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 March 31, 2025April 2, 2025 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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Hi Blog. What follows is my latest column, written while I was in Canada witnessing how Trump’s threat of tariffs is affecting Canadian society. Short answer: Not well. But better than I would have expected. Canadians so far seem to be able to separate the US government’s wicked behavior from the treatment of people with American origins. That’s sapient, and hopefully not temporary. I’m not sure the Americans would be as careful if the roles were reversed. A report from the field, with lots of links to sources, and a particular scoop about how current FBI Director Kash Patel owns a company selling racist/secessionist merchandise to Canadians. Screen captures below. It’s a weird era indeed. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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*T-shirt with an American Flag in the shape of the Canadian Province of Alberta, being sold by a company owned by US FBI Director Kash Patel; courtesy of SNA.*

LETTER FROM CANADA

Subtitle: A country weirdly threatened by its southern neighbor, including racist/secessionist merchandise from Kash Patel, is somehow taking it all in stride

By Arudou Debito. Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities Column 65, April 1, 2025, courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2025/04/01/visible-minorities-letter-from-canada/

I am currently writing you from Canada, up here taking care of some business.

In the past I’ve lived in Canada for about a year, and now am spending a week enjoying Alberta. One of Canada’s richest provinces due to its oil and natural gas reserves, it’s actually on the front lines in the weird American MAGA push to invade Canada.

ALBERTA IS A SPECIAL PLACE FOR CONSERVATIVES

I’m told that Alberta considers itself the “Texas of Canada.” You quickly see why. People here wear cowboy boots and hats, proudly chow down on Alberta beef with Taber corn, have an annual “Stampede” festival due to its cattle ranching history, and openly eschew the politics of its “pot-head” neighbors to the west (British Columbia) and the “boring” prairie provinces to the east (Saskatchewan and Manitoba).

But Albertans reserve their biggest grievances for Ontario and Quebec, arguing that jealous national politicians “down east” drain them of tax monies and natural resource revenues while ignoring their interests. (Or, horrors, force them to learn French!)

Albertans generally vote for whatever party seems to come closest to a conservativism redolent of the US GOP. Distaste for the ruling center-left Liberal Party and former Prime Minister Trudeau (nicknamed “Turd-o” here) is normal and vocal, especially amongst the gun-toting Ford F-150 pickup-driving rural population.

Alberta has a long history of resisting what it sees as the excessive power of Eastern Canada, dating back to the populist Social Credit Party of the 1930s. Alberta’s current Premier Danielle Smith (the equivalent of a US state governor) has continued that tradition by making it clear that she and Alberta “don’t take marching orders from Ottawa,” the nation’s capital and center of federal government.

Smith argues that national policies have done nothing but harm Alberta’s oil and gas sector. The major population centers of Edmonton and Calgary cycle between boom-and-bust economies depending on constraints put on the fossil fuel market. Wind, solar, and hydroelectric be damned: To them, on-again off-again export fuel pipelines and provincial control over resource revenues make or break this part of Canada.

In addition to passing the Alberta Sovereignty Act in 2022 (to opt out of enforcing “federal rules deemed harmful to Alberta’s interests”), Smith also has a history of promoting MAGA-esque culture war issues, such as opposition to Covid mask mandates. In January, Smith even made the pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to meet Donald Trump and kiss the proverbial ring.

The debate shifted significantly in February and March, as Trump insultingly began calling Trudeau “governor” instead of prime minister, unilaterally declared he didn’t recognize the Canada-US border treaty of 1908, and threatened tariffs unless Canada became America’s 51^st state. Media reports of Canadians caught up in ICE immigration dragnets have caused shockwaves. The MAGA crowd even put out a map annexing southern-tier Ontario between Windsor and Kingston, which includes Toronto and comprises a good third of Canada’s economy and population.

While signaling her opposition to the tariffs, Smith still took pains to note the need to “coordinate the securing of our border against illegal migrants and drugs moving in both directions” (despite the negligible numbers in both cases)—sops to Trump talking points. Smith also had to debase herself last week in a sit-down with far-right provocateur Ben Shapiro, who called Canada “a silly country that makes maple syrup, hockey and annoying prime ministers.”

ALBERTA HAS A SOFT SPOT FOR “US-EH”

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. (Click on the images for a closer look.)

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***ing a Canada goose.

Who owns Based Apparel? Kash Patel, the current Director of the FBI and a full-bore Trump sycophant. In 2022 he released a children’s book portraying Trump as a king winning an election against an evil queen (named Hillary) who accuses him of cheating. (Naturally, a wizard named “Kash” saves the day.)

Silliness aside, this merch matters. An official at the highest levels of American government, in charge of federal police investigations, is directly profiting from sowing secession in another country.

THE VIEW FROM THE GROUND

Fortunately, most Canadians, even in Alberta, don’t seem to be falling for the fringe.

A quick trip to any shopping center gives you your first clue. Choosing between imported and locally produced products has never clearer. Stores and supermarkets are very carefully putting maple leafs next to Canadian goods. Banners are up outside businesses proclaiming, “Proudly Canadian owned and operated.”

Much media has focused on Canadian liquor stores summarily removing American bourbon, whisky, and brandy from their shelves. This is a coordinated effort, since Canada’s retail liquor market is generally run by provincial governments. Alberta happens to be the only province with a fully privatized liquor market, but a representative of Real Canadian Superstore, which accounts for nearly a third of Canada’s grocery retail market share, proudly told me they removed all American booze from their shelves at the first sign of Trump tariffs and put it in storage.

Private liquor stores I visited still had a clear “America” section labeled as usual, but when asked about it, the owner said, “It’s my stock, my choice. Where would I put it? So I put it out. But once it sells out, I’m not ordering more.” The Alberta Government supports this, instructing its Gaming, Liquor, and Cannabis agency to “ban” all US alcohol imports and let the remaining retail stock sell out.

In terms of popular conservative sentiment, my Alberta businessman friend (a staunch libertarian and Liz Cheney fan) is adamant that Canadian MAGA fans are nowhere near power. “They’re out there. I see them on my Facebook but they get shouted down. I think it’s a safe bet the vast majority of Canadian conservatives do not support Trump.”

In fact, he laments how Trump’s threats have in fact backfired, draining support from the Conservative Party and delivering it to the Liberals.

In early January the Liberals were polling behind the Conservatives by double digits, and 338Canada projected a landslide victory for the latter. Mere weeks later, the Liberals are back in the lead, projected to take every province and territory except Alberta and Saskatchewan.

This doesn’t usually happen in Canadian politics. The pattern is usually that Canadian voters award power to a party but soon get sick of them. Poll numbers inexorably go down. Then another party gets in until voters get sick of them too.

But thanks to Trump’s bullying (and the fact that the Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is basically echoing Trump’s invective of “woke obsessions” and “broken immigration”), Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, looks likely to cruise to victory in the next national election on April 28.

The point is, Trump’s bullying has united Canadians—even Quebec separatists—like never before. “Elbows up!” (a hockey term for standing your ground) has become the national buzzword as Canucks react viscerally to the Trump regime’s obnoxious threats to their freedom and way of life. The national mood is one of anger, and profound sadness that the US seems to have completely lost the plot.

“FORTRESS AMERICA” IS A RECURRING BAD IDEA

Last column I talked about the American propensity to take things to logical extremes. This is more evidence of that.

The US has a habit of periodically whipping itself into a frenzy over metaphorical foreign invasions (even though it hasn’t experienced an actual invasion for nearly two centuries). When that happens, public policies reflect bunker mentalities and the border becomes a fortress wall. This is worse than unseemly; it puts enormous stress on the borderless global economy and the postwar Pax Americana World Order.

The weird thing is that America’s trade war with its northern and southern neighbors, which account for about a third of US trade, pretty much came out of nowhere. In the case of Canada, it’s just plain absurd. Canada and the US have had surprisingly porous borders and hand-in-glove relations for generations. Despite what Trump may claim, no country has been as supportive of both American trade terms and war efforts (participating in basically every postwar American overseas military campaign) as Canada has.

Even in calmer times, “Fortress America” is often the first thing one experiences when approaching the border. I personally have faced harassing American Customs officials waxing racist about the fact I’m a white guy with a Japanese passport (something I’ve never, incidentally, experienced at the Japanese border), and then they would send me to secondary for a few hours until I missed my connecting flight. (My worst experience was at Calgary Airport, where you actually face American police on Canadian soil before you board your plane.)

This attitude doesn’t seem to have rubbed off on Canada. Even in Alberta, the place I would expect it most, I have not experienced any animosity towards people from America, even from the random shopkeepers and clerks I’ve struck up conversations with.

Maybe I’ve been lucky so far, but everyone I’ve talked to basically just laments how the US government is destroying one of the most constructive and productive international relationships in history.

Yes, Canadians will now buy anything but American if they can and take their vacations anywhere but the United States. Travel to the US from Canada has already plummeted by 70 percent so far this year. But so far, Canadians seem to be distinguishing the country (or at least the person on top) from the American people in general.

That’s pretty enlightened. I’m not sure many Americans, with their steady diet of chauvinistic propaganda in the right-wing media ecosystem justifying anything Trump does, would be as discrete.

DUMB IS AS DUMB DOES

The Wall Street Journal has called this “the dumbest trade war in history.” I will echo that and call it the dumbest territorial dispute in history. Last Friday, PM Carney announced that, “The old relationship we had with the United States, based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over,” adding that Canada will have to “dramatically reduce” its reliance on the US.

So much quantifiable opportunity and trust between two prosperous societies has been squandered, for no good reason beyond the venality of one man. As the world seemingly divides into China-Russia-US spheres of influence, this wanton destruction of sovereign goodwill only weakens the North American sphere.

Meanwhile, let’s see if I have another bad experience crossing the US border this time. If I haven’t been renditioned to an ICE facility in Louisiana, you’ll hear again from me next month.

ENDS

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My latest SNA VM 64: “It can only end in violence”: 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 February 28, 2025 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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Hi Blog. This month’s entry is again based on what’s on my mind these days as I teach courses on the state of American Democracy: How it is being predictably and rapidly dismantled. Here’s my article about consequences of acting lawlessly. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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IT CAN ONLY END IN VIOLENCE

Subtitle: That’s what happens when the rule of law meets a lawless leader

Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities column 64, February 26, 2025

By Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2025/02/26/visible-minorities-it-can-only-end-in-violence/

We live in extreme times…

Time out for a second, for I have a confession to make. Things are so extreme that columnists like me don’t know where to begin. Do I comment on a small thing within a deluge of events, and risk ignoring the big picture? Or do I go big and realize I’m completely out of my depth, especially measured up to the big-picture columnists successfully rising to the occasion, such as Anne Applebaum, Rebecca Solnit, Robert Reich, or Timothy Snyder?

But writing things out is how columnists make sense of it all, so bear with me as I try. Let me start again:

WE LIVE IN EXTREME TIMES…

We have an American president who has declared himself king (not only rhetorically, but pictorially), while the legislative branch abdicates its oversight powers, and the judiciary grants immunity. Essential services are arbitrarily slashed by an unelected, unapproved, and unmonitored “Department of Government Efficiency.” Civil Servants are fired for something as mundane as taking a DEIA course required under the previous Trump administration (Source: Alex Wagner, “Trumpland” podcast, Feb 13). Even reliable information is under assault, as top-level domains with the formerly trustworthy .gov label (see for example whitehouse.gov and doge.gov) are being degraded into blogs and twitter feeds.

Meanwhile, NATO is dying, with the likely victory of Russia as it absorbs Ukraine then reconstitutes its military. We are regressing to a century where the world was carved into blocs run by regional powers (this time probably China, Russia and the US). This will mean the end of equal sovereignty within a community of nations, as might makes right, and great powers invade at will (China taking Taiwan; the US taking Greenland, Panama, Gaza, even Canada?; and Russia snaffling sovereign countries of the former Soviet empire).

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

If I could offer one generality that seems to cut through some of the noise, it would be that the Americans were always temperamentally ill-suited to be leaders on the world stage. Pax Americana was fine while it was governed by the educated specialists, trained in useful skills such as international trade, diplomacy, military strategy, and the sobering science behind life and death decisions.

But among governing systems, democracy uniquely gives the public a say in foreign policy. That’s why the policy experts had better make sure the general public knows the basics of what’s going on, or is convinced by the aims of the mission. Or bad things will happen when they go out and vote.

The governing class really dropped the ball on that. The overall culture of secrecy and unaccountability behind America’s military action, both in mandate and budget, was shrouded in “official secrets” and “executive privilege.” That not only made things ripe for unknown unknowns to be filled by internet conspiracy theories, but also ideal for the opportunistic “America First” advocates. Why is America spending so much of our money on weird things overseas when people at home are hurting?

Yes, this political dynamic favoring isolationism could happen anywhere. But here’s where America is particularly susceptible: It not only has the largest economic and military footprint in history (meaning uninformed Americans falling for irresponsible slogans affect the whole world order), but also a long history of taking things to logical extremes.

America was founded in extremism. From the first settlers’ cult-like devotions to superstitions leading to the Salem witch trials, to a system of slavery that overwhelmed entire economies (to the point where, in some places, slaves outnumbered the free population). From a system of coexisting with your indigenous neighbors to a philosophy of “terra nullius” that denied their very existence. Or worse, a system that justified the extremes of war and genocide in order to occupy an entire continent through “Manifest Destiny.”

Yes, these ideologies could be dismissed as excesses of an adolescent nation. But even as the United States turns 250, plenty of extreme ideologies can be found in modern policy debates. Consider these:

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

The belief that the United States is unique in its values, democracy, and development, therefore destined to place a special role on the world stage, has underpinned policies ranging from an economy open to trade deficits (even to the detriment of American workers) to the United States assuming the mantle of de facto world policeman (even if that means Americans dying in military adventurism abroad).

Having been born and raised in America and being trained as an Eagle Scout, I too was once imbued the mindset of how America is special. But after decades living abroad and becoming fluent in another language (America’s brazen monolinguality is a related blind spot), I’ve also developed the skill set of seeing that that other viable world views and systems are possible, and that America isn’t #1 at everything. Revisiting America, I find mine a pretty lonely view.

But here’s the logical extreme: American Exceptionalism doesn’t just mean it’s special or unique. It means America is also somehow an exception to international rules. That given its unique role as keeper of the world order and promoter of the democratic peace, the United States should get special treatment immunizing it from the consequences of its actions. How else does one justify the United States not joining the International Criminal Court, or arrogantly issuing “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” without including itself? If American leaders or soldiers make decisions that result in war crimes, who gets prosecuted at The Hague? Nobody. And what are you going to do about it? It makes international relations even more lawless.

But the biggest blind spot in American Exceptionalism could be American democracy’s undoing: the unfounded belief that authoritarianism couldn’t happen here.

The logic is that America’s amazing democracy wouldn’t allow it. Except that historically America has had many “near-misses” with popular political extremists, including John Adams, Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Leland Stanford, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Huey Long, Charles Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, and George Wallace.

Americans can’t accept that one authoritarian finally got through in 2016 and 2024, and watch agape as Trump and his cronies act in waves of extremes dismantling democratic institutions one by one. So policymakers, media, and voters disbelieve their lying eyes and treat it as politics as normal. This is extreme hubris.

AMERICA AS THE COWBOY IN THE WHITE HAT

Another American extreme is cultural: The conviction that Americans are always the winners and the heroes in the world.

Thanks in part to the dominance of American entertainment in media, coupled with the Americans’ incessant need to feel entertained rather than informed, they aren’t used to seeing themselves as the bad guys (in contrast to, say, the Germans). American-sponsored torture and coups overseas? Fuhgeddaboudit. Show us Rambo blowing up Afghanistan and pass the popcorn.

If Americans ever make it outside the US (most don’t; it wasn’t until 2024 when 51% Americans even got a passport!), they’re astounded to find themselves loathed and targeted abroad. After all, American news media rarely reports on overseas events, and many Americans can’t find a country on a map unless it involves an American military conflict. Then that, of course, goes through a filter embedding the reporters and supporting the troops, so lessons aren’t learned again.

The problem is that Americans have little sense of what’s being done in their name. A public ignorant of that elects extremely ignorant people in their own image, who in turn make irresponsible decisions affecting the lives and governments of people thousands of miles away. And if there is any blowback, we American Heroes have been attacked, so America must retaliate. Pass the popcorn.

EMBEDDED STRUCTURAL EXTREMISM

Finally, we get to the fact that America’s archaic democracy has mechanisms that embed extremism.

Start with the fact that America has an extreme number of elections and jobs elected—the most in the world, in fact. That means even fundamentally nonpartisan jobs (such as sheriffs and judges) become popularity contests. While many dismiss this as true people power in action, American democracy goes to extremes in more important ways:

For example, the “primary system” not only favors extremists choosing candidates, but also the most important election campaigns are now perpetual. American elections are the most expensive in human history, thus easily susceptible to corruption. Yet a Supreme Court stacked with free-speech extremists has consistently short-circuited attempts to rein in campaign finance reform by interpreting free speech in terms of money, which plainly gives the rich and corporations the loudest voices in an election. National politicians are now forced to waste at least half their work time not on policymaking, but on fundraising.

Likewise, extremist candidates picked under extreme conditions end up passing extreme laws (such as banning abortion under all circumstances), and ask politicized judges to take things to their logical extremes.

Follow this logic: New York City Mayor Eric Adams last September was indicted for bribery, fraud, and soliciting foreign campaign money. However, the Department of Justice under Trump as of last week wants to drop those charges. Why? The Supreme Court last year granting Trump immunity while in office. The reasoning? Being sued or arrested for a crime is an interference with an elected official’s duties.

Thus Trump is trying to apply his immunity beyond the presidency to the mayoral level. And beyond. The DOJ is also arguing here that all politicians, or even political candidates, should be granted immunity, because being accused of a crime counts as election interference! Run for office and immunize yourself from criminal prosecution? Calling all crooks!

When extremism becomes this normalized, weird theories go from fringe to mainstream. What other country would fall so hard for Milton Friedman’s capitalistic zealotry, i.e., that unfettered market forces magically fix everything so we don’t really need governments? That hokum has evolved from Ronald Reagan’s snake-oil “trickle-down economics” to the current extremist Project 2025.

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

So what happens next?

Extreme moves result in extreme blowback, and that means sometimes violence has to occur before people realize they went too far.

For example, it took extreme laws (the Alien and Sedition Acts, etc.) that nearly destroyed freedom of speech under the fledgling US Constitution before people voted out a stupid President John Adams. However, the United States then swung to another extreme, becoming a one-party state for the next 30 years and enfranchising slavery as an economic and political institution.

It took a horrific Civil War before the United States finally outlawed that slavery. But the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln followed by extreme interpretations of “states rights” ensured that freed slaves still remained disenfranchised for nearly another century.

After 60 years of a “spoils system” embedding political cronyism, it took the assassination of President James Garfield by an enraged job seeker before people realized a politicized civil service was a bad idea.

It took the death of 146 workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and 172 children in the Collinwood School Disaster before people realized that buildings needed safety protocols and fire escapes.

It took the death of President Franklin Roosevelt before people realized that perpetual presidencies were a bad idea, and constitutionally enshrined term limits (a lesson Trumpophiles, recently creating a “Third Term Project and Beyond,” seem to have unlearned).

It took the death of President John F. Kennedy before Civil Rights and Voting Rights were finally passed, thanks to a guilt-ridden election that gave rare supermajorities to one party. (After all, thanks to the filibuster, it takes extreme support for anything to pass the Senate.)

Likewise, I bet somebody gets hurt before things snap back from the extremes in the present Musk-Trump co-presidency.

IT CAN ONLY END IN VIOLENCE

It’s ironic that Trump cites McKinley as his template president, as he too went to extremes. Presiding over a mercantilist tariff regime and stoking wars to annex territories overseas, McKinley saw society polarize into an oligarchic ruling class versus an exploited factory worker class, and the rise of the Communists and the domestic “bomb-throwing anarchists.”

One of those anarchists assassinated McKinley.

The politics of assassination is not sustainable, and it’s completely avoidable. One of the reasons we have the rule of law is not only to temper extremism, but also because a functional society requires justice.

When justice is not served, and people with power act as if they are above the law, people resort to extrajudicial means. If you go to the police after a crime but they do nothing about it, what else can you do? You call the mafia and they break legs.

We have the rule of law so the black market for justice does not thrive. Consequences must happen one way or another. And if lawlessness happens, that probably means violence. A lawless Trump administration means that sooner or later somebody is going to get hurt.

That’s why I don’t think things will end well. Extremes result in counter-extremes. That’s what history teaches us over and over again. Learn it or else.

But America’s exceptional case means that, due to its extremities, it was never designed to sustain a worldwide empire. And now that its expertise is being politicized and removed, this is where the empire collapses. That, or democracy will snap back and real reforms happen.

Either outcome might happen extremely fast. I’ll be here to muddle through with another column then.

ENDS

HNY 2025: My SNA VM column 63: “Trump’s Weak Mandate”, 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 January 20, 2025February 28, 2025 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog, and Happy New Year! This column marks a complete departure from my Japan-based opining and more what I’m professionally researching now: The state of democracy in the US and elsewhere. I’m sure there are a lot of other informed venues you can read on this subject, but if you’re interested in my take as a Political Scientist, well here you go. I hope 2025 turns out as well for you as it possibly can, but I’m in the camp where I don’t think it will, and offer some strategies below. Thank you as always for reading and commenting to Debito.org. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Visible Minorities 63: Trump’s Weak Mandate

Subtitle: Trump is reentering the presidency with what has been called an “overwhelming, historic mandate.” That’s not true. In fact, the case is stronger that what happened was less a matter of support for Trump and more a worldwide repudiation of incumbents. Keep reminding people of that.

Shingetsu News Agency, January 20, 2025 by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN
Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2025/01/20/visible-minorities-trumps-weak-mandate/

SNA (Tokyo) — 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.

Look at the Statistics: The Senate

Brace yourself for a walk through the political weeds. I’ll simplify the system a bit for those who aren’t familiar with the structure of American politics:

In America’s legislature, the Senate (upper house) has a clear majority for Trump’s Republican Party (GOP) over the leftist Democratic Party (Dems). Out of 100 seats, the balance of the Senate shifted from 51-49 Dem to 53-47 GOP, a loss of four seats for the Dems.

In a two-party system, this matters because control of the chamber means control over the chamber’s rules, agenda-setting, committee assignments, leadership, and confirmation of Trump’s cabinet and judicial nominations.

But it’s not an “overwhelming” majority. This also matters because the US Senate is not majoritarian. You need a supermajority (60 senators) to pass most legislation (thanks to a rule called the filibuster). And since the Senate hasn’t had a supermajority for either party since 1964, it’s still pretty much business as usual in 2025.

Granted, there have been significant holes punched in the filibuster in the past couple of decades (that’s how the Supreme Court, for example, got stacked with Trump justices in his first term), but unless the GOP gets rid of the filibuster (not impossible, but the current form of the rule has been in place for more than a century), the Dems can still easily blockade and force compromises.

Look at the Statistics: The House

The other chamber, the House of Representatives (lower house), is like a regular legislature where you need a simple majority to pass things. But in 2025, the voting margin is even slimmer than it was before the election. Despite all the talk about a “red wave” for Trump, his party actually lost one seat from its pre-election majority to wind up at 220 GOP to 215 Dem.

Yes, that means that the House GOP, like in the Senate, retains control of chamber rules, speakerships, and leadership in committees.

But do the math. In the likely event that all 215 Dems vote as a bloc, that means only three GOP defections will doom a bill.

And since three GOP Congresspeople have resigned their seats to vie for Trump cabinet positions, that means the margin (until those people are replaced by their state governors or special elections, which may take months), is 217-215. One GOP defection dooms the boldest moves for most of Trump’s first 100 days.

And given that Congress usually has somebody resign or die every session, these are the slimmest margins of support for a president in a long time.

Now let’s turn to Trump’s claims of popular support for his programs because he won the election.

Caveats to Trump’s Mandate

Yes, Trump won the popular vote. But not by much. He won by 1.7% more votes than Kamala Harris got. Good for him, but that’s a smaller percentage than the 2.1% of the popular vote Hillary Clinton got more than Trump in 2016 (and Clinton only lost because of the weird US Electoral College).

Source: MSNBC, Nov 7, 2024

It’s also the fourth-smallest margin of victory in the 26 presidential elections over the past century (ahead of Nixon 1968 at 0.7%, Kennedy 1960 at 0.2%, Bush Jr. 2000 at -0.5% (due to another Electoral College-only victory), and Trump again in 2016.

Source: US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

But still, Trump won the popular vote, right? Yes, but not by a majority. Trump got 49.8% of the vote (versus Harris’s 48.3%). That’s a plurality, not a majority.

The point is that any claims of Trump’s “overwhelming” victory are clearly overblown. Turns out that more than half of American voters did not vote for him.

Worldwide Trends in Democracy

Trump’s victory is actually part of a worldwide wave against the incumbent.

Believe it or not, nearly half of the world’s population (3.7 billion people) voted in 2024. And as noted in the Financial Times, almost all democracies decided to vote out the incumbent party, regardless of whether it was on the Left or the Right.

Places like Lithuania, France, and Belgium saw the party in power lose seats by 30% or more. Most famously, the UK Conservative Party lost a whopping 46%!

Source: MSNBC, Nov. 7, 2024

For its part, the United States saw a 7% shift against the incumbents, who happened to be the hapless Democrats. But if you want to turn the frown upside down, that means that on a global scale, the Dems in fact did better than all other leftist parties worldwide (the only exception being Mexico, where the leftist governing party won in a landslide, expanding their support from 54% to 61%).

But of course, that’s not how it’s being spun by the media and political operatives. They keep harping on about how all branches of government are in the hands of one party so Trump can do whatever he wants.

Wrong. Trump’s victory was narrow at best, and not necessarily because voters supported Trump’s policies, but because they wanted a change from the status quo. And in the United States, that means there’s only one other party to vote for.

And that’s why we need more people taking civics classes on how to read elections, so they don’t fall for the spin.

Reading This Election

The fairest conclusion that can be drawn is that the United States is split evenly, a 50-50 country (often seen in two-party, “winner-take-all” electoral systems).

Or more accurately, when considering the 244+ million voting-eligible population of Americans, 31.5% voted for Trump, 30.6% voted for Harris, and 37.7% did not vote at all. The country is split into even thirds.

Source: Ian Carillo, Ph.D.

Now put that through the American election filter where outcomes are measured not by total popular vote, but state-by-state and in mostly “gerrymandered” (uncompetitive) districts drawn by states usually dominated by one political party.

This means that small shifts in the electorate (sometimes only a couple thousand votes) can swing whole states in favor of one presidential candidate or another.

Yes, this worked in Trump’s favor (as the Electoral College famously gives advantages to rural, conservative areas), winning all “swing states” that were competitive in this election. But that means the pendulum can swing back, and probably will do so in two years when all of the House and a third of the Senate go up for election again.

It’s pretty much a law of political gravity that the incumbent president loses seats in Congress (the notable exception being, for the first time since 1934, Biden in 2022). So we can anticipate this happening again in 2026.

But again, this is not an “overwhelming” or “massive” victory for Trump by any measure.

The Point: Do Not Obey in Advance

One of the features of the US executive branch is that it, unlike the fractious Congress, is intensely hierarchical. Once installed, the president has effective control over the US military, foreign policy, border security, military assignations, the nuclear arsenal, and entire budgets (which, yes, have to be approved by Congress, but they have to want to hold the president accountable).

But over the past century, Congress and the Supreme Court have increasingly abdicated their oversight powers in favor of the theory of the “unitary executive.” This has effectively given the man who already occupies the most powerful position in the world even more powers, such as conducting secret activities while immune to the rule of law, discretion over whether to spend budgets earmarked by Congress, hiring or firing apolitical bureaucrats based upon their loyalty to Trump, pardoning people for political gain and enhanced corruption, and whipping members of Congress to do his bidding or face being “primaried” from office.

America’s fabled federal “checks and balances” eroded to an inflection point in 2025. And starting today, Trump is going to leverage all this politics of fear and personal retribution into making government into a transactional business that always profits him, depicting any dissent as enemy action, and doing what he can to whiten up the avenues of power. All while the GOP pretends there’s a coherent conservative ideology behind it all. The rich and powerful now see it clearly and aren’t even hiding the fact they’re lining up to kiss the ring, “paying to play.”

And we’re all supposed to wish it “godspeed” as part of a “honeymoon period,” as if it’s just politics as normal.

The point of this essay is to bear in mind that this election has not given him the mandate to do any of this.

A common adage spouted by cynics is that “people get the leaders they deserve.” However, that fatalism is fatal to democracy, and voter resignation is in fact part of the authoritarian playbook.

Have a read someday of Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s important booklet, On Tyranny. I teach it in my classes. The very first lesson is:

“Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

That’s why we’ve heard so much about the “overwhelming mandate.” It’s a ploy to get us out of the way.

It’s our job as defenders of democracy to not enhance Trump’s power by attrition.

A golden rule of the game of chess is that, “If you let your opponent accomplish their goal, you will lose.” So do what you can to thwart.

Of course, I assume that most people will shrug and say, “I haven’t the time or energy to picket outside, call my representative, etc.”

What you can do is what we see people always do when disaster strikes: Send a little money to the helpers.

Fund some civil-society organizations (the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, Ballotpedia, Open Secrets, Democracy Docket, Indivisible, etc.) who are keeping track of corruption, lawfare, voting rights, social justice issues, etc. Sending them five bucks will not break the bank. In America, you spend more than that tipping your server for dinner.

The least you can do is pay your journalists, especially local. Take out a paid subscription to a few reliable news agencies. They are doing god’s work.

The End of the Tunnel

Let me try to end this column on a hopeful note without being panglossian.

As a benchmark, American presidents have “the first 100 days” to get as much done as possible. That’s Trump’s momentum to lose, and he has a habit of being capricious enough to blow up his own policies.

And realistically, short of a full descent into autocracy, Trump has two years (actually, eighteen months, given that Congress gears up for re-elections six months prior) before the above-mentioned political gravity sets in and the pendulum probably swings back.

That’s the window for him to do his worst. No doubt he will try. But that’s better to manage mentally than thinking in terms of four more years.

Meanwhile, remind others when you can that Trump’s mandate is overblown. A simple reminder that a majority of Americans didn’t vote for him is probably sufficient in most situations. The belief of invulnerability and inevitability is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s do what we can to break that spell.

ENDS

Collated sources and links in a powerpoint:

2024 Election Results and 47’s Mandate

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 December 13, 2024February 28, 2025 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Emerging from my busiest semester ever plus a November election, I have a lot on my mind. And it’s about US politics, since that is the data set I’m working with these days. Here’s something you might find interesting about it. Thanks for reading as always. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

=================================================

SNA VM 62: “Electing the Joker”

People still can’t believe Trump won again. Let’s consider how a shift in American popular culture favoring the villain over the hero might have legitimized it.

By Debito Arudou, Ph.D. Shingetsu News Agency, December 10, 2024

Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2024/12/10/visible-minorities-electing-the-joker/

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.

TRACE THE ARC OF THE ELECTABLE VILLAIN

Let’s start with how villains are of course attracted to politics. In fact, it’s generally seen as part of the job description: people with no patience for politics see politicians as venal, self-serving, and corrupt crooks.

But historically, that in itself hasn’t made them electable. In popular culture, crooks were at least supposed to hide their criminal tendencies during election campaigns, and portray themselves as morally upright with a sense of public duty. But if they were caught with their hand in the till, popular culture served up justice: They lost office, stood trial, and got put behind bars.

As many have noted aloud, if you tried to sell a story of a candidate running for president with the slogan of, “I’m voting for the convicted felon,” no TV or movie producer would have bought it. It would have been too far-fetched and unrealistic.

Not any more. And that’s because we’ve gotten to the point of voting for even the most obvious, cartoony villains in popular culture.

This plot twist has been decades in the making. Consider, for example, in two 1966 episodes of the Adam West “Batman” TV series, cartoon villain The Penguin actually ran for Mayor of Gotham City, having gotten a substantial lead in the polls against the incumbent. Batman, naturally, had no choice but to run against him, and eventually won after The Penguin conveniently got caught showing his true colors as a criminal in public. Justice prevailed.

Now fast forward thirty years and consider the 1994 “Simpsons” episode where cartoon villain Sideshow Bob ran for Mayor of Springfield. What was interesting this time was how sophisticated the nomination process was. The local right-wing talk show radio host (styled after Rush Limbaugh) portrayed Bob (a felon convicted of attempted murder) as a victim of the justice system, got him pardoned, and had him run against (venal, self-serving, and corrupt) Mayor Quimby.

In this case, Bob won the election. Why? He had an ace up his sleeve: charisma. Being an entertainer, Bob approached public policy in an unserious way, making the audience laugh with physical comedy and antics. Being an outsider not behaving “like a politician” was his selling point. And, once elected, he used his mandate to take revenge against his enemies.

(Justice ultimately did yet prevail, but that’s because each Simpsons episode has to reset every week, Bob was again conveniently shown in public to have rigged the election, putting Quimby back in office.)

Nowadays things are different. Villains, even the cartoony ones, win the popularity contests for real. Reality shows such as “Survivor” (which does have elections at the end of every episode) routinely decide not to vote out the villains early (or at all; as of 2020, at least nine seasons have had the sociopathic contestant win—including the wildly successful first season).

This attitude has trickled downstream into real-life politics. Given that US Presidential elections are basically a season of Survivor that lasts for years, the American public has learned to accept, even celebrate, the villain as the hero now. To the point of now being electable not despite, but because they are villains.

TRUMP’S SURPRISING ADVANTAGES IN THIS NEW CULTURAL MILIEU

As Scott notes in his column, the “evil” villain has distinct advantages over the “good” hero. One is that standards of ethical behavior are looser for villains. We expect the “goody-goodies” to follow the rules and political norms to the letter. To the point where one presidential pardon by Joe Biden of his son Hunter (an act plenty of earlier presidents have similarly done) is somehow more outrageous than the huge list of other convicted felons (who have committed egregiously worse crimes than Hunter) pardoned by Trump in his first term.

The reason for this double standard, in my read, is that Biden didn’t adhere to our image of a hero, and villains can get away with more because they’re acting within our expectations of an villain. Being venal, self-serving, and corrupt is what they do, so the hero must do only good things in contrast. Or else there is no truth or justice, the whole system is bad, and we can believe in nothing.

Another advantage villains have is they are simply more interesting than heroes. We can actually live without a hero at the center of a story now. Whole series are devoted exclusively to the villain (two movies about “The Joker” alone since 2019), with immersive TV series that spend years developing classic villain backstories, either humanizing/justifying their character traits, or showing how both hero and villain are not that far apart (witness “Wicked,” “Maleficent”, “Gotham,” “Cruella,” or the multi-movie Star Wars arc about Darth Vader). Even the optimistic “Star Trek” universe is plumbing the lawless “Section 31” loophole, while “The Wire” or “Breaking Bad” have gone out of their way to make us root for the bad guy no matter how evil they become.

This fandom for the “anti-hero” probably started with “The Godfather” series (later rehashed in much more detail as “The Sopranos”), but back then I remember it being scandalous. Not any more. Nihilism is now normal.

The twist is that in a society like America’s that is addicted to entertainment, boredom is somehow worse than bad behavior. People need drama 24/7, and the villain is intrinsic to drama.

Finally, villains have an advantage when it comes to what’s considered “entertaining” with the accelerated media consumption of the Internet. Anything made public needs to be short (or risk being dismissed as “TL;dr”), easily digestible, viral, and optimally funny.

That means a Sideshow Bob-esque character like Trump, with all his loopy dances, puerile humor, and communal grievances, holds the aces in modern political debate. He can in turns, as Scott puts it, “enact both the babyface tropes of wounded innocence and flag-waving wholesomeness and the belligerent, transgressive, over-the-top rantings of the classic [villain],” as illustrated in professional wrestling matches. That comparison is insightful. Just watching wrestlers do their thing gets boring. We positively crave the backstories, slaps, chairs over the head, and bloodletting between a villain and a hero. And the bad-guy character often triumphs.

Trump knows all of this, as he is a huge fan of professional wrestling. And from decades of media events he has mastered holding your attention forever. As presidential historian Jon Meacham put it, “Trump doesn’t see America as a country. He sees it as an audience.”

That craving for drama at all times puts our public servants, especially those wanting to win a popularity contest, at an enormous disadvantage. Public policy, i.e., the ability to use the government to find solutions to collective problems, is actually pretty ho-hum stuff.

But it’s supposed to be. You want the complex planning, detail, and implementation to be as predictable (and undramatic) as possible, or resources get wasted, people get hurt, and government gets blamed for not doing a good job.

Yet if you’re a dry, serious, or complicated candidate or functionary, then boooooriiiiing. To win, you must now put an entertaining spin on policy minutia. Most people simply aren’t talented enough to do that, as it requires comedic timing, an economy of words, an effective use of visuals, and internet savvy.

That means the Class Clown who spent high school disrupting class making people laugh at their desks has a more electable skill set now than the Teacher’s Pet who spent all their years quietly studying and mastering complicated concepts.

Hyperbole? Contrast the tone and content of the Trump and Harris rallies. Which one is closer to the Class Clown? Which one is more televisable? Which one grabs more headlines? Which one brings back more repeat viewers, crowds, and ratings? “Are you not entertained?,” I’m expecting Trump to say someday.

DEMOCRACY FANS NEED TO GET READY

The point of this column is to point out a stone unturned in the political debate: How American culture itself has shifted against the “goody two-shoes” doing the right thing. In my view, the Democratic Party did everything they should have done as the Good Guys to appeal to the American public as they knew it. They lost in part because they just weren’t interesting enough to get out enough votes in their favor, or to stem the wave of voters dissatisfied with the status quo.

But there’s more, and here’s where the brain rot goes very deep: Voters who like sociopathy.

Trump is fortunate enough to be downstream of an American cultural snowmelt that has normalized and celebrated sociopaths as never before. The deluge of shows celebrating villains has created a permission structure for a cult of copycats who want bad because it is bad. The “bad fan,” as Scott puts it, is where “the most passionate members of the audience embrace what they are meant to condemn.”

For the echo-chambers of communities of “bad fans” who found each other via the Internet, what unites them is Trump’s villainy—it’s what they like best about him. The Democrats just aren’t villainous enough—and they better not be, or American democracy is doomed.

The problem is that this simply isn’t politics as usual, and what’s about to happen isn’t just contained within a movie or TV drama anymore. America is about to be run by villains, put there in part by “bad fans.”

I don’t think they know what they’re getting everyone into. Americans have never dealt with an authoritarian like Trump before. (Contrast with the South Koreans, who have, and voted down the recent attempt at a Martial-Law coup within hours.) Americans are convinced their democracy in America is invulnerable, that authoritarianism “couldn’t happen here.”

So they essentially elected The Joker on a whim and a lark. After all, he didn’t destroy American democracy last time around. What’s the worst he can do?

We’re about to find out, because here comes the kakistocracy. The Joker’s minions are much better organized this time, and Republican majorities in all three branches of government (including a Supreme Court that has unprecedentedly granted him immunity) means even less oversight. Something very wicked this way comes.

But the Americans who eventually find they aren’t entertained by all this won’t be able to walk out of the theater partway or change the channel. They’re stuck. The Joker is on them.

Hang on, everyone. It looks like America has to get the authoritarian disease before it comes up with a cure.

ENDS
======================
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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 October 3, 2024February 28, 2025 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

MAGA’S ROOTS IN JAPAN
Shingetsu News Agency Visible Minorities column 60, October 3, 2024
Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2024/10/03/visible-minorities-magas-roots-in-japan/

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.

MAGA, INSPIRED BY JAPAN

As I argued in my concluding chapter of “Embedded Racism”, Second Edition, Japan is fetishized as a template “ethnostate” by the world’s White Supremacists: It keeps itself “pure,” free from immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.” It has no official immigration policy, has revolving-door work visa policies designed to stop cheap imported labor from actually settling in Japan, and has a cultural narrative that foreign residents must settle for second-class status, with no expectation of equal treatment or even guarantees of human rights under Japan’s Constitution. If you don’t like it, “go back to wherever you came from.”

This ideology has been openly espoused by even the highest levels of Japan’s government. Even Far-Right ideologue Steve Bannon famously called the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe “Trump before Trump.”

But trying to adapt Japan’s xenophobia is one thing. Japan’s more impressive innovation is exporting tools to rally the Far-Right, as seen in the rise of the fringe in democracies including Brazil, Holland, Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States.

The internet exploded in the early 1990s, but by the turn of the century Japan had already perfected communication networks (such as 2-Chan) servicing the Netto Uyoku (Internet Right-Wing). These anonymous bullying communities could target dissenting newspapers and businesses, make public the personal contacts of opponents, and assemble overnight the flag-wavers and bullhorns to terrify whole communities. Particularly foreign communities, including ethnic Korean schools, Brazilian neighborhoods, and recently Kurdish enclaves.

So what’s happening in Springfield is, if anything, a bit quaint. This playbook is a quarter-century old in Japan.

The Uyoku have enjoyed great success in Japan. With the power to shift political narratives and votes, they have killed open-minded policy proposals (such as giving local suffrage to generational permanent residents) with hateful and murderous invective. Entire political platforms dismissed “individual liberties” and “human rights” as “Western concepts” antithetical to Japanese native values. Well-funded by ultraconservatives (such as Nippon Kaigi) long nursing historical grievances over losing a war and an empire, thanks to the revolutions of the Internet they have had enough volume in the media to make the fringe seem mainstream.

They not only undermined Japan’s Left to point of restoring a grandson of a war criminal (Abe) to power, making him the longest-serving Prime Minister in history, they also helped cause the collapse of the largest leftist political party (the Democratic Party of Japan). To this day, there is scant hope of a leftist party ever retaking power.

This much success was astounding to fringes elsewhere, so they wanted in. Japan’s troll website “2-Chan” became “4-Chan” in English, anger-inducing algorithms in online communities steered people towards extremist echo chambers, etc. Further assisted by outside autocracies and their Internet bot-farms, the Far-Right rallied worldwide like never before.

The United States was particularly susceptible. Given that it has more guns than people, a strong historical distrust of government, and an extremely flawed electoral system that can be gamed to favor rural conservative voters, the US’s Far-Right surprised everyone in 2016. They put an opportunistic con man in the presidency whose only qualification was being rich and good at stoking grievance, not to mention being completely devoid of any ideology or moral values beyond winning.

DIFFERENT SOCIETY, DIFFERENT OUTCOME?

We know well where the election of Donald Trump led. A person woefully unequipped to deal with democratic processes or national crises resulted in death, destruction, and insurrection. Other democracies learned from this and disqualified their demagogues from running again. Not the United States, where centuries-old anti-majoritarian flaws embedded within its constitution still allow an insurrectionist and convicted felon to run for office. He has a decent chance of winning again if he continues to command more than 40% of a tribalized electorate.

However, we’re seeing interesting differences between how the US and Japan are dealing with their Uyoku, and that speaks to the strength of America’s civil society.

For example, compare the Springfield case with, for example, the Kurdish or Brazilian areas targeted in Japan.

In both Japan and America, politicians fearmongered for attention, and the conservative press (e.g., Fox and Newsmax in the US, Yomiuri and Fuji-Sankei in Japan) sensationalized the evils that “illegals” commit, bolstered by cherry-picking crime statistics from a compliant police force or a border control agency. Make “foreign crime” into a campaign issue and normalize xenophobia — that’s the Uyoku playbook, and it worked in America too for a stretch.

The difference is that in the US, the liberal voice can be as loud as the conservative. Part of it is due to the strength of the data. You can find government statistics and academic publications, cited by the trustworthy press on a regular basis, that reliably demonstrate how much the foreign workforce contributes to the economy, and how foreigners have crime rates lower than citizens. This creates a stronger narrative that immigrants are a boon, not a bane.

In Japan, however, data of this ilk has been consistently muffled. The press pretty much parrots the police narrative. Most of the statistics you find on foreigners in Japan are couched in crime statistics, because the government (i.e., Ministry of Justice, not a ministry dedicated to immigration) is more interested in tracking and policing them, not supporting them as they assimilate. In the Japanese media, try to find any publication that calls imported laborers “immigrants.” There isn’t even a word for it yet. Which means the default assumption is that foreigners are temporary workers, here to make money off the economy instead of contribute to it.

There’s also the fact that minority voices in the US are much stronger. Reporters and news networks actually go on-site to targeted areas such as Springfield and channel the voices of the discriminated directly into the national conversation. They also megaphone liberal politicians, interest groups, and civil rights experts. Even late-night comedians (the overwhelming majority of whom are liberal, many even immigrants themselves) keep a steady drumbeat exposing how the arguments against immigrants are ludicrous.

In Japan, however, you might get some media reportage on the plight of foreign workers, but most of it is muted through the voices of Japanese spokespeople who aren’t affected by the discrimination themselves. Rarely do you hear the voice of the Non-Japanese person because people reflexively assume a language barrier. At best, you might get the occasional feel-good feature on one brave foreigner with translated platitudes about common humanity, but again, nobody calling him an “immigrant” who now belongs in Japan.

You don’t even have good late-night political comedy in Japan (because sarcasm isn’t really a source of humor in Japanese). Plus I lost my “Just Be Cause” column in The Japan Times (which got more than a million page views during its decades-long run) because of a pro-Abe switch in ownership. Again, these voices get muted. It matters.

HOPE ON THE HORIZON?

For a case in point, contrast Japan’s media narratives with this column in the Daily Beast dated September 25 entitled, “Why I hope Trump’s racist pet-eating lie will cook his goose.”

Its subtitle is “Donald Trump is not a real American,” because, “real Americans stand up against bigotry. Real Americans care about the least among us, not only because we are empathetic humans, but because a generation or two back, most of our families were in exactly the same position.”

The main arguments are about “how profoundly anti-American the Trump/Vance ticket has now become.”

“Anti-American?!” That’s stunning. Can you imagine any mainstream Japanese press opining that somebody discriminating against and libeling foreign residents of Japan is “anti-Japanese?”

Quite the opposite. The corresponding term, “han-Nichi”, is usually reserved for critics who oppose the Uyoku, and it doesn’t get all that much pushback. Thus elements of their bigoted views are often so normalized in Japanese society they are visibly part of the legal structure and national narrative. Read my book “Embedded Racism” for more substantiation.

CAN THINGS REALLY CHANGE?

One can make a solid case that these differences between the US in Japan are a matter of culture, I.e., one society grounded in a narrative of a “nation of immigrants,” and another that sees itself as (despite all evidence to the contrary) as a “monocultural, monoethnic, isolated island nation” (tan’itsu minzoku, shimaguni). After all, Japan only opened up to the world, er, um, nearly two centuries ago.

The problem is that putting things down to culture makes societies look static. That’s untrue. To me, the difference is more legal than cultural. And fortunately, you can reconstruct the cultural through the legal.

For example, the world reconstructed itself to abolish an evil as dire as slavery, once a commonplace feature of prospering societies.

Japan too has reconstructed itself to shed feudalism, imperialism, and suicidal militarism.

How? Because people eventually realized, usually the hard way, that giving legal license to systemic bigotry and hate-based privilege only leads to awful consequences, including genocides, civil wars, and revolutions.

So the racisms of the world, including targeting foreigners for political sport and advantage, must be legislated away. You don’t just wait for the bigots to naturally “come around.” That’s why we have a United Nations treaty against racial discrimination and related intolerance (which Japan too has signed).

However, for nearly three decades now, Japan has violated not only that treaty but also its own constitution (Article 14), refusing to pass a law against racial discrimination. And it has long gotten a free pass for it thanks to geopolitics. The Western powers need Japan plugged into the world economy, anti-communist, and now anti-China. If some foreigners suffer, oh well. That’s politics.

Well, as they say, karma’s a bitch. As seen above, this free pass has allowed Japan to become a fast-breeder reactor of Far-Rightism, with Uyoku-styled networks undermining democracies worldwide.

How Japan treats its non-citizen residents and diverse communities is a bellwether for how future neofascist demagogues in other countries will treat their minority voices and views. Because, again, Japan is their template.

Will the United States, despite its own enormously flawed record (e.g., the legacies of slavery, indigenous genocides, and geopolitical war crimes), detoxify itself from its own demagoguery in its November elections?

There’s a decent chance. It’s happened numerous times in American democracy and civil society.

And if it does, it’s time for the democracies of the world, including Japan, to face the fact that their societies are not static. Majorities change over time, as do their priorities.

The nature of majority rule means that societies in flux (in America’s case, becoming demographically browner), must have governments that respond to this change, not preserving bigotry and White Supremacism just because it’s historical and loud.

It’s the “silly season,” yes, but what’s at stake this election is anything but silly.

ENDS
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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 August 31, 2024February 28, 2025 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Kamala Harris and Shorter US Elections

American elections are fun to watch but unnecessarily long and wasteful. Could Kamala Harris be setting a precedent for shortening the election season?

By Debito Arudou, Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities column 59, Sept 2, 2024
Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2024/09/02/visible-minorities-kamala-harris-and-shorter-us-elections/

SNA (Tokyo) — 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.

Elections-R-Us

The United States, if anything, has too many elections. Even petty bureaucrats, whose jobs are meritocratically filled by civil servants in other countries, are subject to political popularity contests.

Consider these jobs that would be merely filled by civil servants in other countries: sheriffs, coroners, school board members, transportation district board members, justices and clerks of the peace, public advocates, mine inspectors; commissioners of land, public utilities, railroads, agriculture, insurance, public instruction, etc. I dare American readers to go to www.runforsomething.net, put in their zip code, and see what’s up for grabs near them.

To the astonishment of other democracies, the United States even elects its judges, including state supreme court justices, which unhelpfully politicizes the judiciary. Even election supervisors are elected, and that creates some pretty bad incentive systems. Since state governments decide their own electoral rules and districts, this leads to some normalized rigging in favor of one political party. (That’s a column for another day.)

Now remember that American elections happen at the federal, state, county, city, town, and regional levels. Then throw in the extra “pre-elections” in every state and territory (called Primaries) that choose party candidates for Election Day in November, and take almost a year to run. This is why at any given time, somebody somewhere in the United States is campaigning for public office.

Sounds like democracy, right? But it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

The Wastefulness of Perpetual Campaigning

Since the lion’s share of these offices are two-year terms, that means that right after you assume office you have to plan your re-election.

Naturally, election campaigns cost money, and the higher up you go, the more it costs. Successful campaigns require media investment in message (the “air war”) and in the hiring of staff and coordination of volunteers to get out the vote (the “ground war”). And that’s before we consider the logistical cost of transportation, security, on-site services, and campaign swag at public rallies.

Now add in all the money that gets pumped into the media from organizations and corporations to shift public narratives in their favor, and you find out that US election campaigns are the longest and most expensive in the world.

Successful Congressional candidates each invested on average nearly $3 million in 2022, while Senators spent more than $26 million—multiples of what it cost a generation ago. And that’s before we get to down-ballot races.

Each American election has been more expensive than the previous one, even after accounting for inflation. That’s why reps devote on average a third to half of their work time just on fundraising. That’s an enormous time suck on actual legislating.

But it matters if you don’t. History shows the candidate who spends more usually wins. News outlets routinely measure the popularity of a candidate by the size of their financial “war chests.” It’s a convenient shorthand, but it means an ever-escalating arms race between candidates that sucks in everyone and everything (down to the weekly “please send $5” emails in most Americans’ inboxes).

Squirrel!

Another thing US elections suck away is attention. Like dogs chasing tennis balls served at regular intervals, media devote obsessive airtime to candidates, their rallies, their steps and missteps, and if there’s no drama, they’ll find some. In any election year, we basically have a media blackout on what’s going on in other countries, or on other meaningful issues that aren’t on the campaign ticket. All sorts of shenanigans go on around the world while the Americans are distracted.

Now the distraction is no longer limited to election years. In the age of Trump (who, as a master manipulator of the media cycle, has constantly occupied the American mindspace for a decade now), campaigns have now become perpetual.

Other countries see this as a cautionary tale. So they legally limit their campaign seasons to a few weeks and strictly enforce it.

Consider Japan. If you utter or print a poster saying explicitly “vote for me” outside of the official campaign time, you will likely be disqualified as a future candidate. Having run my ex-wife’s (successful) campaign, I know how strict it is. So the political posters you see outside party offices or supportive businesses are careful just to display a person’s name, political party, and an anodyne slogan. The hint of “vote” is nowhere.

But once the starting gun goes off, you have ten days to two weeks before the election to campaign as much as you like. Put up your posters, get in your sound trucks, have laconic ingénues in white gloves wave at people from the windows, and spout slogans at mega-decibels to your heart’s content. Just keep it all between the hours of 8am and 8pm or again face disqualification.

Japanese politicians look at what their American counterparts go through and shudder.

Nevertheless, We Persisted

Granted, many Americans would have it no other way. They’re proud of the energy behind campaigning, celebrating constitutional freedom of speech and association, while political junkies tune in daily to their favorite networks and reaffirm their tribal identities. It’s perpetual Christmas for them too.

There are merits to this system. I find public debates in the United States a lot more interesting than in other countries, with the average J. Q. Citizen being asked their opinion a lot more with all the polling, corn-dogging at state fairs, and public baby kissing. Moreover, party manifestos are de rigueur with talking points coalescing around “hot-button” issues. “What is this election about?” is a feature you don’t find in, for example, many parliamentary “snap” elections.

Plus, thanks to the extended campaigning, Americans get to know their candidates better than in Japan; the mystique of the American President is fortified worldwide after years of running a gauntlet. On the other hand, politicians in Japan are rarely quizzed in depth on the issues, and can usually get away with shallow “ganbarimasu” sloganeering. “Stay the course… or don’t,” is often the depth of thought behind a Japanese election. Offering an official party manifesto only started this century. Boring.

Yet for all the investment and energy, one could still question whether US elections are all that effective. Even in the best of times, only about two-thirds of the US electorate actually turns out to vote.

That’s why I think the shorter, cheaper, less obsessive campaigns on balance offer more bang for the buck, and are better for a democratic society.

Signs of Change?

Habits that have happened for centuries can be hard to break. The United States has held elections like this since 1796 when political parties first appeared. And since every state has to vote for candidates over the course of a year, it’s hard to believe this system can actually be rejiggered.

But one interesting precedent has just been set: the changing of the candidates at the last minute.

I’m a tiny bit smug that on Saturday, July 19, I wrote on Facebook:

Trump’s closing speech at the Republican National Convention last night clinched it for me.

It’s time for Joe Biden to bow out and let the Democrats select a younger candidate.

The GOP can go into this election saddled with and hijacked by their aging Castro-esque rambling speechifier. The Dems don’t have to be.

It’s a prime opportunity next week to have the Democrats as a political party do what it’s designed to do, and what it’s done umpteen times in the past: Choose somebody to represent the party through a party delegate election.

Call it ‘smoke-filled rooms’ Party Machine politics of yore if you want. I will call it a party reacting to the exigencies of the situation, now realizing that, as I’ve said before, poor old Joe is just all used up after four years in the world’s most demanding job.

Let’s face that reality and make the switch, starting next Monday.

Biden was obviously listening. On that Monday, July 21, he dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

This meant Harris essentially leapfrogged the entire year of primaries yet became the Democratic nominee.

The chattering classes stuck in the past, of course, doubted whether anyone could rally the party behind her within three months. Despite the fact that in other democracies, this takes mere weeks (and in Britain, the transition of administrations only takes one day!).

Yet Harris did exactly that, and in about two weeks. Moreover, this streamlined campaign has managed to completely upend the race.

The American left’s pent-up energy against Trump has produced a social movement with the most energized (and surprisingly watchable) Democratic National Convention in history, and she now leads in almost every national and “battleground state” poll. And if the cynics need more proof, consider the fact that Harris’s campaign has raised the most money in such a short time ever in history.

For now, Harris has flipped the script. If she can pull this off in November, she will have conducted the shortest and most successful underdog presidential campaign in American history.

We’ll see, of course. Two months is an eternity in politics. Look what two weeks did to the Trump campaign, where all his momentum after trouncing Biden in a debate and surviving an assassination attempt essentially vanished.

Could the Harris campaign be a case for a new playbook streamlining the wasteful American political process? Condense all those years of effort into a few months or weeks? Make American election campaigns closer to normal by world standards of democracy?

Probably not, but in a campaign season suddenly running on hope, that would be one of my hopes.

ENDS

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 July 2, 2024July 2, 2024 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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“OVERTOURISM” AS RACISM

Much media has covered the downside of too many foreign tourists in Japan. Less attention has been devoted to how xenophobes use “overtourism” as a means to bully foreigners.

By Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

SNA Visible Minorities column 57, July 1, 2024

Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2024/07/01/visible-minorities-overtourism-as-racism/

In late May, Joshua Sherlock, an eight-year resident of Kyoto offering local tours, took a group of foreign tourists on an evening visit of Yasaka Shrine. They were confronted by a local middle-aged woman (Twitter handle @fujino_ojo), accusing them of ringing the shrine’s bell too loudly and disrespecting a religious place.

Fujino took the liberty of filming the occasion, and according to her video, Sherlock’s group apologized multiple times. But she still chased after them as they left. Sherlock repeatedly asked her to leave them alone in English and Japanese, to which Fujino accused Sherlock of discrimination because he spoke English to her. Finally, he answered in Japanese using the same tone she used on him. Claiming Sherlock had “rudely brushed her off,” Fujino then uploaded her videos to Twitter where they got a million views.

What happened next was devastating. According to The Times (London), Sherlock’s family reported people telephoning his home to scream insults and demand he leave Japan. A removal van arrived to collect their belongings. Strangers began prowling their neighborhood, and somebody threatened to set their apartment on fire. His wife began having panic attacks and their daughter was taken out of school.

Sherlock says that he no longer feels safe in Kyoto, and, suspending his tour services, fears that even stepping outside might result in him being “attacked by a lynch mob of extreme right-wing people.”

The Times’ headline: “Japanese hospitality wears thin as overtourism takes toll”.

“OVERTOURISM” AS A MEANS OF HARASSMENT

“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.

WHAT EXACTLY DOES JAPAN WANT FROM ITS TOURISTS?

Given Japan’s excellent public transportation systems, tourism has long been a source of economic activity. As Japanese discovered they had more disposable income, depopulating rural areas realized they needed more revenue.

So local governments launched programs to encourage people to visit. Even during the privations of the pandemic, there were subsidized traIns, cut rates on hotel and airplane packages, and ad campaigns for local festivals and seasonal sights encouraging people to get out and spend money.

This included foreign tourists. Hard to believe now, but Japan once whined that there weren’t enough foreigners sightseeing. An article in the June 6, 2010, Asahi Shinbun grumbled that Chinese consumers were being “stingy,” noting their “tendency to scrimp on accommodations and meals and bypass tourist attractions for the main purpose of their trips—buying electronic appliances and designer brand clothing and accessories.”

So the national government steered them towards those attractions with slogans about Japan’s special “omotenashi” (hospitality) and splashy “Cool Japan” and “Yokoso Japan” campaigns worldwide. For good measure, Japan also sponsored major international competitions such as the FIFA World Cup, the Rugby World Cup, and the Olympics.

The goal was to make Japan a major world tourism destination. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

In 2023, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council, Japan’s tourism sector was forecast to employ about 5.6 million people and represent 6.8% of Japan’s GDP. With the devalued yen, I expect the numbers will be even better this year.

But there can be too much of a good thing. Local governments in Kyoto and Mt. Fuji have started restricting entry to certain areas. A town in Yamanashi famously put up a screen to block a view of Mt Fuji behind a convenience store, blaming this overkill on “bad manners” from foreign tourists. And as seen in the Yasaka Shrine case, there have been increased confrontations with “culturally disrespectful” tourists.

The flip side is that there are people eager to take offense and capitalize on confrontation.

“CULTURAL DIFFERENCES” USED AS A WEAPON

In 2019, this column wrote about how Halloween in Shibuya was a target of “Xeno-Scapegoating”, where drinking in public was somehow portrayed as an imported problem. Yes, despite Japan being the origin of “cosplay,” the seasonal festivals and outdoor partying, entertainment sectors in every Japanese city, and the lack of open container laws, Shibuya Mayor Ken Hasebe made that argument with a straight face when he banned all festivities in 2023.

He could because whenever foreigners are proximate to a problem, they tend to get blamed for it.

Why? Because of cultural conceits about “unique Japan.” If Japan is different from everywhere else in the world, foreigners must axiomatically have “different manners” (or they wouldn’t be foreign). So “cultural differences” are seen as an inevitable source of problems wherever foreigners congregate.

But there are people who take advantage of this dynamic: bullies. They exist in every society, but are especially powerful in Japan because of the general avoidance of confrontation. They get a freer hand to push people around because fewer people push back.

Bullies generally prey on the vulnerable, so they especially like to push foreigners around. After all, foreigners are supposed to be “guests” (not residents) while Japanese are their “hosts,” so the former occupies a lower rung on the social ladder. (If you doubt that, consider how it is official policy in Japan’s civil service to not grant administrative jobs to foreigners, expressly because they would have authority over Japanese. They must remain subordinate.)

This makes foreigners, not to mention Japan’s Visible Minorities (Japanese citizens who do not “look Japanese”), an easy target. Allow me to illustrate.

Last month I was lined up waiting for a taxi in front of Tokyo Station, and just as a cab pulled up for me, some pushy middle-aged guy jumped the line and took it. When I told him in Japanese that I was in fact next, he cursed me out, shouting that I should speak “proper Japanese” (peppered with a few “omae”s to establish dominance). So I obliged, telling him in “proper Japanese” to get bent and eat shite. Clearly not used to being challenged by the likes of me, he shut up, took my cab anyway and fumed as the door closed. I got the next cab and got on with my day.

Now, if any culture-policing Karen at Yasaka Shrine had been filming that, they would have seen people in line apologizing to me. I also looked over the crowd and saw no hairy eyeballs on me, so clearly they had seen his queue jumping too.

But the lesson I took from this incident is this: The bully chose the foreign-looking guy as the spot to jump the queue, thinking he could get away with it. And he kinda did.

Now consider what happens when these bullies think they can empower themselves as Culture Police as part of the “overtourism” backlash.

FROM ENFORCEMENT OF THE RULES TO MAKING UP YOUR OWN RULES

Live in Japan long enough and you’ll probably encounter the Culture Police. They’re essentially the people wanting foreigners to “get off their lawn.” Of course, all of Japan is their lawn and they consider themselves the arbiter of “the Japanese Way.”

They’re in parks enforcing arbitrary rules like telling you not to eat in public or talk loudly in foreign languages. Or they’re gruffly sorting through your garbage bags on Gomi Day assuming foreigners can’t follow the rules. Or drunkenly giving you a piece of their mind on the street regarding something they’ve taken an instant dislike to, such as your not walking on the correct side of the sidewalk or daring to date a Japanese.

Some of these weirdos take their policing role quite literally. There have been cases of people masquerading as uniformed cops to demand foreigners’ ID and get their private details, which is one reason why the government rendered that info invisible on Gaijin Cards.

Usually it’s best to ignore these Karens. But sometimes you can’t, especially when they swarm online.

Yasaka Shrine is an excellent case in point. It’s one thing for Fujino to point out somebody’s social faux pas, then accept their apologies in good faith. It’s a completely different matter to film them and vindictively upload it for millions to see, encouraging doxxing, destroying Sherlock’s livelihood and terrorizing his family.

But the online swarm went even further, calling their shrine visit a “desecration” (fukei), and advocating criminal prosecution under Penal Code Article 188 with 6 months imprisonment and a 100,000 yen fine. So if they didn’t drive Sherlock out of Japan, they could try to get him arrested.

All this for ringing a bell too loudly.

BULLYING CRYSTALIZING INTO BAD GOVERNMENT POLICY

But the overkill doesn’t stop there. Riding the backlash to “overtourism,” people are already creating nutty policies that target foreigners.

Restaurants are charging higher “foreigner” prices and blaming it on Japan’s cheapening yen. Local government officials are demanding an entry tax for foreign tourists at attractions. The Osaka Governor and Himeji Mayor are currently considering a significant Gaijin Surcharge to enter their local castles. Others have established “foreigner-only” buses and hotels.

It only promises to get more amateurish. For example, Remi Kimura, indicatively a “former volunteer guide who currently works in the social media content industry,” somehow got a one-off column published in the Japan Times on June 21 calling for an “arrival tax” on foreigners, to “dissuade some from coming to Japan while funding cultural preservation.”

What was she basing this on? She opens with how she went back to her hometown in the Japan Alps, finding a restaurant with “avocado toast” and “cold cuts and bread,” something she claimed “virtually no Japanese person would order.” To her this was evidence that “tourism has transformed the places of my childhood.”

I’m not sure what she’s trying to preserve beyond her own personal preferences. I found a charcuterie plate (rendered as such in katakana) at a local craft beer place in Tokyo Jinbocho. I also found avocado sushi combos in a kaiten sushi restaurant in Engaru, all the way out in the Hokkaido outback.

Photo: Avocado on the menu: Toriton restaurant, Engaru Town, untouristed Hokkaido, June 2024.

Neither place is overtouristed. So Kimura is essentially blaming foreigners for Japanese tastes evolving when she wasn’t looking. Get off my lawn!

“OVERTOURISM” COUNTERMEASURES ARE IN FACT WORSE THAN “JAPANESE ONLY” SIGNS

When I put this issue up on Debito.org last month, regular commenters had a lot to say. One even made the case that Gaijin Surcharges (dual pricing systems, or nijuu kakaku sei) are actually worse than “Japanese Only” signs and rules outright excluding all foreigners.

First, exclusions cost the company because they lose business. On the other hand, overcharging foreigners rewards the company with more money.

Second, how will the dual pricing systems be enforced? Will Foreign Residents have to produce their Gaijin Cards to prove their residency? Will these ID checks, once unlawfully required by hotels at the behest of the police, now be expanded to regular shops nationwide? Will Japan’s Visible Minorities also be forced somehow to prove their Japaneseness to get the “local” price?

Third, the pressure to change course disappears. A “Japanese Only” sign not only invites public shame, it is in fact unconstitutional with lawsuits supporting its removal. A Gaijin Surcharge is a lot more sustainable and probably harder to challenge in court, especially if the government is behind it.

So financial incentives are there to make things more expensive for foreigners only nationwide, including those working here and getting paid in Japanese yen like any other Japanese. The social hierarchies that already force “foreigners” onto a lower social rung are now fostering an economic apartheid.

CONCLUSION: YOU WANTED THEM HERE. NOW PROTECT THEM.

The utter irony behind this situation is that, again, Japan wanted tourists to save Japan’s economy. Now that they’re here doing so, they’re getting punished. Local governments are succumbing to vocal xenophobes and coming up with discriminatory policies.

Foreign Residents and Visible Minorities are also getting caught in the backlash. What’s happening to Joshua Sherlock’s family is not just Cultural Karenism. It’s outright terrorism.

Japan has for nearly three decades already refused to protect foreigners against racial discrimination despite international treaty promises. Not protecting them from the “overtourism” bullies is similar negligence.

What should be done?

First, let’s create an official definition of “overtourism” that doesn’t encourage foreigner bashing and racial profiling. Have it show some nuance that reflects the fact that plenty of tourists are Japanese citizens and Foreign Residents too.

Second, develop suitable infrastructure to accommodate incoming foreign tourists. If that means siphoning off numbers to more outlying attractions, make that possible and do the groundwork to prepare locals for any anticipated language and cultural barriers.

Third, bring in qualified tourism experts. Not the “get off my lawn” Cultural Karens with an aversion to avocado. From what I’ve witnessed, the “overtouristed” places are already doing a pretty good job. Get their advice on how to protect our “guests” as good “hosts” should.

Above all, stop blaming the tourists for doing what you asked them to do—come here and enjoy themselves. Yes, tourists can be more respectful and mannerly. But make those rules, norms, and manners clear, and enforce them gently but firmly.

And do it quickly. Japan’s cultural hypersensitivity is already a source of overseas humor. Last month The Onion ran a satirical article entitled, “Tourist Immediately Breaks 34 Sacred Local Customs While Deboarding Airplane,” where an American “within 30 seconds of unbuckling his seat belt at the gate, had unknowingly violated countless unwritten rules that inhabitants of Japan had observed for thousands of years.”

Tourists can always take their money elsewhere. After decades of effort to get them here, don’t let Japan’s Cultural Karens, bullies, and xenophobes spoil things for everyone.

ENDS

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 June 2, 2024June 26, 2024 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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Hi Blog. This is just a quick personal post as what’s happening to others is also happening to me.

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.

It even happened to me yesterday in front of Tokyo Station. Some ojisan (now they’re actually younger than me) decided to jump his place in line for taxis in front of us, and then cursed me out when I told him that that wasn’t acceptable behavior. When I cursed him out back, he told me to speak “proper Japanese” peppered with a few “omae”s to establish his dominance. I told him to get lost and to eat shit, and he jumped into the cab and fumed as the doors closed. The people behind us in line apologized to me (thanks; appreciated, but not something you’re responsible for), and a visual survey of the crowd behind me revealed no hairy eyeballs being directed at me. They saw his line jumping too. So I got the next cab and got on with my day.

But the lesson I took from this incident is that, since bullying is a cultural standard in Japan due to the hierarchical nature of everything here, there are plenty of bullies who naturally believe that anyone who looks NJ is on lower social rung. Seeing me as a soft target, the bully yesterday decided to enforce that.

And while he didn’t accuse me specifically of being a tourist, it’s easy nowadays to justify the standard bullying that happens to NJ as a reaction to overtourism.

We as Visible Minorities and NJ Residents should be wary of that dynamic and push back at it. Don’t let overtourism become leverage for bullying. Make it clear that rules are rules, rudeness is rudeness, and Cool Japan is no longer cool when it becomes knee-jerk disrespectful.

After all, tourism is what Japan wanted. “Cool Japan” and all that. And now you’ve got record levels of visitors (not to mention NJ Residents, by the way). So live with it. Deal with it (as I’ve found Japan generally has, successfully).

But definitely don’t blame people who look “foreign” for doing what Japanese do too. I mean, just about everything foreign tourists do here are what Japanese also do at home — from littering to being loud in public to shoplifting (theft by Japanese is by far the largest crime in Japan), etc. etc. And it’s especially true for Japanese abroad, due to a philosophy of tabi no haji wa kakisute (“shed your shame when traveling”, with both positive and negative connotations).

Lose the racism and quit the bullying. And stand up to the bullies when necessary. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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 May 28, 2024 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s my latest SNA column. There are mixed feelings from many people hurt by the Koseki System, but I hold the view that the new law allowing for Joint Custody after divorce is a step in the right direction. Read on and see what you think. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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ADDRESSING JAPAN’S CHILD ABDUCTION PROBLEM
By Debito Arudou, Ph.D., Shingetsu News Agency Visible Minorities column 56, May 27, 2024

Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2024/05/27/visible-minorities-addressing-japans-child-abduction-problem/

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. For example, if you want to visit your child’s school and find out how they’re getting along, the school will turn you away as a stranger. Or if you want to say hello to your child at home or on the street, your ex can call the police and have you arrested as a stalker. Even in extreme cases where the custodial parent dies or abandons the children, grandparents have adopted the kids (since the kids are still legally registered to that family unit) and shut out the LBP all over again! Despite this, LBP are obligated to pay child support. So essentially the system is there to punish you for ever getting divorced, since you lose everything and can’t even pay to play.

This cruel system affects everyone in Japan, Japanese citizen or not (as former Prime Minister and LBP Junichiro Koizumi can attest). But it hits international divorces especially hard. If you are, say, a foreign resident with a Spouse Visa you void your status to live and work in Japan. Then on top of that you get specially targeted by two evil narratives.

One is of course the racial profiling that happens when your ex siccs the police on you, and you get the regular third degree for existing while foreign in Japan. The other is a conviction that foreigners are naturally violent and prone to spousal or child abuse. Yes, people actually believe (and are repeatedly told by mass media and even the Japanese government) that despite all the bullying in Japan that goes on at home, school, and the workplace, foreigners are the ones who beat their children because of automatically presumed “cultural differences.”

Your rights are even fewer if you marry a Japanese and live overseas. Umpteen cases have been recorded of illegal child abductions (e.g., taking a child across an international border without the permission of both parents) by Japanese spouses fleeing to Japan. Sometimes they are assisted by abduction guidebooks you can find on Amazon Japan. Sometimes they have been actively abetted by the local Japanese consulate issuing them a new passport, in defiance of overseas court orders granting joint or sole custody to the Non-Japanese parent. And when the LBP comes to Japan to enforce the court order in Japanese court, they get ruled against because “habitual residence” has already been established here. She who dares, wins.

Many a Non-Japanese LBP has been arrested, gone on hunger strike, or even committed suicide due to this nightmarish lack of rights. And enough international arrest warrants on Japanese spouses have piqued the interest of foreign governments. Finally, after decades of overseas government pressure (gaiatsu), Japan signed The Hague Convention on International Child Abductions in 2014, only a decade ago. Unfortunately, Japan just caveated its way out of ever enforcing it.

People filing claims under the Convention rarely got a Japanese court to side with them. If the abduction took place many months ago, then “habitual residence” was established and that’s that. Or there’s the common prejudice that a child naturally belongs more with their mother. And one verbal claim of “child abuse” or “spousal violence” (which in Japan, according to some spokespeople, could include a raised voice, an angry look, or even a silent stare in an argument) is usually enough to close ranks. Plus there’s the conceit that Japan’s population is decreasing, so there’s a demographic interest in stopping depopulation through repatriation. We got our kid back, so that’s that.

This system has even inspired racism. As I mentioned before, the Japanese mass media and government surveys have long had a white-hot curiosity about finding what causes conflict in any international marriage. (Japanese men are pretty browned off about losing their women to foreigners—even though the majority of international marriages are Japanese men to foreign women—so there’s a smug satisfaction in knowing that foreign men aren’t perfect either.) But a Foreign Ministry pamphlet in 2014, issued shortly after Japan signed the Convention, clearly reinforced the narrative that foreigners are violent through illustrations depicting a Caucasian father beating his child. For good measure, the pamphlet also insinuated that Japanese can’t get a fair deal in a foreign court, and was clearly written working backward from a conclusion that the Convention disadvantaged Japanese.

Likewise, the most creative argument came from far-right propaganda network Sakura TV, which opined in 2018 that Japan’s signing the Hague Convention was just the judiciary trying to appease White people. The Convention’s main goal was to empower White men playing around with women from “uncivilized” countries, who would then divorce them in favor of White women, and convert their foreign playthings into de facto babysitters of their offspring. Therefore the Convention exists to ensure White cads still enjoy access to their bastard children!

But let’s return to reality and get to the good news occasioning this column. First, full disclosure: I too have been through a divorce in Japan and lost all contact with my children. So have many of my friends and colleagues, Japanese and foreign. I have argued before that nobody, Japanese or foreign, should get married under these conditions and have children, as it’s just too risky should the relationship sour. I stand by that argument even today.

But finally this May the Japanese Diet passed a law establishing joint custody. Starting in 2026 and working retroactively, this law means that both parents will now, at least on paper, legally have a say in a child’s upbringing after divorce. Unless both parents agree to sole custody, joint is presumed under Family Court proceedings.

Naturally, there will be caveats for accusations of domestic violence or child abuse. But these have to be recognized by a court case-by-case as legitimate concerns. It is the first change to Japan’s laws concerning parental authority in 77 years, and it will be revisited in five years to assess how well it’s working.

Not surprisingly, the response has been muted from my experienced colleagues. Some, inured to decades of Japan’s bad-faith negotiations and policing, doubt the law will ever be properly enforced. Signing the Convention didn’t work, so why should this? After all, what Japanese court would ever willfully give priority to a foreigner over a Japanese in a dispute? Or by now the law is too little, too late, as their children are all grown up and the damage is done for a lifetime. An outcome that makes up for all the past cruelty and denial is simply impossible.

Nevertheless, my take is that this new law is still good news. It’s better to have it than not. It can be pointed to as the law of the land, as opposed to a malleable norm that can be much more easily bent away from any LBP in any convoluted “he-said, she-said” dispute.

In principle, giving power to both parents over the well-being of a child is better than giving all power to one vindictive spouse. It will at least allow the possibility of a child hearing both sides of a story, which is a valuable skill set for anyone in their formative years. Moreover it will bring Japan back within international practices.

It’s been pretty much determined by child psychologists that, on average, children need both parents in their life. It’s about time the law in Japan reflected that. The Japanese government has finally taken that step in the right direction. Now let’s wait and see if it gets enforced in good faith.
ENDS

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 March 31, 2024May 16, 2024 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. My latest SNA column talks about how NJ do have the ability to get some political power in Japan. It will of course mean some work on their part, but that’s inevitable for all minorities anywhere. But the biggest obstacle, aside from the willful exclusion of NJ from the electorate, is the will to naturalize and run for office. You can do it, and I believe it’s likely you’ll get in, since the Japanese electorate is really quite hungry for something different to choose from. But you’ve gotta stop believing that you’re merely a “guest” in Japan in the first place. Read on to see some examples of elected former NJ and take note. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Non-Japanese Residents claim political power despite obstacles
Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities column 54, March 31, 2024
Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2024/03/31/visible-minorities-non-japanese-residents-claim-political-power/

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.

GETTING BEYOND THE “GUESTISM”

A lot of the issue is that, as I have written before, many of Japan’s minorities believe they really don’t have the ability—or even the right—to shape Japanese society. They convince themselves that they are merely “guests” in Japan—not taxpayers and residents—and therefore have no say in how they’re treated by public policy.

After all, they’re in Japan by choice, and if they don’t like the way things are, they should go “home.” They’ve internalized the narrative that Japan is not “home” and foreigners don’t belong here.

This dehumanizing mantra is well-established and reinforced on a daily basis. But less considered are the underlying political structures enforcing it. It’s hard to have a stake in a society when it might be booting you out shortly.

Official permission to work, i.e., visas, are generally only one to three years in duration, sometimes non-renewable, and often tethered to a specific job sponsor. This means many NJ can’t change jobs without losing their visa and risking going to jail as overstayers. Employers, of course, are happy with this situation, leveraging this vulnerability to abuse and exploit NJ workers even further. Thus all the incentive structures are there to make NJ life in Japan temporary and miserable.

But consider one more disenfranchising mechanism: The larger scheme to make sure NJ never coalesce into interest groups and voting blocs.

In other societies, minorities, newcomers and immigrants cluster in like-minded regions where they can create communities. Harlem. Chinatowns. The Navajo Nation. Little Tokyo, Little Armenia, and Little Saigon. The Dearborn Muslims. New York’s Jewish communities. The Polish Patches. The Castro District. The proposed states of Jefferson and Deseret. And the majority-minority states of Hawaii, California, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Maryland, and soon Georgia.

Once people reach a critical mass in a population, they can foster entire social movements, even elect representatives and become an unignorable political force.

PREVENTING RESIDENTS FROM BECOMING VOTERS

But Japan makes sure NJ never reach a critical mass. Whenever we hear about, for example, Chinese buying up land in an area, out come the politicians stoking fear about Chinese becoming the local majority and “seceding from Japan.” Essentially, the logic is that more foreigners means less Japan, and if NJ ever get power over Japanese, Japan is lost. That’s especially visible when NJ are officially denied administrative roles in any public sector positions.

Then there’s simply getting rid of NJ Residents by not renewing visas en masse. Clean house and ethnically cleanse. The lost historical Iranian, Filipina, and Brazilian communities in Japan are testament to that.

But even without a critical mass, power within a democracy is granted to people who can vote, so Japan makes sure NJ Residents never become part of the electorate.

Japan still has no official immigration policy to encourage NJ Residents to become Japanese citizens. Further, whenever Japan announces an expansion to any working visa program, politicians at even the highest levels of government are quick to clarify this does not mean these migrants will become immigrants. The very word “immigrant” (as in a person) isn’t an established concept in Japanese policymaking circles.

This situation seems unlikely to change, despite the recent resumed mass migration into Japan. Japan’s NJ Registered Resident population reached a record high of 3.4 million in 2023, up more than 10% over the previous year.

Yet the government has made it more difficult over the past two decades to go from a one-year visa to a three, not to mention obtain Permanent Residency.

The numbers reflect this. Although the largest group of NJ Residents are Permanent Residents, their numbers only grew about 3% in 2023.

Then there’s the issue of actually taking out Japanese citizenship, as this author has. Yet the number of people who have naturalized on average over the past decade is less than 1000 per year, and on a general downward trend.

No wonder. After years languishing in nasty jobs and jumping through so many visa hoops, getting Japanese citizenship is often a very arbitrary process, with applications rejected even for parking tickets and “cultural incongruities.” There’s also favoritism shown to applicants from countries with richer economies and lighter skins. Not to mention the identity sacrifice of forcing people to give up their birth nationality.

IMMIGRANT POWER AND POLITICIANS IN JAPAN

Consequently, the only NJ groups in Japan that have accrued any political power are the Zainichi generational “foreigners.” They’re the Japan-born descents of the former citizens of empire, who have lived in Japan more than a century yet are still “foreigners.” Also known as the “Oldcomers,” they have formed lobbying groups such as as Mindan, Mintoren, and Soren. Then there are also historical and indigenous minority groups such as the Burakumin Liberation League and Utari Kyoukai. They all have managed to move the needle on how minorities are portrayed in the media.

But in terms of shifting real political power, there is no substitute for getting the vote and a seat at the policymaking table. And that means overcoming it all to become a citizen and get elected to office.

That happens, even in Japan. Perhaps the most visible case was Finland-born Tsurunen Marutei, who not only served in his local town council in Kanagawa Prefecture from 1992, he also served two terms in Japan’s national Diet from 2002 to 2013.

Others have since followed. Decades ago US-born Anthony Bianchi and Canadian-born Jon Heese won back-to-back city council seats in Inuyama and Tsukuba respectively. Bianchi has since retired, but Heese (whom I have interviewed for this column before) has since graduated up to a prefectural-level elected position.

We have also seen incumbents such as Bolivian-born Noemi Inoue, elected in 2011 to the Sumida-ku Assembly; Syrian-born former Egyptian Sultan Nour, elected in 2021 to Shonai Town Assembly in Yamagata Prefecture; and Uzbekistan-born Babakhodjaeva Orzugul, elected to a seat in Tokyo’s Setagaya-ku Assembly in 2023.

Notably, all of them won their seats quite easily, some even getting the highest number of votes of all candidates running, despite the fact that their fellow NJ Residents cannot vote for them. Bravo.

A reporter recently asked me if this meant change in Japan was afoot.

My answer was that yes, this is not something we’ve seen before, and Visible Minorities claiming the right (and the structural power) to be Japanese is a positive change. I think anyone who wants to see the change has to be the change, and they’re doing that.

How did they win so handily? My theory is that given Japan’s single-party democracy, I think the Japanese electorate are hungry for any hope of change. Something different. Newcomer Immigrant Japanese can be precisely that. So for once, being seen as an outsider in Japan can be an advantage.

This theory also holds when you consider the opposite example: When Diet Member Tsurunen didn’t offer his constituents anything new beyond having blue eyes (seriously, that was his slogan), he got voted out. They realized he was basically running more for himself than them. So you really have to be the change, not just look it.

Finally, the reporter said, “I think Heese, Orzugul, Inoue, and Sultan offer interesting insights into the shifting demographics of Japan. But none of them are Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Filipino—the four groups who make up the most non-Japanese residents. Do you think it is easier for certain types of Non-Japanese to gain power and acceptance in the country?”

My answer was this:

“I don’t know. There is certainly a hierarchy of treatment based upon country of origin and skin color in Japan, especially in naturalization processes. But certainly people of Chinese and Korean ancestry have been elected in the past.

“Probably when other ethnic groups aren’t overworked, underpaid, and restricted to unstable visa statuses, we’ll see more of them naturalizing and running for office.”

We’ll talk again with Jon Heese about running for office next column.

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 March 30, 2024March 30, 2024 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Interesting statistics here on how the labor migration has resumed to the point where hundreds of thousands of NJ are migrating to Japan every year, and NJ Residents are at record highs. 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 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 Arudou, Ph.D.

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Record 3.4 million foreign residents in Japan as work visas rise
PHOTO: Foreign tourists visit Sensoji Temple in the Asakusa area of Tokyo. As of the end of December, 3,410,992 foreign nationals resided in Japan, up 10.9% from the previous year.
The Japan Times/Kyodo Mar 23, 2024
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/23/japan/society/foreign-nationals-visas-japan-record/

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.

The number of foreign arrivals, excluding reentry by residents, increased more than sixfold from the previous year to around 25.83 million following the easing of border restrictions associated with COVID-19.

The number has now recovered to over 80% of pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

In 2023, over 9.62 million Japanese nationals left the country for reasons including tourism, which was more than triple the figure from a year earlier but still remained under half of pre-pandemic levels.

There were 79,113 foreign nationals who overstayed their visas in Japan as of Jan. 1, 2024, an increase of 8,622 compared with the year before. Vietnamese made up the largest group at approximately 15,000. ENDS

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

Posted on February 27, 2024 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. People have been clamoring for me to write about this case. Well, here you go. No surprises in my conclusion, probably. Just some new research. Enjoy. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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MISS JAPAN SHIINO KAROLINA LOST HER CROWN, INEVITABLY

By Debito Arudou. Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities Column 53 February 26, 2024

Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2024/02/26/visible-minorities-miss-japan-karolina-shiino-lost-her-crown-inevitably/

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.

Shiino, who came to Japan as a child from Ukraine and was raised and naturalized in Japan, was admitted to the contest on the basis of her Japanese citizenship, meaning without any blood-quantum qualifier.

This is a very positive step, as it acknowledges that “Japaneseness” is a legal status. (And yes, this pronouncement came with all the caveats that she’s a fluent speaker, acculturated, “more Japanese than we are” from all the people who would vouch. Phew.)

Shiino’s win showed that people can become Japanese over time, not just be ascribed it from birth and bloodlines.

This matters to Japan’s rapidly depopulating society. If Japan can bring immigrants over and see them as “Japanese” like any other, well enough to represent Japan even if you don’t “look” it, this portends well for Japan’s inevitable international future.

But then came the backlash.

The first problem was the media making a big deal of this for the wrong reasons. Instead of heralding the positive steps and future implications for Japanese society, they used racialized headlines (most without even mentioning Shiino by name, making her an issue instead of a person) to focus on how they anticipated readers would react. Never mind the judges’ decision, where she won because of her looks. Media once again made her win a “despite.”

Media also empowered the self-proclaimed Identity Police. Instead of focusing on the voices of how Shiino was in fact Japanese, media again devoted an outsized proportion of space to the trolls who reinforce the unhealthy narrative that “real” Japanese have to look a certain way.

The trolls should not even make the news. There are racists in every society, and their unhealthy hate will always be underground chatter. Unearthing and megaphoning them just resuscitates their dying ideologies. Manufacturing drama for the sake of clickbait is irresponsible pandering.

The second problem here is with “beauty contests” in general. They are a throwback idea that women should be pedestaled just because they won the “lovely lottery”. Too bad for all those who “fell out of the ugly tree at birth and hit every branch on the way down.” (There’s a half-trillion-dollar cosmetics industry to help fix that, of course.)

Remember the origin of these pageants. According to a well-researched article in Honolulu Magazine, “the first modern contests involving the judging of women’s outward appearance can be credited to P.T. Barnum, one of the country’s greatest showmen, who also held national contests for dogs, chickens and babies, in 1854.”

So putting people on display like dogs and chickens was always problematic. And by “people,” of course we mean “women.” Where are the international beauty pageants similarly subjecting men to the “male gaze”?

Now put it through the Japan filter, where looks are linked to citizenship: you have to “look Japanese to be Japanese.”

Thus any contest that focuses on “looks” means Japan adds an extra hurdle. “Shiino doesn’t even look Asian, let alone Japanese. How can she possibly represent ‘us’?”

Try claiming that a Visible Minority (or a Person of Color, however defined) doesn’t represent “us” in a lot of other societies, and then try to dodge the accusation of being a “racist country.”

The same embedded racism is so hard-wired in that you see it in overseas ethnic-transplant societies.

In Hawai’i, for example, there are the Miss Chinatown Hawai’i, the Narcissus Festival, The Cherry Blossom Festival, the Miss Latina Hawai’i and the Miss O’ahu Filipina beauty contests, where contestants have to exhibit sufficient blood quanta to qualify.

For the Japanese exhibitors, purity of bloodline mattered. The Cherry Blossom Festival wasn’t even open to “multiethnic Japanese-American women” until 1999. And that’s before you get the extra layer of now having to be stewardesses not just of countries, but of entire cultures.

But back to the worldwide pageants where ethnic identity is less important than looking good in a swimsuit. You still have the issue of, “Who can represent ‘us’?” And what befell Shiino is similar to what happened to Vanessa Williams, the first African-American woman to win Miss America in 1984.

Out came the Identity Police back then too: A black woman representing America? Oh hell no. Eventually Williams lost her crown due to nude photographs taken two years prior.

Now with Shiino: A Ukranian-Japanese with no Japanese blood whatsoever representing Japan? Oh hell no. Find a reason to dethrone her.

It only took two weeks to find a sex scandal. After all, pageant women are also supposed to be virginal and available too. (Hence the “Miss” in the title.) Being c*ck-blocked by a married man sort of spoils the male gaze.

Nevertheless there’s a whiff of hypocrisy to what happened to Shiino. It’s hard to believe other contestants weren’t also having sex as consenting adults. So why Shiino? Because the pageant organizers didn’t anticipate how controversial a win by a Japanese without any bloodline would be. They blinked and looked for an off-ramp.

The sad conclusion to draw from this case is that Shiino Karolina got hers. Japan still isn’t ready to recognize Japaneseness as a legal status instead of an ethnic bloodline, and people will still resort to any means to revert to type. In this case, blood type.

But if you really want to fix this situation, you’ll abandon beauty contests altogether. They just bring out bad habits in society, and at the expense of women.

My SNA Visible Minorities Column 50, “Memory-holing the ‘Japanese Only’ signs” (Oct 31, 2023), where I conclude that, since racial discrimination is unconstitutional but not illegal in Japan, the most effective way to get “Japanese Only” signs down is to get the media and government involved. If they won’t help, you’re probably out of luck.

Posted on October 30, 2023October 30, 2023 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Memory-holing the “Japanese Only” signs

Exclusionary businesses have a long history in Japan, and people seem to be forgetting it. Here’s a reminder from somebody who has studied them more than anybody.

By Debito Arudou. Shingetsu News Agency VM 50, October 31, 2023

News Item: The Okinawa Times reported that an izakaya pub in Naha put up a sign saying, in a mix of English and Japanese, “Because our staff can only speak Japanese, Japanese Only (sorry). We don’t allow customers from overseas to enter our bar.” Once it made the news, the local government tourist agency intervened, and after some weeks and back and forth, the bar took the sign down.

For this, my 50th column for SNA, I’d like to take the reader on a little nostalgia trip through a project I’ve been working on for a quarter century: “Japanese Only” signs.

I’ve investigated and interviewed hundreds of these exclusionary places, published and updated seven books on this issue in English and Japanese, and curated on Debito.org the “Rogues’ Gallery of Exclusionary Establishments” since 1999 to make sure this issue doesn’t get memory-holed.

For it seems that memory-holing is happening. A SoraNews24 article on the Naha Case didn’t do much research, claiming somehow that, “Bars with Japanese-customers-only policies aren’t unheard of in Japan, but they’re becoming increasingly uncommon in the modern age. Moreover, when you do come across such establishments, they’re generally dedicated bars.” (Incorrect. The highest incidents of exclusionary rules are in fact hotels.)

Then we get to the public reaction to the news. When I put it up on Debito.org, some readers were defensive as usual, basically ranging from the “self-othering” by the Guestists (quote: “I understand why they do it. I’m not offended. It’s their business and country.”) to the Ostriches who prefer, in spite of decades of evidence to the contrary, to bury their head in the sand and pretend the problem simply doesn’t exist (quote: “You are overdramatizing things. It doesn’t say we do not allow foreigners. Being to those places as long as you speak Japanese you can enter anywhere. You have to see things from their perspective too you know. They don’t wanna get in trouble because a tourist doesn’t read nor understand. As simple as that.”)

But it’s not as simple as that. “Japanese Only” signs in fact predate the massive tourist influx to Japan over the past decade and thus cannot be blamed on them. Yes, signs have popped up here and there since foreigners were allowed back in after the pandemic, but the earliest signs I’ve been able to verify started in 1992, when public baths in the city of Kofu put up signs refusing foreigners — particularly foreign women imported during the Bubble Era to work as bar hostesses and in the sex trades — due to the contemporary fear of AIDS (which of course was linked to foreigners). Fortunately, once the Kofu Case hit national news, the city health department intervened, demanded the bathhouses cease excluding, and educated the public about how AIDS is actually transmitted (i.e., not through shared bathwater or bathhouse).

But then it bubbled up again in Otaru, a seaport in Hokkaido, when in 1993 “Japanese Only” signs went up in a couple of public baths ostensibly to bar Russian sailors shipping in seafood from former Soviet waters. However this time local media and government ignored the situation, because they knew the locals have a “thing” about about Russians.

After WWII, many Japanese who lived in wartime-occupied Sakhalin and the Kuriles were forcibly repatriated by international agreements, and most emigrated to Hokkaido in general and Otaru in specific. Memories are long in a defeated people, so they ate the Russians’ seafood but drew the line at “smelly, scary, and drunk Russkies” (their words) sharing their public baths. And up stayed the exclusionary signs for years.

How on earth can this happen? Because in Japan, “Japanese Only” rules are unconstitutional but not illegal.

Unconstitutional because discrimination by race is explicitly barred under the Constitution of Japan (Article 14). Not illegal because Japan is the only developed democratic country without any law in its civil or criminal code specifically banning racial discrimination (jinshu sabetsu).

And it shows. Compare what would happen if a business open to the public put up a “no foreigners” sign in other developed democratic countries. Civil rights laws would kick in and the local civil rights division would probably get their their business license suspended. Media would also make an issue of it. There might even be boycotts, spray paint, and broken windows.

Not in Japan. Quite the opposite, actually. When we took up the abovementioned Otaru Case in 1999, we actually had people and opinion leaders rallying on the side of the exclusionary establishments. They made sophistic arguments claiming that unique Japanese culture must be protected from allegedly illiterate, ignorant, and rampaging foreigners. (A column explicitly titled “Antiforeigner discrimination is a right for Japanese people” even appeared in The Japan Times.) Or that businesses could exclude anyone anytime for anything. (Try making that argument to the Burakumin, for example, and see how far you get.) One establishment mentioned that their patrons have bad WWII memories (to which we replied, “What about German customers?”)

But it wasn’t just offhand, ill-considered comments. The government was even complicit back then. The Potemkin department for overseeing discriminatory issues in Japan, the Ministry of Justice’s Bureau of Human Rights (which has only advisory, not punitive powers), actually coached the Otaru City Government in writing NOT to do anything about their “Japanese Only” bathhouses — because, they argued, it would legally carry no penalty!

And that’s only talking about the discrimination that’s clearly signposted. Now consider, for example, renting an apartment in Japan or trying to get a job at the “Hello Work” unemployment agency. Racist landlords and corporate practices are so normal that explicitly stating “no foreign applicants” in their descriptions is perfectly acceptable.

This is all really funny, because Japan signed a United Nations treaty in 1995 (the CERD) in which it promised to take all effective measures to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination. As the Naha Case proves nearly 30 years later, Japan was just going through the motions of a “developed country,” signing treaties without any intention to enforce them.

So why not just go elsewhere and spend your money at a place that won’t exclude you? Because the problem with leaving “Japanese Only” signs up is that covert discrimination in Japan becomes overt. Racism becomes an option for any bigot who obviously need fear no penalty.

History bears this out. After the Otaru Case made national and international news after 1999, exclusionary signs and rules spread nationwide across industries. This included bars, discos, internet cafes, restaurants, stores and shops, hotels, realtors, schools, and even hospitals. It goes without saying, but these industries have a fundamental impact on a minimum standard of living. It’s not just a matter of getting a drink in a bar. If there’s ever even the possibility that you can’t shop, stay, reside, receive an education, or get medical treatment, you’re in trouble.

So if you leave discrimination alone, it not only spreads — it mutates. Consider the most elaborate exclusionary sign I ever saw: “Chinese and naturalized citizens, war orphans, and children with mixed Chinese blood are absolutely refused entry. Only pure-blooded Japanese males only.” That’s grounded in some mighty specific prejudices.

But why do these places exclude in the first place? In my interviews over more than a decade, their standpoints range from, “Foreign customers were disruptive to my business” to “I personally hate foreigners.” Some who thought their prejudice through a bit more cite an apparently exclusive clientele that want their dining or bathing experience to be “foreigner-free.” Even those who never dealt with a foreign customer cited rumor to claim that something bad might happen, so the signs were a preventative measure.

All point to a pretty simple logic: If foreigners are let in, they’ll go bankrupt because Japanese customers will stay away. (Even though plenty of these places went under anyway despite their exclusionary policies. So maybe it wasn’t the foreigners after all.)

But here’s the most insidious thing: enforcement. To the gatekeepers, a “foreigner” can be determined on sight. This happened in practice when people who didn’t “look Japanese” enough were still refused entry even after they showed proof of Japanese citizenship. That means they excluded by race, not nationality. “Japanese Only” signs exclude Japanese too.

So you see, the “Japanese Only” sign in Naha was nothing new or all that simple. What’s new is that the Okinawa media and the local government played a role in getting it down.

After decades of thinking about this, I’ve come to the conclusion that seems to be the best route.

With the Otaru Case, we tried everything else. We spent more than a year negotiating with the exclusionary businesses, the local, regional, and national governments, and the general public. Then we spent much money and many years in Civil Court trying to get one place to open their doors and one government to take responsibility for their years of negligence. I even took the Otaru Case to Japan’s Supreme Court in 2005, which stunningly denied cert because it somehow “didn’t involve any Constitutional issues.” At least the courts formally acknowledged that “Japanese Only” signs are in fact “racial discrimination.” But that was a lot of energy spent on one bathhouse. Now try doing that for all the other places that exclude foreigners.

As the Naha Case shows, the most effective way to get an exclusionary sign down is to get it in the media and make the government fear an impact on local tourism. In a society where issues of human rights perpetually take a back seat to business ethics (which, in any society, would happily make money selling poison to the public as long as there’s no law to stop them), you really have few other reliable or effective options in Japan.

Sad to say, but it’s as simple as that.

ENDS

“Japanese Only” sign on izakaya bar in Naha, Okinawa (Okinawa Times and Japan Today). Removed after govt scrutiny and media exposure.

Posted on October 11, 2023October 12, 2023 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s the latest entry for the Rogues’ Gallery of Exclusionary Establishments, where a bar in Okinawa refuses all “customers from overseas” (=”Japanese Only“) to enter the bar. The difference is that the media took it up and ran them through the wringer of logic. Not to mention they faced government scrutiny, which history shows makes all the difference. It came out poorly for the bar, so they took the sign down. Good. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

(courtesy Okinawa Times)

Okinawa pub posts ‘Japanese only’ admission sign based on some shaky logic

Oct. 6 06:00 am JST 116 Comments

By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24, courtesy of Eric

https://japantoday.com/category/national/okinawa-pub-posts-‘japanese-only’-admission-sign-based-on-some-shaky-logic?

TOKYO: Outside an izakaya (Japanese pub) in Naha, the capital city of Okinawa Prefecture, a notice had been posted the management. At the top was an illustration of a cute cheerful samurai, bowing deeply as in greeting, but the words below were decidedly less welcoming.

The first line of the notice, written in Japanese, translates to “Because our staff can only speak Japanese,” which is repeated immediately below in English. After that, though, the notice continued in English only, declaring: “Japanese Only (sorry) We don’t allow customers from overseas to enter our bar.”

▼ A photo of the notice

Bars with Japanese-customers-only policies aren’t unheard of in Japan, but they’re becoming increasingly uncommon in the modern age. Moreover, when you do come across such establishments, they’re generally dedicated bars, with menus almost entirely consisting of drinks, and often the presence of hostesses or “floor lady” pseudo-hostesses. Izakaya, on the other hand, are essentially restaurants, where customers are expected to order both food and drinks, and it’s competitively rarer for them to have such exclusionary admission policies.

[Ed: Clearly the author didn’t do much research.]

According to local newspaper Okinawa Times, the notice had been posted since at least a year ago, during which the management has turned away non-Japanese would-be customers. Eventually the sign came to the attention of two members of a Naha residents group that reported it to various government departments, including the Naha City Tourism Division and Okinawa Convention Bureau. This prompted a visit by members of the Tourism Division in August of this year in which they asked the owner to take the sign down, especially in light of increasing numbers of overseas travelers visiting Okinawa following the lifting of pandemic protocols, but the owner refused to do so.

The owner claims that the notice wasn’t meant to be taken as discriminatory intent, saying “We only have one person working the dining hall, and one person in the kitchen, so we don’t have time to spare for customer interaction. We have no intent of discriminating.” Coupled with the sign’s disclaimer that the staff only speaks Japanese, that would seem to indicate that the aim of the no-customers-from-overseas rule was to eliminate time-consuming communication problems, but if that’s really the case, the more appropriate policy would have been “Customers must order in Japanese.” It’s pretty short-sighted to make a blanket assumption that all non-Japanese diners will be unable to speak Japanese, given that the number of people living outside Japan who’ve still acquired some basic proficiency with the language is higher than it’s ever been, as is the number of non-ethnically Japanese residents of Japan, most of whom can order food and drinks in the language without difficulty. Even if the owner’s concern was foreign customers asking for changes in how their food is prepared, something far more common at restaurants outside Japan than within it, a sign saying “No menu substitutions allowed” would be sufficient and succinct.

With the sign getting increased attention, the owner has apparently rethought the Tourism Division’s request to remove it, and at some point in September it was taken down, with the owner saying “The writing was incorrect.”

However, he also added “What I want the government to do isn’t to try to attract travelers from other countries, but to teach people about izakaya culture.” But if what he really wants is a broader understanding of izakaya drinking and dining traditions, presumably on a global scale (since Japanese people are already familiar with those traditions), it’s hard to see how turning people away because they’re not Japanese was going to accomplish that.

Source: Okinawa Times

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Japanese from Okinawa Times
入店拒否の張り紙。英語で「スタッフが日本語しか話せないため／日本人のみ（ごめんなさい）／海外からのお客さまは入店させません」と記す＝９月、那覇市
沖縄タイムズ　2023年10月2日 Courtesy of KM and JK
https://www.okinawatimes.co.jp/articles/-/1232333

那覇市の居酒屋が入り口に「ジャパニーズオンリー」と書いた紙を張り、外国人の入店を拒否していた。国籍による違法な差別で、市民グループが気付き、行政に相談した。現時点で店側は張り紙を取り外しているが、客や通行人を傷つけていた事実は残る。行政による支援や啓発の必要性も浮かぶ。（編集委員・阿部岳）

張り紙は「スタッフが日本語しかしゃべれないため」と書き、さらに英語で外国人の入店禁止を伝える内容。１年ほど前に張り、実際に入店を断ったこともある。拒否された客は「非常に悲しい」とネットに投稿している。
経営者は「ホール担当１人、キッチン担当１人で接客に時間を割けない。差別は意図していない」と主張する。

ただ、国籍だけを理由にした入店拒否は人種差別撤廃条約に反する。静岡地裁浜松支部は１９９９年、街頭の店舗は一般に開放されていると指摘し、外国人の入店を拒否した宝石店に損害賠償を命じた。

那覇市の居酒屋の張り紙を偶然見つけた市民グループの２人は、市の各部署や沖縄観光コンベンションビューローに相談して回った。「沖縄カウンターズ」のメンバーは「これを見た外国人がどれだけ傷つくか。でもいきなり炎上させるのではなく、行政も一緒に円満に解決したかった」という。

相談を受けた市観光課は８月、店を訪問し、「観光客が増える中、好ましくない」と撤去を打診したが、店側は応じなかった。市の担当者は「権限がなく、お願いしかできない」と説明する。

最終的に本紙が９月、取材に訪れると、経営者が「文面は間違っていた」と撤去した。一方で「行政はただ海外客を呼ぶのではなく、居酒屋文化を伝えてほしい」と求める。

問題解決に向けて行政にかけ合ったもう１人、「多文化ネットワークｆｕふ！沖縄」のメンバーは「観光行政も人数や収入だけでない、文化の相互理解につながる観光を目指してほしい。店側が相談できる場所も必要ではないか」と投げかける。

４月に施行された県差別のない社会づくり条例は、事業者に差別解消に向けた努力を求めている。条例の検討委員だった白充（ペクチュン）弁護士は「国籍のみを理由とした入店拒否は条例に抵触しており、実効性が問われる。県民一人一人の意識変容に加え、県が周知徹底する努力も必要だ」と話した。
ENDS

My SNA Visible Minorities 43: “Salute to the “Author of Cartels of the Mind’,” an obituary of influential Japan Studies scholar and mentor Ivan Hall (1932-2023)

Posted on February 19, 2023February 19, 2023 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. My latest SNA column 43 is a tribute to old friend, mentor, and influential scholar Ivan Hall. I blogged about him shortly after he died here. This is a fuller treatment, excerpted. RIP. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Visible Minorities: Salute to the Author of Cartels of the Mind
By Debito Arudou
Shingetsu News Agency, February 20, 2023

SNA (Tokyo) — Ivan Parker Hall, author of landmark book Cartels of the Mind: Japan’s Intellectual Closed Shop, died in Berlin on February 1, 2023, at age 90.

Before I start writing another obituary, please let me pause and talk about our very close relationship: Ivan Hall fundamentally changed my life into an activist researcher in Japanese Studies.

It wasn’t always this way. When I first arrived in Japan during the latter 1980s, I was in fact a cultural relativist. Carefully trained in the non-judgmentalism of the liberal arts, I had the mantra of “Who am I to judge Japan?” It had its own way of doing things, and would get along just fine without one white Western interloper (or even the outside world) telling it what to do. As per my classic Edwin O. Reischauer Ivy League training, Japan was one of those precious “culturally unique” jewels that should just be left to flourish in its own way.

That’s why at first I was a devoted scholar of the “Japanese Way.” After all, Japan must be doing something right. Its people were living the longest in the world. Its economy measured per capita had just surpassed that of Americans. It was buying up major world assets on the strength of the Yen. Our next boss, according to movies such as Back to the Future II, was going to be Japanese.

It took just one stint working for an abusive Japanese trading company–and the bursting of Japan’s asset bubble–to disabuse me of those early notions.

But it wasn’t until I became a Japanese university professor that I saw just how much the Japanese system was wasting talent due to racism. Japanese faculty hired full-time were getting permanent tenure from Day One, while almost all foreign educators (who were often more qualified than their Japanese counterparts) were getting permanent contract work.

Enter Ivan Hall, who summed this situation up most pithily as “Academic Apartheid.”…

Read the rest at the Shingetsu News Agency at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2023/02/20/visible-minorities-salute-to-the-author-of-cartels-of-the-mind/

My SNA column 41: “Celebrating Christmas as a Compromise” (Dec 27, 2022), about what to do when people say you shouldn’t celebrate regular traditions you hold dear because they’re “not Japanese”

Posted on December 27, 2022December 27, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Let me say it upfront: If you’re celebrating December customs such as Christmas, then I hope you had a Merry (and unobstructed) Christmas and a Happy New Year. If your Christmas was in fact obstructed in some way by people who claim that “Christmas is not Japanese” or “Christmas is something you should outgrow” (as happened to a friend of mine recently), my end-year SNA column is for you:

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Visible Minorities: Celebrating Christmas as a Compromise

SHINGETSU NEWS AGENCY, DEC 27, 2022 by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN

SNA (Tokyo) — A long-term Non-Japanese resident friend, married with a Japanese husband and adult kids, recently told me about a new development in their relationship: Christmas was no longer to be celebrated in their household.

Their children were all grown and didn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore; so no more presents or any big dinner to celebrate the day. They would allow her only a tree.

Why this sudden change of heart? To her surprise, all this time Christmas had been regarded by the family as a nuisance, a cultural imposition on them. Now it was time to grow out of it.

It raises a fundamental issue that someday comes up within any intercultural relationship: How much culture do you give up for the sake of compromise?

I argue that Japan’s “unique” culture narrative (and therefore its lack of commonality with anything “foreign”, by definition) can often create sudden, long-term culture shocks. Because people here can see any accommodation of “foreign” culture as an identity sacrifice, a denial of “Japaneseness”, this can kill relationships, and I offer advice on what to do about it.

Article at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/12/27/visible-minorities-celebrating-christmas-as-a-compromise/

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Thanks for reading! Seasons Greetings to all Debito.org Readers and beyond! Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

My SNA Column 40: Visible Minorities: “Hard to Root for Japan at Sports Events” (Nov 28, 2022), due to all the nasty and racialized attitudes towards our athletes, and the lack of fair play in general

Posted on November 27, 2022November 28, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. My latest SNA column was inspired by the World Cup. Intro:

//////////////////////////////////////////

Visible Minorities: Hard to Root for Japan at Sports Events

By Debito Arudou, Shingetsu News Agency, November 28, 2022

SNA (Tokyo) — First off, bravo the Japan team for its upset victory over Germany in their first match of the 2022 World Cup!

It was a game where the Samurai Blue showed world-class skill against a lackluster team, and didn’t let the nerves of playing a former world champion get the better of them. Of course, they did lose their next game against Costa Rica, but their achievement against Germany stands.

I want to devote this column to why it’s difficult for me to root for Japan teams in general. It’s not an issue of nationality (since I have that). It’s a matter of how Japan as a society approaches international sports; given the racialized obstacles towards “foreign” participants, a lack of fair play, the unrelenting pressure on our athletes, and media attitudes that oscillate between racial superiority and victimhood, we take all the fun out of it…

Rest at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/11/28/visible-minorities-hard-to-root-for-japan-at-sports-events/

Thanks for reading! Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

My SNA Column 39: Visible Minorities: “Never Forget Japan’s Racist Covid Policies” (Oct 24, 2022), where I ask you to seriously reconsider devoting your life to a place that could revoke your legal status at any time

Posted on October 24, 2022October 24, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Visible Minorities: Never Forget Japan’s Racist Covid Policies
SHINGETSU NEWS AGENCY, OCT 24, 2022 by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN
https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/10/24/visible-minorities-never-forget-japans-racist-covid-policies/

SNA (Tokyo) — This month Japan finally lifted its Covid restrictions and reopened its borders to tourists. Well, whoop-de-doo.

For now, foreigners will no longer suffer entry caps, or go through extra procedures just because they’re foreign, such as being sequestered in foreigner-only floors of hotels with tour-minders so they don’t wander off and contaminate the rest of Japan.

Never mind that Japanese entrants, barely subjected to these strictures put on foreigners, had all this time predictably infected Japan quite freely.

Remember how this whole thing started back in 2020, when cases were found in Yokohama Port aboard a luxury liner called the Diamond Princess? It soon became mired in Japan’s bureaucratic politics, the ship’s patients counted by no country as part of their Covid case total. This was the bellwether for Japan’s future Covid border policies of incompetence and racism…

Rest at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/10/24/visible-minorities-never-forget-japans-racist-covid-policies/

Debito’s SNA VM37: “Reforming Japan’s Dickensian Foreign Trainee Program,” Aug 22, 2022, and why I remain skeptical that reforms will actually happen

Posted on August 21, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Visible Minorities: Reforming Japan’s Dickensian Foreign Trainee Program
August 22, 2022, By Debito Arudou

SNA (Tokyo) — News Item: video footage surfaced in 2020 of a Vietnamese “trainee” being physically abused by Japanese co-workers at a construction company in Okayama Prefecture, resulting in injuries including broken ribs and a broken tooth. Despite a criminal complaint, the Okayama Prefectural Police Prosecutor’s Office declined to prosecute the four Japanese co-workers involved.

Here is the video footage that started it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK1HhnvktOc&t=76s

This Vietnamese trainee is not alone. Despite the strict Covid border controls, currently 280,000 foreigners toil as temporary low-wage workers in Japan’s farms and factories nationwide. Given Japan’s often nasty work environments, which generally combine exploitative work ethics with a normalized bullying culture, this means that more than a quarter of a million foreigners are here and in harm’s way under a system of unfettered abuse…

[…]

Fortunately, there are some stirrings that reforms might happen. Even the conservative Yomiuri Shinbun said in an August 20 editorial that reforming the system is “unavoidable.” Moreover, the government announced last month a full-scale review of the program, intending to “bring this long-standing issue to a historical conclusion.”

I am skeptical these reforms will achieve what is promised, which is basically to resolve the ongoing human rights abuses which have always characterized the trainee system. One reason for my doubts is because…
==================================

Read the rest at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/08/22/visible-minorities-reforming-japans-dickensian-foreign-trainee-program/

Japan Times on neighborhood sento bathhouse restoration activists: Omits history of how Japan’s already-declining public bath industry hurt itself with “Japanese Only” signs

Posted on August 12, 2022August 12, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Particularly dear to my heart is the issue of public baths in Japan (onsen and sento), as racist exclusionism is something my friends and I have dealt with for decades (including a successful civil suit in Otaru that went all the way to Japan’s Supreme Court, a couple of books in English and Japanese, and even a doctoral dissertation). Despite all these years of recording their “Japanese Only” signs and activities, already people seem to be trying to forget, or remembering not to remember, how this industry already in decline did itself no favors by being racist.

The most recent example of historical revisionism was in a Japan Times article about “Sento Samaritans”, where it didn’t even mention that past. The article is excerpted below. I wrote in their Comments Section in reply:

======================
Debito: I applaud the efforts of these movements to keep neighborhood sento open. However, the writer of this article (and perhaps the activists themselves) neglected to mention an important part of history, where public/private baths have refused entry to foreign and foreign-looking residents and customers. If offering this communal experience is “an important channel of communication between neighbors”, then it’s also important to recognize the fact that sometimes sento and onsen have undermined themselves by putting up “Japanese Only” signs, and not recognized “foreigners” as fellow neighbors. Openness to all members of the community should also be part of their slogans.
======================

The JT article is excerpted below.

Also, The Japan Times in general seems to be forgetful of this discriminatory history as an editorial policy, as their archive on recent articles regarding Sento demonstrates. The JT laments the decline of the industry (for example, here) without getting into how some of their decline is their own fault. That’s particularly galling, considering I wrote for the Japan Times for two decades a regular column, in addition to other stringer articles, on this very subject.

Seems The Japan Times doesn’t prioritize this type of issue anymore. So much for reporting “in the public interest”. This is how history gets unlearned and eventually repeats itself. Just wait for the next moral panic blamed on “foreigners”, and communal doors to a public service will shut all over again. Even if if drives the excluder out of business. Talking about preservation without including this issue is in fact counterproductive for the industry. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Sentō Samaritans: The fight to save urban bathhouses
Activists believe bathing for a coin means soaking up culture
The Japan Times, August 6, 2022 (excerpt)
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2022/08/06/general/sento-bathhouse-historians/

Dozens of elderly regulars, families with children and young Tokyoites from all over the city strip, shower off and soak.

This was the scene during a scorching weekend in July at Inari-yu, a rejuvenated sentō (public bathhouse) in Kita Ward’s Takinogawa neighborhood. Together in baths ranging from warm to very hot, bathers admired the bright blues and greens of a recently repainted mural of Mount Fuji over their heads.

Built in 1930, Inari-yu is a rare surviving example of the shrine-like miyazukuri architectural style typical of Tokyo’s prewar bathhouses. The main attraction for visitors, though, was the reopening of the century-old nagaya, a type of Edo Period (1603-1867) rowhouse, adjacent to the sentō. Inari-yu’s staff originally lived in this building, but it had been abandoned for decades — until three years ago, when Sento & Neighborhood, a nonprofit that aims to revive historic bathhouses, started working with Inari-yu’s fifth-generation owners to restore the nagaya.

At the inaugural event, Sento & Neighborhood organized activities such as a lecture by an architectural historian, a community breakfast and a neighborhood walking tour. Next to Inari-yu’s entrance, a market with local food vendors added to the colorful and festive atmosphere.

Unmissable for the attendees, of course, was also a visit to the bathhouse. Stepping out of the heat and into Inari-yu’s cool, soothing interior, bathers shed their clothes and their fatigue in the spacious changing rooms with simple wooden decor overlooking a small, outdoor koi pond.

“Bathhouses are a space where I can ground myself,” says Sam Holden, who first found solace in sentō when he was a graduate student in Tokyo.

Holden, who labels himself an urban activist, is a writer, translator and renovation specialist. He founded Sento & Neighborhood together with four associates in 2020 with the idea of “changing historic bathhouses as little as possible but finding a way for them to become sustainable,” Holden explains, hinting at the financial difficulties that many sentō face…

[History of Sentos redacted]

To Holden, visiting bathhouses means exploring the back alleys that embody a deeper layer of Japan’s urban fabric tucked away from busy and anonymous main streets — and one that has been part of Japanese cities for centuries.

“Across the street from the bathhouse you have the liquor shop where the grandpas gather, the vegetable grocer and tofu shop and all sorts of local eateries,” Holden says. “Preserving a bathhouse means not only preserving that building, but this neighborhood network.”

Read the full article at https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2022/08/06/general/sento-bathhouse-historians/

Ministry of Foreign Affairs sets up “foreign media policing website” where anyone can report to J govt any foreign info “incompatible with our country’s standpoint”. Actually, quite within character.

Posted on July 24, 2022July 25, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s something for the undergraduates taking classes on critical thinking and government censorship to write a midterm essay on:

Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has put up a website that enables anyone to submit to the government “information about any accounts in overseas [media] relating to our country that is based on misunderstandings of the truth/facts (jijitsu), or is incompatible with our country’s standpoint.”

https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/p_pd/pds/page22_003885.html

Here are some essay writing prompts. Discuss:

Why is the Japanese government, particularly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, getting involved in policing foreign media? Are they the new international media police?
Why is there an assumption that “our country” has a defined “standpoint” that uniformly faces the rest of the world? And whose “truth” is this?
Where did the line-item budget come from to pay these MOFA bureaucrats to act as the media police? Don’t they have enough on their plate already managing, y’know, our country’s diplomacy?

Actually, I might be able to answer the third one. There’s a political dimension to all this. Check out this tweet from SNA on Dietmember Onoda Kimi:

Yeah, we’ve talked about Onoda Kimi before. She’s the American-born former dual-national American-Japanese MP who advocates for antiforeigner public policy that would go against her foreign father’s interests. As I wrote for SNA back in 2020:

You can see how deep the pathology runs in Kimi Onoda, LDP Upper House Diet Member from Okayama. She similarly insinuated on March 30 that government subsidies should be denied Non-Japanese residents. But this is stunningly ironic because she was born in America to an American father. She even held American nationality until 2016 (when she was ratted out and gave it up), meaning she too was a foreigner in Japan.

That’s how deep Japan’s dehumanizing antibodies run — where even a self-hating haafu would effectively deny equal treatment to her own father! What immense psychological scars from childhood bullying have prompted her to deny any ties to her minority origins, and to pander for the approval of majority whim that Non-Japanese Residents belong on a separate and unequal tier in society?

If we ever meet, one question I’d like to ask is, “Who hurt you?”

Anyway, good job, Onoda Kimi. Mission accomplished.

Actually, what MOFA is doing is very much within the Japanese Government (GOJ)’s character anyway. The GOJ is very sensitive to how they are perceived abroad, historically stepping in many times to “correct misperceptions” in foreign media. See here, here, here, here, here, and here, for example. (And it’s a stark contrast to, for example, the Americans, who ignore outright disinformation even when it affects their own citizens abroad.)

Granted, compared to the US’s negligence (even making outright threats against their US citizens for not ignoring racial discrimination in Japan), I’d rather that a government step in to correct public misperceptions when their citizens abroad stand to get hurt. But I’m also suspicious of the GOJ’s motives, as evidenced by the links above, as their “standpoint” towards historical and “factual” interpretation is riddled with ahistorical revisionism.

Moreover, asking for the public’s participation like this is redolent of the “Snitch Sites” the Immigration Bureau deployed in 2004, so that anyone could anonymously sicc the GOJ on any foreigner they thought could be an “illegal” — much to the delight of all the Zainichi Korean haters out there.

In sum, this “MOFA foreign media policing site” is yet another politically-motivated government-sponsored website that is encouraging online abuse and feeding the trolls. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

My SNA Visible Minorities 36: “Abe’s Assassination and the Revenge of History” (July 18, 2022), on how his historical revisionism created a blind spot that ultimately killed him

Posted on July 18, 2022June 22, 2023 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. After the Abe Assassination, people have been asking me what I think about it. In short, I think Abe’s historical revisionism is what got him killed. Opening of my latest SNA column 35:

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Abe’s Assassination and the Revenge of History

By Debito Arudou, Shingetsu News Agency, July 18, 2022

https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/07/18/visible-minorities-abes-assassination-and-the-revenge-of-history/

SNA (Tokyo) — The assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has occasioned a lot of valuable, eye-opening discussions in the media, but few if any have focused upon how Abe’s death could be seen as a form of karmic payback–-what happens when you ignore the lessons of history in the pursuit of raw political power.

The discussions have instead focused on the veneer of Japan’s “safe” society being blown away by a homemade gun; or about how the world’s democracies have been deprived of a Japanese leader comfortable on the international stage (while egregiously overlooking all the damage he did to Japan’s democracy).

A few intrepid journalists (starting with the SNA) have explored the swamp of Abe’s political connections with the “Moonies” religious cult, and how that probably gave motive to the killer.

To me the most absurd debate has been whether Abe’s death was an “assassination” at all –- the Japanese media have uniformly refused to use the corresponding word ansatsu, portraying it as merely a “shooting event” (jugeki jiken).

These important topics have been covered elsewhere by people with more expertise, so this column will take a different tack. It will discuss the role of national narratives in a society, how dishonest national narratives stunt the maturity of societies, and how a willful ignorance of history due to these national narratives circled back to kill Abe.

First, let’s talk about what national narratives are: stories created by governments, education systems, and media that unify people within a nation-state. For example, Japan sees itself as a pure-blooded monoethnic society that can be mobilized under shared collective goals to accomplish political and economic miracles. On the other hand, the United States sees itself as a “melting pot” of immigrants and cultures whose harnessed diversity has made it the richest, most powerful nation in the world. And so on.

Accurate or not, all societies create national narratives as a matter of necessity. They tell us what we as a group believe and share as collective history. Without them, policymakers would have great difficulty getting disparate people to obey social norms and laws, or accept their status as a member of society. When people believe that they share a history, starting with national education from childhood, political “legitimacy” can be entrenched. You really know it has worked when someone “loves” their country so deeply that they’ll die for it.

But there’s a problem endemic to creating a shared history–you have to decide who’s a member of society and who’s not. Narratives that unify also must exclude. You can’t have an “in-group” without the existence of an “out-group” to contrast yourself with. You can’t have “citizens” without also having “foreigners.”

Sooner or later even the most well-intentioned people make mistakes that turn people against each other, privileging some people at the cost of others, disenfranchising and even killing in the name of national integrity.

So from that comes two types of history: a “good” one that is celebrated, and a “bad” one that people generally don’t want to talk about.

Consider a few examples of the latter:

When the European powers of the world were colonizing other lands, they soon discovered they couldn’t extract treasure without exterminating local peoples. Consider Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean.

Or as the United States grew and developed, “Manifest Destiny” wielded an unspeakable impact on Native Americans–and that’s before we mention the horrors of chattel slavery.

Japan too didn’t secure its borders without committing cultural genocide against the Ainu and Ryukyuans. There was also that brief episode in the last century when it decided to “liberate” Asians abroad under the auspices of a racist Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The point is that every country has a dark side, and any honest historical accounting would allow for that.

Unfortunately, most countries would rather see themselves as the “good guys” in their own narrative, and either downplay or ignore the atrocities committed in the name of the nation.

That’s a bad idea for a number of reasons: not only because it produces poor public policy that leaves past injustices and grievances unresolved, but also because it leaves people blind to the more genuine lessons of history.

For example, the American tendency to see the US Civil War as merely a good-spirited contest between North and South economic and cultural needs overlooks the fact that owning people as property was the central cause of the war. And yet, narratives are still circulating in the South that downplay slavery and its impact.

Why do you think there’s so much backlash these days towards Critical Race Theory, which highlights the legacy of unequal racialized treatment still embedded within current legal systems and narratives? It is because many people would rather just pretend these issues are all settled.

Similarly, why do you think there’s so much backlash in Japan to teaching about atrocities like the Unit 731 biological warfare, the Nanjing Massacre, the brutal colonization of Korea and China, or the government-sponsored sexual slavery of the Comfort Women? It is because some would prefer to pretend that it never happened.

This is where Abe comes in–he was deeply committed to historical revisionism, asserting that Japan was a victim (not an aggressor) in the Pacific War, no more guilty of wrongdoing than any other great power. He also wanted to remove many of the “Western” elements (such as civil rights and individual liberties) that had been enshrined in Japan’s “Peace Constitution” to prevent a recurrence of Japan’s past militarism.

For people like Abe, a national narrative depicting Japan as the “bad guys” would force Japanese to feel shame about their country and to “love” it less. That’s the rubric behind his enforced patriotism and revised compulsory education curriculums.

It was an immature approach which forestalls ever coming to terms with and learning from the past.

Some other countries are more mature about it. Germany, for example, has accepted that its inexcusable historical deeds are just that–inexcusable–and contemporary Germans are taught as such.

There’s no denying that Nazi Germany was one of the worst political systems that ever existed. German schoolchildren are rightly taught to “Beware the Beginnings” (Wehret den Anfängen); that is, to be vigilant against something similar ever happening again.

South Africa has done something similar with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Canada is finally coming to grips with its genocidal Indian Residential School System. And so on. Some societies acknowledge a portion of their dark past and try to move forward on a healthier basis.

On the other hand, societies with dishonest historical narratives wind up stuck in the past, continuously refighting and relitigating old battles. Remember what George Santayana said about people not learning from history? They’re doomed to repeat it.

Was American mob violence against the US Capitol on January 6 something entirely new? In fact, this sort of thing happened in city and state legislatures many times in the past. Have you ever heard of the Meridian Race Riot of 1871, the Battle of Liberty Place in 1874, the South Carolina Race Riots of 1876, and the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898? Probably not, and that’s the point. If you don’t know about them, it’s like they never happened.

These and many other incidents evicted anti-slavery politicians from elected offices in the South, established Jim Crow laws for nearly a century, and created the longstanding ahistorical narratives that pervade some elements of Trumpist politics to this day.

In other words, the Capitol insurrection was in fact a repeat from a historical blueprint..

Likewise, the Abe assassination was, in the longer view of history, not unique. Mark Schreiber recently offered a “guided historical tour” in the Asia Times on the long list of political killings in Tokyo alone, calling it “practically routine” in times that are not so distant from our own.

But such history was so suppressed in favor of “safe Japan” narratives that Abe himself scoffed at the need for additional security around public political events. During a 2015 Diet floor session, Abe officiously dismissed a question from MP Kiyomi Tsujimoto about the possibility of domestic terrorism, sniping that it was an attempt to “denigrate Japan.”

That was one of the historical blind spots that got Abe killed.

Even now the narrative of “safe Japan” is reasserting itself. The Japanese media still won’t accurately portray Abe’s killing as an “assassination.” Yet, as the Japan Times noted, similar political killings are freely portrayed as ansatsu–as long as they happen overseas.

Why? Apparently because, in Japan, assassinations are somehow “historically unexpected.”

Even the excuse that Abe’s killing was not “political” is inaccurate. This was not a random murder. As reported in various media, the killer wanted to retaliate because his family had been financially crippled by the Moonies, and specifically targeted Abe for his connections to them. That sounds political to me. Yet the Japanese media initially tried to suppress Abe’s Moonie connection until SNA and social media commentators broke the story.

Societies that stunt growth with “love-of-country-at-all-costs” narratives do themselves an enormous disservice, and not just because it leads to things like politics through violence.

Japan is still stuck in other hackneyed feedback loops: that it has always been a monoethnic society without actual minorities (it has ethnically cleansed itself numerous times); that it never actually lost the Pacific War (using the term shusen–war’s end–instead of haisen, war defeat) in historical accounts; and that Japan is not responsible for past militarism, much to the aggravation of nearby countries. These are counterproductive to Japan’s present and future.

Ahistoricity also keeps Japan from facing one more essential fact it has known for decades–that it is an aging, stagnating society, facing senescence and insolvency within a generation or two unless it allows immigration. To move forward, it needs to adopt more inclusive narratives.

That means coming to terms with, and teaching, the dark side of its history. The senseless death of Abe, who was the most prominent proponent of head-in-the-sand nationalism in postwar Japan, is a good opportunity for a reevaluation.

Otherwise history will continue to exact its revenge.

My SNA VM35: “Visible Minorities: Torture and Murder in Japan Detention Centers” (June 20, 2022) including the Sandamali, Suraj, Fernando, Okafor, Ekei etc. Cases.

Posted on June 20, 2022June 20, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Visible Minorities: Torture and Murder in Japan Detention Centers
Shingetsu News Agency, June 20, 2022, by Debito Arudou

https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/06/20/visible-minorities-torture-and-murder-in-japan-detention-centers/

SNA (Tokyo) — News Headline: “Prosecutors drop case over death of detained Sri Lankan woman.”

In August 2020, a Sri Lanka national named Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali was arrested for overstaying her visa, and detained in a Nagoya Immigration Detention Center. She had arrived in Japan in 2017, but her student visa was cancelled in 2019 because she couldn’t afford tuition fees. While in detention, she opted not to return to Sri Lanka, reportedly due to reduced flights during Covid and an abusive boyfriend back home.

During her seven months in custody, however, Sandamali’s health steadily declined due to a stress-induced stomach condition. According to the Straits Times, Sandamali “was vomiting blood in her final days, and was so weak that she had no control of her arms and legs. The immigration authorities allegedly turned a blind eye to medical expert advice to put her on an intravenous drip or to grant her provisional release to ease her stress. A report by public broadcaster NHK suggested that officials tend to suspect malingering for minor illnesses in their reluctance to grant provisional release.”

That’s a questionable decision, since she had lost 20 kilograms from her small frame over seven months—hard to dismiss as mere “malingering” or “minor illness.” And her decline was not sudden: According to the Asahi Shinbun, she had notified her jailers from mid-January about nausea and lack of appetite. Nineteen days before her death, a urine test indicated she was in a state of starvation. The New York Times noted that in her final days she could ingest little more than water, sugar, or morsels of bread, and could barely make a fist or speak. Yet she was again refused provisional release for hospital treatment.

On March 6, 2021, Sandamali died in her cell, aged 33. An August 2021 postmortem probe by Japan’s Immigration Services Agency ruled that Sandamali had been “mistreated” by the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau, formally reprimanding the bureau’s director and three other supervisors for not reporting her requests for examination and treatment to an outside doctor.

But overlooked was cruelty of her captors. According to Nikkei Asia, “one immigration officer allegedly mocked Wishma when she was unable to swallow her drink,” and the Mainichi Shinbun reported that other Immigration officers misled a doctor about her condition two days before her death, dismissing her illness as merely “psychosomatic.”

By the time Sandamali’s family received her body, “her skin was wrinkled like an old person, and it was stuck firmly to her bones.” In November 2021, Sandamali’s family lodged a criminal complaint against officials at the Nagoya facility, accusing them of murder through willful negligence.

Unfortunately, as noted above, last week the Nagoya District Public Prosecutor’s Office dropped the Sandamali case, citing an inability to establish criminal liability or even a cause of death, blaming it on “multiple factors.”

Multiple factors indeed. Sandamali’s case is not unprecedented. According to CNN, since 1997 at least 27 foreign detainees have died in Japan’s Immigration detention centers (aka “Gaijin Tanks,” because they detain foreigners only).

The main factor here is the cruel and unusual punishment by public officers, expressly forbidden under Article 36 of the Constitution.

Yet nobody has ever been held criminally liable for foreigner deaths in detention. That’s what makes Japan’s Gaijin Tanks so cruel and unusual.

Let’s consider a few more cases, then talk about the system that killed them…

Read the rest at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/06/20/visible-minorities-torture-and-murder-in-japan-detention-centers/

Japan Today expose: How the media failed Japan’s most vulnerable immigrants (Feb 22, 2022)

Posted on June 2, 2022June 3, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

(Photo courtesy of Japan Today)

Hi Blog. Since Japan Today has a history of “expiring” its articles (in addition to some irresponsible journalistic practices) and this one is important enough to warrant public archiving, Debito.org includes its full text below for the record. As Japan’s xenophobic and extreme border controls continue to treat foreign outsiders like the plague despite some signs of opening (as we have discussed here, here, and here), officialdom treats foreigners it has incarcerated like animals or worse (as we have discussed here). What follows is some excellent original reporting on yet another death in custody, and the political ramifications that conspired to maintain the deadly status quo. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Opinions
How the media failed Japan’s most vulnerable immigrants
Japan Today, Feb. 22, 2022, By Dreux Richard, courtesy of JDG
https://japantoday.com/category/features/opinions/how-the-media-failed-japans-immigrants?comment-order=popular
TOKYO
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a strange institution. It’s responsible for the way Japan is perceived abroad, and it decides who receives the opportunity to immigrate. But its jurisdiction over the lives of immigrants largely vanishes when they reach Japan. It’s also the most influential agency that does not play a meaningful role in developing the government’s legislative agenda. Senior MoFA officials can only watch in dismay as less prestigious agencies, including some of Japan’s most corrupt, devise legislation that erodes the rights of immigrants and damages Japan’s international reputation.

A proposed overhaul of Japan’s detention system, scuttled in 2021 after the death of detainee Wishma Rathnayake and a resulting wave of protests, was especially unpopular with Japanese diplomats. The Kishida administration has revived it anyway, with parliamentary debate anticipated this summer. Until recently, MoFA relied on the press to guard against legislative aggression toward immigrants, quietly passing sensitive information to reporters who covered the Ministry of Justice, which enforces immigration law.

According to MoFA officials who acted as my sources during the 10 years I covered immigration, their current reluctance to cooperate with journalists is related to the sense, among the agency’s staff, that the media has become “much louder, but much less effective” on issues of immigration.

The officials I spoke with traced this problem to 2019, when a detainee starved to death at a detention center in Nagasaki, following a four-week hunger strike.

The Ministry of Justice cleared the detention center of wrongdoing, issuing a report that contained several defamatory statements about the detainee. He was not, as the ministry’s findings suggested, a hardened criminal or a deadbeat father—not according to court records, not according to his family.

The report went on to claim that it wasn’t possible to return the detainee to Nigeria because he refused to cooperate with the deportation process in January 2019. But the report also documented a meeting in May of 2019 where the detainee begged to be deported. As one MoFA official dryly observed, “May comes after January.”

The death was covered in Japan’s major newspapers, as well as a variety of global outlets. All of them printed the government’s claims without attempting to verify them. Not a single reporter succeeded in confirming the identity of the detainee, a native of southeastern Nigeria who came to Japan 19 years earlier to look for work in the leather tanneries of Hyogo Prefecture. His name was Gerald “Sunny” Okafor.

An important story about the destruction of a family was overlooked. Okafor’s widow, who is deaf, struggled to raise her daughter alone after her husband was detained, pushing her to the brink of psychological collapse. Immigration officials took advantage of her vulnerability, pressuring her to file for divorce and promising—disingenuously—that it would expedite Okafor’s release.

The media also failed to uncover administrative malpractice at the detention center, which led Mr. Okafor to believe that steps were being taken to expedite his return to Nigeria. After learning this wasn’t true, he refused to receive intravenous fluids, precipitating his death. The Nigerian embassy helped the Ministry of Justice cover up these mistakes, leaving a paper trail in Okafor’s immigration file.

The success of this cover-up has undermined the best opportunity to sink the proposed immigration reforms, which were developed in response to Okafor’s death. The reforms are based on the insulting notion that the detention center could have saved Okafor if it had possessed greater powers of coercion—the power to sanction his attorneys, for instance, if they pushed too aggressively for their client’s release.

But the press has helped to turn Okafor’s death into a non-story, by disseminating state propaganda that diminishes the death’s significance, then responding to that propaganda with opinion essays instead of investigations.

“The media approaches the immigration debate as an ideological matter, rather than a test of the integrity of Japan’s institutions,” observed one MoFA official who monitored Mr. Okafor’s case. “That’s not helpful to people in government who are trying to fix the system, because it doesn’t change anybody’s mind. It only inflames existing disagreements.”

If disobeying the instructions of immigration officials becomes a criminal offense, as the government has now proposed, it will be made possible by the collapse of non-partisan relationships between trustworthy elements of Japan’s government and their counterparts in the press.

Mr. Okafor’s body shortly after his death. “Japan never saw what starvation did to that man. It should haunt them,” said Stanley Egbogota, chairman of an Igbo civic association that raised money for Mr. Okafor’s family. Photo: With permission from the family of Gerald Okafor

In an era of journalism where editorial decisions are shaped by web traffic and algorithms, the loss of knowledgeable sources may not strike every media professional as a matter of concern. Reporters didn’t need to speak with anyone who knew Mr. Okafor in order to write about him, or to decide that it was no longer necessary to write about him — even as parliament debated legislation that resulted from his death.

“They got the answers they needed,” Okafor’s widow observed in our most recent correspondence. “And in such a convenient way: from no one, from nowhere.”

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For six years, Dreux Richard covered Japan’s Nigerian community for a daily newspaper in Tokyo. His first book, Every Human Intention: Japan in the New Century, was published by Pantheon in 2021. ENDS

My SNA Visible Minorities col 34: “Henry Scott-Stokes, Sell-Out to Gaijin Handlers, dies.” May 23, 2022, with ruminations on why foreign journalism in Japan has historically been so astray.

Posted on May 23, 2022June 21, 2023 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s my latest SNA column, discussing in part why journalism on Japan has historically had so many topical, “weird Japan” stories. Part of it is because some commentators on Japan remain willfully ignorant of the Japanese language. Others get duped by the industry of “Gaijin Handlers” designed to steer foreign perceptions of Japan in the “right direction”. And some commentators, like the late Henry Scott-Stokes, former Tokyo Bureau Chief at The Financial Times, Times of London, and New York Times, become willing abettors of the Japanese far-right, selling their reputations to maintain their privilege.

Have a read. It resolves one mystery I always felt when meeting numerous veteran foreign correspondents during the Otaru Onsens Case. They would often arrogantly question my standing to work within the Japanese system as resident, citizen, and activist. Yet they could barely read the menu. Time for me to question their standing too. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Visible Minorities: Henry Scott-Stokes, Sell-Out to Gaijin Handlers
Shingetsu News Agency, May 23, 2022, by Debito Arudou

https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/05/23/visible-minorities-henry-scott-stokes-sell-out-to-gaijin-handlers/

SNA (Tokyo) — Henry Johnstone Morland Scott-Stokes, patrician among Japan’s foreign correspondents since 1964, recently died in Tokyo at the age of 83, but not before he did untold damage by performing as a foreign handmaid to Japan’s fascists.

A man described as “tweedy” and “entertaining and congenial,” Briton Scott-Stokes was nonetheless a man of privilege, lucky enough to land in Japan as Tokyo bureau chief of the Financial Times only three years after graduating from Oxford.

Becoming bureau chief of a major newspaper at the wizened old age of 26 might seem odd today, but back then foreign journalism in Japan had lower standards, and the field was infused with neocolonial attitudes towards the “natives.” Fluency in your assigned country’s language was not required.

Nor was Japanese required at the other “Big Three” English-language newspapers in Japan, as Scott-Stokes later became bureau chief of The Times of London and the New York Times through the 1970s and early 1980s. For a man described as “someone who really understood Japan,” he spent his entire 58 years in Japan as a functional illiterate, unable to fluently read, write, or speak Japanese.

To be fair, this was normal: Scott-Stokes arose from a bygone generation of Japan commentators who were poorly trained in social science methods. That’s actually one reason why newspaper analysis on Japan at the time was so topical. They simply couldn’t do their own deep and rigorous research in the vernacular.

As a result, overseas readers usually got the topical “weird Japan” stories–dismissively called the “Three Es” of economics, exotica, and erotica–that condescendingly promoted the Japanese as “inscrutable” and the Japanese language as “the hardest in the world” for foreigners to learn.

Of course, that had the self-serving effect of absolving their willful ignorance. The problem with doing onsite research dependent on interpreters (in Scott-Stokes’ case, his second wife) is that professionals become blinkered. Not only are you less able to talk to the hoi polloi on their own terms about their daily lives, but in Japan in particular you become vulnerable to the elite, targeted by a particular class of people with an agenda for prominent Western journalists.

Also known as “Gaijin Handlers,” this industry of information spooks is designed to distract attention from politically troubling or shameful stories about Japan, and at best mislead foreign correspondents into parroting government propaganda.

After all, the Japanese government is well-practiced in steering domestic media and influencing public perception for social control–hence Japan’s enormously restrictive “Press Clubs.”

Until the mid-1980s, the Gaijin Handlers succeeded quite well. The image of Japan transmitted to the outside world was kept “harmless and weird,” and Japan got richer and richer on its trade surpluses.

But then, seemingly out of nowhere, Japan suddenly emerged even wealthier than the United States in terms of per capita GDP. Japanese companies bought up prominent overseas properties while the US taxpayer footed the bill for Japan’s regional defense. Overseas editors started demanding that Japan be studied as an economic powerhouse, if not a rival.

This is when a new generation of Japan scholars came in, where if you weren’t fluent in Japanese you simply weren’t respected.

We did our own research outside of government meddling, using the same vernacular sources the Gaijin Handlers read and tried to obfuscate. We knew their code because we spoke it too. Our analysis wasn’t perfect, but we could better see through the propaganda.

Times change, and most of the old hacks moved on to other countries or settled into a quiet life in Japan, living a harmless twilight existence as cottage consultants in their cups.

Scott-Stokes didn’t. He didn’t just continue to rely on his privileged access to Japan’s elite for his income; he decided to embrace their fascist tendencies.

He first attracted attention from Japan’s far right in 1974 with his signature book, a biography in English of his alleged friend Yukio Mishima. It proved useful to Mishima’s ilk. With the imprimatur of a pedigreed white man whitewashing one of Japan’s far right fanatics into a sympathetic hero, he helped refashion Japan’s fascism for the outside world.

Then, by the 2010s, as journalistic standards rose and money got tighter, Scott-Stokes went all-in with his Gaijin Handlers, selling his reputation for thirty pieces of silver.

His 2013 book Falsehoods in the Allied Nations’ Victorious View of History, as Seen by a British Journalist, came out in Japanese only, and it sold an estimated 100,000 copies within a few months.

But Scott-Stokes wound up blindsided by its contents. Despite his name being on the cover and his standing as the titular “British Journalist,” it turns out that he didn’t actually write the book, let alone read it. The Times of London reported that he had essentially dictated it to an interpreter.

Later asked about sections denying “as a historical fact” the Nanjing Massacre of civilians by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1937, he initially said he was “shocked and horrified” at having been unable to check that “rogue passage.” Then Scott-Stokes reversed himself and stood by what was written. “If I’ve been taken advantage of, it’s with my complicity.” Books needed to be sold, after all.

Further, he doubled down on minimizing Japan’s “alleged” war crimes with whataboutism, comparing them to the “war crimes” of the atomic bombings, and of the “victor’s justice” of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal–all Japan historical revisionist tropes. He even argued that the United States, not Japan, bears “prime responsibility” for the Pacific War.

Some of his absurd claims are still visible on far right websites, such as, “It is largely as a result of Japanese shedding their blood that we entered a new world where colonies did not exist any more and there is racial equality.”

He concluded, “You should not be misled by anti-Japanese propaganda but rather take pride in Japan as a nation,” noting that Japan was “Asia’s light of hope” which “liberated Asian countries from white domination” (replaced by, the record also demonstrates, Yamato domination; they too were brutal colonizers, after all). All of this effort was to “protect the Japanese soul.”

Fortunately, Scott-Stokes’ former employers took responsibility for their own, acknowledging in their obituaries that his book was “embraced by right-wing apologists for atrocities committed by the Japanese military during World War II” (New York Times), and “Scott-Stokes was certainly sympathetic to Japanese nationalist right-wingers” (The Times of London).

I can find no specific buy-in from Scott-Stokes for other tropes that the far-right takes pride in, such as encouraging thoroughbred Wajin bloodlines free of miscegenation or promoting “pure” Yamato males as the only people entitled to represent and rule Japan.

But his sympathies for those who do, especially those who lament Japan’s postwar disapproval of “traditional Japanese values,” including Meiji Era martial training and the Emperor as the head of state, gave their rhetoric a sense of legitimacy. And it runs directly counter to Japan’s inevitable future, given its low birthrates and aging society, as a multicultural, multiethnic society.

The point is that Scott-Stokes’ lifetime peddling in and profiteering off of Japan’s mysticism has interfered with seeing Japan’s history, and its present-day realities, realistically.

His son, Harry Sugiyama Scott-Stokes, a celebrity broadcaster in Japan and frequent commentator at NHK, has announced that he will be “carrying on in the spirit of my father,” whatever that means.

In the end, what is the measure of a life well spent? In my view, it is to leave the world a better place than you found it. By this measure, Scott-Stokes did quite the opposite.

By passively, then later actively, promoting the aims and ideology that undergird Japan’s fascist xenophobes, he offers no template for Japan’s foreign communities, let alone his professional colleagues. His support of people who would never grant equal rights to minorities, particularly Japan’s Visible Minorities, is especially ironic and counterproductive.

Future residents and interpreters of Japanese society should see Scott-Stokes as a cautionary tale. Here was a man who lived most of his life in a country, even tried to rewrite the narrative on it, yet remained in a bubble of privilege so opaque he could never see the obvious–that he was being used by elites who would never let his type into their club.

Henry Johnstone Morland Scott-Stokes became a “useful idiot” to the Gaijin Handlers, destroying his legacy.

ENDS

My SNA Visible Minorities 33: “Why Progressives keep losing” (short answer: because they alienate their own allies), April 18, 2022

Posted on April 18, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. My most recent SNA column is a think-pied about how the Left keeps losing out to the Right. Because working with the Left is like herding cats. Enjoy. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Visible Minorities: Why Progressives Keep Losing

Shingetsu News Agency, April 18, 2022

SNA (Tokyo) — Shingetsu News Agency President Michael Penn wrote about my previous column:

“Debito found a way to provoke them again, and I must say that I don’t understand the way a lot of people think these days. Those who read the article and interacted with what was written tended to say on social media that they largely agreed with it. But there was a more vocal cohort who, not really disagreeing with any specific arguments made, were outraged on the basis that Debito, a white man, had dared to give any advice to Naomi Osaka. Apparently, we are now supposed to live self-contained within our own little tribal identities, and universal humanity is no longer recognized as sufficient grounds to express an opinion, even for a news columnist whose job is to comment on public affairs.”

There’s a lesson here.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder said recently in a television interview, “The Left loses for the right reasons; the Right wins for the wrong reasons.”

One of the reasons why the Left, particularly the Progressives who have not enjoyed much power worldwide for more than a century, keeps losing is because of their fractiousness.

Just as soon as they gain an advantage or start making headway in the policy arena, they lose focus and begin turning on themselves. They alienate natural allies because they are not ideologically pure enough, or worse yet, as seen above, the wrong skin color.

Granted, the Left has always had a tougher time mobilizing people than the Right. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, the Left wants leaders they can fall in love with, while the Right wants leaders they can fall in line with.

Let’s unpack that. Voices from the Left are discordant and diverse, and expectations are high and sometimes uncompromising. It’s also a lot tougher for a Leftist leader to gain and sustain the “love” of their supporters since, no matter what else happens, there will always be winners and losers with every decision they make.

But for Rightists, it’s a lot easier to “fall in line” behind an ideological camp whose basic organizing principle is money (and the shameless acquisition of it). And once they gain enough of it, money in itself not only buys power, but also, oddly enough, credibility. […] Sadly, that’s why the Right understands power better…

But that’s Right vs. Left. Now let’s talk about Left vs. Left, and how they undermine themselves…

Read whole column at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/04/18/visible-minorities-why-progressives-keep-losing/

My SNA Visible Minorities 31: “Shintaro Ishihara: Good Riddance to an Evil Man”, an honest obituary. Feb 20, 2022

Posted on February 21, 2022June 22, 2023 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Visible Minorities 31: Shintaro Ishihara: Good Riddance to an Evil Man
Shingetsu News Agency, February 21, 2022
By Debito Arudou

https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/02/21/visible-minorities-good-riddance-to-an-evil-man/

Former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who died February 1, was an evil man. Any honest obituary would admit as such. Unfortunately, the media’s retrospectives have tended to eulogize him, using weasel words so as to not speak ill of the dead.

But that’s the wrong reflex. Evil should never be whitewashed, especially when it comes to a person as evil as Ishihara, and by doing so they are complicit in historical revisionism. I will try to rectify that with this column by recounting Ishihara’s actual record.

COMPARISON AND CONTEXT

I do not use the term “evil” lightly. Consider other people in Japan who, when granted power, did wrong:

Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, a rehabilitated war criminal, stunted Japan’s development into a mature sovereign country by perpetually subordinating Japan’s geopolitical interests to the American military under the US-Japan Security Treaty.

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, who abetted the “Comfort Women” system of wartime sexual slavery, spent his life not only denying its existence, but also reconstituting Japan’s ruthless revisionist far-right.

And Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, did all he could to restore prewar elitism to the postwar governing system, by destroying any “Western” ideals of individuality, human rights, and pacifism; and (unsuccessfully) trying to “revise” Japan’s postwar Constitution.

But all of these horrible little men still pale in comparison to a man as irredeemably evil as Shintaro Ishihara.

WHITEWASHING THE RECORD THROUGH WEASEL WORDS

Most obits have used weasel words to describe Ishihara’s life: “Controversial,“ “brash,” “charismatic,” “unapologetic,” “chauvinistic,” “contentious,” a “firebrand (or fiery) nationalist,” “staunch right-winger,” “outspoken conservative,” even “gaffe-prone,” woefully understating his misdeeds.

Some went even further, looking for some good in him: His establishment of the Shinginko Tokyo bank using public monies (which failed, becoming a windfall for the yakuza), involvement with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (and we’ve written here what a nationalist mess that became), restrictions on diesel cars in Tokyo (yes, less air pollution is good, but rarely were his policies green), and an “outspokenness” towards anything he didn’t like (that’s not a virtue; just a guilty pleasure to watch).

One of the harsher ones, after calling him a “rightist, elitist, racist, misogynist, patriarchal pig,” still fell for his “unmistakable, evocative allure,” and concluded that “Tokyo has lost something” with his death.

What we lost was a legitimizer of hatred.

Revealingly, one of Ishihara’s elitist co-conspirators described him as “a politician who challenged what became the norms in the postwar era… He was not afraid of criticisms and insisted on what he had to say” (Shinzo Abe). Translation: Ishihara’s extreme stances and policies helped our right-wing policy aims seem less extreme.

INSTEAD, MEMORIALIZE ISHIHARA’S HATEFUL DEEDS

So let’s recount Ishihara’s actual record, starting with his peerless sense of entitlement.

Born into wealth, he got lucky getting a prestigious book award at an early age which catapulted him into celebrity status. This enabled him to hobnob with elites and attain elected national office for several decades. After all, electorates in any society are suckers for celebrities.

He eventually found himself in a position of real power, elected multiple times to the governorship of the world’s largest and richest city. And he used that bully pulpit to further aims explicitly motivated by hate, admitting in 2014, “Until I die, I want to say what I want to say and do what I want to do, and I want to die hated by people.”

Accordingly, Ishihara infused hate and spite into just about any public policy he sponsored. Remember how mere weeks into his first term as Tokyo Governor he called for the Japanese military to actively round up foreigners (using the racist epithet “Sankokujin”) in the event of a natural disaster? How were they to do that? Unclear — probably just arrest anyone who “looks foreign.” Why? Because in his words, foreigners are “heinous” and will of course riot and run amok when given the opportunity.

That claim was put to the test during the Tohoku Tsunami, and surprise, no foreigner riots. Any retractions from Ishihara? Of course not. Men of no conscience or sense of consequence for their actions never apologize unless they’re forced to.

For Ishihara was a man who unapologetically said that he loathed Koreans and Chinese, and went out of his way not only to justify Japan’s occupation of its Asian neighbors, but also deny its colonial and wartime atrocities. (All while calling the US atomic bombing of Japan racist.) Ishihara even claimed, in his regular Sankei Shinbun columns, that Chinese were innately criminal due to their “ethnic DNA.”

A hateful man who poured his hate into concrete policies, Ishihara installed Japan’s first neighborhood surveillance cameras specifically in areas of Tokyo he claimed were “hotbeds of foreign crime,” and went on TV at regular intervals to propagandize that Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and Roppongi at night were no longer Japan.

He also said that Japanese politicians who support more civil and human rights for foreign residents must have “foreign ancestors” themselves, and abetted political witch hunts and loyalty tests to root out politicians with international connections.

Essentially, Ishihara was trying to ethnically cleanse Japan, undoing the “internationalization” phase of the 1980s and 1990s of openness and tolerance.

In its place, he sponsored overt racism and normalized xenophobia. He fueled Japan’s reflexive self-victimization by scapegoating foreigners, accusing them of crime, terrorism, subversive activities, and a general undermining of all things “Japanese.”

And it worked. To this day, entire political parties, candidates, and hate groups publicly rally for the expulsion of foreigners and the extermination of Koreans. That’s why current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida can’t easily lift the world’s longest, most draconian and unscientific Covid border policies–because polls say 57% of the fearful Japanese public want them kept.

In his spare time, Ishihara also found ways to hate anyone who wasn’t like him, even blaming his own citizens for their woes. Such as the time he said the 2011 Tohoku Disasters were “divine punishment for Japanese people’s egoism.”

Ever the misogynist in his novels and policy statements (one obit called him “the King of Toxic Masculinity”), he called women who survived past menopause “a waste” and “a disease of civilization” (as opposed to men, however senile, who can still “propagate the species until their 80s and 90s”), said that a woman euthanized for having ALS suffered from a “karmic disease due to the sins of a past life,” and averred that gays and lesbians are “genetically subnormal.” There’s plenty more, but I’ll stop there.

STOP EULOGIZING A HITLER PROTOTYPE

That’s why I find it so jarring that obituarists minced their words. Stop it, because you are complicit in historical revisionism.

To find any redeeming qualities in a man like Ishihara is like noting that Hitler liked dogs, built Germany’s autobahns, or created Volkswagen. But that shouldn’t be the focus of any honest historical accounting of a balance sheet of evil.

And yes, I made a comparison to Hitler. That’s not Godwin’s Law. Think about it: If Ishihara had been given the powers Hitler had, do you think he would have done much different?

Other people of Ishihara’s ilk (such as Prime Minister Taro Aso) have expressed admiration for Hitler, saying he had the “right motives,” because that enables politicians to achieve results. Shucks, if only Japanese politicians’ power wasn’t so diluted by Japanese bureaucracy, and the Japanese military freed to project more power wherever it wanted, what could we accomplish?

Well, that was precisely what Ishihara was trying to do whenever he had power.

Remember when Governor Ishihara tried to leverage public and private monies (eventually forcing the national government’s hand to do so) to buy up the Senkakus, some disputed rocks in the East China Sea? That was, in his words, his attempt to “start a war with China and win.” To this day, major world media that should know better blithely portray this conflict as merely a “feud,” a “row,” and a “spat.”

Given that Ishihara was also calling for Japan to develop nuclear weapons, that means, if Ishihara had achieved his results, he would have mass-murdered the people he hated.

Thus comparisons with Hitler are not hyperbole. They’re history.

DEATH BY “KARMIC DISEASE” IS NOT ENOUGH

Ishihara died at age 89 of recurring pancreatic cancer. I’m told it’s a painful way to go. Good. But no amount of pain he would ever feel would make up for the suffering he caused out of purely personal animus and spite. He was a cruel man who spent his life persecuting people not only because they crossed him, but also simply because they were born a certain way.

So this is my obit: Shintaro Ishihara was a monster and now he is dead. May he rot in hell.

Japan Govt’s “Kizuna” magazine: “Beyond Tokyo 2020 Olympics: Leading the Way towards an Inclusive Society”, Winter 2021: Govt propaganda whitewashing history & rewriting exclusionary narratives

Posted on February 13, 2022February 13, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Getting to this one a bit late, sorry. (Got two more new classes this semester; just starting to get into a semester groove now.)

Have a look at this Japanese Government article in their “Kizuna” Magazine trying to present the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as a liberalizing force, allowing Japan to embrace “inclusivity”.

Of course, we here at Debito.org are all in favor of inclusivity. But when even the data it presents below doesn’t substantiate the headline, you know even the Japanese government is indulging in propagandizing clickbait based on incomplete social science. No surprises there, I guess, but let’s parse. My comments interspliced within the article:

/////////////////////////////////////////////

PORTRAITS OF JAPAN
BEYOND TOKYO 2020: LEADING THE WAY TOWARD AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY

Kizuna Magazine, Winter 2021
https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/_userdata/pdf/2021/winter2021/beyond_tokyo_2020.pdf

The Tokyo 2020 Games, which reached a safe conclusion even under the difficult circumstances presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, made a significant step toward the realization of an inclusive society—one in which everyone respects one another regardless of gender, age, or ability.

(Comment: So the inclusivity is restricted to gender, age, and ability? Not nationality, minorities (who were in fact shut out of the Games), or other racialized characteristics for Visible Minorities in Japan? Granted, those three items are good ones, but it’s a narrower scope for “inclusivity” than should be possible or laudable.)

It was precisely because the world had been facing great difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic that Japan determined to fulfill its responsibility as host country to hold the Tokyo 2020 Games, even without spectators, and to provide the world with a sense of solidarity and to offer hopes and dreams, especially to children, who hold the future in their hands. Firmly intent on making this happen, many people throughout Japan worked in unison, striving to implement measures for safety and security to ensure that Japan bring the Games to a safe conclusion.

(Comment: Trope check: We hardworking Japanese should take a bow for “working in unison” (echoing the wartime sentiment of all Japanese hearts beating in unison without exception) making everything safe and secure for providing the world with hopes and dreams and solidarity. Especially the children. And according to the first sentence, Japan did this for the world? I think more for its sponsors, both foreign and particularly domestic.)

The Tokyo 2020 Games not only moved and inspired many people through sports, but also advanced the Games’ core concept of “Unity in Diversity,” serving to promote the further growth of this movement. The percentage of female athletes participating in the Olympic Games was a record 48.8. Moreover, the number of athletes who identified themselves as LGBTQ+ was reportedly over 180—-more than triple that of the Rio 2016 Games—-and they won more than 55 medals among them. In order to promote gender equality, the number of mixed-gender events was doubled to 18. Seeing men and women teaming up to compete for their country was like a breath of fresh air. The Paralympic Games, which was held in Tokyo for the second time, served as an opportunity to convey to the world and cultivate the “barrier-free mindset” that is at the foundation of an inclusive society, in which everyone, with or without impairments, can lead a vibrant life.

(Comment: Ah yes, the “Unity in Diversity” trope that I critiqued for SNA last August. I will excerpt that below and show how ironic that trope actually was. But look at how the article categorizes “diversity”: Females. LGBTQ+. Mixed-gender. Paraolympics. Nothing about, for example, Visible Minorities.

But again, this has nothing to do with Japan, and more to do with the Olympic-sponsored events themselves. Claiming this as something that we Japanese created is like claiming that Japan promoted better chocolate because Japan hosted a chocolate festival that somebody else created and sponsored. And that that better chocolate somehow created mindsets throughout society to make them more inclusive of chocolate, even for those who hate chocolate. There’s simply no data to support this assertion that any mindsets changed here, there, or anywhere. Then we actually get to their dataset for their claims:)

Supporting the success of the Games from behind the scenes were more than 70,000 Games volunteers, who ranged in age from 19 to 91. These volunteers, regardless of age, gender, or disability, played the vital role of actuating the concept of “Unity in Diversity” by providing hospitality and supporting athletes and staff from around the world. MIURA Hisashi, who has a hearing impairment, was one of these volunteers. Wanting to contribute in some way to this historic event, he performed reception and maintenance duties, among others, at the residential buildings and fitness center at the Olympic and Paralympic Village. “As I actively offered my own opinions and shared sign-language skills, my teammates also naturally started to communicate more openly, showing their care for one another using both spoken words and sign language. Ultimately, I felt that we made an excellent team, and were able to fulfill our role. It was also unforgettable to have the chance to communicate with players and staff visiting from all around the world using gestures and body language. I’m glad that I was able to support them, even if only in a small way”, says Miura.

(Comment: Wow, Miura got a lot of space. One guy with a hearing impairment who performed “reception and maintenance duties” leads the way with gestures and body language. A diverse sample size of one proves the point that society’s mindsets are changing. And that’s basically the meat of the article.)

Respecting and supporting one another regardless of differences is crucial to the realization of an inclusive society. At this year’s Games, this notion was reiterated to many people throughout the world. Miura says, “The Tokyo 2020 Games offered an opportunity to make great progress in terms of ‘Unity in Diversity.’ I am thankful that I was able to make my personal contribution as a volunteer at the Games, and I believe it is important to continue building up such experiences, not just at the Olympics and Paralympics.”

(Comment: Even more space for Miura. That’s lazy journalism. And it repeats that trope that we Japanese unified to somehow welcome more diverse people, whoever they are.

Note there’s not even a mention of the truly diverse people involved, notably tennis champ Osaka Naomi lighting the Olympic Cauldron in the Opening Ceremonies. I guess that’s not the diversity they’re looking for: It doesn’t fall into the “gender, age, and ability” point they’re trying to prove, then don’t.)

Each of us embracing diversity will create a vitality that will lead to the realization of a world where everyone can live comfortably. The Tokyo 2020 Games were a sure, significant step in that direction.

ARTICLE ENDS

ARTICLE PHOTOS: Some 11,000 athletes from 205 countries and regions and the Refugee Olympic Team participated in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, giving inspiring performances and setting numerous records. (Photo: Closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, August 8) AFLO SPORTS

Top: MIURA Hisashi (left), who has a hearing impairment, participated in the Games as a volunteer. Through the assistance of the Nippon Foundation Volunteer Support Center, which provides support to volunteers with impairments, he worked on a team together with an individual (right) who was able to offer sign-language interpretation at the venue to support the athletes. THE NIPPON FOUNDATION VOLUNTEER SUPPORT CENTER

Bottom: With the help of volunteers, Slovenian sprinter Anita Horvat exits the venue after the competition. Volunteers offered their assistance to athletes and Games personnel not just at the competition venues, but also at various locations around the country. XINHUA/AFLO

Left: Tom Daley (foreground), an openly gay athlete who won the gold medal for Great Britain in the men’s synchronized 10-meter platform, told the press, “I’m incredibly proud to say that I’m a gay man and also an Olympic champion.”
PICTURE ALLIANCE/AFLO

Top: The Japanese duo of MIZUTANI Jun and ITO Mima won the gold in a new event, mixed doubles table tennis. REUTERS/AFLO
ENDS

===============================

As mentioned above, here’s an excerpt of my SNA column of August 16, 2021 critiquing that “Unity in Diversity” trope:

===============================

SNA Visible Minorities; Tokyo 2020 Olympics Postmortem (excerpt)

By Debito Arudou

…That’s why I had some pretty low expectations for Tokyo’s Opening Ceremonies on July 21. Scandal after scandal had erupted over Japan’s Olympic Committee abysmal leadership choices, including the creative head cracking fat jokes about a female entertainer, the composer of the ceremony bragging about his history of abusing disabled people, the director of the ceremony making wisecracks about the Holocaust, and, of course, Yoshiro Mori, the octogenarian chair, resigning after sexist remarks.

After this, how would Japan introduce itself to the world?

Surprisingly, as a land with some degree of diversity. In prominent positions were people in wheelchairs and Visible Minorities, including hoopster Rui Hachimura as Japan’s flag bearer, Zainichi Taiwanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh on the torch relay, and of course tennis champ Naomi Osaka having the great honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron. This caused much media buzz about how Japan was finally changing, coming to terms with the reality of its own diversity.

Sadly, I disagree. I would say this represents less a contradiction of Japan’s “monoethnic society,” more an affirmation of the power of tokenism.

Remember how Tokyo got these Games in the first place: By wheeling out French-Japanese TV announcer Christel Takigawa to give a fluent gaijin-handling presentation about Japan’s mystical prowess in omotenashi hospitality. Once her purpose as a token of diversity was served, she essentially disappeared from the Games, and the old guard took over and reverted to its scandalous form.

The thing is, tokenism isn’t acceptance. At best it’s a way station to your acceptance as an exceptional individual, successful DESPITE your background, and even that depends on whether you’ve fulfilled your assigned purpose. For the Olympics, if we’re putting you center stage, you’d better do your job and win Gold for the nation.

Unfortunately, the tokens didn’t win. Osaka was defeated in her third tennis match. Hachimura’s basketball team placed eleventh. Despite Japan’s record haul of medals, as far as I can tell only two Visible Minorities (Aaron Wolf in judo and Kanoa Igarashi in surfing) made it to the podium.

And Igarashi, US-born resident of Huntington Beach, CA, indicatively promotes himself on his Olympics website entry in classic Olympic “thoroughbred-ism”: “I have so much support here in the USA and America will always be part of who I am. But I’ve grown up with a lifestyle and in a generation where things can seem a bit borderless. And so representing Japan felt like a solid, comfortable decision. My blood is 100% Japanese. That’s something that you don’t change.”

Good for his bloodline, I guess. But for mongrel non-medalists like Osaka, as the New York Times noted, Japan’s social media pounced, contesting her Japanese language ability, her standing to represent Japan, and even her Japaneseness, all of which mattered much less when she was winning.

The final straw was when The Daily Beast reported August 4 that Yoshiro Mori had lobbied against Osaka lighting the Olympic cauldron in the first place, in favor of a “pure Japanese man.” With her lackluster performance, no doubt many bigots feel Mori has been vindicated.
EXCERPT ENDS

===============================

“Unity in Diversity” indeed. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

The article itself is available as a screen capture here (click to expand):

Ruminations on Ishihara Shintaro’s death: Good riddance to an evil man.

Posted on February 2, 2022August 24, 2024 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. It was with some measured amount of joy that I saw that a quintessentially awful man, Former Tokyo Governor and Political-Resident Racist Ishihara Shintaro, recently died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 89.

Predictably, the eulogies and hagiographies have minced their words about what an awful man this was, watering down their modifiers to call him a “brash” “hawk” “firebrand”, a ‘fiery nationalist” with “controversial views” etc. (Check out the utter gloss job the NY Times Obits did here.) Even after some admit that he deliberately used his political power to try to start a war with China over some island scraps, and to publicly denigrate and persecute people not only because they crossed him, but also because they were born a certain way. Simply saying he was not a force for good is to have a fundamental misconception of what evil is.

Debito.org has commented on Ishihara’s evil activities umpteen times (most famously here), so I see no need to dwell further. I think Kaori Shoji writes an excellent obit in the Japan Subculture Research Center (aptly titled “A Farewell To Japan’s King of Toxic Masculinity: Shintaro Ishihara“) where she sums up:

The man was a rightist, elitist, racist, misogynist, patriarchal pig. I hope I didn’t leave out anything.

But even she winds up succumbing to a begrudging admiration for a person in power who was granted even more power and wielded it. That’s a pity. Yes, Ishihara had power — the power of yet another racist toxic masculinist born into rich privilege who did everything he could to make sure that privilege is perpetuated for his ilk. And his ilk have caused (and then denied) things like genocides, and should never be allowed to come near power and public service. Alas, an early showing with a prestigious literary award catapulted Ishihara into fame, and people are suckers for celebrities.

Returning to my opening, I say “measured amount of joy” because my joy was restrained by the fact that a recurrence of pancreatic cancer took Ishihara. I hope it hurt real bad in your final days, Ishihara. But no amount of pain you would ever experience would be enough payback for all the pain and suffering you caused other people.

Rot in hell, you monster. Arudou Debito, Ph.D.

======================
PS. Other Debito.org Readers have already commented on Ishihara’s demise in a separate blog post here.

PPS: Here’s my more thorough Ishihara Obituary for the Shingetsu News Agency, Feb 20, 2022.

My SNA Visible Minorities 30: “US Military Should Combat Japan’s Xenophobia”, i.e., counteract apparent Japanese media disinformation about their bases’ Covid policies (Jan 24, 2022)

Posted on January 24, 2022January 24, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Visible Minorities Column 30: US Military Should Combat Japan’s Xenophobia
SHINGETSU NEWS AGENCY, JAN 24, 2022 by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN
https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/01/24/visible-minorities-us-military-should-combat-japans-xenophobia/

SNA (Tokyo) — Shingetsu News Agency has reported for two years on how the Japanese government and media have gone out of their way to blame foreigners for the domestic spread of Covid. Each time we’ve gone out of our way to point out that Covid was usually brought in by Japanese citizens disobeying lenient quarantines.

The government’s exclusionary border policies, treating people without Japanese passports as somehow more contagious, is routinely supported neither by logic nor science.

The latest mutation of this narrative has been the blame targeted at US military bases in Japan for community spread.

For example, Japan Times reported on January 8, stitching together wire reports from Jiji Press and Kyodo News, that “US military personnel are believed to have triggered a coronavirus resurgence in [Okinawa, Yamaguchi, and Hiroshima]. Many people in the three prefectures live in close proximity to American bases. Infection prevention measures taken by the US forces, which some have criticized as being too lax, are thought to be behind that explosion of cases.” […]. But this is contradicted by what the US Forces Japan say are their actual policies, claiming 92-98% vaccination rates and limitations on movement.

So is the blame game grounded in facts and science? Or are these reactions to people trying to find another foreign scapegoat for the latest Covid spike? We don’t know because US Forces Japan aren’t making their practices sufficiently loud and clear. As usual.

The upshot: How US Forces Japan are yet again ignoring being used for domestic political capital is irresponsible. USFJ has the duty to recognize that what they do affects Visible Minorities in Japan, whether it be inspiring “Japanese Only” bigots to slam shop doors in their faces, or giving more ammunition to reactionaries who seek to seal off Japan’s borders.

Full article at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/01/24/visible-minorities-us-military-should-combat-japans-xenophobia/

Page with more sources at https://www.debito.org/?p=16964.

Combating xenophobic rumors and media: Debito.org asks US Forces, Japan for clarification on their COVID testing and vaccination policies

Posted on January 12, 2022January 24, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

From: Debito Arudou <debito@debito.org>
Subject: From Debito.org: Questions regarding US Forces, Japan vaccination procedures.
Date: January 13, 2022
To: indopacom.yokota.usfj.mbx.pao@mail.mil (courtesy of this site)
Cc: Shingetsu News Agency <shingetsunewsagency@gmail.com>

To Whom It May Concern,
US Forces, Japan

Dear Sir or Madam,

My name is Debito Arudou, Ph.D., coordinator for Debito.org (www.debito.org), an award-winning online archive for life and human rights in Japan for more than 25 years. We address issues that affect Non-Japanese Residents of Japan, particularly Visible Minorities, and have acted as a launching pad for hundreds of journalistic and academic articles, government and NGO reports, and actions that have changed the course of national narratives and public policies. I am also the author of “Embedded Racism: Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination” (Lexington Books, Second Edition 2022), and am a columnist for the Shingetsu News Agency.

Debito.org has some questions we would like to ask about the policies of US Forces, Japan.

In recent weeks, the Japanese media has portrayed US Forces in Japan as a major vector for infection in Japan, portraying the US military presence in Japan as a leak in their otherwise tight border policies. Consider:

============================
“Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki told reporters on Thursday that ‘U.S. military bases are one of the major causes of the spread of infections,’ while Yamaguchi Gov. Tsugumasa Muraoka said, ‘The fact that (military personnel) were not tested before departure from the United States had a big impact.’ Hiroshima Gov. Hidehiko Yuzaki also called the U.S. military’s measures ‘extremely regrettable.’”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/01/07/national/anti-us-base-sentiment/
“U.S. military personnel are believed to have triggered a coronavirus resurgence in the three prefectures. Many people in the three prefectures live in close proximity to American bases. Infection prevention measures taken by the U.S. forces, which some have criticized as being too lax, are thought to be behind that explosion of cases.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/01/08/national/japan-coronavirus-january8/
============================
with a public advertisement in Okinawa published by Kyodo News in the Japan Times, showing a Westerner (not an Asian) sneezing:

From https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/01/08/national/japan-coronavirus-january8/

As you know, Japan’s border policies for most of the past two years have refused entry to most foreigners, including foreign residents regardless of visa status, while letting in Japanese under often lax quarantine conditions to spread Covid anyway. Yet media and policymakers in Japan have frequently portrayed Covid as an exogenous, “foreign” disease, with the highly problematic interpretation of seeing foreigners as more likely to spread Covid than Japanese.

The World Health Organization last month noted the lack of good science behind that claim, stating that “Epidemiologically, I find it hard to understand the principle there. Does the virus read your passport? Does the virus know your nationality or where you are legally resident? Our concern here is that we apply public health principles, not political principles, to selecting measures that are used to control the spread of diseases. The idea that you can put a hermetic seal on most countries is frankly not possible.” (https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/12/28670f8f00db-urgent-kishida-hints-at-review-of-japans-re-entry-restrictions-over-omicron.html)

My point is that the US Military in Japan has a responsibility to dispel rumors and reports that are playing a part in potentially increasing xenophobic attitudes towards foreign residents of Japan.

I understand that you have made an attempt to do so with announcements on your US Forces, Japan, website dated January 5 and 9, 2022:
https://www.usfj.mil/Media/Press-Releases/Article-View/Article/2889890/us-forces-japan-increases-to-health-protection-bravo/and
https://www.usfj.mil/Media/Press-Releases/Article-View/Article/2893181/us-japan-joint-committee-statement-on-measures-to-address-the-spread-of-covid-19/

But please permit me to ask some clarifying questions, for publication on Debito.org:

==================================
1) Pursuant to President Biden’s order that all federal employees and military be vaccinated and tested by February 15 (“as of early December, 92 percent of federal employees and military personnel had received at least one dose”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/11/biden-federal-coronavirus-mandate-testing-rules-unvaccinated/), does this mean that all US Forces in Japan, both incoming and resident, have been vaccinated and boosted, and tested for Covid, including the Omicron variant?

2) What happens when members of the US Military test positive for Covid? If in Japan, are they quarantined within the base? If outside Japan, are they denied entry into Japan and quarantined overseas?

3) Do you have any response to the claims within the following reportage in the Japan Times:

“It was revealed in December that U.S. forces had been lax in their border measures against the virus… But it was found that the U.S. side was not conducting pre-departure and post-arrival testing, as required by Japan, and that it had shortened the period of restrictions on arriving personnel’s movement from 14 days to 10. It also allowed people in the restriction period to move freely within U.S. bases.” https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/01/07/national/anti-us-base-sentiment/
==================================

I have heard unsubstantiated reports from American military members on social media that US Forces must be properly vaccinated and tested before they arrive in Japan. This would be at odds with what the Japanese media is saying.

Debito.org would welcome your clarifications for the record.

Thank you for reading and responding.

Sincerely, Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
Coordinator, Debito.org
Columnist, Shingetsu News Agency (https://shingetsunewsagency.com)
ENDS

UPDATE JANUARY 23, 2022: We received no answer.

Why COVID keeps being seen as a “foreign” disease in Japan: Uncritical reportage in the Mainichi of Shizuoka Mayor blaming Omicron on “foreign nationals at work”, claiming it’s not “community transmission”. Wait, let’s parse that.

Posted on January 9, 2022January 10, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Debito.org has talked about how Japanese officialdom keeps trying to construe COVID as something “foreign”, i.e., something exogenous that affects foreigners more than Japanese people (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for example). To the point where there’s even a research institute (Riken) speculating that Japanese are genetically less susceptible to COVID. Seriously.

And that unscientific attitude is reflected in Japanese government policy that treats anyone with a Japanese passport as somehow less contagious than somebody with a foreign passport, regardless of individual vaccination status. (That of course means that a porous border and more lax quarantine rules for VIPs and “Japanese” entrants — including those without Japanese citizenship but WITH Japanese blood — get in and spread the disease anyway. Omicron is in Japan to stay, brought in by Japanese, no matter how much you’re trying to blame it on, for example, the US Military.)

It’s gotten to the point where even the WHO has decried these policies as unscientific:

(Kyodo News Dec 2, 2021): Michael Ryan, head of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, said of Japan’s ban on new entries of foreigners, “Epidemiologically, I find it hard to understand the principle there. Does the virus read your passport? Does the virus know your nationality or where you are legally resident? Our concern here is that we apply public health principles, not political principles, to selecting measures that are used to control the spread of diseases. The idea that you can put a hermetic seal on most countries is frankly not possible.”

But one other factor in all this gaijin-bashing is an uncritical media, even from foreigner-friendly media outlets like the Mainichi Shinbun. Where they report unconfirmed statements from a local mayor that people had contact “with foreign nationals” (“kaigai no hito“, or “overseas people” in the original Japanese), and scare the public all over again.

Article follows, then my comment:

//////////////////////////////////////
Central Japan prefecture’s 1st omicron case linked to contact with foreigners at job: mayor
December 28, 2021 (Mainichi Japan), courtesy of JK
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20211228/p2a/00m/0na/004000c

SHIZUOKA — Following the first confirmed coronavirus omicron variant case in the central Japan city of Shizuoka in Shizuoka Prefecture on Dec. 27, Mayor Nobuhiro Tanabe said at a press conference, “He (the patient) is confirmed to have had contact with foreign nationals at work, and community transmission is unlikely.”

According to the Shizuoka Municipal Government, the patient was earlier confirmed infected with the coronavirus and has mild symptoms. Genome analysis by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases revealed he was positive for the omicron variant. Two people who had had close contact with the man tested negative for the virus.

The patient has no recent history of overseas travel, and came into contact with foreign nationals at work. The city’s public health center explained that it determined the route of infection was strongly suspected to have been via contact at work.

The man received his second coronavirus vaccine by August. He developed symptoms on Dec. 23, was tested the following day, and hospitalized on Dec. 25. He was confirmed positive for the omicron variant the next day.

Other than the two people deemed close contacts, 12 of the 13 people involved in the same work tested negative. One still awaits their results.

(Japanese original by Hideyuki Yamada, Shizuoka Bureau)

静岡市でオミクロン株初確認　海外から来た人と接触　市中感染は否定的
毎日新聞 2021/12/27
https://mainichi.jp/articles/20211227/k00/00m/040/344000c
新型コロナウイルス感染症の変異株・オミクロン株への静岡県内初感染が静岡市で確認された27日、田辺信宏市長は記者会見で「業務上、海外の人と接点が確認されている。市中感染の可能性は低い」と説明した。患者は男性で軽症、市保健所で感染経路を調べている。
市によると、男性は新型コロナの感染が既に確認されていた。国立感染症研究所のゲノム解析でオミクロン株陽性と判明。濃厚接触者2人は陰性だった。
男性患者は海外渡航歴はなく、海外から来た人と業務で接触があった。市保健所は感染経路について「業務上の接触の方を強く疑う状況と判断している」と説明。8月までにワクチンの2回目接種を終えていた。23日に発症、24日に検査を受け、25日に入院。26日にオミクロン株の陽性と分かった。
濃厚接触者以外の仕事関係者13人のうち12人の陰性を確認。1人は検査結果を待っている。【山田英之】

ENDS

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COMMENT: A few more simple questions needed to be asked of Mr. Mayor before his speculation got passed through by the Mainichi editors, and allowed to filter into the public sphere:

Were these “overseas people” freshly-arrived in Japan from overseas despite a near-blanket ban on any foreigners at the border?
Were these “overseas people” in fact foreign residents who were here anyway, therefore those people are in fact part of “the community” (meaning, yes, “community transmission”).
Is there any evidence that these individual “overseas people” were in fact COVID-positive? Were they tested? Was there any other vector testing of other people in the community? Or are we just simply assuming that foreigners are more likely than Japanese to have COVID and leaving it at that?

We should know. But we don’t. Why not? Because the constant and uncritical assumptions that foreigners a) are vectors, and b) are not part of the “Japanese community” at large anyway, are precisely what I mean when I refer to Japan’s Embedded Racism. Presumptions like these are so normalized as to be embedded and unquestioned in Japan, even by media professionals who are supposed to be asking these questions before they let these racist ideas infect and spread throughout society. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

My annual “Human Rights Top Ten for 2021” countdown now at Shingetsu News Agency, VM 29 Dec 27, 2021

Posted on December 27, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hello and Happy Holidays to all Debito.org Readers! Here’s my annual Top Ten, this year moved to the Shingetsu News Agency because The Japan Times isn’t in the market for articles like these anymore. Excerpt:

//////////////////////////////
Visible Minorities: Human Rights Top Ten for 2021
SHINGETSU NEWS AGENCY, DEC 27, 2021 by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN

SNA (Tokyo) — Since 2008, I have always devoted my end-year columns to counting down the Top Ten human rights issues as they pertain to Non-Japanese residents of Japan. This year I’m moving this feature to the Shingetsu News Agency. Let’s get started:

10) Debito.org Turns 25 Years Old…
9) Tourism to Japan Drops 99% Since 2019…
8 ) Vincent Fichot Hunger Strike against Japan Child Abduction…
7) Tokyo Musashino City Approves, Then Defeats, Inclusive Voting Proposal…

Full countdown with write-ups at https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/12/27/visible-minorities-human-rights-top-ten-for-2021/

Enjoy! More to come in 2022! Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Debito’s SECOND EDITION of “Embedded Racism: Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination” (Lexington Books, 2022), fully revised and updated, now on sale

Posted on November 15, 2021November 16, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. The new SECOND EDITION of “Embedded Racism” (Lexington Books, 2022), completely revised and updated with 100 extra pages of new material, is now on sale.

Information site outlining what’s new, with excerpts and reviews, and how to get your copy at a discount at

https://www.debito.org/embeddedracism.html

(Or you can download a flyer, take it to your library, have them order the book, and then borrow it for free at EmbeddedRacism2ndEdFlyer)

Read a sample of the book on Amazon here.

Front Cover:

Full cover with reviews:

Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

My SNA Visible Minorities 25: Tokyo 2020 Olympics Postmortem, where I argue the Games failed its goals of “Diversity and Inclusion” predictably and by design

Posted on August 16, 2021August 16, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Visible Minorities: Tokyo 2020 Olympics Postmortem
SHINGETSU NEWS AGENCY, AUG 16, 2021 by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN (excerpt)
http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/08/16/visible-minorities-tokyo-2020-olympics-postmortem/

SNA (Tokyo) — The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are now past. This is a postmortem.

Last month’s column talked about the “evil” of the Japanese government and International Olympic Committee (IOC) in forcing an unpopular Olympics upon Japan’s residents, all the while as Tokyo’s cases spiked during a global pandemic. But I also argued how host Japan in particular is trained by national narratives to see “outsiders” (including residents who don’t “look Japanese”—our Visible Minorities) specifically as terrorists, hooligans, criminals, and vectors of disease.

These fault lines have predictably exacerbated the endemic social disease of racial discrimination. International events just give people more excuses to create “Japanese Only” signs and rules.

That’s not to say that I boycotted the Olympics. In fact, given my background, I should be a superfan. […] But thanks to my background in political science, I’m trained to view nationalism with a critical eye: How governments convince people to live, fight, and even sacrifice their lives for their country. The Olympics are rooted precisely in these attitudes, and forever filter athleticism through the lens of national representation and superiority.

So despite all their promises to showcase “Diversity and Inclusion,” the Tokyo 2020 Olympics shirked that opportunity — predictably and by design…

//////////////////////////////////

Rest at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/08/16/visible-minorities-tokyo-2020-olympics-postmortem/. Go read it before it goes behind paywall. Or better yet, support independent progressive journalism and subscribe to SNA for as little as a dollar a week! Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

My SNA Visible Minorities 24: “The Tokyo Olympics Trap”, on how these Games are harming Japan’s minorities, and how the IOC is harming Japan

Posted on July 18, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. My latest SNA column 24 is about the fiasco the Tokyo 2020 Olympiad has become. Introduction:

//////////////////////////

Visible Minorities: The Tokyo Olympics Trap
By Debito Arudou, Shingetsu News Agency, July 19, 2021

SNA (Tokyo) — On the eve of the Tokyo Olympics, let’s talk about the mess.

Much space has been devoted to the idiocracy behind spending record amounts of money on infrastructure that is not built to last, or even if it is, it often winds up abandoned. Further, holding a superspreader sports meet during a global pandemic is a surefire path to social discord and preventable death.

But it matters that Japan is hosting this mess. This column as usual will first focus on the Olympics’ impact on our minorities, and then talk about the IOC’s responsibility for scamming Japan…
//////////////////////////

Rest is at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/07/19/visible-minorities-the-tokyo-olympics-trap/

My SNA Visible Minorities column 22: “Interrogating the Discriminatory Covid Self-Quarantine Scandal”, May 17, 2021

Posted on May 17, 2021May 17, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Hello Debito.org Newsletter Readers. This month’s SNA Visible Minorities column 22 updates us on how Japan’s discriminatory border policies disproportionately punish Non-Japanese residents, even when things that are going wrong are due to government mismanagement. Paraphrased excerpt:

==============================
Visible Minorities: Interrogating the Discriminatory Covid Self-Quarantine Scandal
By Debito Arudou, May 17, 2021 (condensed intro)

SNA (Tokyo) — Sometimes government-designed policies lack sense. Or, in places where the government is as unaccountable as Japan’s, policymakers ignore cautions—-or don’t get cautioned at all because a docile mass media is mobilized behind a national goal. So when things go wrong, very bad things can happen, especially when punishments for noncompliance only go one way and hurt innocent people.

That is what’s in the cards yet again with Japan’s Covid border controls. The current policy is that if you are a resident of Japan returning from overseas, you face a mandatory self-quarantine system. Everyone, regardless of nationality, signs must notify the authorities of their current location each day. If not, authorities will contact them via Skype, WhatsApp video call, or by voice cell phone number.

If you are found to be breaking quarantine as a Japanese, you get your name exposed to the public. However, foreign residents will lose everything—their lives, livelihoods, and anything they ever invested in Japan—by getting deported. So with punishments this disproportionate, the government had better make sure nothing goes wrong. Guess what? Things are going wrong, and it’s the government’s fault…
==============================

Rest is at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/05/17/visible-minorities-interrogating-the-discriminatory-quarantine-scandal/

Links to sources cited in the full article: Kyodo News May 1, Japan Times May 12, MOFA self-quarantine pledge.

Enjoy! Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
======================
Do you like what you read on Debito.org? Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? Please consider donating a little something. More details here. Or if you prefer something less complicated, just click on an advertisement below.

SNA Visible Minorities 21: “A Retrospective on 25 Years of Activism”, April 19, 2021

Posted on April 19, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

SNA — I’ve been involved in activism in Japan for many years. Indeed so many that my online archive of work, Debito.org, just turned 25 years old last week. With that in mind, I’d like to devote this column to a retrospective of the past quarter century: What, if anything, has Debito.org contributed to help make conditions for Non-Japanese residents and Visible Minorities better?

Debito.org first went live on April 15, 1996, during the earlier days of the World Wide Web, as a means to respond to online bulletin board critics. When topics came up over and again, I’d just archive a previous essay on Debito.org and send a link. After a couple hundred essays were organized into general information sites, Debito.org became a platform for issues involving foreign residents of Japan.

The first major issue I took up was “Academic Apartheid” in Japan’s universities. This is where all Japanese full-time faculty were granted contract-free tenure from day one of employment, while all foreign academics, despite many being better qualified than their Japanese counterparts, got perpetual ninkisei contracts (some of them term-limited) without the opportunity for tenure.

I discovered a “smoking gun” one day in my university mailbox: A paper directive from the Ministry of Education encouraging national and public universities to fire their older foreign professors by not renewing their contracts. I scanned it, archived it, and sent a link to prominent advocates like Ivan P. Hall (author of Cartels of the Mind) for further exposure. It turns out that a government demanding their universities axe all their foreigners over forty is state-sponsored discrimination, and it blew up into an international issue that even then-US Ambassador Walter Mondale took up.

All of that information is still up on Debito.org today, and it turns out that a permanent archive that is searchable, citable, with context and without paywall, is a valuable resource, especially as many unscrupulous people would rather have a history of their actions and policies disappear into the ether. Once archived on Debito.org, it didn’t. Soon other issues on Debito.org garnered national and international attention, even generating public policy movements…

Rest is at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/04/19/visible-minorities-retrospective-on-25-years-of-activism/

My SNA VM column 20: “The World’s First ‘Japanese Only’ Olympics?”, on how Japan’s new ban on “overseas spectators” may lead to banning all foreigners (out of linguistics and force of habit) (UPDATED)

Posted on March 14, 2021March 23, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s an excerpt of my latest Shingetsu News Agency Visible Minorities column 20. Have a read before it goes behind paywall, and please subscribe if you want to see the rest of their articles — it’s but a dollar a week, and it supports progressive journalism. Enjoy. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Visible Minorities: The World’s First “Japanese Only” Olympics?
Shingetsu News Agency, March 15, 2021, By Debito Arudou

SNA (Tokyo) — Reuters and Kyodo recently reported that Japan is banning “foreign spectators” (or “overseas spectators”) from the Tokyo Olympics: “The government has concluded that welcoming fans from abroad is not possible given concerns among the Japanese public over the coronavirus and the fact that more contagious variants have been detected in many countries.”

Blogging about this at Debito.org, I worried aloud that excluding all “foreign spectators” would be interpreted to mean all foreigners, including Non-Japanese living in Japan. But commenters (some of whom already have tickets or will be volunteering to help) were quick to stress that the “overseas” wording meant only foreign tourists, not them.

But I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

Granted, the original wording in Japanese is kaigai kara no ippan kankyaku (regular spectators from overseas), not “foreigners” (gaikokujin). But words matter, especially when you’re categorizing people, and doing it wrong will lead to discrimination.

I think Japan will do it wrong, due to linguistics and force of habit…

Rest at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/03/15/the-worlds-first-japanese-only-olympics/

(Read a rough draft of the contents of this article before it became my SNA column at https://www.debito.org/?p=16480)

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UPDATE MARCH 20, 2021: The NYT reports that it’s a done deal now. The IOC has approved the exclusion of all “spectators from overseas”. And it’s just being passed off as a “concession to the realities of the pandemic”. Its possibly problematic enforcement in terms of NJ Residents is not touched upon — more focus is on the plight of overseas ticket holders. — Debito

=============================

Spectators From Overseas Are Barred From Tokyo Olympics
The move, announced Saturday, is a significant concession to the realities of the pandemic, even as organizers remain determined to hold the Games this summer.

By Motoko Rich and Ben Dooley
New York Times, March 20, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/world/asia/tokyo-olympics-spectators.html

=============================

JOC’s official statement on this:

ABOUT THE GAMES
Statement on Overseas Spectators for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020
Japan Olympic Committee 20 MAR 2021, courtesy of BM
https://tokyo2020.org/en/news/statement-on-overseas-spectators-for-the-olympic-and-paralympic-games-tokyo-2020

Lloyd Parry in Times London: “Cancel Tokyo 2020 Olympics”. Yet even this respected reporter sloppily implies Japan’s Covid numbers are contingent on foreigners

Posted on March 5, 2021March 7, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Richard Lloyd Parry, a very respected journalist and author, has come out with a sensibly-argued Op-Ed in The Times London in favor of cancelling the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (which, for the record, Debito.org was never in favor of Japan getting in the first place). Full text below.

But even then he words things carelessly when he writes:

“[…] Japan […] compared to the pandemic mess in the rest of the rich world [has] been doing well. With twice the population of Britain, Japan has registered about a tenth the number of coronavirus cases and one twentieth the deaths. This has nothing to do with vaccination, which has hardly begun in Japan — only a few tens of thousands of health workers have been jabbed — but rather good hygiene and an almost complete ban on foreign visitors. Now the government threatens to sacrifice these gains for the sake of money and prestige.”

COMMENT: Portraying Japan’s apparent success at lower case numbers as due to an almost complete ban on “foreign visitors” is neither helpful nor accurate.

As Mr. Lloyd Parry surely must have known (since the ban affected him too as a Japan resident), this ban included foreign residents, not just visitors. Not to mention that the British Covid variant was verifiably brought into Japan by Japanese.

Implicitly framing Covid as a “foreign virus” brought in by “foreign visitors” makes Japan seem to be a hermetically-sealed environment until the foreigners came in; and now “the government threatens to sacrifice these gains” from its apparent isolationism. This rhetoric isn’t that far removed from calling Covid the “Chinese Virus” or the “Kung Flu“. And we’ve seen the dreadful results of that kind of carelessness. (Including Japan.)

A moment’s reflection (which probably would have happened if Lloyd Parry were talking about minorities in Britain, especially at the editorial stage) would have brought about the realization that these are people we’re talking about, and how issues are couched in the media affects them, particularly if they’re Japan’s disenfranchised minorities.

If it were my article, I would have said “Japan strongly limited international travel“, which doesn’t zero in on foreigners in specific.

I’ll let others comment on the possible comparative issues of “good hygiene” (implying the rest of the rich world has bad hygiene?), and other factors that might lead to Japan undercounting actual virus cases (such as a lack of reliable contact tracing, and not testing the asymptomatic for Covid).

But in my view, keeping the Covid case numbers low was a matter of politics, not science: to keep the Olympics on track. Now even despite all that, Lloyd Parry makes a convincing argument for canceling the Games. Fine. But let’s be more careful how we point fingers, shall we? We’ve seen enough of how foreign correspondents succumb to Japan-style racialized narratives just as soon as they talk about “foreigners” and Japan. (Japan Times column on this implicit racism also here and here.) Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

////////////////////////////////////////

It’s time to cancel this year’s Olympic Games
The risk to the world, not just Japan, of a super-spreading event in Tokyo this summer is too great
Richard Lloyd Parry
Wednesday March 03 2021, 12.01am GMT, The Times London, courtesy of RW
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/its-time-to-cancel-the-2021-olympic-games-3pb6sq9w9

All but the most fanatical music lovers would accept that, this summer at least, Glastonbury had to go. For the second year in a row the 50-year-old festival has been cancelled because of the pandemic. The disappointment is hard to overestimate: for plenty of people, Glastonbury should have been a moment of release after months of demoralising lockdown. But, as Sir Paul McCartney observed, “a hundred thousand people closely packed together with flags and no masks. Talk about super-spreader.”

Similar feelings of frustration, sadness and resignation are being experienced over cultural and sporting experiences around the world, from closed theatres and cinemas to empty football stadiums to the Chelsea Flower Show. It’s not that anyone personally objects to gardening enthusiasts but as a matter of common sense, and for the good of all of us, this is not the time for 157,000 of them to converge.

Consider then another international event, the grandaddy of them all. It will bring together more than 15,000 young participants from more than 200 countries plus several times that number of judges, sponsors, journalists and hangers-on. More than 11 million tickets are to be sold; tourists are supposed to pour in from across the globe.

If far smaller and shorter festivals are to be sacrificed in the interests of global public health, it seems obvious that such a massive event, spread over four weeks in the biggest city in the world, should also be cancelled. And yet officially, at least, the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, postponed since last summer, are going ahead.

As Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, said the other week, “I am determined to achieve the games as a proof of human victory against the pandemic, a symbol of global solidarity and to give hope and courage around the world.”

The Olympic custodians like to talk about courage, humanity and other abstract virtues; in reality, they have more hard-headed reasons for pressing ahead regardless. The vast sums of money already spent on the games are only the most obvious, inextricably tangled up with other investments of prestige and power that make the prospect of cancelling them heart-sickening to a lot of very powerful and determined people.

Tokyo’s will be the most expensive Olympic Games ever mounted — even Japan’s government auditors put the cost at £18 billion or more, and the cost of postponement from last year has added £2 billion to that. No one seems to know, or is willing to say, how much has already been spent. But to call it off now would directly hurt some of the world’s biggest companies, including Coca-Cola, Visa and General Electric, and lead to years of legal arguments about who owes what to whom.

It would represent a withering humiliation for the Japanese government. It would be crushing to the young athletes who have spent years training for the world’s most prestigious sporting event. Money, power and glamour say that the Olympics have to go ahead whatever happens; they are the runaway train that cannot be stopped. The question of public health has been officially ruled out as a consideration. As Yoshiro Mori, the former Tokyo Olympic boss, said, “no matter what situation with the coronavirus, we will hold the games.”

This matters to people in Japan because, compared to the pandemic mess in the rest of the rich world, they have been doing well. With twice the population of Britain, Japan has registered about a tenth the number of coronavirus cases and one twentieth the deaths. This has nothing to do with vaccination, which has hardly begun in Japan — only a few tens of thousands of health workers have been jabbed — but rather good hygiene and an almost complete ban on foreign visitors. Now the government threatens to sacrifice these gains for the sake of money and prestige.

The Japanese authorities and the International Olympic Committee insist that they will do everything possible to Covid-proof the games. Details are far from clear. (More may emerge from a high-level meeting this week, but they are likely to include repeated testing of athletes who will essentially be locked down in their Olympic “village”.) Spectators, it seems, will be allowed, although it is not clear whether these will include foreign visitors.

The effect of all this will be to take the fun out of the Olympics without eliminating the risk that they will serve as a super-spreader event. It might work out, and if any country can pull off such a feat of regulation and enforcement it is Japan. But nobody can be sure. Pandemic trends may improve dramatically between now and July or there may be new surges in emerging variants of the virus that will make the Olympics a crucible of infection that will set the world back weeks or months.

There is one factor that should be decisive in all this: the views of ordinary Japanese people. About this there is no room for argument. Poll after poll has consistently shown that a majority of not only individual Japanese but even businesses oppose the holding of the games this summer.

This is not an expression of sour anti-Olympic sentiment but the reluctant acknowledgment of a grim truth. Whatever precautions the authorities take, people will sicken if the Tokyo Olympics go ahead. Some of them will die. That is not a price that anyone should be asked to pay.
ENDS

SNA VM 19: “Yoshiro Mori’s Overdue Comeuppance”, Feb 15, 2021, on how the former Japan Olympics Chair melded misogyny with racism — for decades!

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. My latest Shingetsu News Agency column recounts former Prime Minister and professional bigot Mori Yoshiro’s tenure as Japan representative, and the mystery behind Japan’s consistent waste of talent in favor of hopelessly incompetent and elitist old men. Enjoy. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Visible Minorities 19: Yoshiro Mori’s Overdue Comeuppance
By Debito Arudou, Shingetsu News Agency, February 15, 2021
http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/02/15/visible-minorities-yoshiro-moris-overdue-comeuppance/

SNA (Tokyo) — When I started writing this month’s column, Yoshiro Mori, an 83-year-old fossil of Japanese politics, was still president of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Organising Committee, where he had come under fire for comments claiming that women in leadership positions “talk too much,” cluttering meetings with competitive chatter. He has since resigned, but in the wake has come much media commentary about Japan’s sexism and women’s disenfranchisement.

Photos appeared showing meetings of top-level Japan business organizations (such as Keidanren) that look like old-boy clubs. Pundits noted that Japan has slipped in the World Economic Forum’s gender-empowerment index to 121st place out of 153 countries measured (the lowest amongst the developed countries, behind China, Zimbabwe, Brunei, and Myanmar). And my favorite: Japan idiotically sending a man (Kono Taro) to the world’s first meeting of women foreign ministers in 2018.

All this has occurred despite former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s much-touted policy of unlocking the women workforce as the “greatest potential for the growth of the Japanese economy.” He would create “a society in which women can shine.” Mori’s sexist comments make clear that hasn’t happened.

So let’s focus on what Mori himself represented: the worst of Japan’s politics, melding misogyny with racism…
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Rest is at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/02/15/visible-minorities-yoshiro-moris-overdue-comeuppance/

My SNA Visible Minorities column 18: “Latest visa rules could purge any foreigner” (Jan 18, 2021), on how Covid countermeasures disproportionately target Non-Japanese against all science or logic

Posted on January 18, 2021January 18, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. My latest SNA column’s point is this: Even after political leadership has finally shed Shinzo Abe, the Japanese government has found new ways to discriminate against foreign residents of Japan. This is no accident, as NJ were in no way protected, considered, or involved in this policymaking that profoundly affects them. Soon, any foreign resident of Japan may be under threat of immediate deportation. Excerpt follows, full article at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/01/18/visible-minorities-latest-visa-rules-could-purge-any-foreigner/ Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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“Latest visa rules could purge any foreigner”

Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities column 18, January 18, 2021

[…] New year, new salvo of foreigner bashing: Last week, the Suga administration unveiled re-entry rules that permit non-Japanese residents to re-enter the same as Japanese, as long as they completed the same paperwork and fourteen-day quarantine.

Good, but here’s the wrinkle: If you are found in violation of any quarantine regulations, you don’t just get in trouble like Japanese by, err, having your name made public. You may lose your visa status and get deported from the country. You read that right.

This policy was in reaction to the discovery of the United Kingdom mutation of Covid within Japan this month. But like most policy created in times of shock, it has hasty assumptions: that a foreign variant meant that foreigners were somehow responsible. In fact, the Patient Zeroes who came back from England and went out partying instead of quarantining were Japanese.

This new policy is ironic. In addition to the past year of Japanese media blaming foreigners for creating “foreign clusters,” it also ignores the lazy government response to Covid. Nobody at the national level wanted to take the responsibility for declaring a blanket state of emergency. But since infections have now reached record numbers, here comes the crackdown—and once again foreigners are being disproportionately targeted.

Granted, the government is now threatening to mete out jail time and fines for Japanese who don’t cooperate with measures to reduce Covid’s spread. This has occasioned the perfunctory hand-wringing about the effectiveness of punishment in curbing infections and “infringing too much on personal freedoms” for Japanese. I see that as part of the healthy give-and-take of political debate, to make sure things don’t go too far. But where is the parallel debate about the “freedoms” of non-Japanese residents who are receiving unequal treatment under the law?

A Japanese getting a fine or a spell in the clink is one thing, but it’s incomparable to a foreigner losing their legal status gleaned after years or decades of residency, followed by deportation and permanent separation from their lives, livelihoods, and families in Japan.

We know that one of the reasons Covid became a pandemic is because of asymptomatic transmission. So what if a person who doesn’t know they’re sick and hasn’t left the country gets linked to a cluster by contact tracing? If that somebody happens to be a foreigner, his or her life in Japan may well be over…

Read the rest at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2021/01/18/visible-minorities-latest-visa-rules-could-purge-any-foreigner/
======================
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My Japan Times JBC 119: Top 5 Human Rights Issues of 2020: “A Watershed Year for Japan’s Foreign Residents” (Dec. 31, 2020)

Posted on December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

======================
Hi Blog. Happy New Year! As has happened at the Japan Times for more than a decade, here is my annual countdown of the top human rights issues for the past year in terms of their impact on NJ Residents in Japan.

I usually do a Top Ten, but since I only had 1000 words this year, it became a Top Five with a few “bubble unders” snuck in. Enjoy! Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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2020 was a watershed year for Japan’s foreign residents
By Debito Arudou, The Japan Times, Just Be Cause, Dec 31, 2020

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the famous curse. By that standard, 2020 was captivating. One thing affected everyone worldwide: COVID-19. And in Japan, our international community was hit particularly hard by public policy regarding its containment.

There were many other issues worth mentioning, however. For example, the Education Ministry announced an increased budget for language support in schools for non-Japanese children next year — a promising sign. However, Japan’s continued mistreatment of those kept in immigration detention centers, and an officially acknowledged incident of “hate speech” in Kitakyushu that went unpunished, were also steps backward from the goal of an inclusionary society.

We don’t have space for them all, so below are the top five issues I feel were of greatest impact to Japan’s non-Japanese residents in 2020, in ascending order.

5) Black Lives Matter in Japan…

Read the rest at https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2020/12/31/issues/japan-2020-foreign-resident-issues/

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The issues that bubbled under (with links to sources):

My SNA Visible Minorities 17: NIKE JAPAN Advertisement on Japan’s Visible Minorities does some good (Dec 21, 2020)

Posted on December 21, 2020December 21, 2020 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. As promised in a previous blog entry, I would be giving my opinion on a recent advertisement from Nike Japan that got a lot of attention. We’ve already debated the ad itself on Debito.org here. Thanks for your feedback. Now here’s my take, as part of my latest Shingetsu News Agency column. Enjoy. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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Visible Minorities: Nike Japan Does Some Good
Shingetsu News Agency, DEC 21, 2020 by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN
http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2020/12/21/visible-minorities-nike-japan-does-some-good/

SNA (Tokyo) — Nike’s television advertisement depicting a multiethnic Japan stands out as a bright spot to close out the dreadful year of 2020.

Entitled “We Will Continue Moving: Myself and the Future,” the two-minute ad depicts a series of diverse Asian youths pensive about their lives in Japan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G02u6sN_sRc

Some are running about and kicking soccer balls while musing about their identity and their abilities. A voiceover has them wondering if they’re “normal,” or living up to expectations. One girl, shown in closeup in a school uniform, is clearly a Japanese with African roots. Another boy, after eating a Korean meal with his family, looks up the Zainichi issue late at night on his cellphone. Tennis champ Naomi Osaka’s photo makes a fleeting appearance, with a question about whether she’s American or Japanese. A girl finds Japan’s culture of cuteness doesn’t resonate with her, and wishes she could just ignore it all. Another girl gets glares for going out in public in her Korean school uniform. After more cuts to kids practicing their sports skills, scenes follow of school crowds staring and group-bullying minorities. One lad, drawn attention to by the teacher in class as a new transfer student, feels pressure to be liked by everyone. Another isolated kid feels pressure to tolerate her ostracisation, and then the African-Japanese girl reappears, trying to ignore the other kids who are making a fuss about her kinky hair in a school bathroom. As the music swells, these kids then seek solace in sports, becoming appreciated by their peers for their talents as star athletes—to the point where one girl tapes “KIM” over her Japanese name on the back of her jersey.

The takeaway message in a final montage of voices is the treatment they’re getting is not something they should have to tolerate. They shouldn’t have to wait for a world where they can live “as is,” without concealing themselves.

Now, before I say why this advertisement is important, let’s acknowledge some caveats. One is that this is from Nike Japan, and like all corporations their motivation is to make money. It is a stunt to attract attention and sell products.

Moreover, Nike taking a high road with social justice issues is a bit ironic, given their history of child labor and sweatshops. Above all, human rights and business do not always mix well, and businesspeople are essentially opportunists. So let’s first not delude ourselves to think Nike is primarily motivated by altruism.

The other point worth mentioning is the attention that the ad got: 11 million views so far on YouTube. Naturally, internet trolls, xenophobes, and haters got triggered. Unfortunately, even responsible media (such as the AFP and BBC) gave them oxygen by reporting their overblown calls for a boycott, then fumbled the issue by getting soundbites from unqualified “experts” with no real training in Japan’s history of civil rights, social movements, or race relations issues. These rubes missed the mark by denouncing Nike Japan as a “foreign brand,” or dismissing these kids as “outside voices.”

This is worse than just lazy journalist hackery. This fumble was a missed opportunity to highlight issues that have long been ignored in Japan’s media—the existence of a growing number of visible minorities. So let’s make up for that in this column by acknowledging that Nike Japan’s ad was a big step in the right direction.

First, let’s recap how big 2020 was for minorities in Japan sports:

Rest of the article at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2020/12/21/visible-minorities-nike-japan-does-some-good/

Read it before it goes behind a paywall on Friday.

NIKE JAPAN ads featuring Japan’s Minorities and Visible Minorities taking solace and courage from doing sports

Posted on December 2, 2020December 21, 2020 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Reader JK sent me this link to the following NIKE JAPAN advertisement for discussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G02u6sN_sRc

Entitled “動かしつづける。自分を。未来を。” (Lit: We will continue moving. Myself. And the Future.”, which is a bit different from the official title of “The Future Isn’t Waiting”), the subject is of Japan’s school-age Minorities and Visible Minorities facing social othering in Japan, and finding solace and courage in themselves by becoming good at sports.

It’s dated November 27, 2020, and been viewed nearly 10 million times as of this writing. According to the Japan Times, it’s inspired a “fiery online response”: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/12/02/national/social-issues/japan-nike-ad/

The BBC adds, a bit disingenuously: “Many Japanese do not like to be told by outside voices to change their ways,” said Morley Robertson, a Japanese-American journalist. “But if a foreigner demonstrates a deep understanding of Japanese culture or Japanese rules, then those same Japanese who would otherwise take offence will gush forth with praise.”

[NB: Morley Robertson is listed in his Japanese-only Wikipedia entry as a “タレント、DJ、ラジオパーソナリティ、ミュージシャン、ジャーナリスト、コメンテーター”. “Journalist” seems a bit of a stretch.]

Steve McGinnes, the author of Surfing the Asian wave: How to survive and thrive in the new world order, believes the advert is an “own goal”. “Endemic racism is going to be a sensitive topic in any culture. But Nike should not think, as a foreign brand, that it is appropriate for them to point it out to their hosts. “They are crudely putting a spotlight onto a subject that many feel should be off-limits to guests. It’s a huge own goal for Nike.”… “In 2020, should America or an American brand be taking the high ground on racism and telling the rest of the world what they are doing wrong?” adds Mr McGinnes. “Clearly, a lot of Japanese people think they shouldn’t.” https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55140846

Despite the pretty flawed English translation in the CC function, I think it’s worth critique by our Readers. JDG has already said: Interesting comment reported by JT: “Nowadays, you often see one or two people of different nationalities going to school perfectly peacefully. The one that’s prejudiced is Nike,” wrote one user named “hira1216.” No, ‘hira1216’, those ‘one or two people’ aren’t ‘different nationalities’, they are JAPANESE! I guess hira1216 doesn’t understand what racism is, so they can’t see it, and are responsible for perpetuating it.

I’ll reserve my comment for later. But I don’t believe this is an “own goal” for Nike. And how self-assured can these pundits be that these are “outside voices”? Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

Unknown news chyron of Govt panel that apparently blames foreigners for spreading Covid. However, FNN News tells a different story: one of assisting foreigners. Let’s be careful to avoid disinformation (UPDATED).

Posted on November 12, 2020November 15, 2020 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Long-time readers of this venue know that I surrender to no-one in terms of criticizing the GOJ in its handling of NJ residents, especially in how they treat taxpaying long-term residents on par with (or even value less than) foreign tourists.

That said, an image sent to me by a number of people has been this:

Now, I’m not sure where this screenshot is coming from (Debito.org Reader MF has noted that it came from the Fuji TV network itself), but the chyron would indicate that this government panel is saying that “Foreigners have different languages and customs, so we can’t thoroughly enforce policies against the spread of [Covid] infections.” By implication, this means that foreigners are being seen as an obstacle to the safety of Japanese society because of their differences. This image is starting to multiply around the media sphere, for example https://www.facebook.com/memesugoi/posts/1032954460504017, which is why people are sending it to me.

However, news network FNN has a different take. Debito.org Reader JLO submitted the following video:

FNN says, at minute 1:30, “Bunkakai de wa, kurasutaa e no taiou ya, kotoba no chigai de soudan ya jushin ga okureru gaikokujin no tame ni ichigenteki na soudan madoguchi o setchi suru koto ni tsuite giron shiteimasu.”
Or (my translation):
“At this panel, they are debating about whether to set up a unified consultation center to deal with clusters and with foreigners and who face delayed medical consultations and treatments due to language differences.” Screen capture:

#新型コロナウイルス

“第3波”感染拡大止まらず　クラスター・外国人支援など協議

2,864 views •Nov 11, 2020

FNNプライムオンライン

That’s quite a different take from that other chyron! According to FNN, this panel seems to be trying to assist, not exclude or blame.

I welcome others who find more clarifying media about this event. Meanwhile, my point is to be careful. Foreigners have been so perpetually offset and treated as exceptions from the regular population that this could reflexively feel like a repeat performance. But let’s be careful that this reflex does not lead to disinformation. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////

UPDATE NOV 14:

Ph.D. Candidate Anoma van der Veere has kindly tweeted out his research indicating some media sensationalism is going on here. Access the thread beginning at https://twitter.com/anomav/status/1327117586249568256?s=21&fbclid=IwAR0gIPlDs9K6X8tH87UWEuafZDYEM9XrgLobf7LI2luRRJgnStztEdka9n4

(Courtesy of JLO). Screen captures follow, for the record. Debito

THREAD ENDS

My latest SNA VM column 14: “Visible Minorities: Weaponizing the Japanese Language”, on how Foreign Minister Motegi’s discriminatory treatment of Japan Times reporter Magdalena Osumi is part of a bigger phenomenon, Sept 21, 2020

Posted on September 21, 2020January 9, 2021 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. My latest Shingetsu News Agency Visible Minorities column 14 discusses how Japan weaponizes its language to require “perfect Japanese” from non-native speakers only, and when they can’t speak it perfectly, they get discriminated against. Consider this:

===================================
Visible Minorities: Weaponizing the Japanese Language
Shingetsu News Agency, SEP 21, 2020 by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN

http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2020/09/21/visible-minorities-weaponizing-the-japanese-language/

On August 28, Toshimitsu Motegi, Japan’s foreign minister, was giving an official press conference to reporters in Japanese. A foreign reporter for Japan Times, Magdalena Osumi, asked some questions in Japanese. When Osumi followed up on a point he left unclear, Motegi responded to her in English.

Osumi then retorted in Japanese, “You needn’t treat me like I’m stupid. If we’re talking in Japanese, please answer in Japanese.” Damn right.

How many times has this happened to you? You ask a question in Japanese of a shop keep, clerk, passerby, or somebody on the other end of a telephone, and they flake out because you got some words in the wrong order, had an accent, or just have a foreign face? Many automatically assume that because you’re foreign-looking or -sounding, you must be able to speak English. So they reply in English.

Or how many times, as a budding Japanese language learner, were you told that what you just said “is not Japanese,” not “it’s not correct Japanese”? Just a flat-out denial, as if your attempt is in some alien tongue, like Klingon.

This phenomenon, where it’s either “perfect Japanese” or you get linguistically gaijinized, is odd. It’s also based upon a myth…
===================================

Read the rest at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2020/09/21/visible-minorities-weaponizing-the-japanese-language/

The video of that Motegi press conference is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdlt9n5FDUU (watch from around minute 2 onwards)

Reuters: Tennis star Osaka Naomi “a Jesse Owens of Japan”. I don’t think the comparison is apt, yet. She should also speak out for Japan’s Visible Minorities.

Posted on September 12, 2020December 5, 2020 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. A recent article in Reuters portrays Japanese-Haitian-American tennis star Osaka Naomi as “a Jesse Owens of Japan”. Article first, then my comment:

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Osaka ‘a Jesse Owens of Japan’ for racial injustice stand
Reuters, September 12, 2020 By Jack Tarrant

Courtesy https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-japan-tennis-osaka-featur-idUSKBN2630F4

TOKYO (Reuters) – Naomi Osaka has been the dominant storyline of the 2020 U.S. Open, both for on-court performances that mean she will be playing in Saturday’s final and for her vocal support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Before each match, Osaka has worn a mask bearing the name of a different Black American in a powerful symbol of her support for the fight against racial injustice in the United States.

Osaka, who has a Japanese mother and Haitian father, may represent Japan but she lives in Los Angeles and has joined several BLM protests across the country this year.

Although her focus has been on racial injustice over the last few months, the 23-year-old has long been a symbol for change in Japan.

Osaka is one of the country’s most recognised personalities and has become the face of a changing Japan coming to terms with challenges to its self-image as a racially homogenous society.

Baye McNeil, a prominent Japan-based African-American author and activist, sees Osaka as the next in a line of great Black athlete activists such as boxer Muhammad Ali and sprinter Jesse Owens.

“Muhammad Ali… put his career on the line in order to protest things that he thought were unjust or just wrong. And I think Naomi is on that path,” McNeil told Reuters from Yokohama.

“She is joining a community that has a history, has a legacy, going all the way back beyond Jesse Owens. In fact, what she is doing is very in line with Jesse Owens. Not necessarily for her impact on America but on Japan.

“I kind of think of her as a Jesse Owens of Japan.”

CHANGING THE NARRATIVE

McNeil, who moved to Japan 16 years ago, believes Osaka and other biracial athletes like basketball player Rui Hachimura and Chicago Cubs pitcher Yu Darvish can be catalysts for change just by competing.

“It doesn’t even require them to say anything, you just look at them and say ‘Oh my God, this is a Black woman representing Japan,’” he said.

“This is something Japan has never faced before and I am not sure how exactly they are going to resolve this, or how they are going to modify the narrative, but some modification is required.”

Jaime Smith, who helped organise June’s BLM protest in Tokyo, thinks many Japanese people do not see Osaka’s activism as relating to their own country.

“They see it from the viewpoint that she is a Black American woman, even though she’s half Japanese, and she is speaking out about an American problem, so I still think there’s some wilful ignorance there,” Smith told Reuters.

“That’s … the kind of mindset we are trying to change.”

Smith, who moved from the U.S. to Japan three years ago, sees Osaka as the perfect person to push through this change.

“She is at a point where she is huge worldwide and people can’t help but listen to her,” she said.

“I think this is the perfect time to do what she is doing.”

JAPANESE SPONSORS

Following her 2018 U.S. Open triumph, Osaka attracted a large number of sponsors, many of them big Japanese brands, and became the world’s highest paid female athlete, according to Forbes.

These sponsors have not always been supportive of Osaka’s campaigning against racial injustice, however.

A report in Japanese newspaper Mainichi on Friday [see below] cited unnamed sources at one of her sponsors as criticising her BLM stance, saying they would prefer her to concentrate on tennis.

If some in Japan are struggling to come to terms with Osaka’s activism, this was not apparent at Tokyo’s Godai tennis club on Saturday morning.

“With the face masks, I perceive a kind of determination that she is facing her matches with these thoughts,” said Chika Hyodo.

“I think she is trying to fulfil the role she was given as an athlete and I feel awesome about it. I support her.”

Osaka was a hot topic of conversation at the club as the younger members had their weekly lessons and there was no sign that her activism was having any impact on her popularity.

“She is a Japanese, strong female tennis player,” said 10-year-old Ai Uemura.

“I think it’s great that she entertains people.”
ENDS
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COMMENT FROM DEBITO: What a way to end an article: With an interview with a ten-year-old and some unqualified stranger at some tennis club, as somehow representative of “Japan’s reaction”. That’s some lazy research and poor social science there, Reuters.

Now, as far as Osaka’s activism is concerned, I support the fact that she is bringing to light racial injustice, and is willing to take a stand in public to do so.

However, remember that this is a stand against racial injustice in another country. Not in Japan. This is an easier target because a) Japan has long taught about racism in other countries (particularly America’s) as part of a narrative that racism “happens elsewhere, not here”, so this unfortunately plays into Japan’s grander deflection strategy; and b) this protest doesn’t imperil her sponsorship in Japan, where her money is coming from.

Yet racism, as this blog and my research have covered for more than a quarter century, is alive and “practiced undisturbed” (according to the United Nations) in Japan. That’s worth protesting. So is racism in America, of course. But there are plenty of high-profile voices involved in that already. What is sorely needed is someone standing up for the equal and nondiscriminative treatment of, for example, Japan’s Visible Minorities (a group Osaka herself is a member of).

Others have tried, such as VM Japanese beauty queens Miyamoto Ariana and Yoshikawa Priyanka, and their careers in Japan suffered as a result. Osaka Naomi, as Debito.org has argued before, has a stronger immunity card to criticize Japan (as long as she keeps winning) if she so chooses.

It’s still unclear she will ever choose to. The last big opportunity she had, when her sponsor Nissin “whitewashed” her in one of their ads, she declined to make an issue of. (Imagine the reaction, however, if an American advertiser had done something so stupid.) That’s an enormous disappointment, but indicative of her priorities. And a bit ironic in light of how Japanese society treated her multiethnic family.

Finally, comparisons with Jesse Owens and Muhammad Ali? I’ll let others who are more qualified to shape that narrative speak more to that. But just consider Jesse Owens’ history: a person who protested the segregation and lack of sponsorship he received in his home country of America (to the point of repeatedly, and poignantly, pointing out that Hitler acknowledged his achievements more than President Roosevelt did). However, his legacy has been portrayed more in my history books as a counternarrative to White Supremacism in Nazi Germany. That in itself, of course, is very welcome, but it’s not quite the whole story.

As for Muhammad Ali, there’s a lot to unpack there because he did so much, but remember that he was suspended from boxing during the best years of his career for protesting the Vietnam War and refusing to be drafted. Again, protesting racial injustice in his country of sponsorship. That’s real sacrifice and heroism.

My point is that the more one tries to apply their cases to Osaka’s case, the more inapt the comparisons become. Being in a position of “it doesn’t even require them to say anything” is not what happened in either Owens’ or Ali’s case. Especially when you consider that Owens’ and Ali’s protests were more directed towards their country of sponsorship. That’s not what Osaka is doing here.

Again, I praise Osaka Naomi for taking a public stance against racism in the United States. But let’s keep things in perspective, and not let praise become unqualified gush.

And let me suggest she speak out on behalf of her fellow Visible Minorities in Japan too. Not just dismiss racism in Japan as an issue of “a few bad apples” (which can be — and has been — applied to any society as an excuse for racist behavior). Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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The Mainichi article cited by Reuters above:

Japanese sponsors of tennis star Naomi Osaka not 100% on board with anti-racism actions
September 11, 2020 (Mainichi Japan)
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200911/p2a/00m/0na/023000c

TOKYO — The anti-racism stance taken by tennis player Naomi Osaka on the courts of the U.S. Open has drawn widespread attention from the public and elicited differing responses from her sponsors in Japan and elsewhere.

Starting with her first match, Osaka entered the court wearing a black mask with the name of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed at the hands of police, on it as a call for an end to racial discrimination.

“I don’t think she needed to do that while she’s fighting her way to the top. If possible, we’d like her to attract more attention with her tennis skills,” said a source linked to a Japanese corporate sponsor of Osaka’s. “She’s taken on a leadership role as a Black person, and what she’s doing is great as a human being, but whether that will help raise the value of a corporate brand is another thing. There hasn’t been any impact in particular, but it’s not something we’re openly happy about.”

Another source linked to a different Japanese corporate sponsor said, “I think it’s wrong to bring the issue of racial discrimination and her trade, tennis, together.”

Meanwhile, one of her other sponsors, an American corporation, has reacted very differently. A person involved with the company said that in the U.S., it’s riskier not to say you take a stand against racial discrimination, because if you don’t say anything, you could be seen as being accepting it. They said that there are a lot of companies that uphold diversity and inclusion and also agree to help stop discrimination as part of their corporate principles.

After Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot in the back seven times by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in late August, NBA teams boycotted games in protest of the incident, and MLB games were postponed due to players refusing to play. Naomi Osaka announced she was withdrawing from the Western & Southern Open semifinals — a qualifier for the U.S. Open — in protest. Soon thereafter, the tournament decided to postpone the match by a day in solidarity with the protesters, and Osaka decided she would play the next day, sending a strong message to the world.

In the NBA, where the majority of players are Black, actions taken to demand an end to racial discrimination are not uncommon. An official from a management company that has a contract with a Black NBA player explained that the top athletes have the strongest awareness that they must take the initiative to act as a representative of the Black community. And Black children, they said, dream of getting into the NBA, watching those top-tier athletes.

There are some compromises that Osaka, who was born to a Haitian father and a Japanese mother, and grew up in the U.S. since she was three, is not willing to make.

“If I can get a conversation started in a majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction,” she wrote in her now-famous tweet.

Osaka arrived at the U.S. Open with seven masks, one for each round of the tournament, and each emblazoned with the name of a Black person who had been a victim of police violence. She’s worn six now.

What drives Osaka is her hope that people will get to know the victims better, and do what she can to prevent younger people from suffering from racial injustice.

(Japanese original by Hiroyuki Asatsuma, Sports News Department)

Japanese Version
なおみの人種差別抗議に国内外で温度差　スポンサーの微妙な事情
毎日新聞2020年9月11日 (excerpt)
https://mainichi.jp/articles/20200910/k00/00m/050/300000c
テニスの全米オープン女子シングルスで、人種差別への抗議を続ける大坂なおみ（22）＝日清食品＝の行動が、大きな反響を呼んでいる。1回戦から黒人差別による被害者の名前が書かれた黒いマスクをつけてコートに入場し、差別撤廃へのメッセージを発信しているが、大坂を支援する国内外のスポンサー企業では受け止め方に温度差がある。その事情とは？【浅妻博之】

「上まで勝ち上がっている時にやらなくてもね。できればテニスのプレーでもっと目立ってほしいんですけど……」。そう話すのは大坂を支援する日本企業の関係者だ。「黒人代表としてリーダーシップをとって、人間的にも素晴らしい行為だとは思うが、それで企業のブランド価値が上がるかといえば別問題。特に影響があるわけではないが、手放しでは喜べない」と複雑な心境を打ち明けた。また別のスポンサー企業関係者からは「人種差別の問題と本業のテニスを一緒にするのは違うのでは」との声も聞こえてきた。

一方でスポンサーの一つである米国系企業の反応は違う。この…
Full article at https://mainichi.jp/articles/20200910/k00/00m/050/300000c

“A Despotic Bridge Too Far”, Debito’s SNA Visible Minorities column 12 on Japan’s racist blanket ban on Foreign Resident re-entry, July 20, 2020

Posted on July 20, 2020June 29, 2022 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Visible Minorities Column 12: A Despotic Bridge Too Far
By Debito Arudou, Shingetsu News Agency, July 20, 2020

http://shingetsunewsagency.com/2020/07/20/visible-minorities-a-despotic-bridge-too-far/

SNA (Tokyo) — How bad does it have to get? I’m talking about Japan’s cruelty and meanness towards its Non-Japanese residents. How bad before people think to step in and stop it?

I think we now have an answer to that due to Japan’s recent policy excluding only foreigners from re-entry at its border, even if they’ve lived here for decades, as a by-product of the Covid-19 pandemic. Japanese re-entrants get let in after testing and quarantine; no other G7 country excludes all foreigners only.

Consequently, many Non-Japanese residents found themselves stranded overseas, separated from their Japanese families, lives and livelihoods, watching their investments dry up and visa clocks run out without recourse. Or perhaps found themselves stranded within Japan, as family members abroad died, and the prospect of attending their funeral or taking care of personal matters in person would mean exile.

However, protests against this policy have been unusually mainstream, including institutions who have been for generations largely silent regarding other forms of discrimination towards foreigners in Japan. Consider these examples of how institutionalized and embedded racism is in Japan:

You’re probably aware that Japan has long advertised itself as a “monocultural, homogeneous society,” denying that minorities, racial or ethnic, exist within it. But did you know that Japan still refuses to include Non-Japanese residents as “people” in its official population tallies? Or to list them on official family registries as “spouses” of Japanese? Or that Japan’s constitution expressly reserves equality under the law for Japanese citizens (kokumin) in its Japanese translation? This complicates things for all Non-Japanese residents to this day.

Consider how Japan’s law enforcement system still willfully targets “foreigners” for special treatment and racial profiling, encouraged by a system of registration and random street identity checks that apply to Non-Japanese residents only.

With prosecutorial presumptions of guilt and lack of human rights for foreigners, more have been incarcerated as a percentage of the population than Japanese. That is what you get when a criminal justice system has a separate track for detention, incarceration, interrogation, and jurisprudence against foreigners, one so rigged that even a foreigner as powerful as former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn, despite a weak case against him, couldn’t buy, bully, or lawyer his way out of.

Then we get to Japan’s mass media, which still more often portrays “foreigners” at best as quirky outsiders and guests, at worst as terrorists, criminals, and vectors of disease. That’s before we get to the random expressions of racism and “othering” that are rife and largely unproblematized in Japan. Rarely does mainstream media salute Non-Japanese residents for their contributions to Japanese society, even as taxpayers.

Yet Japan still wants people to come work on temporary revolving-door visas, including so-called “trainees” hired without any labor rights. But when Non-Japanese residents stick it out and devote their lives to Japan, they get little encouragement to stay on permanently, naturalize, or otherwise become “Japanese.” The general expectation remains that foreigners are in Japan for a period of time to profiteer before they “go home.”

This happens despite foreigners being consigned to jobs on the margins of society, such as menial workers, entertainers, non-executive bureaucrats, healthcare workers, small-time businesspeople, and non-tenured educators. Where are the Non-Japanese licensed professionals in more influential fields like doctors or lawyers?

A handful of foreigners get promoted with great fanfare, but they remain statistical asterisks, not mainstream influencers. Positions of real power are reserved for Real Japanese, and foreigners are second-class subordinates. If not, suddenly it’s Nippon ja nai mitai (Japan is not the Japan we know). Quite.

So back to the opening question: Even with all this, how bad does it have to get before the mainstream begins to cry discrimination? The answer: Covid-19 bad.

Thanks to the re-entry ban last April, many Non-Japanese residents found themselves stranded overseas, separated from their Japanese families, lives and livelihoods, watching their investments dry up and visa clocks run out without recourse. Or perhaps found themselves stranded within Japan, as family members abroad died, and the prospect of attending their funeral or taking care of personal matters in person would mean exile.

Granted, the US government recently tried something similar when, on July 6, Immigration and Customs Enforcement unilaterally decided that all foreign students taking online classes only would have their student visas cancelled.

That lasted about a week. Prominent universities (such as Harvard and MIT), organizations of higher education, corporations, and individual state governments cried foul or filed lawsuits to moot this move. It worked. Even for a Trump administration this bigoted, the policy was dropped on July 14.

So who similarly advocates on behalf of foreigners in Japan, besides the usual activist groups and human rights agencies who get routinely ignored? It’s hard to imagine a Japanese university filing a lawsuit against the government.

This time, however, Japan’s mainstream media did speak up. For example, the Asahi Shinbun on June 8 ran an editorial calling the current policy “unreasonable” and “discriminatory.”

The Japan Association of National Universities, representing Japan’s flagship educational institutions like Tokyo University, also stepped in. It recently petitioned the Ministry of Education to promptly allow both old and new students and researchers to enter their universities after proper quarantines, and to resume issuing visas.

And in a blistering critique, the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan issued public statements for Japan to repeal the policy. This is quite a step, since the ACCJ in my experience cares more about unperturbed access to Japanese markets than messy issues of human rights. The ACCJ’s words are worth quoting at length:

Foreign nationals actively and positively contribute to Japan’s economy and society, and do not pose any greater risk than Japanese citizens re-entering Japan. The ACCJ statement expresses concern among our international business community that the prohibition currently in place is detrimental to Japan’s long-term interests… Such individuals, especially those with permanent residency (eijuken) and their accompanying family members or those who are immediate family members of Japanese nationals, and those with long-term working visas and their accompanying family members, need to be allowed to enter Japan under the same conditions as Japanese citizens to continue living and working in this country. Such foreign nationals are actively and positively contributing to Japan’s economy and society, and do not pose any greater risk than Japanese citizens re-entering Japan… At minimum, Japan should adopt the approach of other G7 countries to allow foreigners with established residency status and their immediate family members to depart and enter the country on the same basis as Japanese nationals.

So what was the tipping point? Perhaps it was when the Japanese government broke its own rules by unilaterally revoking the status of its lawful permanent residents; when it showed the world that it cares naught for the people it even grants permanent status to. Even with all the institutionalized discrimination for generations, a move this despotic shows just how much of an outlier Japan is among developed nations.

This might even be a bellwether. In recent years, we’ve seen a move towards authoritarianism in the world’s developed liberal democracies. As I have argued elsewhere, this systemic intolerance has its roots in Japan, which to overseas xenophobes represents a model ethnostate. Ethnic cleansers have in fact been copying many of Japan’s strategies and policies.

But even when an outlier like Japan, with a society so deferential to power and profoundly oblivious towards the treatment of its minorities, is seen to have gone too far, perhaps authoritarianism has finally crested.

We might be seeing the pendulum swinging back towards liberalism at last. It’s just a shame it had to go this far before it did.

American Chamber of Commerce in Japan calls on J govt to cease “double standard restricting [Foreign Japan Residents’] travel, economic, and familial opportunities based on nationality” in Coronavirus policy

Posted on July 16, 2020July 17, 2020 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Now the ACCJ has spoken out against the Japanese government’s coronavirus policy treatment of NJ Residents that you see nowhere else in fellow developed countries.

As Debito.org concurs with a resounding cheer (as it’s what we’ve been saying all along), the ACCJ notes in its second statement:

“Such individuals, especially those with permanent residency (eijuken) and their accompanying family members or those who are immediate family members of Japanese nationals, and those with long-term working visas and their accompanying family members, need to be allowed to enter Japan under the same conditions as Japanese citizens to continue living and working in this country. Such foreign nationals are actively and positively contributing to Japan’s economy and society, and do not pose any greater risk than Japanese citizens re-entering Japan… At minimum, Japan should adopt the approach of other G7 countries to allow foreigners with established residency status and their immediate family members to depart and enter the country on the same basis as Japanese nationals.”

Bravo. This is in addition to the recent Japan Association of National Universities’ similar call on behalf of international students. Courtesy of TJL. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN JAPAN CALLS ON GOVERNMENT OF JAPAN FOR EQUAL TREATMENT OF ALL RESIDENTS

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eb491d611335c743fef24ce/t/5f0c1ed4aee1c9281ab07fc0/1594629845288/200713+PR_English.pdf

JULY 13, 2020 [TOKYO] – The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) today issued a second statement [included below] in response to re-entry travel restrictions placed on residents of Japan who are not Japanese citizens and called on the Government of Japan to provide fair and equal treatment for all residents regardless of nationality.

“Foreign residents of Japan who have made a decision to build a life here and contribute to the Japanese economy should not be subject to a double standard restricting their travel, economic, and familial opportunities based on nationality,” said Christopher J. LaFleur, ACCJ Chairman. “While we applaud and support the Japanese government’s efforts to manage the COVID-19 crisis, a resident’s nationality provides no basis on which to assess risk or assign travel privilege in relation to COVID-19.”

Foreign nationals actively and positively contribute to Japan’s economy and society, and do not pose any greater risk than Japanese citizens re-entering Japan.

The ACCJ statement expresses concern among our international business community that the prohibition currently in place is detrimental to Japan’s long-term interests, in particular as to Japan’s attractiveness as a place to invest and station managerial employees with regional responsibility.

The ACCJ requests that the Japanese Government establish a re-entry permit or process whereby travelers entering Japan under the ‘humanitarian’ exception can receive an assurance that they will be admitted to Japan before they board flights outside of Japan.

The ACCJ also requests that any measures taken to permit Japanese nationals to travel for business, or, in the future, travel for other purposes, also apply equally to foreign nationals with proper permanent residency as well as their spouses and children, foreign nationals who are spouses or children of Japanese nationals, long- term visa holders and their accompanying family members, and foreign nationals residing in Japan under a Japanese working visa.

Finally, the ACCJ would like to see the Japanese government announce clear timelines for the resumption of travel and implement clear policies with the minimum documentation necessary. This will enable those properly desiring to return to Japan to make plans free of anxiety and continue their contributions to Japan’s economy, society, and international relations. ENDS

About ACCJ

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The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) was established in 1948 by representatives of 40 American companies. Over its 72-year history, the ACCJ has positioned itself as one of the most influential business organizations in Japan. The ACCJ has approximately 3,000 members who together represent over 600 globally minded companies with offices in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Working closely with the U.S. and Japanese governments, business organizations and others, the ACCJ engages in activities that advance its mission of further developing commerce between the U.S. and Japan, promoting the interests of U.S. companies and members, and improving the international business environment in Japan including the commitment to demonstrating responsible corporate citizenship. The ACCJ’s more than 60 committees represent a variety of industries and make policy recommendations through advocacy tools such as viewpoints, public comments, and white papers. The ACCJ holds on average 500 events and seminars a year, many of which focus on government policy and economic trends. The ACCJ is also committed to promoting charitable and CSR activities.

PRESS CONTACT: ACCJ Communications (comms@accj.or.jp)

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FULL ACCJ STATEMENT

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eb491d611335c743fef24ce/t/5f0433e6e9c21e3821625bca/1594110951359/200707+Second+Statement+on+re-entry+travel+restrictions.pdf

July 7, 2020

Second Statement on Re-entry Restrictions Placed on Permanent Resident and Visa Holders

The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) expresses our concerns regarding Japan’s immigration authorities’ limitations on the entry of non-Japanese nationals residing in Japan during the COVID-19 crisis.

The ACCJ understands and supports Japan’s efforts to protect itself from further spread of the virus, including Japan’s decision to enforce a mandatory 14-day quarantine on those returning to Japan from countries where the risk is greatest. We also recognize the progress in clarifying the conditions and criteria for, and the process under which, foreign residents of Japan may receive permission to re-enter Japan for humanitarian reasons.

We are concerned, however, that the prohibition currently in place on the entry into Japan of foreign nationals who have a permanent abode, family, and work base in Japan is detrimental to Japan’s long-term interests, in particular as to Japan’s attractiveness as a place to invest and station managerial employees with regional responsibility.

Such individuals, especially those with permanent residency (eijuken) and their accompanying family members or those who are immediate family members of Japanese nationals, and those with long-term working visas and their accompanying family members, need to be allowed to enter Japan under the same conditions as Japanese citizens to continue living and working in this country. Such foreign nationals are actively and positively contributing to Japan’s economy and society, and do not pose any greater risk than Japanese citizens re-entering Japan.

We would also note that through the payment of local and national taxes, the consumption of goods and services from the local economy, and the support for companies both local and international, Japan’s foreign residents and workers play an important role in ensuring Japan’s economic growth and good relations with global partners. Their contributions will be all the more important as Japan looks to recover from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are grateful that the Government of Japan treated the foreign community in Japan on an equal basis by designating duly registered foreign residents as eligible for the recent COVID-19 stimulus payment.

More immediately, we respectfully request that the Japanese Government establish a process whereby travelers entering Japan under the ‘humanitarian’ exception can receive an assurance that they will be admitted to Japan before they board flights outside of Japan. This is because airlines are generally obligated to return, at their own expense, travelers rejected entry to a country. For this reason, we understand that many airlines are refusing to board any non-Japanese nationals on flights to Japan because of the regulatory uncertainty. This process could be notionally similar to the current re-entry permit application system, and it could be thought of as a “coronavirus re-entry permit” granted at the time the traveler leaves Japan or by special application to a designated Japanese Embassy, Consulate or other designated entity.

We respectfully request that, as the government’s Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters considers which further steps it might take to ease restrictions on travel and measures taken to permit Japanese nationals to travel for business, or, in the future, travel for other purposes, any decisions also apply equally to foreign nationals with proper permanent residency as well as their spouses and children, foreign nationals who are spouses or children of Japanese nationals, long-term visa holders and their accompanying family members, and foreign nationals residing in Japan under a Japanese working visa. At minimum, Japan should adopt the approach of other G7 countries to allow foreigners with established residency status and their immediate family members to depart and enter the country on the same basis as Japanese nationals. In the event that is not done, any guidance provided should be based on objective standards and any advance clearance provided should be in writing and should be recognized as an official approval at the point of entry into Japan.

We hope that the Japanese government will announce clear timelines for the resumption of travel and implement clear policies with the minimum documentation necessary. This will enable those properly desiring to return to Japan to make plans free of anxiety and continue contributing to Japan’s economy, society, and international relations.

We respectfully request that the Japanese government considers these concerns and suggestions as critical work continues to protect Japan from the effects of the pandemic and encourage its recovery. ENDS

LETTER FROM CANADA

Subtitle: A country weirdly threatened by its southern neighbor, including racist/secessionist merchandise from Kash Patel, is somehow taking it all in stride

By Arudou Debito. Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities Column 65, April 1, 2025, courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2025/04/01/visible-minorities-letter-from-canada/

ALBERTA IS A SPECIAL PLACE FOR CONSERVATIVES

ALBERTA HAS A SOFT SPOT FOR “US-EH”

THE VIEW FROM THE GROUND

“FORTRESS AMERICA” IS A RECURRING BAD IDEA

DUMB IS AS DUMB DOES

IT CAN ONLY END IN VIOLENCE

Subtitle: That’s what happens when the rule of law meets a lawless leader

Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities column 64, February 26, 2025

By Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

WE LIVE IN EXTREME TIMES…

THE ROOT CAUSE: AMERICA’S NATURAL-BORN EXTREMISM

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

AMERICA AS THE COWBOY IN THE WHITE HAT

EMBEDDED STRUCTURAL EXTREMISM

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

IT CAN ONLY END IN VIOLENCE

Visible Minorities 63: Trump’s Weak Mandate

Subtitle: Trump is reentering the presidency with what has been called an “overwhelming, historic mandate.” That’s not true. In fact, the case is stronger that what happened was less a matter of support for Trump and more a worldwide repudiation of incumbents. Keep reminding people of that.

Look at the Statistics: The Senate

Look at the Statistics: The House

Caveats to Trump’s Mandate

Worldwide Trends in Democracy

Reading This Election

The Point: Do Not Obey in Advance

The End of the Tunnel

SNA VM 62: “Electing the Joker”

People still can’t believe Trump won again. Let’s consider how a shift in American popular culture favoring the villain over the hero might have legitimized it.

TRACE THE ARC OF THE ELECTABLE VILLAIN

TRUMP’S SURPRISING ADVANTAGES IN THIS NEW CULTURAL MILIEU

DEMOCRACY FANS NEED TO GET READY

Kamala Harris and Shorter US Elections

American elections are fun to watch but unnecessarily long and wasteful. Could Kamala Harris be setting a precedent for shortening the election season?

Elections-R-Us

The Wastefulness of Perpetual Campaigning

Squirrel!

Nevertheless, We Persisted

Signs of Change?

“OVERTOURISM” AS RACISM

“OVERTOURISM” AS A MEANS OF HARASSMENT

WHAT EXACTLY DOES JAPAN WANT FROM ITS TOURISTS?

“CULTURAL DIFFERENCES” USED AS A WEAPON

FROM ENFORCEMENT OF THE RULES TO MAKING UP YOUR OWN RULES

BULLYING CRYSTALIZING INTO BAD GOVERNMENT POLICY

“OVERTOURISM” COUNTERMEASURES ARE IN FACT WORSE THAN “JAPANESE ONLY” SIGNS

CONCLUSION: YOU WANTED THEM HERE. NOW PROTECT THEM.

Okinawa pub posts ‘Japanese only’ admission sign based on some shaky logic

Visible Minorities: Celebrating Christmas as a Compromise

Abe’s Assassination and the Revenge of History

“第3波”感染拡大止まらず クラスター・外国人支援など協議

“第3波”感染拡大止まらず　クラスター・外国人支援など協議