Exclusionism

Clear examples of people or institutions saying “Japanese Only”; “No Foreigners”.

Japan Times FYI on voting rights in Japan (including Zainichi & Newcomer NJ)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants to Japan\Foreign Residents and Naturalized Citizens Association forming NGO\「ジャパニーズ・オンリー　小樽入浴拒否問題と人種差別」（明石書店）JAPANESE ONLY: The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan

Hi Blog.  I’m finding that the Japan Times is also doing excellent “FYI” articles these days as briefings of certain situations and issues that aren’t necessarily “in the news” at the moment.  See for yourself below with this week’s briefing on voting rights in Japan for citizens who live overseas, or for people who should arguably have the same rights as citizens by now…  Arudou Debito in Sapporo
===============================
Tuesday, June 3, 2008

SUFFRAGE

Absentee ballot system up, running

Expats won hard-fought battle but suffrage still eludes foreign permanent residents

By SETSUKO KAMIYA, Staff writer
 Suffrage is a fundamental right of a democracy, and many countries ensure their citizens can cast absentee ballots. 

News photo
Absentees: Japanese voters living in Australia turn out at the Japanese Consulate in Sydney on Aug. 31, 2005, to vote in a Lower House election held the following Sept. 11. KYODO PHOTO

It was only a decade ago, however, that Japanese living abroad won the right to vote in national polls. They had to campaign actively before politicians were pushed into establishing this right.

Over the years, improvements have been made to the voting system, but some critics say that more needs to be done to ensure that all eligible voters can exercise this right fairly.

Another issue being considered is allowing foreign nationals with permanent resident status to vote in local-level elections.

Following are questions and answers about the voting system, and where expatriates and permanent residents fit in:

How did Japanese abroad win suffrage?

The process began in 1993, when politics went through a transition that saw the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lose its Lower House majority for the first time ever.

Many expatriates observing the developments back here in Japan with great interest were disappointed that they could not participate in the election process.

At the time, the Public Office Election Law did not grant suffrage to voters living outside the country.

Only Japanese registered as living in Japan were allowed to vote.

Seeing this as a violation of the Constitution’s stipulation that all Japanese nationals at or above the age of majority have the right to vote, expatriates living in Los Angeles formed the lobby Japanese Overseas Voters Network, which later expanded to 13 cities in 11 countries.

In 1996, its members sued the government, claiming their denial of the right to vote violated the Constitution.

As the litigation proceeded, the government submitted a bill to revise the election law in 1998.

It cleared both chambers and was enacted that year.

It took until 2005 for the group to win their legal case at the Supreme Court, however.

What are the qualifications required for Japanese living abroad to vote? How are they registered?

Citizens of Japan who are 20 and older who have lived more than three months in another country qualify.

But unlike Japanese living in Japan whose residence registration is automatically reflected in the voter registration, expatriates must apply to be listed as overseas voters.

An application must be submitted to a Japanese embassy or consulate, which in turn sends it on to Japan for registration.

Basically, one is registered with the local government where the applicant lived in Japan before moving away, or with the locality of one’s family registry.

What revisions have been made to the voting system?

When the law allowed Japanese living overseas to participate in Diet elections, they could only cast ballots for proportional representation candidates, meaning they could only vote for parties.

The 2005 revision finally allowed them to cast ballots for candidates in districts and to participate in by-elections.

Technically, it was only at last July’s Upper House poll that expatriates won full suffrage for national elections.

How many Japanese are registered as overseas voters?

According to the Foreign Ministry, as of July there were some 798,000 eligible voters overseas, but only a little more than 100,000 are registered.

Observers say the number of eligible voters probably exceeds 1 million, because people who don’t bother to register with their local embassy do not appear in the official numbers.

Many claim the government has failed to grasp the exact number of eligible expatriate voters, and thus the system is already flawed.

Why does the number of registered overseas voters remain low?

Several technical reasons prevent expatriates from pressing their right to vote.

Voting day always falls on a Sunday in Japan, but embassies and consulates abroad are only open on weekdays. And people who do not live near them must vote by mail.

The troublesome procedure of having to use the mail to apply for and receive expatriate voter registration and then send ballots to Japan before the polling deadline prove a deterrence, said Hayahiko Takase, president of Japanese Overseas Voters LA, who was among the leaders of the initial campaign.

And voters have no way to confirm that their ballots made the deadline unless they send them by express mail.

“Voters are still not equal under the law,” Takase said, noting that casting ballots via e-mail would be an efficient way to solve the problem.

How do politicians feel about this issue?

A group of nonpartisan politicians recently launched a league to promote overseas voting and said they will work to raise registration and facilitate the process.

Online voting may be a solution but has yet to be allowed domestically.

Pushing this would require further revision of the Public Office Election Law, the politicians said.

Tetsundo Iwakuni, head of the Democratic Party of Japan’s international affairs division, said his party is aiming to establish overseas offices to increase its profile with expatriate voters.

What is the status of efforts to give permanent residents of Japan the right to vote?

Foreign nationals currently do not have the right to vote in Japan and the issue of giving foreign permanent residents that right for local-level elections is controversial.

Permanent residents, mainly Korean descendants of those who lived in Japan before the war and were forced to take Japanese nationality at that time, have been fighting for local-level suffrage.

Newcomers with permanent resident status from other countries and regions, including China, Brazil and the Philippines, are also part of this movement.

Recently, DPJ members started work on a bill to grant them suffrage. New Komeito has also been active in this area.

However, conservative lawmakers oppose granting foreigners suffrage, arguing such residents must become naturalized Japanese first. This is because the Constitution stipulates that sovereignty rests with the people, and people are defined as those who hold Japanese nationality, they say.

The Weekly FYI appears Tuesdays (Wednesday in some areas). Readers are encouraged to send ideas, questions and opinions to National News Desk

ENDS 

Japan’s Supreme Court rules Japan’s marriage requirement for Japanese nationality unconstitutional

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants to Japan\Foreign Residents and Naturalized Citizens Association forming NGO\「ジャパニーズ・オンリー　小樽入浴拒否問題と人種差別」（明石書店）JAPANESE ONLY: The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan
Hi Blog.  I think this will be the best news we’ll hear all year:

Thanks to the vagaries (and there are lots of them) of Japan’s koseki Family Registry system, if a child is born out of wedlock to a Japanese man and a NJ woman, and the father’s parentage is not acknowledged BEFORE birth, Japanese citizenship up to now has NOT been conferred.  Japanese citizenship is still NOT conferred EVEN IF the J man acknowledges parentage AFTER birth.  

(If the situation was reversed i.e. J mother-NJ father, it doesn’t matter–obviously the mother and child share Japanese blood, therefore Japanese citizenship is conferred.  Of course, the NJ father has no custody rights, but that’s a separate issue…  More in HANDBOOK pp 270-2.)

But as NHK reported tonight, that leaves tens of thousands of J children with J blood (the main requirement for Japanese citizenship) either without Japanese citizenship, or completely *STATELESS* (yes, that means they can never leave the country–they can’t get a passport!).  It’s inhumane and insane.

But the Japanese Supreme Court finally recognized that, and ruled this situation unconstitutional–conferring citizenship to ten international children plaintiffs.  Congratulations!

News photo

Photo by Kyodo News

(NHK 7PM also reported last night that three Supreme Court judges wrote dissents to the ruling, some claiming that the Diet should pass a law on this, not have the judiciary legislate from the bench.  Yeah, sure, wait for enough of the indifferent LDP dullards in the Diet to finally come round, sounds like a plan; not.)

Read on.  I’ll add more articles to this blog entry as they come online with more detail.  One more step in the right direction for Japan’s internationalizing and multiculturalizing society!  Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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Top court says marriage requirement for nationality unconstitutional

TOKYO, June 4, 2008 KYODO

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9133QJG2&show_article=1

     The Supreme Court on Wednesday declared unconstitutional a Nationality Law article requiring parents to be married in order for their children to receive Japanese nationality, ruling in favor of 10 Japanese-Filipino children.

     The top court’s grand bench made the landmark decision in two separate cases, filed in 2003 by one such child and in 2005 by a group of nine who were born out of wedlock to Japanese fathers and Filipino mothers and who obtained recognition of the paternity of their fathers after birth.

     After the ruling, the children — boys and girls aged 8 to 14 years who live in areas in eastern and central Japan — and their mothers celebrated in the courtroom by exchanging hugs, with some bursting into tears.

     One of the children, Jeisa Antiquiera, 11, told a press conference after the ruling, ”I want to travel to Hawaii with on Japanese passport.”

     One mother, Rossana Tapiru, 43, said, ”I am so happy that we could prove that society can be changed,” while another said, ”It was truly a long and painful battle.”

     Hironori Kondo, lawyer in one of the two cases, said it is the eighth top court ruling that has found a law unconstitutional in the postwar period and that ”it will have a significant bearing on the situation facing foreign nationals in Japan.”

     Yasuhiro Okuda, law professor at Chuo University who has submitted an opinion on the case to the Supreme Court, said that in the past 20 years tens of thousands of children are estimated to have been born out of wedlock to foreign mothers, citing data by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

     A majority of the 15 justices including Presiding Justice Niro Shimada on the grand bench ruled the Nationality Law clause goes against the Constitution.

     The justices said in a statement, ”there might have been compelling reasons that the parents’ marriages signify their child’s close ties with Japan at the time of the provision’s establishment in 1984.”

     ”But it cannot be said that the idea necessarily matches current family lifestyles and structures, which have become diversified,” they said.

     In light of the fact that obtaining nationality is essential in order for basic human rights to be guaranteed in Japan, ”the disadvantage created by such discriminatory treatment cannot easily be overlooked,” the justices stated in the document.

     Without nationality, these children face the threat of forced displacement in some cases and are not granted rights to vote when they reach adulthood, according to lawyer Genichi Yamaguchi, who represented the other case.

     Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told a press conference following the ruling, ”I believe the government needs to take the verdict seriously, and we will discuss what steps should be taken after examining the ruling carefully.”

     Three justices countered the majority argument, saying it is not reasonable to take into consideration the recent trend in Western countries that have enacted laws authorizing nationality for children outside marriages, on the grounds that the countries’ social situations differ from that in Japan.

     In both of the cases, the Tokyo District Court in its April 2005 and March 2006 rulings granted the children’s claims, determining that the differentiation set by the parents’ marital status is unreasonable and that the Nationality Law’s Article 3 infringes Article 14 of the Constitution, which provides for equality for all.

     Overturning the decisions, however, the Tokyo High Court in February 2006 and February 2007 refused to pronounce on any constitutional decisions, saying it is the duty of the state to decide who is eligible for nationality, not the courts.

     Under Japan’s Nationality Law that determines citizenship based on bloodline, a child born in wedlock to a foreign mother and Japanese father is automatically granted Japanese nationality.

     A child born outside a marriage, however, can only obtain nationality if the father admits paternity while the child is in the mother’s womb. If the father recognizes the child as his only after the child’s birth, the child is unable to receive citizenship unless the parents get married.

     In short, the parents’ marital status determines whether the child with after-birth paternal recognition can obtain nationality.

     Children born to Japanese mothers are automatically granted Japanese nationality, irrespective of the nationality of the father and whether they are married.

==Kyodo  ENDS

JAPAN TIMES EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL

June 6, 2008
Giving children their due

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20080606a2.html

In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court on Wednesday declared unconstitutional a Nationality Law clause that denies Japanese nationality to a child born out of wedlock to a foreign woman and Japanese man even if the man recognizes his paternity following the birth.

It thus granted Japanese nationality to 10 children who were born out of wedlock to Filipino women and Japanese men. The ruling deserves praise for clearly stating that the clause violates Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees equality under the law. The government should immediately revise the law.

The 12-3 grand bench decision concerned two lawsuits filed by the 10 children aged 8 to 14, all living in Japan. The Tokyo District Court, in two rulings, had found the clause unconstitutional, thus granting Japanese nationality to the children. But the Tokyo High Court had overturned the rulings without addressing the issue of constitutionality.

Under the Nationality Law, a child born to a foreign woman married to a Japanese man automatically becomes a Japanese national. Japanese nationality is also granted to a child of an unmarried foreign woman and Japanese man if the man recognizes his paternity before the child is born. If paternal recognition comes after a child’s birth, however, the child is not eligible for Japanese nationality unless the couple marries.

The law lays emphasis on both bloodline and marriage because they supposedly represent the “close connection” of couples and their children with Japan.

The Supreme Court, however, not only pointed out that some foreign countries are scrapping such discriminatory treatment of children born out of wedlock but also paid attention to social changes. It said that in view of changes in people’s attitude toward, and the diversification of, family life and parent-child relationships, regarding marriage as a sign of the close connection with Japan does not agree with today’s reality.

The ruling is just and reasonable because children who were born and raised in Japan but do not have Japanese nationality are very likely to face disadvantages in Japanese society.

The Japan Times: Friday, June 6, 2008
ENDS

Japan Times Community Page May 28, 2008 on Permanent Residency: “Bad PR for Japan”

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

HANDBOOKsemifinalcover.jpgwelcomesticker.jpgFranca-color.jpg

Arbitrary rulings equal bad PR

Article 44, May 27, 2008, Courtesy of http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080527zg.html
“Director’s Cut” with links to sources.
Getting to know Japan is hard work: a complicated language, cultural esoterica, mixed messages about prudent paths to take. People who find their way around and assimilate deserve kudos and respect.
News photo
Never enough?: Sayuki attended Japanese high school, graduated from Keio University, earned a Japanese teaching qualification, worked at Kyodo photo News and NHK, made TV programs and published books about Japan, lectured in Japanese studies in Singapore, and then became the first-ever white geisha. Despite having spent 15 years in Japan, her application for Permanent Residency was refused. KERRY RAFTIS PHOTO
 

And reward. The Japanese government should welcome them by granting Permanent Residency (“eijuken”). But recently people eminently qualified under PR guidelines are being rejected — even Japan’s first Caucasian geisha!

First, why PR? Well, try buying a house without it; most legitimate financial institutions (those run by individuals who still have pinkies) will not grant major loans.

Also, goodbye visa-renewal hassles, and you can take any kind of employment, change jobs, get divorced, etc., all without the risk of visa violation. PR is the next best thing to citizenship, without the identity sacrifice of giving up your native passport (since Japan doesn’t allow dual nationality).

Who qualifies? According to Immigration ( www.immi-moj.go.jp/), PR is a matter of time, visa tenure, and marital status.

In principle, people of moral fiber and legal solvency qualify after 10 years’ consecutive stay — half that if you are deemed to have “contributed to Japan.” For those with Japanese spouses or descendants (“Nikkei” Brazilians, for example), three to five consecutive years are traditionally sufficient.

That’s pretty long. The world’s most famous PR, the U.S. “green card,” only requires two years with an American spouse, three years’ continuous residency without. (Source: UCSIS.gov Section (I)8/(1)(A))

Still, record numbers of non-Japanese are applying. The population of immigrants with PR has increased about 15 percent annually since 2002. That means as of 2007, “newcomer” PRs probably outnumber the “Zainichi” Special PRs (the Japan-born “foreigners” of Korean, Chinese, etc. descent) for the first time in history.

At these growth rates, by 2010 Japan will have a million PRs of any nationality — close to half the registered non-Japanese population will be permitted to stay forever.

But I wonder if Japan’s mandarins now feel PRs have reached “carrying capacity” and have started throwing up more hurdles. Let’s triangulate from three examples this past month.

Jack Dawson (a pseudonym) is the head of an English department in Fukuoka, one of only a few NJ permanently employed at Japanese elementary schools. Having worked continuously in Japan for nine years, he has been married for six with a Japanese and sired two children.

Under PR guidelines, he should be a shoo-in. But Fukuoka Immigration told Dawson he didn’t qualify. “They said I needed to be here 10 years,” he says.

Mark Butler (also a pseudonym), an unmarried Ph.D candidate at Tokyo University, has worked for a Tokyo securities firm for 8 1/2 years. He’s been on a work visa for 9 1/2 years, after spending his initial six months here on a student visa.

“I want a mortgage,” said Mark, “but despite a lucrative job, seven banks refused me outright because I didn’t have PR. Some banks even told me to naturalize, just for a loan!

“So after 10 years, I asked Immigration if I qualified for PR. They said I’d probably get rejected because I’m six months short; when I changed my visa from student to work, the timer reset to zero. But they said I could still apply — a rejection now wouldn’t affect future PR applications.

“So I applied, and was rejected. They suggested I get married, change to a spouse visa, and wait three more years. But we can’t afford to keep renting!”

Mark stresses he’s not angry, and will reapply later this year.

But the case that takes the cake is Japan’s first Caucasian geisha.

Sayuki, a 15-year non-continuous resident of Japan, thought she qualified under “contributions to Japan.” Immigration’s Web site (www.immi-moj.go.jp/english/tetuduki/zairyuu/contribution.html ) includes examples like awards “internationally evaluated as authoritative” (such as a Nobel Prize or an Olympic medal), domestic medals (such as the Order of Culture), or other activities helping Japan “through medical, educational and other vocational activities.” They also gave 38 examples of successful candidates ( www.immi-moj.go.jp/english/tetuduki/zairyuu/eizyuu.html ).

Sayuki hasn’t gotten her Nobel yet, but felt she had done plenty. Attending Japanese high school and university for 10 consecutive years (the first Caucasian woman accepted and the first to graduate as a regular student from Keio), she earned a teaching qualification in Japanese, and became a regular journalist at Kyodo News and NHK.

After making more than 10 television programs about Japan, publishing three academic books and lecturing in Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore, Sayuki topped these achievements off by becoming a geisha. Hence the name.

Nevertheless, Immigration rejected Sayuki’s application, with the stock answer of, “Your actual achievements up to now cannot be acknowledged as sufficient for granting PR.” [Original Japanese is あなたのこれまでの在留実績からみて，永住を許可するに足りる相当の理由が認められません。]

It was a slap.

Don’t let your ‘visa clock’ reset

“Continuous residence in Japan” is crucial for upgrading your visa status or getting Permanent Residency. Stays of five to 10 years are meaningless if they are discontinuous.

If you go outside Japan for any length of time, you must get a Re-Entry Permit (“sai nyukoku kyoka”) beforehand. Without it, your “visa clock” will reset to zero.

Even if you already have PR, if you leave Japan without a valid REP (or it expires while overseas), you will lose your PR and have to start all over again.

More information in “Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants to Japan” (Akashi Shoten Inc. 2008).

“The utter ridiculousness of me being rejected just because my fifteen years were nonconsecutive!” wrote an indignant Sayuki. “Whether or not I was here, I have been contributing to Japan since I was 22 years old. I was busy making television programs, lecturing and writing books on Japan overseas, and promoting Japanese culture to hundreds of students and academics worldwide.

“Then I became the first foreigner to represent Japan as a geisha, the most recognizable icon of Japaneseness. They wouldn’t take any of that into consideration.”

So maybe people shouldn’t bother learning Japan’s language and culture. Why not just put in the time, get married, and let inertia coast you through?

Because even that is no guarantee. PR requirements seem to depend on at which Immigration branch you apply, and which bureaucrat you talk to. Immigration’s English and Japanese Web sites even differ, according to respondents to the Debito.org blog (www.debito.org/?p=1664 ). Some applicants wrote that they got PR after only three years, others were told they needed to have put in the better part of a decade — yet others closer to 20 years!

“Looks like Immigration bureaus have no standard procedure,” says Dawson. “It’s poor management by the government.”

Most ironic is that naturalization requires only five years’ continuous residence regardless of marital status. It’s arguably easier to qualify for citizenship than PR!

The point is that Immigration seems overly eager to reset the “visa clock,” as opposed to judging people on their individual merits and contributions. Sorry, but too much emphasis seems to be put on continuous residence and spouse. Life is often more complicated for those of us who aren’t bureaucrats.

In some ways, the PR regime appears to be anti-assimilative, especially when you consider the lack of transparency. For one, despite the deliberation process being supposedly case-by-case, the “rejection process” is anything but: The mandarins need not reveal their reasons for turning down an application. What’s to keep officials from denying PR because, say, they had a bad “bento” boxed lunch that day, or because your revenue stamp was stuck on crooked? We’d never know.

You can appeal the ruling but, according to Akira Higuchi, administrative solicitor and Immigration consultant, precedent won’t be on your side.

“One time the High Court ordered Immigration to reverse their rejection of a PR application. But that was partly because Immigration made a mistake collecting information. If you appeal but there were no mistakes, you must show PR guidelines are wrong or too inflexible. That’s extremely difficult to accomplish,” says Higuchi.

“You can contact Immigration lawyers (“bengoshi” or “gyosei shoshi”). An hour or so consultation shouldn’t cost too much, and they may come up with a better solution after examining your explanations/documents. But I suggest people just wait and reapply later. . . . There may be major changes to the PR regime next year.”

Whether Immigration is planning to ease or standardize the qualifications is unclear, but without more transparency, the results will be largely the same: We reject you — tough nuts.

Ultimately, this degree of arbitrary rigmarole puts Japan at a competitive disadvantage for attracting qualified, educated migrants. As the New York Times reported May 17, 2008, “Japan is running out of engineers,” adding that “Japan had 157,719 foreigners working in highly skilled professions in 2006, a far cry from the 7.8 million in the United States.”

Lots of newcomers not only know Japan, but also know stuff Japan needs. Must we require they devote up to an eighth of their life-span without a break, or else get married (the worst kind of “local content” requirement, and not a legal option for many; Japan does not recognize same-sex civil unions) before deigning to allow them to stay here securely?

Many of them might (and do) think twice about coming here at all.

Wise up, Immigration, and help Japan face its future. We need more people to stay on and pay into our aging society and groaning pension system.

Remember, non-Japanese do have a choice: They can either help bail the water from our listing ship, or bail out altogether.

Sayuki can be contacted via her Web site at www.sayuki.net. Send comments and story ideas to community@japantimes.co.jp
ENDS

Economist obit on Mildred Loving, defeater of US anti-miscegenation laws

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

HANDBOOKsemifinalcover.jpgwelcomesticker.jpgFranca-color.jpg

Hi Blog.  Here’s an interesting article on two people who just did what they did, but with conviction and perseverance, and managed to overturn a horrible legal situation in the US which I would find hard to believe ever existed in post-Meiji Japan (from Lafcadio Hearn’s marriage on down, to our credit!)–a legal ban on interracial relationships and marriage!  Read on–it’s hard to believe a lot of this happened within my lifetime!  Debito

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

OBITUARY
Mildred Loving, law-changer, died on May 2nd, aged 68
May 15th 2008
From The Economist print edition
 http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11367685

THEY loved each other. That must have been why they decided to get their marriage certificate framed and to hang it up in the bedroom of their house. There was little else in the bedroom, save the bed. Certainly nothing worth locking the front door for on a warm July night in 1958 in Central Point, Virginia. No one came this way, ten miles off the Richmond Turnpike into the dipping hills and the small, poor, scattered farmhouses, unless they had to. But Mildred Loving was suddenly woken to the crash of a door and a torch levelled in her eyes.

All the law enforcement of Caroline county stood round the bed: Sheriff Garnett Brooks, his deputy and the jailer, with guns at their belts. They might have caught them in the act. But as it was, the Lovings were asleep. All the men saw was her black head on the pillow, next to his.

She didn’t even think of it as a Negro head, especially. Her hair could easily set straight or wavy. That was because she had Indian blood, Cherokee from her father and Rappahannock from her mother, as well as black. All colours of people lived in Central Point, blacks with milky skin and whites with tight brown curls, who all passed the same days feeding chickens or smelling tobacco leaves drying, and who all had to use different counters from pure whites when they ate lunch in Bowling Green. They got along. If there was any race Mrs Loving considered herself, it was Indian, like Princess Pocahontas. And Pocahontas had married a white man.

The sheriff asked her husband: “What are you doing in bed with this lady?” Richard Loving didn’t answer. He never said much for himself, being just a country bricklayer with a single year of high school behind him. Mrs Loving had known him since she was 11 and he was 17, a gangly white boy who took her out for years and did the decent thing when he got her pregnant, by asking her to marry him. She thought he might have known that their marriage was illegal—a strange marriage, driving 80 miles to Washington, DC, to be married almost secretly by a pastor who wasn’t theirs, just picked out of the telephone book, and then driving back again. But they hadn’t talked about legalities. She felt lucky just to have him.

She told the sheriff, “I’m his wife.” And Mr Loving, roused at last, pointed to the framed certificate above the bed. “That’s no good here,” Sheriff Brooks said.

Mrs Loving had said the wrong thing. Had they just been going together, black and white, no one would have cared much. But they had formalised their love, and had the paperwork. This meant that under Virginia law they were cohabiting “against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth”. It was a felony for blacks and whites to marry, and another felony to leave Virginia to do so. Fifteen other states had similar laws. The Lovings had to get up and go to jail. “The Lord made sparrows and robins, not to mix with one another,” as Sheriff Brooks said later.

In separate cars
Faced with a year in jail or exile, they chose to go to Washington for 25 years. Mrs Loving hated it. She was “crying the blues all the time,” missing Central Point, despite the fact that they would slip back there in separate cars, first she and the children, then Richard, casually strolling from opposite directions to meet and embrace in the twilight. Only Sheriff Brooks cared that they were married, and they avoided him.

But Mrs Loving wanted to return for good. When the Civil Rights Act was being debated in 1963, she wrote to Robert Kennedy, the attorney-general, to ask whether the prospective law would make it easier for her to go home. He told her it wouldn’t, but that she should ask the American Civil Liberties Union to take on her case. Within a year or so, two clever New York lawyers were working free for the Lovings. By 1967 they had obtained a unanimous ruling from Earl Warren’s Supreme Court that marriage was “one of the basic civil rights of man”, which “cannot be infringed by the state”. The Lovings were free to go home and live together, in a new cinder-block house Richard built himself.

The constitutional arguments had meant nothing to them. Their chief lawyer, Bernard Cohen, had based his case in the end on the equal-rights clause of the 14th amendment, and was keen that the Lovings should listen to him speak. But they did not attend the hearings or read the decision. Richard merely urged Mr Cohen, “Tell the court I love my wife.” For Mildred, all that mattered was being able to walk down the street, in view of everyone, with her husband’s arm around her. It was very simple. If she had helped many others do the same, so much the better.

She had never been an activist, and never became one. When June 12th, the day of the ruling, was proclaimed “Loving Day” as an unofficial celebration of interracial couples—who still make up only 4% of marriages in America—she produced a statement, but she was never a public figure. She lived quietly in Caroline county, as before. Her widowhood was long, after Richard was killed in a car accident in 1975, but she never thought of replacing him. They loved each other.
ENDS

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

More on America’s anti-miscegenation laws here.  Particularly surprising is the history back and forth within Louisiana regarding banning and unbanning interracial relations–including reinstatement of ban by American authorities in 1806 after the Louisiana Purchase!

ends

Sayuki et al: People clearly qualifying for J Permanent Residency are being rejected by Immigration

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

HANDBOOKsemifinalcover.jpgwelcomesticker.jpgFranca-color.jpg

Hi Blog. I have been receiving emails recently from people saying that the essential benchmark qualifications for Permanent Residency (eijuuken, or PR)–i.e. five years’ continuous residency if married to a Japanese, ten years’ continuous if not (aside from the obvious bits about law-abidingness and stable income)–don’t seem to be sufficient anymore, even in some cases where one would think candidates would be a shoo-in. Witness:

Dear David, I have just been to the Fukuoka Immigration center at Fukuoka Airport and was planning to submit my forms for Permanent Resident Status (永住権) after taking advice from your web page on this issue.

When I explained myself to the first staff member they said there was no way I would obtain this status because I have not been in Japan 10 years.

But I replied that I have lived in Japan over nine years, employed for all that time, married for six, two children who are Japanese nationals, and I am one of only a handful of people in Japan who has a permanent full-time position in an Elementary School.

I was passed onto another member of staff who told me to fill out some more forms for this application (which is fair enough) but I am seeking advice on this issue – espeically about application and marriage time – for they seemed not to understand the rule about five years of marriage to a Japanese national allows you to apply for Permanent Resident Status.

Any information, English or Japanese, which I could take down and show them on the date of my next meeting with them would be gratefully received.

According to HANDBOOK co-author Akira, Immigration says the requirements for PR are:

Guidelines for Permission for Permanent Residence

Legal requirements
(1) The person is of good conduct.
The person observes Japanese laws and his/her daily living as a resident does not invite any social criticism.
(2) The person has sufficient assets or ability to make an independent living.
The person does not financially depend on someone in the society in his daily life, and his/her assets or ability, etc. are assumed to continue to provide him/her with a stable base of livelihood into the future.
(3) The person’s permanent residence is regarded to be in accord with the interests of Japan.

In principle, the person has stayed in Japan for more than 10 years consecutively. It is also required that during his/her stay in Japan the person has had work permit or the status of residence for more than 5 years consecutively.

The person has been never sentenced to a fine or imprisonment. The person fulfills public duties such as tax payment.

The maximum period of stay allowed for the person with his/her current status of residence under Annexed Table 2 of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act is to be fully utilized.
There is no possibility that the person could do harm from the viewpoint of protection of public health.

※ The requirements (1) and (2) above do not apply to spouses and children of Japanese nationals, special permanent residents or permanent residents, and requirement (2) does not apply for those who have been recognized as refugees

Special requirements for 10-year residence in principle

(1) The person is a spouse of a Japanese national, special permanent resident or permanent resident, and has been in a real marital relationship for more than 3 years consecutively and has stayed in Japan more than 1 year consecutively. Or, the person is a true child of a Japanese national, special permanent resident or permanent resident, and has stayed in Japan more than 1 year consecutively.
(2) The person has stayed in Japan for more than 5 years consecutively with the status of long term resident.
(3) The person has been recognized as a refugee, and has stayed in Japan for more than 5 years consecutively after recognition.
(4) The person has been recognized to have made a contribution to Japan in diplomatic, social, economic, cultural or other fields, and has stayed in Japan for more than 5 years.
※ Please see “Guidelines for Contribution to Japan.”[which are not linked from this site, and unavailable despite a MOJ website search; see them here in Japanese]
March 31, 2006, Immigration Bureau of Japan, The Ministry of Justice

Source: http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/english/tetuduki/zairyuu/guide_residence.html
Japanese original: http://www.moj.go.jp/NYUKAN/nyukan50.html

Would have thought the first case cited above would suffice. Same with this case I just heard about the other day:

Bad news on my PR application — I was turned down after half a year on a student visa and 9 1/2 years on the current work visa. They want me to get married, change to a spouse visa, and then wait three more years before trying again. I hate to wait that long — I want to get a mortgage and buy a home; we can’t afford to keep renting!

The above is from a graduate student at Japan’s top university, who got in after passing his entrance exams in Japanese!

But what really beats all is the fact that SAYUKI, Japan’s first NJ geisha (more on her here.) was also recently refused her PR! This despite:
================================
1) A total of fifteen years in Japan, ten consecutive in high school and university
2) Attending Japanese high school
3) Being the first caucasian woman ever to be accepted and graduate as a normal student from Keio University
4) Probably the first NJ caucasian woman to get the teaching degree in Japan (kyoushoku katei)
5) Being the first to work in the Japanese life insurance industry (ippanshoku to shite)
6) Being employed at Kyodo Tsushi, Reuters, NHK etc as a journalist
7) Making more than ten television programmes about Japan
8) Publishing three academic books on Japan
9) Being a Lecturer in Japanese Studies at university (National Univ of Singapore)
10) Currently the first foreign woman ever to be accepted as a geisha.
================================

She concludes that it was in fact easier to get into Keio! This despite guidelines (Article 2(4) above) saying that ten years need not be continuous if, “The person has been recognized to have made a contribution to Japan in diplomatic, social, economic, cultural or other fields (which she clearly has) and has stayed in Japan for more than 5 years” (which she has). So why refused? Unclear.

There is, however, an unusual right of appeal for PR applications (not for other visa statuses), within six months. A person in the know advised:

There are many lawyers (bengoshi or gyoseishoshi) in Tokyo who deal with immigration matters. How about consulting with them? Just one hour or so consultation shouldn’t cost much. They may come up with a better solution after thoroughly examining your explanations/documents.

There is a high court case in which the court ordered to cancel the immigration decision of “non-permission of permanent residency.” But this is (partly) because of Immigration’s fault in the factual finding phase, not because “the guideline” is prejudiced or irrational. So you (or your lawyer) will have to overturn this kind of judgement in court. Hiring a lawyer will take a lot of time and money, and most of all, it’s very difficult even for a specialist lawyer.
http://www.courts.go.jp/search/jhsp0030?action_id=dspDetail&hanreiSrchKbn=01&hanreiNo=35728&hanreiKbn=04

So a practical solution would be to wait for another couple of years and re-reapply IF you still can/want to extend your current visa for three more years.

The govenment is planning to change the law next year, and there may be major changes to permanent residency system.

Yeah great. But cripes, how many hoops must one jump through these days just to upgrade to PR? A Green Card in the US, for example, certainly doesn’t take this many years, and without PR in Japan, you can’t get home/car/etc. loans from financial institutions with pinkies, qualify for many credit cards, or, say, obtain the ability to divorce without the threat of visa violation. Also having Immigration demand that people marry or else (not everyone has that affectional preference; civil unions are not legal in Japan) is one of the worst kinds of “local-content requirements” for your working environment.

This much rigmarole from Immigration only puts Japan at a competitive disadvantage for attracting qualified, educated migrants to stay in Japan permanently. After this much dedication from them, then a slap in the face, many of them might think twice about staying on after all. Wise up, Immigration. You’re supposed to be helping Japan face it’s future.

Comments from others with successful (or not) experiences getting PR are welcome. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Anonymous on job-market barriers to NJ graduates of J universities: The “IQ Test”

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

HANDBOOKsemifinalcover.jpgwelcomesticker.jpgFranca-color.jpg
Hi Blog. Feedback from a reader about prospects of finding work in Japan as a NJ despite graduation from a J university. According to the author, barriers are put up at the entry level all over again to prefer native candidates–or at least how they get tested by IQ. Read on:

======================
Hello Debito. I am a reader of your blog since I came to Japan the second time in September 2006. I am a Master’s student at [an extremely prestigious Japanese university] and do research on “national identity” in Japan. That is why I was interested in your homepage in the first place.

But now I feel discriminated the first time and wanted to ask you for some advice.

I started searching for a job in Japan because I will graduate next year but I want to stay in Japan. I started as early as the japanese students, visited countless fairs and setsumeikai, and bought all the expensive books on business fields, tests and self analysis. In short – I didn’t do anything wrong. But now all my J friends have a job contract and I still don’t what is extremely frustrating. Because I put more effort into it then most of them and I don’t think I am less smart, but still I did not get even one serious offer.

The reason for this is a stupid old fashioned IQ test like test which is quite the same at each company. It is not so difficult but the time limit for each problem is very strict, which is a major disadvantage for NJ graduates. Once I did the test in English at ONE out of 35 companies which provided the same test in English for NJ applicantsand passed easily, although English is NOT my mother language. I am German.

(I failed at the second interview though. Partly because I was inexperienced and nervous. It was my first and last opportunity for an interview)

I think this test is extremely unfair against all NJ, because it needs far much more preparation than for J students to master it and even then you have less chances to pass. In other words, even with the best preparation it’s a gamble.

It would be much better for the students (and the companies who waste talent) to provide the test in English and add an extra test for the Japanese abilities of NJ students. The English test for the J students is quite meaningless because its far too easy (I finished it 10 min. before the time was over and had everything right). But it is not enough to compensate the lack of speed reading skills in Japanese which need 12+ years of J education system.

I think if Japan wants to keep the students who studied here and want to contribute something to Japan’s society they should think these recruiting practices over, or they will loose well educated brain power in a world wide competition.

Anonymous (who is serously thinking about going to the US or back to Europe…)
======================

COMMENT: When I got my first non-Eikaiwa job in Japan (back in 1989), I too had to take an IQ test–the same one meted out to regular entrants, and in Japanese. Well, I failed–after only a couple of years of classroom and street study, my Japanese wasn’t good enough yet. So the boss administered other tests, such as having me read the newspaper aloud etc, making it a language test. Up to that point, I had been trained more in Japanese the Spoken Language (Eleanor Jorden’s text), not written, so I didn’t do well enough for him again. He was about to deny me the job when I did what I do best–talk persuasively in Japanese. I convinced him the test wasn’t representative of my real abilities nor would it reflect accurately upon what I could do for his company. I passed that test, as I got hired, and from that point on became much better in Japanese working for a year at an intern in a software company. But this was Bubble Japan (and companies were looking for ways to “internationalize” themselves; plus I took a big pay cut), and I clearly got far more rope to explain my way into a job than the above author, who has far more ability and experience (and a degree from a world-class Japanese university) yet got stopped for lack of “measurable IQ”.

This is an issue that deserves attention, so others with experience should feel welcome to comment. For in the poster’s view (and mine), these sorts of barriers only hurt Japan when educated candidates want to stay and contribute. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

在日韓国・朝鮮人高齢者の年金訴訟を支える会: 4月25日判決傍聴と呼びかけ

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

HANDBOOKsemifinalcover.jpgwelcomesticker.jpgFranca-color.jpg
Hi Blog. Court decision due April 25 on elderly Korean Zainichis being denied their Japanese nenkin pension contributions due to being foreign. Details below FYI. Arudou Debito

===================================
Subject: 4月25日判決傍聴と呼びかけご協力のお願い
Date: April 17, 2008 9:42:55 AM JST

お疲れ様です。
在日韓国・朝鮮人高齢者の年金訴訟を支える会の鄭明愛です。
いつも、貴重な情報をありがとうございます。
この場をお借りしまして、ご案内させていただきます。

在日韓国・朝鮮人高齢者の年金訴訟の大阪控訴審が判決を迎えます。
４月２５日（金）１５時３０分〜大阪高等裁判所２０２号法廷で、
終了後、１６時〜大阪弁護士会館で報告集会を行います。

1月18日の第３回控訴審で、
原告側代理人の発言にも耳をかさず、裁判官の暴挙とも言える、
いきなりの結審、そして判決を通告しました。

大阪高裁裁判長のスピード結審、
昨年１２月２５日の在日無年金障害者の年金訴訟の最高裁の不当判決、
それに続く、大阪地裁提訴の高齢者年金訴訟の上告受理せずの通知

合わせると、言いたくありませんが、
不当判決の可能性です。
大阪高裁、そして、その後の大阪弁護士会館での報告集会で
ぜひとも、抗議の声をあげていただきたいと思っております。

傍聴、抗議の声、報告集会での応援の声をいただきたいと思っております。
ご参加くださいますようお願い申し上げます。

ご参加いただけます方は、
１５時に大阪高等裁判所門前に集合してください。
１５時１５分には、横断幕を持って行進して裁判所へ入場します。

原告のオモニは、五名おられますが、
９０歳のオモニは腰を骨折されて入院され、
８７歳のオモニは裁判に関わるには体の負担が大きく無理で、
８０歳のオモニはお仕事で参加できなくて、
このたびは、原告団長の玄順任オモニと高五生オモニがチョゴリを着て
参加してくださる予定です。

在日一世の方々は、何の補償もなく、また保障もないまま、
ずっと働いてこられ、私たちを育ててくださり、生活の基盤を築いてくださった一世の方々、
苦労されたオモニたちが、また、今、私たちの代わりに、日本社会の差別を是正するために、闘ってくださってます。
玄順任オモニの言葉、
「私が言いたいことは一つだけです。
戦前は「非国民」としてなじられ、戦後は「外国人」として排除され、そんなことってありますか。」
原告五名は、「死ぬまで、最後まで闘う」
とおっしゃってくださってます。
ぜひとも、応援の声をおかけくださいますようお願いいたします。
また、お知り合いの皆様へ傍聴の呼びかけのご協力をお願いいたします。

追伸
４月２５日１５時３０分大阪控訴審判決を迎えますが、
何とか政治的決着をつける道筋を作りたいと思います。
今年、おそらく国会が解散総選挙をした後に、国会請願署名の提出と厚労省交渉に行きます。
また、１０月には、国連の自由権規約委員会が開催されますので、
障害者年金の原告団長、金洙榮さんがジュネーヴに行って日本政府と日本裁判所の差別を報告する予定です。

鄭明愛

＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
在日外国人「障害者」の年金訴訟を支える会
在日韓国・朝鮮人高齢者の年金裁判を支える会京都

〒601-8022京都市南区東九条北松ノ木町１２エルファ内
電話075-693-2550
FAX075-693-2555
携帯090-6753-6993
e-mail lfa AT h7.dion.ne.jp
エルファ　http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~lfa/
在日外国人「障害者」の年金訴訟を支える会
http://munenkin.hp.infoseek.co.jp/
在日韓国・朝鮮人高齢者の年金裁判を支える会・大阪高裁判決４月２５日１５時〜
http://zainichi-nenkin.hp.infoseek.co.jp/
ENDS

No bank accounts allowed at Mitsui Sumitomo for NJ without minimum six-month stays. Okay at Japan Post Office, however.

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

HANDBOOKsemifinalcover.jpgwelcomesticker.jpgFranca-color.jpg
Hi Blog. As I ease on back into blogging again, let me spend my last evening on the tour with a bit of advice from somebody in the know about how to open accounts in Japan: If in doubt, use Postal Savings. Blogged with permission. More on Debito.org here about the errant overzealousness of J banks to connect NJ with money laundering. Arudou Debito in Fukuoka

=======================================
Hello Debito,

I ran into a rather strange situation on March 10, 2008. I work for a international youth exchange (homestays, language study programs, etc), and one of the programs I head is a year-long internship for high school graduates from the US, Canada, and Australia. We just had a couple of interns from Australia arrive last month, and once they recieved their 外国人カード one of my Japanese coworkers (I was out of the country at the time on business) took them to our local 三井住友 branch to open accounts.

We have been using this bank for 2-3 years now and never had a problem with them, but this time we were informed that they would be unable to open bank accounts until they had been here for 6 months, citing new regulations regarding money laundering. My coworker was quite angry and tried to reason things out, pointing out that we had opened similar accounts just 6 months ago for our Canadian and American interns, but was stonewalled. Later that day the president of our foundation called the bank and was told the same story. At that point my coworkers went to the post office and opened accounts there with absolutely no problems.

As I said, I was out of the office until today, when I was told about what had happened. I have heard of other non-Japanese running into the same problem (though I don’t remember which banks were involved), so I wasn’t completely surprised and knew that the bank’s claims were bogus. I called the Australian Embassy and let them know what was going on, and they said they would look into it. I will not be using 三井住友 in the future for my programs, and I am planning on closing my own account there and speaking to the manager as to why I am doing so. At this point I feel I’ve done all I can with the resources at my disposal.

However, being a socially aware resident myself, I thought I would pass this along to you and see if you had any further advice or if you wanted to follow up on it yourself. I am mostly curious about this anti money laundering regulation they cited, which I’m pretty sure does not exist. On the whole it seems pretty discriminatory to me to not allow non-Japanese who hold valid visas and alien registration cards to open accounts for their first 6 months…and if it is true I can foresee a whole bunch of issues popping up (such as eikaiwa teachers essentially being paid under the table simply because they can’t open an account).

Best regards, Ariel
ENDS

“WELCOME NON-JAPANESE CUSTOMERS” stickers for businesses now on sale at Debito.org (Paypal OK)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

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Hi Blog. Happy to announce, along with the sale of HANDBOOK FOR NEWCOMERS, MIGRANTS, AND IMMIGRANTS, another new program on Debito.org to push back the night–and counteract the nationwide spread of JAPANESE ONLY signs on businesses: New signs that say “WE WELCOME NON-JAPANESE CUSTOMERS”:

welcomesticker.jpg
More details on how you can order these stickers through Paypal here:
https://www.debito.org/welcomestickers.html

I’ll have a list of businesses with the stickers up there as orders come in. Please patronize these establishments, and tell the management that you approve of the sticker!

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

(PS: I’ll be on tour from now until April with only sporadic Internet access. Sorry to keep commenters waiting…)

“Japanese Only” sign in Tsukiji Fish Market

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s a sign I received a couple of days ago from a friend in the Kansai. “JAPANESE People ONLY” in a Tsukiji restaurant, along with a litany of what kind of food appreciation they expect from their customers.

How urusai. Problem is, they indicate that NJ cannot have this degree of food appreciation, and so refuse them entirely.

Click on photo to expand in your browser. Anyone want to run down to Tsukiji for me and get a definitive picture of the storefront with the sign? (These things usually need two photos–the sign and the storefront with the sign). And a confirmation of what the name of the restaurant (and the address if possible?) Thanks.
TsukijiJapaneseOnly.jpg

Again, this is what happens when this kind of discrimination is not illegal in this society. More of this genre here. Arudou Debito in Sapporo
ENDS

——————————-

UPDATE FEB 12: Readers at site “Occidentalism.org” contacted the owner of the restaurant and say they got the sign down. Well done. Details (highly critical of Debito.org, mind; ah well) available here.
ENDS

Ryan Hagglund on how he successfully dealt with an exclusionary landlord

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Turned 43 years old today… Here’s Ryan Hagglund of Yamagata on how he successfully dealt with a very common problem in Japan–exclusionary landlords.

As you probably know, if a landlord has a “thing” about foreigners and decides not to rent to you, legally there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Racial discrimination is not illegal in Japan. But Ryan found a place he liked and wasn’t having any of it. And he managed to change the landlord’s (and realtor’s) mind.

How? Sticktoitiveness and accountability. Lessons: 1) be as polite as possible while being clear that you will not accept a denial based on being foreign, and 2) audio record everything just in case you have to go to court.

(Covert recordings are also admissible in court. I did it for the Otaru Onsens Lawsuit, and it removed any possible element of plausible deniability or misunderstanding.)

Good work Ryan. Here are the series of emails he sent to the Life in Japan List. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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

From: Ryan Hagglund
Subject: [LIFE IN JAPAN] Apartment Refusal
Date: December 4, 2007 10:10:00 PM JST

I have a quick question, if anyone can help. This afternoon the school I manage was told point-blank by the real estate agent we’ve been using that the apartment we had decided on for our new teacher is not available because the landlord doesn’t rent to foreigners, even if the company acts as the official tenant. We would like a chance to talk with the landlord, but the real estate company refuses to divulge any of his information. Is there any way to find out who the owner of an apartment building is? I would imagine there has to be some kind of public record out there. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much.

Ryan Hagglund, Yamagata

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

UPDATE ONE

From: Ryan Hagglund
Subject: [LIFE IN JAPAN] Apartment Refusal
Date: December 5, 2007 8:21:40 PM JST

Thanks to everyone for the comments and thoughts so far. I thought I would write with a quick update and a little more background information.

Anyway, the whole situation started with a new teacher who needs housing accepting a position at our school. My wife, who is Japanese and works for the school, went apartment hunting while I was teaching and found a really great one. The real estate agent kept telling her how wonderful it was and she was right; it is by far the best apartment we have seen in the area for the price and in a good location too. We wanted the new teacher to have a chance to look at it, so my wife called to let the real estate know that her husband, me, and a new employee would be down to look at the apartment as well. Up to this point we had not said that the occupant would be a foreigner. We weren’t purposely trying to hide that fact by any means; we just hadn’t thought to mention it. It’s legally a non-issue anyway. When I arrived with the new teacher and came in saying we wanted to look at the apartment that had been played up for my wife, the agent was hesitant. She said she would show us it, but that “special permission” is required for foreigners to rent. I mentioned that such as policy was illegal and that we would like to see it. Aside from the comment about special permission, she was quite polite and pleasant, though I had to ask for her business card as she was walking back to her car to return to the office, something I thought was unusual. This all happened Saturday, just before the office closed. (All the above conversations happened in Japanese, by the way, though our new teacher doesn’t speak much at all.)

On Monday we called to confirm the apartment, but were told this afternoon that it is not available for rent by foreigners. When my wife asked to please speak with the landlord she was told that wasn’t possible. Following the suggestions on this list, my wife went to the city hall, but was told that they could not divulge private information on the ownership of a building. We decided, then, to return to the real estate agent. We were polite, letting her know we realize she is in a difficult situation, but that denying an apartment to someone simply because they are foreign is illegal, a conclusion with which our school’s attorney agrees. We said that we would like to speak with the landlord and were willing to work with him to find a suitable compromise, such as the school renting the apartment instead of the new teacher, but that we definitely wanted that apartment and feel it is very important for the law to be followed. (We also recorded the conversation so that we have proof that we were in fact denied based on being foreign.) The real estate agent said she would talk with landlord and get back to us, so we’ll se what happens. We’ve also scheduled a consultation with an attorney tomorrow to talk about our options in case the landlord refuses. I hope that won’t be necessary. Trying to be polite, but firm.

Ryan Hagglund, Yamagata

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

UPDATE TWO

From: Ryan Hagglund
Subject: [LIFE IN JAPAN] Re: Apartment Refusal
Date: December 17, 2007 12:07:44 AM JST

I want to thank everyone for their support, comments, and suggestions on the apartment situation we encountered. At least one person asked for updates, so I hope you don’t mind if I oblige.

As you may remember, my wife checked apartments through many realtors for a new employee for our school. We decided on the best one we could find, a nice, newer, spacious 1LDK with 9-foot ceilings; bar separating the kitchen from the dining area; three-panel, glass-inlaid sliding doors separating the kitchen and dining from the main room; outdoor storage connected to the balcony; hikari-fiber internet; and video intercom system for the front door in order to evade the NHK guy :-). All of this for 45,000 yen per month, which is a decent price in this area without all the extras. As the realtor had told my wife, “If I was looking for an apartment, I would live here.” We agreed.

When we told the realtor we wanted the apartment and it became apparent that it was for a foreigner, we were then refused since the apartment owner has apparently had problems with a foreigner in the past. We found the same apartment listed with another agent in the area who told us the same thing. We have one of the refusals recorded. Neither agent was the main listing agent for the apartment, however. We wanted to talk with the owner or main agent about the situation, but we were refused the information.

On the advice of one list member who wrote privately, I went to the houmukyoku to find the registered owner of the apartment, and my wife and I gave him a visit Thursday evening. We were very polite and asked him if we could talk to him about the problems he had previously had with foreigners, but he said he has no policy against renting to foreigners and would have no problems renting to us. He then (supposedly) called the main real estate agent and gave us the news that someone else was already interested in the apartment, though, telling us to check with them about the situation the next morning. We at least got the main listing agent’s name, however.

My wife, being the amazing woman she is, knew the agency and said the light had been on when we passed it on our way to the owner’s house. We hurried into the car and got to the agency just as they were about to close. When we told them why we were there, they said the owner had refused us and there was nothing they could do. They were extremely surprised to learn we had just spoken to the owner, leading us to believe the owner had just been pretending to be on the phone. They then said someone else was interested in the apartment, so we would have to wait for their decision. We made it very clear, however, that we had made our decision a full week-and-a-half prior and considered ourselves ahead of any other possible renters. To make an even longer story a little shorter, they kept giving us the runaround until we had countered all of their “reasons” for our not being able to rent to us and essentially trapped themselves in their own excuses and twisted logic. We recorded the exchanges with both the landlord and real estate office and I would love to post them sometime, as they are absolutely mind-boggling. In the end, though, they ran out of even semi-plausible excuses and we got the apartment.

I have to admit I’m somewhat dissatisfied with the fact that we will be giving these people money. There was definitely a concerted effort going on in the background to get rid of us. At the same time, it was definitely the best apartment available and our new teacher shouldn’t have to settle for second-best simply because she’s foreign. In the end, our polite determination won out. Next time we need an apartment, though, we’ll know to have a Japanese person look first at what’s available and then decide from there. We wouldn’t have been shown the best apartment otherwise, which is a real shame.

Ryan Hagglund
My English School
Higashine, Yamagata

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

FINAL UPDATE

From: Ryan Hagglund
Subject: RESEND: Hi Ryan. May I blog your apartment report? Anything to add?
Date: January 11, 2008 10:35:07 PM JST
To: debito@debito.org

…Of course you may blog you like that I’ve reported to the Life in Japan list. I can’t think of anything at the moment to add to what I’ve written. I guess I would just emphasize that I made sure to be as polite as possible while being clear that I would not accept a denial based on being foreign… Thanks! Ryan

ENDS

Mark Mino-Thompson on “updated” Hotel Laws: Refusal OK if “unreasonable/unrational burden”

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Mark Mino-Thompson reports below on his discovery of new “amendments” to the Ryokan Gyouhou (Hotel Management Law), created in English and Japanese legalese and in generic format (meaning written by somebody else) for use in hotels nationwide. They are vague enough to make it seem as though a hotel could refuse a NJ lodging if the lodger poses an “unreasonable/unrational burden” (such as speaking a foreign language or offering beds instead of futons?). Copies of the laws linked below. Debito in Sapporo

============================
From: Mark Mino-Thompson
Subject: [Community] Hotels asking for passports from residents in Japan
Date: January 8, 2008 11:22:07 AM JST
To: The Community Yahoogroup

My family and I went to an Onsen hotel over the holidays. While the reservation was in my name (My wife’s family name + my first name in katakana), my sister-in-law handled the front desk registration, as we were busy with our kids. They didn’t request to see my passport or other ID, although as I wasn’t checking in directly, I can’t say what would have happened if I had been. I did notice that they did have the standard multilingual “May we see your passport?” sign Debito has posted before, featured on the front desk.

Later that day, while reading through the hotel information, I came across the Terms and Conditions for accommodation, printed in Japanese and English. Firstly, I noticed that much like others I’ve seen in various hotels over the past two years erroneously states in Article 8 that:

“The guest shall register the following particulars at the front desk of the Ryokan/Hotel on the day of accommodation: (1) Name, age, sex, address, and occupation of the guest(s) (2) For non Japanese: nationality, passport number, port and date of entry in Japan
newarticle8_eng.jpg
newarticle8_jp.jpg

This is nothing new. There have been many accounts from others about this error in Japanese hotel documentation. However, the Japanese version also seems to be the same wording as in English.

I’ve attached a scan of the original documents in the files section of the Community yahoogroups site. (Too big to put here as image or thumbnail–see them at Debito.org here:)

English: https://www.debito.org/newhotellaws2008eng.jpg

Japanese:
https://www.debito.org/newhotellaws2008j.jpg

Furthermore, as Debito has mentioned and documented before, the Hotel law article 5 states that accomodation can only be refused by the hotel in the case of:

1) a health issue involving contagious disease, 2) a clear and present endangerment of public morals, or 3) because all rooms are full.

However, this hotel terms and conditions Article 5 has additional (new?), disturbing provisions:

Article 5 (Refusal of Accommodation Contracts)

The Ryokan/Hotel may not accept the conclusion of an Accommodation Contract under any of the following cases:

(1) When the application for accommodation does not conform with these Terms and Conditions

(2) When the Ryokan/Hotel is fully booked and no room is available

(3) When the Guest seeking accommodation is deemed liable to conduct himself in a manner that will contravene the laws or act against the public order or good morals

(4) When the guest is clearly detected as carrying an infectious disease

(5) When the Ryokan/Hotel is requested to assume an unreasonable burden in regard to his accommodation [shukuhaku ni kanshi gouriteki na han’i o koeru futan o motomerareta toki–literally, “at times when the burden demanded in terms of staying has superseded the bounds of rationality/reasonability”–there we go with that easily-abusable “gouriteki sabetsu” “rational discrimination” concept again…]

(6) When the Ryokan/Hotel is unable to provide accommodation due to natural calamities, disfunction of the facilities and or other unavoidable causes, or

(7) When the provisions of Article 5 of Iwate Metropolitan/Prefecture Ordinance are applicable.

newarticle5_eng.jpg
newarticle5_jp.jpg
As you can see, clause number 1 seems to me to have a rather broad range of powers to refuse accommodation. Fail to give up your passport/ID to the front desk and we can deny you a room because you’re not conforming to Article 7 of our Accommodation Contract.

Clause number 5 also is troubling to me. What constitutes an “unreasonable burden” and who decides? Does having Japanese customers complaining about foreign bathers and demanding refunds allow the hotel to refuse non-Japanese out of fear of losing customers? Does not having English-speaking (or other language) staff cause “unreasonable burden” to rural hotels and allow them to turn away people as well?

Clause 7 I haven’t researched as of yet, but it seems that ordinances created at the prefectural level may have the power to refuse others as well.

In addition, these Terms and Conditions, similar to the multilingual front desk signs made by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (that Debito has mentioned) seem to be quite professionally made. They are professionally printed on glossy paper, refer to “the Ryokan/Hotel” instead of the actual hotel name and the fact that the English legalese is high and above the ability of most English-speaking hotel clerks would suggest that they were made at either the prefectural (or more likely national) level for all hotels to use.

Any thoughts or comments on my interpretation of this document? Any suggestions or a course of action to get these documents corrected to accurately reflect the new passport ordinance for non-resident visitors and the hotel law itself?

Regards, Mark Mino-Thompson
ENDS

石川県の北國新聞のセールズ：「外国人購読拒否」

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

皆様こんばんは。有道　出人です。あけましておめでとうございます。今年もよろしく！

では、今回の件は外国人が温泉入浴拒否ではなく、アパート入居拒否ではなく、店舗・ディスコ・飲み屋・レストラン・、眼鏡屋・ホテルなどの入場拒否ではなく、
https://www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html
今回は外国人新聞購読拒否の件です。

　証拠は
slip-front-1.jpgpostcard-back.jpgslip-back.jpgpostcard-front-1.jpg

載っているのは、１１月付の北國新聞の契約書、そして翌日届いた外国人の購読を受付しないを言うセールスマンからのハガキ。
(Boss didn’t accept foreigner’s subscription. I am sorry. Ryozo Matsuda)
（上司は外国人の購読を受付かねます。すみません。松田了三より）

　拒否した外国人（以下「顧客」）によると、北國新聞を代表するセールズ（下請けの販売所）の松田氏は昨年１１月１３日に売り込みに顧客の自宅に訪れました。顧客は「日本語の練習になる」と思い、３ヶ月契約に結びました。月初めに前払いの形で、会社に取って全く未納の心配がないものの、翌日１４日に「上司が拒否」というハガキが届いて契約が守られなかったです。

　驚愕ですね。いままで上記のサイトに載っている「ガイジンダメ」という正当化は「文化の違い」「ガイジンは怖い」「ガイジンは嫌い」「払わないかも」「暴れるかも」「衛生問題がある」などと言ってあるが、今回の相当な理由はどうなると思いました。「ガイジンは日本語が読めないから」ですか。

　年明け後調べ始めました。１月７日、北國新聞のセールズ「野々市三馬」（076-243-1810)に電話してみて、松田氏は留守で、翌日８日に午前１１時２３分に代表の織田氏から電話いただきました。織田氏はこの件について一切聞いていないと言い、私は契約書と拒否ハガキを電子メールで送りました。織田さんはその言及した松田氏の上司「桜井」氏と確認して、「過去色々なことがあったから、差別ではない、差別の意図はない」と弁解しました。理屈は分かりにくかったから、直接桜井氏と話したいと言いました。桜井氏は午後４時４７分に電話下さいました。

　桜井氏の言い分は、松田さんはきちんと契約をしなかったから契約をキャンセルをしました。外国人だからではなく、契約にとって色々な問題が発生したからと。私は「それなら、違う人を顧客の自宅まで送って再契約すればどうでしょうか？なぜ２ヶ月経過してから何も動きはなかったですか。わざわざ顧客の自宅まで訪れて、契約して、そして解約するのですか。ハガキは『外国人だから拒否』は明確にあるのに、間違いなくそうなんじゃないでしょうか。私はここでクレームをしなかったら、そのまま解約と顧客精神苦痛はあるのでは？」と問いました。が、桜井氏は「松田はそういうハガキを書いたのかは知らなかった。」

　私は「でも、間違いなく一方的に契約をキャンセルしたに違いませんか。日本の印刷のマスコミが苦しんでいる中、改めて支払う意図のある顧客をこうやってフォローアップしないことは信じ難いのです。」

　桜井氏は「差別ではなく、松田が悪い」と主張しました。私は未だに腑に落ちませんね。

　それに、私は北國新聞本社（〒920-8588　石川県金沢市香林坊2丁目5番1号　TEL.076-263-2111　内線１）に連絡して、「これは御社の契約の問題なので、御社を代表するセールズは『外国人拒否』とはっきり書いたので、どうやら責任を取りませんか」と言っても、受付は「その販売所と話し合って下さい」と言い、私からその契約と拒否ハガキのファックスを拒否しました。その後（午後５時３分）、販売部金沢担当の小竹氏（076-260-3654）から連絡があり、明日現状を調べてからご連絡をいただくようです。

とりあえず、お気がすすめば、どうぞ、北國新聞とそのセールズまでご連絡下さい。
dokusha@hokkoku.co.jp
koho@hokkoku.co.jp
nanbuhanbai@hokkoku.co.jp
kotake@hokkoku.co.jp
http://www.hokkoku.co.jp/

宜しくお願い致します。有道　出人
以上

“Japanese Only” Newspaper Outlet: Hokkoku Shinbun in Ishikawa Pref (UPDATED)

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Things are getting surreal these days in Japan. Now even newspaper outlets are getting xenophobic.

Let’s trace the logical development of all this. In the Otaru Onsens Case, the management said they would refuse foreigners because of, inter alia, different bathing customs and sanitation issues.

In various other cases catalogued at the Rogues’ Gallery of Exclusionary Establishments, foreigners would be refused (these are actual reasons given from people in charge) at bars and restaurants ‘cos they might not pay, stores ‘cos they might shoplift, at a disco ‘cos they might drink too much or hit on Japanese women, at an Internet cafe cos they might breach security, at hotels ‘cos the management doesn’t speak any foreign languages, at a women’s relaxation boutique ‘cos their feet are too big, at an opticians ‘cos the owner doesn’t like Black people, and by realtors because, well, just because–the landlord has a “thing” about foreigners, and legally in Japan there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

But here’s a case that just boggles the mind. Of a newspaper sales outlet refusing a foreigner his subscription. What, is the newspaper seller (in this day of withering print journalism) worried the gaijin might be able to read what they write?

Turning the keyboard over to the person was canvassed, subscribed, then got refused. Anonymized. Courtesy of The Community mailing list. With updates and sleuthing to get to the bottom of this afterwards. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

=======================
November 27, 2007

Hi everyone, I thought this might be of interest to people in The Community.

About 2 weeks or so ago, a newspaper salesman came to my door. As soon as I opened the door, he gave a robust greeting in English that he works for Hokkoku Shinbun 北國新聞 (a local Ishikawa-ken paper) and asked if I understood Japanese. My Japanese isn’t great, but I like trying to read things. He then asked if I would like to subscribe for 3 months and I said sure. We filled out the form and he said that my paper would start to be delivered in December. He was extremely polite and happy that I wanted to subscribe and I was quite happy to have a chance to gather an abundance of reading materials.

Here’s the receipt (front and back, click on images to expand in browser):
slip-front-1.jpgslip-back.jpg

However, about a week later, I got a postcard saying this: “Boss didn’t accept foreigner’s subscription. I am sorry.”
postcard-back.jpg
postcard-front-1.jpg

Naturally, this confused me. It’s for a three month subscription, of which I would pay each month for that month’s newspaper.

In our discussions, the salesman and I talked about where I work and it turns out that he took English classes at the same college way back when. So, he knew that I wouldn’t just up and run or that I wouldn’t be a deadbeat in paying.

Contact information on the newspaper:
北國新聞
販売所名：　野々市三馬（石川県）
代表者名：松田了三（まつだ・りょうぞ）
電話：　０７６−２４７－２１２０ (changed to 076-243-1810)
〒920-8588　石川県金沢市香林坊2丁目5番1号　TEL.076-263-2111
dokusha@hokkoku.co.jp
koho@hokkoku.co.jp
nanbuhanbai@hokkoku.co.jp
http://www.hokkoku.co.jp/
ENDS

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

UPDATE JANUARY 8, 2008 FROM ARUDOU DEBITO

I made some calls around to get to the bottom of this. Here’s what I unearthed:

1) Mr Matsuda, who made the house call to get our client above signed up, is employed of those special selling agencies (seiruzu, from “sales”) hired by the parent newspaper company. It is only tangentally-related (shita-uke) to the hanbaibu within Hokkoku Shinbun itself.

2) Mr Matsuda did not return my call. A Mr Oda at 076-247-7834 did. He said he hadn’t heard anything about this event–he hadn’t even received the actual contract forms I’ve blogged above. Hence he was not the “boss” referred to within the postcard.

3) That boss is a Mr Sakurai, and when asked by Mr Oda why he refused the client, there were some incomprehensible excuses about something or other having to do with some prior experience with something or other. (I don’t think Mr Oda even understood the excuse as he was trying to relate it to me.) What, nonpayment? Stop the subscription, like you would do for any Japanese deadbeat. But the client would be paying in advance anyway, so that’s not even a problem. Mr Oda tried to claim that this wasn’t a case of discrimination, but, I asked, what else could it be?

4) So unless I had made these phone calls, this refusal would have stopped at Mr Sakurai and nobody within Hokkoku Shinbun would have been the wiser. Who’s going to be taking responsibility for this?

Frankly, I felt there was something very fishy about all this (I have received warnings not to purchase newspaper subscriptions from these seiruzu outlets–the ones that offer long-term subscriptions with big presents–because they are often run by organized-crime syndicates. This is according to Hokkaido Shinbun.) So I called the Hokkoku Shinbun head office above and asked if they knew of Mr Oda at this company at this phone number. They did, he’s legit. And when I asked if they would look into it all, they said I should take it up with Mr Oda’s company first. Huh?

What a strange situation. Newsprint hurting for subscribers these days and they’re refusing foreigners, based upon the stealthy prejudices of one person sitting at a veto gate? Hurting the reputation of the newspaper? And the head office doesn’t want to do anything about it? What bad business practices.

I’ve already sent out the above notices to my Japanese press lists, as well as to the dokusha and koho Hokkoku Shinbun email addresses above. The media should find this interesting as it’s one of their own. Should draw up a report in Japanese tonight.

More updates as they come in. Debito in Sapporo

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

UPDATE JANUARY 9, 2007

I have talked with a number of people on this case (NHK and Kyodo have also been in touch), including Mr Sakurai and the actual manager of the Hokkoku Shinbun Hanbai Bu Kanazawa Tantou Mr Kotake (076-260-3564, email kotake@hokkoku.co.jp) twice, for about thirty minutes each. Here’s what else has surfaced:

MR SAKURAI (Last night before dinner):

1) There was no discrimination. He was unaware that Mr Matsuda had written anything like that in the postcard. It’s Mr Matsuda’s fault.

2) There was a problem with the contract, so we cancelled it. Yes, unilaterally.

3) Er… that’s it.

When asked why they didn’t, like, come back with a new contract, or answer with a postcard or a personal visit something a little nicer than “no foreigners”, he just said he had no knowledge the postcard said such a thing, and was sorry he didn’t come back with a new contract.

Fu ni ochinai ne.

MR KOTAKE (this morning, after checking with the Nonoichi Sanba company and Mr Sakurai):

1) This was a separate sales company unrelated to the actual Hokkoku Shinbunsha, so the problem is within the Nonoichi Sanba sales corp. itself. (As H.O. advised me below in the Comments section.)

2) There was no inkan (seal) on the contract, so it wasn’t a legitimate contract yet.

3) There was no intent to discriminate, and everyone (Mr Kotake, Mr Sakurai, Mr Matsuda) will be going to the client’s house and apologizing today if not tomorrow for not explaining this situation to the customer properly.

I pointed out that it still seemed unnatural (in this day of withering print journalism) for a sales outlet not to assiduously court paying customers (if this were a Japanese client, I doubt there would be any hesitation to go back with a new contract or ask for an inkan on the old contract). And if it I hadn’t made the phone calls, these apologies would never have happened. That, plus the postcard explicitly giving the reason as “no foreigners”, were enough to make one doubt the claim that there was no discrimination. And this attempt to pin the blame on Mr Matsuda, when it was Mr Sakurai who didn’t tell Mr Oda or anyone else in the company about the contract issue, is pretty strange.

Mr Kotake replied that he hoped that this would not give people a bad impression of Ishikawa Prefecture or of Hokkoku Shinbun. I said that how they handled this situation would determine that. He hoped that some of the information on this blog would be changed to reflect that Hokkoku Shinbun and Nonoichi Sanba were two different entities, and I have since made some alterations to the report above.

He also mentioned that he remembered me from the Otaru Onsens Case (he read a lot of my website last night) and hoped that I would have no negative impressions of things. I simply said that this sort of thing is happening all over Japan (see Comments section below for a claim that a Yomiuri subscription service did the same thing to somebody else), in all sectors of Japan, and if Japan is ever to get over their “gaijin allergy”, it’s going to take some work by media outlets, such as the Hokkoku Shinbun, to report the good things that NJ residents also do here, not just the allegedly bad. How about devoting an occasional column to that? He mentioned that few foreigner laborers come here, but lots of exchange students. It’s an idea.

That was it. Lots of loose ends here. Let’s wait and see how they play out in the other media. I spent another half hour on the phone this afternoon with a Kyodo reporter on this. Keep an eye on NHK and Kyodo News. Arudou Debito in Sapporo
ENDS

Economist on “When Japan was a Secret”

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Debito.org is following the template set by The Economist Newsmagazine, where the journalists digress from the usual serious stuff and put out a holiday issue of tangents.

In this year’s Economist holiday issue, we have a three-pager on how people (particularly whalers and other merchant marines) were trying to open up Japan before Commodore Perry. It’s a long one, so here are some excerpts:

==================================
Japanese sea-drifters
When Japan was a secret
The Economist Dec 19th 2007

Long before Commodore Perry got there, Japanese castaways and American whalers were prising Japan open
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10278660

IF THAT double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851

The first English-language teacher to come to Japan landed in a tiny skiff, but before he did so, Ranald MacDonald pulled the bung from his boat in order to half-swamp her, in the hope of winning over locals with a story that he had come as someone who had fled the cruel tyrannies of a whale-ship captain and then been shipwrecked. The four locals who approached by boat, though certainly amazed, were also courteous, for they bowed low, stroked their huge beards and emitted a throaty rumbling. “How do you do?” MacDonald cheerily replied. This meeting took place in tiny Nutsuka Cove on Rishiri Island off Hokkaido on July 1st 1848, and a dark basaltic pebble from the cove sits on this correspondent’s desk as he writes, picked up from between the narrow fishing skiffs that even today are pulled up on the beach….

Far from fleeing a tyrant, MacDonald had in fact had to plead with a concerned captain of the Plymouth, a whaler out of Sag Harbour, New York, to be put down in the waters near Japan. MacDonald had an insatiable hunger for adventure, and the desire to enter Japan—tantalisingly shut to the outside world—had taken a grip on him. Both men knew of the risks, but the captain was less inclined to discount them. For 250 years, since the Tokugawa shogunate kicked Christian missionaries and traders out, only a tightly controlled trade with the Netherlands and China was tolerated in the southern port of Nagasaki, with a further licence for Koreans elsewhere. Though British and Russian ships had from time to time prodded Japan’s carapace, an edict in 1825 spelled out what would happen to uninvited guests “demanding firewood, water and provisions”:

The continuation of such insolent proceedings, as also the intention of introducing the Christian religion having come to our knowledge, it is impossible to look on with indifference. If in future foreign vessels should come near any port whatsoever, the local inhabitants shall conjointly drive them away; but should they go away peaceably it is not necessary to pursue them. Should any foreigners land anywhere, they must be arrested or killed, and if the ship approaches the shore it must be destroyed.

Two decades later the despotic feudalism of the Tokugawa shogunate was under greater strain. At home the land had been ravaged by floods and earthquakes, and famines had driven the dispossessed and even samurai to storm the rice warehouses of the daimyo, the local lords. Abroad, Western powers were making ominous inroads. After the opium war of 1840-42 China ceded Hong Kong to Britain. Meanwhile, thanks to a growth in whaling and trade with China, the number of distressed Western vessels appearing along Japan’s shores was increasing. Moderate voices made themselves heard within the government. A new edict was softer:

It is not thought fitting to drive away all foreign ships irrespective of their condition, in spite of their lack of supplies, or of their having stranded or their suffering from stress of weather. You should, when necessary, supply them with food and fuel and advise them to return, but on no account allow foreigners to land. If, however, after receiving supplies and instructions they do not withdraw, you will, of course drive them away.

…The most famous sea-drifter is known in the West and even Japan as John Manjiro. Two days after Melville set off in early 1841 from Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on the whaling adventure that provided the material for “Moby Dick”, Manjiro, the youngest of five crew, set out fishing near his village of Nakanohama on the rugged south-western coast of Shikoku, one of Japan’s four main islands. On the fourth day, the skipper saw black clouds looming and ordered the boat to be rowed to shore. It was too late. Over two weeks they drifted east almost 400 miles, landing on Torishima, a barren volcanic speck whose only sustenance was brackish water lying in puddles and nesting seabirds. In late summer even the albatrosses left. After five months, while out scavenging, Manjiro saw a ship sailing towards the island.

The castaways’ saviour, William Whitfield, captain of the John Howland, a Fairhaven whaler, took a shine to the sparky lad. In Honolulu he asked Manjiro if he wanted to carry on to Fairhaven. The boy did, studied at Bartlett’s Academy, which taught maths and navigation to its boys, went to church and fell for local girls. He later signed on for a three-year whaling voyage to the Pacific, and when he returned, joined a lumber ship bound round Cape Horn for San Francisco and the California gold rush. He made a handsome sum and found passage back to Honolulu.

By early 1851—the year of “Moby Dick” and two years before Commodore Perry turned up—Manjiro was at last back in Japan, and things were already changing. He and two of the original crew had been dropped in their open sailing boat by an American whaling ship off the Ryukyu Islands. They were taken to Kagoshima, seat of the Satsuma clan. The local daimyo, Shimazu Nariakira, grilled Manjiro, but the tone was inquisitive more than inquisitorial: please to explain the steamship, trains, photography, etc. In Nagasaki, Manjiro had to trample on an image of the Virgin and child. He was asked whether the katsura bush could be seen from America growing on the moon. He described America’s system of government, the modest living of the president and how New Englanders were so industrious that they used their time on the lavatory to read. Amazingly, he dared criticise Japan’s ill-treatment of foreign ships in need of wood and water, and made a heartfelt plea for the opening of Japan, going so far as to put the American case for a coal-bunkering station in Japan to allow steamships to cross the Pacific from California to China.

Rather than being kept in prison, he was freed to visit his mother—in Nakanohana she showed him his memorial stone—and was even made a samurai. In Tosa (modern-day Kochi), he taught English to men who were later influential during the overthrow of the shogunate and the establishment of constitutional government in the Meiji period, from 1860. During negotiations in 1854 with Perry, Manjiro acted as an interpreter. Later, in 1860, he joined the first Japanese embassy to America. But as Christopher Benfey explains in “The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics and the Opening of Old Japan” (Random House, 2003), if the terror of being lost at sea was the defining experience of Manjiro’s life, then his greatest gift to the Japanese was his translation of Nathaniel Bowditch’s “The New American Practical Navigator”, known to generations of mariners as the “seaman’s bible”.

As for Ranald MacDonald, though he was handed over by the Ainu and taken by junk to Nagasaki for interrogation, he was treated decently. With a respectable education and a gentle presence, he was clearly a cut above the usual rough-necked castaway, and he was put to teaching English. Some of the students who came to his cell later flourished as interpreters and compilers of dictionaries. The most notable, Einosuke Moriyama, served as the chief translator in Japan’s negotiations with Perry, as well as interpreter to America’s first consul to Japan, Townsend Harris…

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

The article gives a lot of interesting information, even if it strikes me a bit as if it’s from the perspective of overseas sources only. The labeling of Japanese ships as “junks”, for example, (junks are Chinese) is a bit of an indicator. And it concludes oddly. Read the final paragraph to the piece:

======================
As for whaling around Japan, vestigial echoes reverberate. Every northern winter, Japan faces barbs for sending a whaling fleet into Antarctic waters. And why, asks the mayor of Taiji, a small whaling port, should Japanese ships have to go so far, suffering international outrage? Because, he says, answering his own question, the Americans fished out all the Japanese whales in the century before last.
======================

Kerplunk. Er, so the whole article was leading up to justify this contention? It’s like putting a reggae conclusion on a classical piece.

Anyway, the whole article is worth a read as a holiday indulgence. See it at http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10278660

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

MG International ballet school in Tokyo Azabu refuses Pakistani child–with responses from school & people who were refused

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Report from Ms Amira Rahman, the wife of a foreign diplomat, Mr Rahman Hamid, Commerce Section, Embassy of Pakistan in Tokyo, who received a terrible shock when trying to enroll their 3-year-old daughter in a Tokyo ballet school.

Letter of protest from the Pakistani Embassy (click on image to expand in browser):
Balletschool001.jpg

Report follows. Contact courtesy of the Tokyo With Kids.com website forum. Text authored by Ms. Amira Rahman, adapted by Arudou Debito from the original. Copious debate and comments follow.

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

Dear Sir,

I am a wife of a foreign diplomat representing the Government of Pakistan, and we wanted our little girl to start ballet (she is almost 4)–we thought she would look soooo cute in a tutu.

The place we went to enroll her MG International Arts of Ballet located in Photo house MG Hall, 5-5-9 Azabu Minato Ku Tokyo, December 13th 2007, around 4pm.

ＭＧインターナショナル･アーツ・オブ・バレエ
東京都港区麻布5丁目5-9 後藤ハウスB1F MGホール
地下鉄日比谷線 広尾駅下車 徒歩 5分
info@mg-ballet.org, Person in charge Gotou Mariko.
No phone number listed at 104.
http://www.mg-ballet.org/home.html
MG International Arts of Ballet, MG Hall, B1F GOTO House 5-5-9
Minami-Azabu Minato-ku, Tokyo.

My husband took his official translator along for this exchange also. At the reception we were greeted coldly from the start, and when we requested information about ballet for our daughter we were told that this school does not accept international students.

Thinking she meant they needed students to understand ballet instruction in Japanese we argued that our daughter goes to a local Hoikuen and can understand Japanese. But to our surprise the lady told us that we would need a reference to enter this school.

Still misunderstanding her attitude my husband informed her that his blood relative, an aunt who is Japanese, referred us to this particular school. The lady flat out refused to entertain anything, and after being insulted in such a fashion we left the place with our daughter crying.

We will not under any circumstance be sending our child to such a racist establishment and have already enrolled her in another school.

My husband will be raising this issue with the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the Minato ]-Ku ward. He says that it is not a petty issue. Such people and establishments should be exposed for their racist behavior, and the general public should be made aware of their attitude.

Your dissemination on your blog of what happened to us to other people will serve as a means to identifying such people, and save a lot of them the heartache and disgust we felt when we left that place. Turning such a beautiful art form into something this ugly is a crime in our books.

I have no need to be anonymous because I want people to know what happened, and want to find ways to make sure this does not happen to other expatriate families.

Yours sincerely,
Amira Rahman
////////////////////////////////////////////////

COMMENT: I have tried to contact Ms Gotoh to confirm for myself what happened (I will send her this blog entry at the email address listed above), but cannot find her phone number by any public means. I also called the Japan Ballet Association (Nihon Barei Kyoukai) at 03-5437-0371 and talked to two people there, but they neither could tell me much about what might have gone on (as MG is not a member of their association), nor could believe that she could be turning away a student on the basis of her nationality.

Nor can I. Ms Gotoh clearly has benefited a great deal from her contacts and opportunities in foreign countries. According to her school’s site, she has trained at Academic de Dense Classique Princesse Grace in Monte-Carlo, The Royal Ballet School in London, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Staats Theater Hannover, and Buhnen der Landeshauptstadt Kiel in Germany. She was also in the New National Theatre Tokyo in Japan.

The site says she also “speaks English well” (she even advertises her classes on a website in English), so what’s with the language barrier?

The author is willing to be identified by name, is willing to take responsibility for her claims, and has given sufficient detail in her report, so I’m blogging it. I hope that after I email Ms Gotoh this blog entry at info@mg-ballet.org that she will contact me and clear this issue up.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo, Japan
debito@debito.org
https://www.debito.org
ENDS

================================
UPDATE DEC 15:

I received a very prompt response in English and Japanese from the ballet school:

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

From: info@mg-ballet.org
Subject: Re: To Ms Gotoh: “Japanese Only” Ballet school in Azabu, Tokyo?
Date: December 14, 2007 11:45:46 PM JST
To: debito@debito.org

有道　出人　様、
お問い合わせありがとうございます。
日本がお長く、ご堪能なご様子ですので日本語で失礼いたします。
小樽の「湯の花」の件は、日本人としても恥ずかしく改めなくてはならないと共 感を感じておりました。

今回、このようなメールを突然頂き驚きました。
下記の英文（あまり英語に自信が無いのでお許しください）に述べました通り、 事実誤認に基づく
一方的なクレームであり当惑しています。

有道さんの断定的な発言は大変残念で、下記文書をc.c.のメーリング・リストを 含め回答しようかと
思いましたが、大きな誤解があるようなので、熟慮の末、無用な行き違いを避け るためにも事前に
当メールを差し上げる事としました。ご容赦ください。

下記文書をお読みの上、もしコメントがあればお知らせください。

当方の要望は有道さんのblogの当件に関する文書の即時削除と既に配信なさった メーリングリスト
に対する訂正文の配布です。

今回の件は”Japanese Only”には該当しませんが、クレームをいただいた夫婦の 方に嫌な思いを
させてしまったことは大変残念で申し訳ないと感じております。
今後とも対応には十分注意したいと考えております。

上記要望が有道さんにとって難しければお知らせください。
下記文書を本日頂いたメールに返信する形にて配信させていただきたいと思います。

ご連絡をお待ちしております。

事務局　内野秀紀

== DRAFT ====================================

Mr. Arudou Debito
Thank you for your inquiry to us.

Regrettably I suggest that you should examine the “FACT” before blogged in public.

You made a couple of critical mistakes on this claim.
We have international students now and for these past 8years after establishment of our school.
And Ms. Goto did not meet this lady yesterday because of class teaching, it was our school staff woman that I confirmed having interview..
I’m afraid that you, Mr. Arudou Debito, already have a kind of preoccupation based on a one-sides e-mail from a lady.
If our school is “Japanese Only” and refuse foreigners having racial discrimination, Why do we have international students now and in the past?
Why do we have website in English as you know?

Before confirming these facts and truth, you’ve already blogged one-sides story and Ms.Goto’s privacy in public.
How do you take your responsibility against the fact?
If you would like to injure reputation of our school or Ms.Goto , we should consider taking official steps to deal with the situation
like you do with several cases.
I also would like to ask you on the “RIGHTS” standing point, what’s your idea of keeping Ms.Goto’s privacy and rights?
You may say you tried to contact us but could not find phone number…but you should send a e-mail like many people do before blogged.

The reason why we could not accept her application yesterday was simply “pre-ballet class” is full capasity now.
A little pretty girl had no blame, including her nationality, for the reason why we couldn’t accept.
We are trying to treat fairly all people if they are Forigner, Japanese or any nationality even a diplomat or any occupation.
And our staff confuzed hearing this lady’s reaction…..We dazed our communication gap.
I know we both side have each story to tell and it’s not appropriate to claim each other’s story in public,,because we don’t
have international human rights issue here..

We sometime don’t accept application even Japanese if someone, or parents of small child, is not appropriate to our
school with some reason….. manner, attitude, decency, cooperation, security etc.
Our ballet school is small private school for membership.

Your claim is coming from human rights standing point and we have foreign student now and in the past as I mentioned.
If you would like to confirm this fact/truth, I’ll accept your coming to observe students with no making trouble condition.
I know we have no obligation to accept you but I do .
After your confirming this evidence by yourself, I strongly request your apology in public for giving irrationality impression in public,
I think that’s the fair manners for RIGHTS of our ballet scool and Ms.Goto.

I took a look at your website and your book “Japanese only”, and I can understand your claim on this.
Personally I have 20years experience of working for foreign company, so I understand we have multiculturalism
issue to solve in Japan.
I understand your point and I’m sorry that our case does not fit to your campaign.
I don’t response to your further question on this except your coming request to confirm the FACT/Truth.

I know Sapporo got into very cold winter season with lots of snow.
I hope you take good care of yourself.

Thank you for living Japan and your social activities.

Love People, Love Arts, Love Ballet!
Secretary < < MG International Arts of Ballet >>
MG Hall B1F GOTO House 5-5-9 Minami-Azabu Minato-ku, Tokyo.
/////////////////////////////////

HERE’S HOW I RESPONDED:

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

内野さま、ご返答ありがとうございました。有道　出人です。

ラーマンさまからいただいたレポートの件ですが、ご返答を転送しました。時間の節約のため、英語で答えさせて下さい。

To M. Uchino,

Thank you very much for your speedy response. I reply in English for the sake of saving time.

I have forwarded your response to Ms. Rahman, and will await her response before taking any further action on my blog. I will of course put your answer in both English and Japanese on my blog, and Ms Rahman’s answer (if there is one) also on my blog later. If there is a discussion to be had, I will gladly facilitate it. Please feel free also to respond directly on the blog if you would prefer.

And yes, I would be happy to stop by your school in January (when I will be in Tokyo for speeches) to meet you and hear your side of the story.

You do admit in your explanation that your school does refuse students. Of course, the reasons for refusing any student are very important (and I have a hard time believing that “security” could ever be a concern). If, as Ms. Rahman claims, your representative refused her daughter because MS School does not take international students, there clearly is a communication problem, especially in the face of how your school portrays itself on its website.

In any case, Ms Rahman is very upset at this situation. Having this much upset happen in customer relations is something that should be avoided. Let’s hear her side of the story next.

Thank you for engaging in a dialog on this issue, and, as you note in the Japanese version of your email, for reading my website so carefully. I hope we can reach an understanding on this issue between you and Ms. Rahman.

Sincerely, Arudou Debito in Sapporo
December 15, 2007

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

UPDATE: 8PM SATURDAY DEC 15, 2007:

I JUST RECEIVED A PHONE CALL FROM THE HONORABLE RAHMAN HAMID, HEAD OF THE COMMERCE SECTION IN THE EMBASSY OF PAKISTAN. I HAVE RECEIVED HIS CONTACT DETAILS FOR CONFIRMATION AT THE EMBASSY OF PAKISTAN, AND CAN REPORT TO DEBITO.ORG THE FOLLOWING DETAILS:

1) MR HAMID CAME TO JAPAN FOUR MONTHS AGO, CHOOSING JAPAN OVER SEVERAL OTHER POSSIBLE COUNTRIES BECAUSE HE WANTED HIS CHILDREN TO LEARN JAPANESE AND THE DISCIPLINE AND MANNERS OF JAPAN. HE SAW THE DISCIPLINE PROBLEMS IN THE YOUTH OF OTHER COUNTRIES, AND THOUGHT JAPAN WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE FOR HIS CHILDREN.

2) HE HAS SENT PROTEST LETTERS ABOUT THIS INCIDENT TO VARIOUS OTHER JAPANESE AGENCIES, AND WILL SEND ME A COPY OF THE LETTER (IT’S A PUBLIC DOCUMENT) FOR INCLUSION ON DEBITO.ORG IN DUE TIME.

3) HE HAS SINCE BEEN CONTACTED BY OTHER BALLET SCHOOLS THANKS TO THIS INCIDENT COMING OUT ON DEBITO.ORG, AND HAVE BEEN ASKED TO ENROLL THEIR DAUGHTER THERE INSTEAD.

NOW THAT THIS IS A MATTER OF THE EMBASSY OF PAKISTAN TAKING OVER RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS ISSUE, THE THREAT OF LAWSUIT FROM THE SCHOOL (MADE CLEAR IN THE ENGLISH BUT NOT THE MUCH MILDER JAPANESE VERSION OF THE LETTER FROM THE SCHOOL) IS A NON-ISSUE.

THANKS FOR EVERYONE’S CONCERNS. ARUDOU DEBITO IN SAPPORO

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

RESPONSE FROM MS RAHMAN AGAIN:

From: Amira Rahman
Subject: Response to MG International
Date: December 15, 2007 8:11:55 PM JST

Dear Sir,
I can believe their claim that they have had foreign students in the past but I would like to contradict one small important point which is we were told that this school does not accept foreigners and no mention whatsoever was made of pre ballet classes being full. If they had said this in the first place we would understand immediatly and have had no hard feelings at all because we had a list of 6 other schools in the area we were going to visit.

My only question is have they ever had a student from Pakistan in their school. Please accept their invitation to see their school for yourself and verify the information I have asked. If there has been even one of us there I will gladly chalk it up to misunderstanding on my behalf and apologize otherwise my husband and I will continue in trying to get an apology for their behaviour towards us.

I can also believe that the owners of the establishment or the teachers may have no clue as to what happened at the reception and were not a part of this incident at all but they must acknowledge that somehow, somewhere a misunderstanding took place that led to us feeling insulted. I know the owner is a ballerina of repute and has international credentials to her name and her business is in Hiroo which incidentally is a center of Embassies from around the world, therefore it is my observation that she should lay great emphasis on training staff to deal with “Foreigners”. If I have not stated this earlier the lady at the reception was most cordial but her changing requirements for enrollment and attitude left no room for error that we were not wanted in this place.

Yours sincerely,

Amira Rahman

Dear Arudou,
My husband says it was nice talking to you and he will be emailing his letter to the school to you on Monday first thing in the morning.

Please do not apologize to anyone on our behalf because you are the voice with which people like us can speak and because of you 2 schools contacted us for our daughter already.
Please keep up the good work and our prayers and blessings are with you.
ENDS
//////////////////////////////////////////////////

UPDATE DEC 18, 2007:
Balletschoolending.jpg
ALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL. ARUDOU DEBITO

J Times: UNHCR’s Guterres bravely spins on Japan’s exclusionary refugee policy

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. The United Nations drops in, and tries to put a brave face on Japan’s inability to accept refugees or asylum seekers like any other developed country. Stressing improvements when there really aren’t any. He’s a diplomat, all right. Debito in Sapporo

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

UNHCR chief pitches third-country resettlement
By KAHO SHIMIZU Staff writer
The Japan Times November 29, 2007
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/nn20071129a5.html

Japan is notorious for accepting very few refugees, despite making a significant financial contribution to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

But the visiting head of the U.N. organization said Tuesday that Japan is making steady progress in improving the situation facing asylum seekers here.

“Japan is not a country with many refugees . . . but the asylum system is moving in the right direction,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters during his three-day visit to Tokyo.

After arriving Monday, Guterres met with government officials, including Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama and Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, and left the country Wednesday morning.

Japan was the UNHCR’s third-largest donor country in 2006, with a $75 million (¥8.1 billion) contribution, after being the second-largest donor for eight years through 2005.

However, the number of people granted refugee status in Japan remains small. In 2006, the government recognized only 34 people as refugees, compared with 23,296 in the U.S. and 6,330 in Britain.

Since assuming the top position at the UNHCR in 2005, Guterres, 58, said he has witnessed some improvements in Japan. These include the introduction of an appeal system to review cases of people whose applications for refugee status have been turned down, and the move by authorities to grant protection for people whose applications have been rejected but are allowed to stay for humanitarian reasons.

Above all, the most encouraging development for Guterres was that Japan has begun discussing the possible introduction of the third-country resettlement program, which means accepting refugees who sought asylum in other countries.

The UNHCR views resettlement in a third country as an important tool of protection and a durable solution for refugees, especially when voluntary repatriation to their home countries and local integration are difficult.

In September, the government set up a working group involving officials of the Justice Ministry, Foreign Ministry and other bodies, and began studying the program.

The U.S., Canada and Australia were among the first countries that began offering third-country resettlement opportunities, but although countries in South America, including Brazil and Argentina, recently introduced such a system, no Asian country has done so.

Guterres said he felt there is political will from the Justice Ministry and the Foreign Ministry to introduce the system because they are making a serious analysis of conditions to bring it about.

“We would very much appreciate that (if Japan becomes) the first Asian country to install the program,” Guterres said. But at the same time, the former Portuguese prime minister said the UNHCR does not want Japan to rush, nor is it necessary for Japan to accept a great number of refugees from the beginning, because the U.N. organization wants a system that really works to help asylum seekers.

People’s awareness about refugees in Japan is relatively low due in part to its geographical location, but Guterres said he was encouraged by growing interest among young people.

The Japan Times: Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007
ENDS

Rogues’ Gallery: Kansai Kensetsu Inc., a “No Foreigners” realtor in Osaka–according to its catalog

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Martin Oickle was kind enough to send me one page of a housing/apartment catalog from “Heartful Fukushima Ten”–an Osaka realtor (Fukushima 7-5-1, Fukushima-ku, Osaka-shi, KK Kansai Kensetsu Fukushima Ten, Ph 06-6455-7101).

It has a system for refusing foreigners that is so clear it’s even got a special snappy logo:

heartfulrealtynogaijin005.jpg
very kindly abbreviated to “‘gaijin’ are allowed” for your handy-dandy reference. Cute.

Here’s the original page in its entirety, from page nine of its catalog:
(click on the image to see a very detailed 300 dpi scan close up)

heartfulrealtynogaijin001.jpg

You’ll notice the very clever logos at the bottom, for “Auto Lock”, “Satellite TV”, “Students Allowed”, “Pianos Allowed”, “Children Allowed”, “Sink for Shampooing”, “Pets Allowed”, “Toilet and Bath Unit Separate”, “Shower Included”, “Flooring”, “Piped in Radio”, “Specially for Women”, “Hot Water Pot Included”, “Staff Constantly On Duty”, “Cable TV”, “Parking Allowed”, “Handicapped Access”, “Contract with Legal Entity”, “Air Conditioning”, “Elevator”, “Rentable in Portions”, “Furnished”, “Phone Included”, “Refrigerator Included”, and finally… “Foreigners Allowed”.

(click below to see whole image in your browser)
heartfulrealtynogaijin004.jpg

Thanks for making it so clear, I guess. Very Heartful. You’ll also notice that there is only one apartment of the twelve on this page which will deign to take “gaijin”:

heartfulrealtynogaijin003.jpg

And it’s nearly the cheapest and quite possibly the crappiest one on the entire page–only a one-room (1R). Now what a coincidence…

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

Now some quick counterarguments for the pedants, for what they’re worth:

Yes, there are restrictions on other things, such as pianos, but pianos and other material effects are not people. Same with pets, of course.

Yes, there are restrictions on students and children. But one does not remain a student or a child all their life, so it’s not the same as discrimination by nationality. (And for the record, I do not support “Women Only” apartments by the same logic. In any case, the default mode for apartments is accepting women, whereas the default for “gaijin” is rejection.)

What a lovely way to welcome newcomers who have enough hurdles to jump over in this society, without having the most fundamental thing they need in their life–a place to rest their head every day–denied them when they first arrive or need to move. Moreover relegate them to lousy housing regardless of income.

And the fact that this company is bold enough to make exclusionism so explicit (the realtor will no doubt counterargue that this is done by the landlord’s wishes; they’re just following orders) makes them an accessory to the discrimination in black and white.

Debito.org wishes to discourage this type of systematic discrimination in any way possible. I have put this company on the “Rogues’ Gallery of Exclusionary Establishments”.

Suggest you take your business elsewhere if you’re looking for apartments in Fukushima-ku, Osaka. Someplace less tolerant of intolerance.

Like some of these places, mentioned in a Japan Times article of November 10, 2007, blogged here.

Pertinent references from the article:
The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry launched the Web site Anshin Chintai (safe rental housing) in June to provide rental housing information and lists of real estate agents and NPOs that can support foreign apartment-seekers. So far, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Osaka and Miyagi prefectures and Kawasaki have joined the project. For example, 237 real estate agents in Tokyo are listed as supportive firms.

The site — www.anshin-chintai.jp — is available in Japanese only, but foreigners who have difficulties with the language can ask local governments to explain the information on the site to them, according to the ministry.

The Japan Property Management Association, involving about 1,000 real estate agencies, also launched the Web site Welcome Chintai — www.jpm.jp/welcome/ — in September to introduce rental properties in six languages — Chinese, English, Korean, Mongolian, Spanish and Russian.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo

Human Rights Violations at a J Gym Chain: “Young, Healthy Japanese Only” By Jim Dunlop

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Human Rights Violations at a Well-Known Japanese Gym Chain
“Young, Healthy Japanese people only, please!”

By Jim Dunlop
August 30, 2007
drinkacupofcoffee AT gmail.com

Writing this report made my think of a line from an old song, “Signs” by 5 Man Electrical Band:

And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply,
So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why.
He said you look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you’ll do,
So I took off my hat I said imagine that, huh, me working for you…

Holiday Sports Club is a chain of gyms/exercise centers all across Japan. http://www.holiday-sc.jp/

There are about 33 locations spanning Honshu and one in Hokkaido… This also happens to be the club where my wife and I are currently members). Since we joined this gym, a number of issues have arisen that I think need to be made public and brought to the attention of anyone who may be considering supporting this business. Be aware, that if you are either a foreigner, or have any sort of physical disability, you may be discriminated against, or even prevented from joining. Here’s the scoop:

Race and Age Discrimination at Holiday Sports Club:

1. Racial discrimination. First and foremost, foreigners are routinely barred from joining the gym on the grounds that they “cannot read/write their name and address in Japanese.” This is always given as a requirement to prospective members. I suppose that the “standard” argument given here is that everyone must know some Japanese in case of an emergency, or perhaps in order to understand the rules and regulations and the club. That, however is a bit of a farce, and a HUGE contradiction, considering the club actually has an English rulebook that they give to new members to read through. But yet, the double standard arises when it comes to Japanese literacy. When the club first opened, my wife and I were the first foreign members and we were able to do this so we were given almost no problems in joining, however a friend of mine was told “no, he couldn’t join” because his Japanese was insufficient. When he brought in his Japanese wife, they were all apologetic and then, of course he could join without a hitch. Most recently, in past couple weeks three young women from Iowa who are here on a teacher exchange program were barred membership because their Japanese knowledge was deemed insufficient. Also worth noting (but nothing that can be done) is that a common secondary reason for disallowing people (foreigners and Japanese alike) is having a tattoo, even though many members have them (but cover them up with bandages when in the gym).

2. Discrimination against the elderly / people with limited mobility.

This was brought to my attention today by good friends of mine. They are a mixed couple (husband is Japanese and wife is American). They are both seniors and the American wife has lived in Japan for over 30 years. Her husband was born here and is a lifelong resident of the city. He still remembers the war and American bombing raids over the city during WWII when he was a child in elementary school. (But yet, he married an American when he got older. Interesting stuff! That just goes to show you how love can overcome even war, hatred and racism). As my friends are older, Takao (the Japanese husband) has troubles walking so he walks with a cane. He has been prohibited from entering Holiday Sports Club with his cane. The official reason given: the cane could be used as a weapon! Another elderly woman who needs a cane to walk (following an operation) has similarly been disallowed, and therefore been unable to join the gym for this reason. Furthermore, because Takao is forced to leave his cane in the car when he attends the gym, (thus leaning on his wife for support) both Takao and his wife have requested that several parking spaces near the entrance be marked as “handicapped” with those with limited mobility. This request has been effectively turned down.

The facility, incidentally also is NOT wheelchair accessible or open to those with impaired mobility. It should go without saying that it’s not only young, healthy people who go to gyms. Many people, regardless of age and physical ability attend for health reasons. First and foremost, gyms should be open and welcoming to such individuals, many of whom use gyms as part of physiotherapy or rehabilitation programs. This form of discrimination is both shocking and contemptible.

I question, whether it is even legal for them to prohibit someone from using a cane for SECURITY reasons! I asked my friends several times if there could have been some misunderstanding with what the gym staff told them… But they assured me, “Oh no. They were very clear as to the reason why canes are not allowed in.” Remember, we are talking about a Japanese man here, not a foreigner. There was no language barrier involved.

It really upsets me that our local gym (which is so close to my house) have chosen to be so difficult and unwelcoming to certain groups of people. The staff are often very friendly! In fact, my wife and I have gone out with some of them on a few occasions. But they are forced to enforce this company’s strange “rules” that really put many people off, now including myself.

Please give this report some consideration when you are shopping around for a gym to work out in. Please also let your friends know, whether they be Japanese or not, that Holiday Sports Club seems to only be interested in people who fall into a narrow view of what is acceptable. You must be young, Japanese, free from any body modifications, (which includes you ladies too, by the way. All jewelry, including earrings MUST be removed (without exception) prior to entering the pool area), and anyone who does not “fit in” will be denied entry or declined membership.

As the saying goes, “caveat emptor” — buyer beware.

Jim Dunlop
August 30, 2007
ENDS

PS: If someone wants to call my local gym and check the information out for themselves, please contact me directly (drinkacupofcoffee AT gmail.com) and I can pass along the details (like a local phone number). If they wish to contact the company (in general) then all they need to do is go to the website link I provided above in the article. JD

McGowan Case: Steve wins case on appeal at Osaka High Court

Posted on by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Good news at last. Comment follows at bottom:

ARTICLE BEGINS
==========================

African-American wins Y350,000 in damages for being denied entry into Osaka shop
Japan Today, Wednesday, October 18, 2006 at 19:41 EDT
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/387820/all
Courtesy Kyodo News

OSAKA — The Osaka High Court ordered an Osaka optical shop owner to pay 350,000 yen in damages to an African-American living in Kyoto Prefecture for denying him entry to the shop in 2004, altering a lower court ruling in January which rejected the plaintiff’s damages claim.

Presiding Judge Sota Tanaka recognized the owner told Steve McGowan, 42, a designer living in the town of Seika, to go away when he was in front of the shop, and acknowledged damages for McGowan’s emotional pain, saying the entry denial “is a one-sided and outrageous act beyond common sense.”

However, the remark “is not enough to be recognized as racially discriminatory,” he said. McGowan had demanded 5.5 million yen.

According to the ruling, the owner told McGowan to go away to the other side of the road in a strong language several times when he was about to enter the shop with an acquaintance in September 2004.

The plaintiff had claimed the owner said, “Go away. I hate black people,” but the ruling dismissed the claim, as the possibility that he misheard the owner cannot be eliminated.
A plaintiff attorney said, “It’s unreasonable that discrimination was not recognized, but the court ordered a relatively large amount of damages payment for just demanding the plaintiff leave the shop. It seems that the court shows some understanding.”
==========================
ARTICLE ENDS

COMMENT:
I am very happy Steve McGowan appealed his case, as it shows just how ludicrous the previous District Court ruling was last January.

Full information on the case at
https://www.debito.org/mcgowanhanketsu.html

The previous decision disqualified McGowan and his wife as credible witnesses to any discrimination, by ruling:

1) McGowan’s testimony inadmissible, as he apparently does not understand enough Japanese to reliably prove that the store-owner used discriminatory language toward him.

2) McGowan’s wife’s testimony as negatively admissable. In her follow up investigation, McGowan’s wife didn’t confirm whether the store-owner had excluded McGowan because he is black (“kokujin”); she apparently asked him if it was because her husband is *foreign*.

Put another way: A guy gets struck by a motor vehicle. The pedestrian takes him to court, claiming that getting hit by a car hurt him. The judge says, “You weren’t in fact hit by a car. It was a truck. Compensation denied.”

This was a huge step backward. As I argued in a Japan Times column (Feb 7, 2006, see https://www.debito.org/mcgowanhanketsu.html#japantimesfeb7), the McGowan decision thus established the following litmus tests for successfully claiming racial discrimination. You must:

* Avoid being a foreigner.

* Avoid being a non-native speaker of Japanese.

* Have a native-speaker witness with you at all times.

* Record on tape or video every public interaction you have 24 hours a day.

* Hope your defendant admits he dislikes people for their race.

Actually, scratch the last one. The eyeglass shop owner did admit a distaste for black people, yet the judge still let him off.

Now this High Court reversal sets things back on kilter, although it pays McGowan a pittance (35 man yen will not even cover his legal fees!) and will not acknowledge the existence of racial discrimination.

That’s a shame. But it’s better than before, and far better than if he did not appeal. Gotta pray for the small favors.

Thanks to Steve for keeping up the fight! Arudou Debito in Seattle, USA