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Hi Blog.  Karen Hill Anton, a memoirist, writer, and longtime columnist and commentator on Japan I respect a great deal (and have met in person, which is why I will write about her by her first name), recently wrote something on her Substack that I take great issue with.

The problems I have with the essay I’ll state at the outset:

It’s not only poorly researched.  It misrepresents history, distorts the science, and even winds up disrespecting the activists who invested so much of their lives into this issue.  In sum, it’s a shock, and threatens to overwrite a history I’ve tried very hard to catalog and keep alive from the natural revisionism of time. And that’s why I’ll take a break from my constant grading and preparing for classes to critique it.

First, let’s establish some credibility.  I write as:

— Debito Arudou, Ph.D., Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, 2014. My doctoral dissertation became the monograph of Embedded Racism:  Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination (Lexington Books, 2015, 2nd Ed. 2022); my other monographs include “Japanese Only”:  The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination (Tokyo:  Akashi Shoten, Inc: English and Japanese 2004, updated 2006 and 2013).  I have also maintained Debito.org, this archive of human rights issues in Japan, since 1995, meaning more than thirty years of research and historical record, including 15 years of fieldwork cataloging “Japanese Only” signs and rules on businesses nationwide in Japan.  My point is that I speak with some accredited authority on this topic beyond just my personal experience.

I will put Karen’s article in boldface, then intersperse my comments:

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What Racism Is — and Isn’t — in Japan
Reflections from fifty years as a “visible minority” — and why I don’t call it racism
KAREN HILL ANTON
NOV 12, 2025

Courtesy https://karenhillanton.substack.com/p/what-racism-is-and-isnt-in-japan/

I’ve long read and heard about how the Japanese discriminate against people who look different from them, especially “visible minorities”.

DEBITO:  I’m not sure if she’s read my books above on Visible Minorities.  She has not defined her term or offered any reflection on the science behind it.  If you as a serious author going to have a serious conversation about a topic this complicated, you must demonstrate you have done the background research and are qualified to talk about it.  “Long read and heard” aren’t real qualifications.

As I am clearly a visible minority, here are some of my reflections and experiences during the years I’ve lived in Japan, 1975 to the present.

DEBITO:  Already, this is starting off as an essay grounded in Karen’s reflections based upon her personal experience.  I see this as part of Karen’s general methodology as a memoirist:  Her data set is her experience.  That’s fine within the scope of a personal memoir.  The problem with grounding your social science this way is that it leads a blind spot common in people, especially NJ Residents who willfully choose to ignore the evidence of what happens to other NJ, who tend to dismiss claims and cases as, “But it’s never happened to me.”  Bear that in mind as we look at the methods of gathering evidence for the rest of this essay:

The majority of the time I’ve lived here has been in a village, or small town. I imagine the experience of foreigners who live in the great metropolis Tokyo, for example, might be significantly different from my own.

In the places I’ve called home in Japan, if you follow the rules for putting out your garbage, and participate in community obligations like cutting roadside weeds, it could be said your outward appearance causes no particular problems.

DEBITO:  “It could be said.”  That’s an interesting way to phrase it.  But it could also be said that there are systemic barriers (such as “Japanese Only” signs and establishments, explicitly exclusionary government policies, even bullying Neighborhood Associations) to Visible Minorities being harassed and excluded no matter how much effort they put into community effort and assimilation into Japanese society.  Plenty of journalistic and government surveys evidence the effects of this, which is why we need more science behind this facile generalization.

Still, it would be unusual, and highly unlikely, if I’d never had a negative experience regarding my observable physical characteristics.

Like the time a shopkeeper came out from behind the counter as I was about to pay, caught up a bunch of my hair, which was in dreadlocks, in her hands and, while holding it, looked at the woman I was with, and, addressing her, said: “Is this real?”

The woman I’d gone to the store with, a fellow volleyball mom (we’d just dropped off a carload of junior high girls at a local tournament), duly mortified, was completely speechless. After all, what could she have answered?

“I too am curious. Why don’t we ask the person to whom the hair belongs?”

I took the shopkeeper’s hand by the wrist, removed it from my hair and said in a voice as cold as Arctic ice: “It’s real. Don’t touch it.”

I wasn’t sure if this woman had lost her mind or just her manners. Although I am not capricious in attributing bad intentions to anyone, I will not tolerate poor behavior. Talk about being impolite, I call that kind of behavior rude and offensive. I’d also call that woman ignorant, insensitive, and inconsiderate. No matter how different I may look, I am not an inanimate object.

I would not, however, call this woman a “racist.” That’s the term an American man I know used when I told hm this story. No, it wasn’t a “racist” act. It was a stupid one.

DEBITO:  Okay, so this sort of targeting has happened to Karen, and she acknowledges it.  But she conclusively dismisses it as based upon stupidity rather than the process of racism.  And then shoehorned in that the racist claim is somehow grounded in a foreign context (“an American man”).  The underlying sentiment, as you will see as we read on, is “It’s not as bad as racism in America,” as if that is some yardstick.  However, modern scholars of racism do not see it as a matter of degree, or else you get into a “discrimination Olympics”, and the worst countries get held up to excuse the smaller permutations of racism elsewhere with “whataboutism“.  Even the most ancient scholars of modern racism (such as W.E.B. DuBois, Souls of Black Folk, 1905) see it not as a matter of definition (which is harder to nail down), but rather a process.

In other words, don’t get bogged down on what race and racism is.  Rather, focus on what racism does.  As such, modern scholars of racism talk about the process of “differentiation, othering, and subordination” (cf. Miles, Racism after ‘Race Relations‘, 1995).  And that was in process with Karen’s hair example.  It just didn’t reach the subordination stage because this stupid person apparently didn’t have the power to refuse Karen service.  If she had, I assume we’d have the full range of motion that might even qualify under Karen’s worldview.  Maybe Japan’s notorious “hair police” in schools would qualify.

Any foreign child can go to any public school anywhere in Japan. If they could not, if they were prevented from attending because of their skin color, and because they were deemed an “inferior race” — I’d call that racism.

DEBITO:  Good.  Now we know what you would call racism.  Now do the research:  School exclusions based upon race, ethnicity, and nationality happen in Japan.  That’s why we have so many ethnic schools for children with international roots.  So kids excluded and bullied out of Japanese schools can still get an education.

If it required armed officers of the law to ensure these children could go to school unmolested, as was once the situation in the country of my birth — the United States of America — they would clearly be victims of racism. It’s almost hard to believe now that there was a time when American children were harassed, threatened, intimidated, physically and verbally abused, simply trying to go to school.

DEBITO:  America as the international racism yardstick again.  Yes, that happened in America, and it’s a reflection of racist policies.  But that’s happened in Japan too.  How about the Japanese police raiding and shutting down Korean Schools in 1948?  It’s from the same time period of the incident mentioned above (1957).  You cite that, I’ll cite this.  And it was the opposite course — the government itself was harassing, threatening, intimidating, and abusing these kids simply trying to go to school.

Racism systematically and effectively shuts out and excludes persons or groups from the social, educational, and economic mainstream.

When this system is forcibly maintained by tradition, and institutionalized by law, it is oppression.

DEBITO:  But it’s still the process of “differentiation, othering, and subordination”.  And it is institutionalized by law.  The very Fundamental Law on Education (Kyouiku Kihon Hou) in Japan doesn’t guarantee access to education to foreigners — only to citizens — and that has been cited to systematically and effectively shut out and exclude NJ from getting a basic education in Japanese schools.  That’s why there is an uneducated Brazilian underclass that fell through the cracks (as seen in Hamamatsu, a 42-minute train ride from Karen’s house).  Likewise, how about the Supreme Court ruling in 2014 that NJ Residents systemically and systematically don’t qualify for the welfare programs they paid their taxes into?

I could go on.  But I shouldn’t have to.  It’s been cataloged on Debito.org for 30 years now, there for people who are willing to do the research beyond one’s own personal experiences.

All this, under modern definitions of racism that go beyond seeing American racism and Western “race relations”, still qualifies as racism, not merely “oppression”.  That’s why people should do some scholarship on the complicated topic before speaking aloud and workshopping ill-defined ideas.

PHOTO CAPTION:  From left: Lila 璃羅 Mario 眞理雄 Nanao 奈々緒 Mie 美枝
My four children, born and raised in rural Japan, never had a foreign friend, playmate, or classmate when they were growing up here. They were always the only foreign children in their schools and our neighborhood. (Nanao, the eldest, was born in Denmark.)

This did not present any significant problems. Although it seems young children desire nothing more than to be like their friends — and have no desire to stand out, by looks, language, or anything else.

One day my second daughter, Mie, then in fourth grade, came home in tears, saying a boy in her class had said something mean to her regarding her [brown] skin color. I do not remember what he said, but recall it was offensive enough for my husband to report it to the principal.

The very following day, the boy’s mother, with her son in tow, (I noted he was dressed in a white collared shirt) came to our door. Bowing deeply in apology (and she was practically in tears), she offered me a flower bouquet, and a gift. I, keenly aware she was upset, bowed in return, as I accepted her apology, along with her gift of small cakes.

No ill feelings. As far as I was concerned, the matter was finished. There was no victim here. I thought of it as a lesson. Our daughter learned we would not let any act of bullying or offensive behavior go unaddressed. The boy would learn how he brought distress and embarrassment to his family and his school. As well as shame, a powerful deterrent to poor behavior in Japanese society.

DEBITO:  I am pleased that all was resolved so well, with the school admin and the kids’ parents being so cooperative, and that scars from the experience did not seem to linger in Karen’s children.  Bravo.  But this experience is hardly universal, and I can cite plenty of other cases where the parents of Visible Minorities weren’t so lucky in their experiences either administratively or interpersonally.  Some have even resulted in lawsuits with damages awarded.

Again, I see this is the blind spot of the memoirist.  If it didn’t happen in their experience, it doesn’t make the memoir.  But plenty of evidence attests that this methodology discounts or dismisses different experiences.

Now get a load of the conclusion to this essay:

There was an incident a some years ago in Japan when racism was charged in a civil suit against a shopkeeper who did not want a Brazilian woman in his jewelry store. The woman, who filed a discrimination lawsuit, and won — as well she should have — was described by a foreign journalist as “the Rosa Parks of Japan.”

Rosa Parks? Surely not the same Mrs. Rosa Parks, revered by Americans and people of conscience worldwide, for her courage and principled stance in literally sitting down while standing up to injustice. She succeeded in galvanizing a nation in challenging hundreds of years of oppression and institutionalized racism, protected by law, in the most powerful country on earth. That Rosa Parks? I don’t think so.  ENDS

DEBITO:  And that’s where my pencil dropped.  This is where the essay ends?  With the “Straw-Man Argument” that the plaintiff in this case, Ana Bortz, is not Rosa Parks?  Therefore what happened to Bortz is not racism?

This is why the tone in this critique is annoyed, not cajoling.  It’s willful ignorance and misrepresentation of the historical record during and after.  As seen in many long-term commentators (such as Daniel Kahl and others) who simply refuse to do the research.

I knew Ana Bortz.  I worked with her for years.  Catalogued her case on Debito.org.

Bortz never compared herself to Parks.

So why cite this hack journalist’s lazy sloganeering as a means to dismiss her case as basically incomparable to an American example?  A comparison nobody really made is somehow cited as proof that Bortz’s case is not racism… enough?

That’s manifestly incorrect.  Even Bortz’s judge expressly ruled that it was “racial discrimination” under the UN CERD.  How disrespectful to Ana Bortz’s work!

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

When we met, Karen and I talked about this issue in some detail, and there were no altercations or dismissive language between us.

But if a respected writer is going to make claims in writing as grand as these to a broader audience, do the research.  It’s not hard.  Decades of work and publications are but a Google search away.

If you don’t, you wind up paving over history with ahistorical revisionism that we’re already seeing on Karen’s Substack comments section.  This is how ignorance proliferates.

Karen has seen all this happen in real time to other people, but ignores it because it doesn’t fit into her memoir.  That’s just not good social science.

Last word:  This was a disappointing tossed-off essay from someone who should write better.  And that’s why I’m responding:  I’m not going to let an influential commentator on Japan overwrite history just because it doesn’t fit her personal narrative on Japan.

Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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UPDATE NOV 21, 2025:  I responded to Karen.  I posted the conclusion to this essay on Karen’s Substack comments section to this article, with a link back to this page.  Screenshot as evidence:

(link to this blog entry at the bottom cut off)

Karen kindly responded, saying that those who disagree with her are *free to”:

(This screen capture is from an email notification from Substack.)

Less than a day later, my post and her response were deleted from Karen’s Substack.

I guess we’re “free to” disagree as long as it doesn’t intrude into Karen’s Substack narrative.  

Even if she had left it up, note that her argument that she “didn’t mean to demean or denigrate Ana Bortz” could apply to anyone who wrongs anyone.  Including those who touch her hair.  But again, it’s easier to dismiss potential racists as merely “stupid” (and compare it to racism in America) than to challenge a system that defends and encourages them.  It’s easier to ignore and deny history than to research it.

My takeaway from this event is that willful omission is the MO behind this world view.  A deliberate short-sightedness.  No mention again in Karen’s response of the Otaru Onsens Case or anything any other case I mentioned beyond Ana Bortz.  To Karen, as long as you put in the effort to contribute to your community, anything bad that happens is I guess your fault because you didn’t put in enough effort somehow.  No amount of clear-cut examples to the contrary shall be factored in.  They’ll even be deleted.

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

Karen is welcome to her worldview, of course.  But when it becomes a means to ignore (or, in this case, outright delete) history, this isn’t just poor social science.  This is dangerous denialism.  And it deserves to be called out.  Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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