners are allowed to stay beyond the 90 day tourist visa by obtaining a longer visa. Many countries try to keep out deadbeats. Japan is no different. By deadbeats, I mean people who are only coming to take advantage of our rather generous social services.

SNA:  Hang on.  Point of order.  We’re still falling back on those boilerplate arguments we see in the chauvinistic media that some foreigners are freeloaders.  Not so… [And the conversation gets warmer from there…]

BLOG BIZ: Coming out of the busiest semester I’ve ever had; will try to update more.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

On a personal note, it’s been the busiest semester for me ever, teaching around 250 students and 19.5 college credits.  Consequently, updating Debito.org has been slow since I’ve been devoting all my energies to creating lectures, lecturing, grading, and sleep.  Repeat cycle for sixteen weeks.  Just coming out of it now.  I’ll try to do better, since there’s plenty to comment about (and Debito.org Readers have been doing an excellent job in the Comments sections; thanks!).  But for the first time ever, I didn’t immediately blog my most recent SNA column!  I’ll get to it.  Thanks very much to everyone for reading and commenting to Debito.org.

Debito cited in article, “Japan is becoming more diverse. Will its government?” Christian Science Monitor, April 12, 2024. As are several other naturalized and elected Japanese citizens originating from Canada, Uzbekistan, Syria/Egypt, and Bolivia.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

CSM: A former swimming instructor from Egypt is helping revive the sleepy mountain town of Shonai, Japan. About 200 miles away, a Canadian polyglot is singing the praises of Tsukuba city. And Orzugul Babakhodjaeva is standing onstage at a food festival outside Tokyo, decked in a traditional Uzbek dress, expressing her desire to “create a society where diversity is accepted.”

The first-term city councilor in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward – who does not use her family name, and campaigned simply as “Orzugul” – is one of a small but growing number of foreign-born local government members bringing fresh perspectives to an island nation long known for its homogeneity. These lawmakers are often multilingual and have rich international work experience. Their platforms have resonated with many Japanese voters, as well as with a growing population of non-Japanese residents.

The number of non-Japanese residents jumped 10.9% from 2022 to 2023, reaching a record 3.4 million, as the country struggles to address a chronic labor shortage driven by its aging population. Last year, 8,800 residents were naturalized as citizens, allowing them to vote in elections.

Shifting demographics are challenging Japan’s reputation as a homogeneous society – and creating unprecedented openings for immigrants to participate in local government. Arudou Debito, author of the book “Embedded Racism: Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination,” says the election of immigrants to local government is “very important” for Japan’s democracy.

“Non-Japanese residents’ viewpoints are woefully unseen in Japanese society. They’re treated as ‘guests,’” explains Mr. Arudou, who is a U.S.-born naturalized citizen. “The fact that former non-Japanese residents are getting elected means they aren’t ‘guests,’ meaning Japanese society can trust immigrants with public policymaking power.”

My SNA Visible Minorities 54: “Non-Japanese Residents claim political power” (Mar 31, 2024), where I argue the power of the vote matters whether you are a candidate or part of the electorate; the J Govt tries hard to make sure neither happens for Japan’s Immigrants.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Intro: I teach Political Science at the university level.  In my first lecture every semester, I try to convince skeptical students why they should bother studying Political Science at all. I argue that understanding how power flows through political structures will help students enfranchise themselves in a democratic system.  Because if they don’t, other people who understand the system better will use it to their advantage instead. But this assumes one major fundamental:  that they can participate in the democratic system at all.  Fortunately, most of my students are citizens, so they can vote.  Given how abysmal youth voter turnout generally is, I consider it a major educational outcome if they bother to.  Persuading people that their vote matters is the bare minimum a civics class can accomplish.  

If I have the opportunity in higher-level classes to proselytize further, I encourage them to engage in community building, such as organizing into interest groups and consolidating power into voting blocs.   My real converts consider running for local office, thereby embedding themselves within the very power structure itself.  Because political power, especially for minorities in any society, is rarely surrendered without a struggle.  We need more diverse views in office as demographics change the makeup of future majorities.  

That’s how democracy is supposed to work.  Unfortunately, this is a lesson that Japan’s Non-Japanese (NJ) Residents and Visible Minorities still have trouble grasping.  As a result, they are letting the Japanese government deprive them of their potential as a political force in Japan…

Kyodo: “Record 3.4 million foreign residents in Japan as work visas rise” in 2023. Only a brief reference to foreign crime (i.e., overstaying) this time. Fancy that.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Kyodo: “The number of foreign nationals residing in Japan hit a record high of over 3.4 million in 2023, government data has shown, with employment-related visas seeing significant growth amid the country’s efforts to address its acute labor shortage. As of the end of December, 3,410,992 foreign nationals resided in Japan, up 10.9% from the previous year to mark a record high for the second consecutive year, the Immigration Services Agency said Friday.

“The number of specified skilled workers jumped 59.2% to around 208,000, while trainees under Japan’s technical internship program grew 24.5% to around 404,000 to approach the record high level marked in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, the data showed. The specified skilled workers visa, which allows the holder to immediately take on jobs in designated industries without the need for training, was introduced in 2019 in response to Japan’s severe labor shortage resulting from its declining birthrate, with the aim of attracting foreign workers.

“Meanwhile, permanent residents, who made up the largest group by residential status, stood at around 891,000, up 3.2%. Engineers, specialists in humanities and international services, including foreign language teachers, rose 16.2% to around 362,000. By nationality, Chinese accounted for the largest population of foreign residents at around 821,000, followed by Vietnamese at around 565,000 and South Koreans at around 410,000…”

COMMENT: So the foreign labor imports have resumed, and how. Also interesting is that Kyodo doesn’t seem to feel the need to shoehorn in foreign crime statistics this time (just a brief allusion to overstaying at the very end).  I’ll be incorporating these stats into my next SNA Visible Minorities column, out shortly, and argue how this influx can translate into political power.

DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER MARCH 31, 2024

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Table of Contents:
1) My SNA Visible Minorities 54: “Non-Japanese Residents claim political power” (Mar 31, 2024), where I argue the power of the vote matters whether you are a candidate or part of the electorate; the J Govt tries hard to make sure neither happens for Japan’s Immigrants.
2) Kyodo: “Record 3.4 million foreign residents in Japan as work visas rise” in 2023. Only a brief reference to foreign crime (i.e., overstaying) this time. Fancy that.
3) Debito.org Reader XY on “Rakuten Card is asking for sensitive Koseki Family Registry documents for Naturalized Japanese clients as a prerequisite for continued service”, even though nobody is clearly requiring them to.
4) My SNA Visible Minorities column 53: “Miss Japan Shiino Karolina lost her crown. Inevitably.” (Feb 26, 2024)
5) Reuters: Visible Minorities (“Foreign-born residents”) file lawsuit against government for police racial profiling. Good. Go for it.
6) My latest SNA VM column 52: “Positive Steps for Non-Japanese in Japan” (Jan 23, 2024), a report of a month spent in Tokyo and all the progress towards tolerance observed.
7) Japan Times: “Japan should aim to maintain population of 80 million by 2100”, says private panel of business interests. 24 years later, no new ideas, since it calls for rises in birthrates, not immigration, yet again.

… and finally …
8 ) Japan Times: “Fukuoka court rules ban on dual nationality is constitutional”. Debito.org makes the case for why banning dual nationality is unrealistic, not to mention just plain stupid, with an excerpt from my book “Embedded Racism”.

Debito.org Reader XY on “Rakuten Card is asking for sensitive Koseki Family Registry documents for Naturalized Japanese clients as a prerequisite for continued service”, even though nobody is clearly requiring them to.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Dr. Debito, I’m writing you because I’m experiencing a new type of discrimination by Rakuten Card.

I’ve been a Rakuten Card owner since 2014, and it is the card I’ve hold the longest, making it the biggest chunk of my credit history. Also, I’m a naturalized Japanese citizen, that naturalized back in 20XX, and one month afterwards I had already completed all the requirements for change of name and status according to what I was asked by Rakuten Card, which, if I remember correctly, required me to send copies of documents proving my change of name and status.

About a month ago, I received a mail by Rakuten Card asking me to send them a copy of my current Residence Card. I was very confused by this, so I contacted them, and they told me that since when I applied for the Card I was a foreigner, I needed to provide them with something that “proved” my residence status, and they asked me for my Koseki Family Registry, which is insane. I told them that I already gave them the documents they required back when I naturalized, that I’ve never been asked this by any other Bank or Credit Card company, and that it is insane for them to ask me for a Koseki, which is a very sensitive document that should be handed for these kind of requests, since something as simple as my Juminhyo Residency Certificate, which I think is what I sent back in 20XX proved my nationality, and they also have my “My Number” information, which should gave them access to corroborate this.

They insisted that this was something that the Financial Services Agency as part of an anti Money Laundering KYC thing, I asked them to give me more specifics on this, and they refused to do so, so I called the Financial Services Agency… (continues)

COMMENT FROM DEBITO: The dragnet of suspecting any foreigner, including NJ Residents, of being a money launderer expands to people who are no longer foreign as well.

My SNA Visible Minorities column 53: “Miss Japan Shiino Karolina lost her crown. Inevitably.” (Feb 26, 2024)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

SNA: You might have heard the big news last month about Shiino Karolina, a Ukrainian-born Japanese citizen who won the title of Miss Japan. You have also heard earlier this month that she lost her crown due to allegations of her having an affair with a married man.

Yappari.  I thought that might happen.  How convenient.  Let’s put this event in perspective.  

This not the first time a Japanese beauty contest in has chosen a person not “pure-blooded” to represent Japan.  In 2015, African-American-Japanese Miyamoto Ariana was chosen as Miss Japan in 2015. 

This was big news back then too for winning despite her biracial status.  I say “despite” because oodles of internet trolls questioned whether a half-Japanese could represent Japan.  

And guess what?  She could, since lightning struck a second time a year later, when Indian-Japanese Yoshikawa Priyanka was crowned Miss World Japan.

However, with Shiino, the third time was not the charm.  She only lasted two weeks.  Why?  Because she was a bridge too far…

Reuters: Visible Minorities (“Foreign-born residents”) file lawsuit against government for police racial profiling. Good. Go for it.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Reuters: Three foreign-born residents of Japan filed a lawsuit on Monday against the national and local governments over alleged illegal questioning by police based on racial profiling. It is the first such lawsuit in Japan, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, and comes amid a sharp rise in the number of foreign workers coming to the country to help stem labour shortages as its population ages and declines.

The three men filed the lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court demanding that the national, Tokyo Metropolitan and Aichi Prefecture governments recognise that it is illegal for police officers to stop and question people solely on the basis of their race, nationality or ethnicity.

COMMENT: This has made big international news, the likes I haven’t really seen since the Otaru Onsens Case.  Good. Debito.org has reported at length on how racial profiling is standard operating procedure for the Japanese police, so it’s an issue that deserves to be pursued in court. We’ve also sued the government before, and think it’s unlikely they’ll win (we didn’t). But it’s worth doing for the awareness raising. If we can get it on the record that the judiciary recognizes this as “racial profiling”, or even that “racial profiling” actually exists in Japan as a term and a phenomenon, this will be a big step ahead. Plaintiffs, go for it, and good luck, says Debito.org.

My latest SNA VM column 52: “Positive Steps for Non-Japanese in Japan” (Jan 23, 2024), a report of a month spent in Tokyo and all the progress towards tolerance observed.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

I know I should be talking about the Miss Japan 2024 debate, but I’ll get to it. Meanwhile, my latest SNA VM col 52 excerpt: Last month SNA (and this column) went on vacation for Christmas and New Years. During the hiatus, I spent a month in Tokyo meandering around visiting sights and people, developing my inner flaneur as well as conducting relaxed random research. Tokyo, a walking city riddled with world-class transportation and public facilities, is an ideal place for that.

This month’s column will offer my impressions about how much Japan has changed regarding the issues that have always been on my radar screen — society’s openness to Newcomers. On that score (in contrast to what’s happening with the debate over Miss Japan), I have some positive developments to report…

Happy 2024: Japan Times: “Japan should aim to maintain population of 80 million by 2100”, says private panel of business interests. 24 years later, no new ideas, since it calls for rises in birthrates, not immigration, yet again.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

JT: Amid concerns over rapid depopulation, a private panel has proposed that Japan should aim to have a stable population of 80 million by 2100 in order to maintain economic growth. Last April, the government released an estimate that the population would be reduced by half to about 63 million in 2100, with 40% of people expected to be 65 or older.

Japan has wrestled with the issue of a declining birthrate for decades, but the situation is about to “change drastically,” with the country now entering a serious phase of population decline, the panel, headed by Nippon Steel honorary chairman Akio Mimura and consisting of 28 members including prominent academics and business leaders, said Tuesday. […]

To avoid such a future, Japan needs to slow down the pace of the decline and eventually stop it, the panel said, adding that government strategy should focus on stabilizing the population at around 80 million by 2100. As of last month, Japan’s population was estimated to be 124 million. The panel carried out several simulations and argued that if the country raised the total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman gives birth to in her lifetime — to 1.6 by around 2040, 1.8 by around 2050 and eventually 2.07 by 2060, it could maintain a population of around 80 million by 2100.

COMMENT: Nothing new here when you have the same old people retreading the same old shinola to the same perpetually-elected party in power.  Getting all these people together to wish for a skypie solution of increasing birthrates (while somehow also boosting productivity) is silly, as it has already been proposed multiple times over the decades without success.  This is no way to craft public policy that actually solves a problem.

Indicatively, *once again* this report makes no mention of immigration, despite both the UN and then-PM Obuchi agreeing as far back as the *YEAR 2000* (see below) that immigration is inevitable to keep the economy going.  But as we saw afterwards in 2009, xenophobic politics intervened, and even Japan’s demographers are forbidden to mention foreign inflows as part of Japan’s domestic demographic science. (See My JT column on that here.) In conclusion, a quarter-century later nothing has been learned.

A further note:  Whenever you have business interests involved (as if they’re any experts on demographic engineering), the primary concern will be about business interests, i.e., profits and cheap labor.  Now remember what the likes of elite business lobby Keidanren wrought by bringing in foreign labor on exploitative revolving-door visa regimes since 1991 (the “Trainee” slave-labor program, for example).  Allowing the grubby little hands of Japan’s business lobbies any more input into future policy drives only guarantees more inhumanity, because with population drops and an elderly society come labor shortages.  Who will fill them?  Robots; but robots don’t pay taxes into the rickety national pension system.  So foreigners.  Hence business interests will only continue to advocate importing labor without ever letting foreign workers become permanent Japanese residents.

Japan Times: “Fukuoka court rules ban on dual nationality is constitutional”. Debito.org makes the case for why banning dual nationality is unrealistic, not to mention just plain stupid, with an excerpt from my book “Embedded Racism”.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

JT: The Fukuoka District Court ruled Wednesday that Japan’s law that bans dual nationality is constitutional, rejecting an argument by a Japan-born plaintiff who lost her Japanese citizenship after she naturalized as an American. Yuri Kondo, 76, had argued that the nationality law — which stipulates that Japanese nationals will lose their citizenship if they become a citizen of a foreign country — undermines fundamental human rights to pursue happiness, self-determination, and identity, as guaranteed under the Constitution. While the nationality law was deemed constitutional, presiding Judge Fumitaka Hayashi said the wish of the individual who would lose their nationality should be considered as it is part of a person’s identity.

COMMENT: Most arguments made by the Japanese Government dovetail around the idea that people will be somehow confused in terms of national allegiances if they have more than one nationality. For what if Japan went to war with the country you have a second passport for? Where would your allegiances lie?

Making public policy merely on the basis of hypotheticals is not the best way to make laws. As noted above in the article, the number of countries allowing dual nationality is in fact increasing (“the number of countries allowing dual nationality has increased from one-third to three-quarters worldwide”), as more people around the world travel, resettle, immigrate, marry, and have multinational children as well as lives.  Forcing them to give up their other nationality is to force them to give up part of their identity — a completely unnecessary and moreover psychologically damaging move just for the sake of bureaucratic convenience.  And that’s before we get into issues of arbitrary enforceability, as discussed in my book excerpt below.

The increase in diversity should be reflected in laws to accommodate reality.  Instead, we have pig-headed J politicians who can’t imagine a life beyond their own experiences (with the exception of the LDP’s Kouno Taro, who actually argued for dual nationality, albeit to coat the Kokutai in more glory, not for the sake of the individual’s identity) and refuse to legislate reality into reality.  And that feeds into a hidebound judiciary that claim they can only enforce the law as it’s written (even presiding Judge Hayashi above expressed regret at that).

To finish up, let me excerpt from my book “Embedded Racism” on this topic.  It’ll make the case about why public policy is as stupid as it is as best I can…

My SNA VM column 51: “Being thankful despite adversity” (Nov 27, 2023), a think piece on how people survive terrible lives because the basic unit of survival is being part of a pair. And if you’re not in one in Japan, life is especially difficult.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Excerpt: Life is full of big emotions, many of them caused by you, others the product of your being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some are just the cards you were dealt from birth and environment.

We can put that down to bad luck or some godforsaken ordeal. Or we can rationalize about things that don’t kill you making you stronger, adversity building character, etc.

But I don’t believe in ordeals anymore. I’m 58. My character is pretty much built. Moreover I’ve seen, through elders turned bitter in their old age, that too much adversity just makes you mean.

So as I approach my sixties, one of my life projects is understanding the science and practice of happiness. Interim conclusion: I choose to be happy. To me that means being thankful for the people who carry you through the inevitable tribulations of life while you do the same for them.

The life hack is having another person — at least one — who wishes you well, has your best interests in mind, and is there to see what you see, reminding you that you’re not the only one going through all this.

There is some science here. A book called “Escape from Camp 14” describes a survivor’s account of escaping a North Korean concentration camp. It offered the following life lesson…