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

• January 30, 2024 at 4:23 pm

  David Markle says:

  When our daughter was being bullied in school on account of her non-Japanese features, I brought this up with several of her Japanese teachers and the principal and got nothing but blank looks. One Japanese teacher even stated that she thought there was none of this sort of thing in Japan because she personally had never experienced it. Walk a mile in my shoes was all I could say. Good luck getting the average Japanese to even consider that racial profiling exists in their country. Thats just something that other less superior races have to deal with as far as they are concerned.

  Reply
• February 6, 2024 at 2:21 pm

  JDG says:

  On a related note…
  Volunteer NJ ‘Firemen’ not able to assist fully in earthquake recovery work due to the fact the ‘authority’ is required to fulfill their role during emergencies. Unfortunately, NJ are denied ‘authority’ to protect the racial-superiority myth narrative (plus, an emergency is a good opportunity for the state to oppress NJ. Ishihara knew this😉).
  In fact, none of this is even spelled out in black & white. Those responsible for commanding Fire Services are just assuming it ‘must be so’ because ‘gaijin’.
  In an emergency, I’d rather rely on common sense than racism.

  https://japantoday.com/category/national/feature-foreign-firefighters-stifled-by-japan-gov't-bureaucratic-smoke-screen

  Reply
• February 10, 2024 at 3:30 am

  JDG says:

  ‘Asked whether they want a higher percentage of foreign nationals in their community, 54.5% said they do not, with many citing concerns about increased friction or deterioration of the social order.’

  ‘Deterioration of social order’= any change whatsoever to what happens outside their front door.
  NEWSFLASH! When there aren’t any young people working and paying taxes, what do they think is going to happen to ‘social order’.
  Just goes to show, you can take the polity out of a fascist police state, but you can’t take the fascist police state out of the polity.
  Again, it’s the obsession with controlling imagined ‘social order’, as if it were possible.
  If only there were some way of doing apartheid…
  https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/02/10/japan/society/foreign-workers-limited-exchanges/

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  • February 18, 2024 at 8:51 pm

    JDG says:

    Here’s an example of that consensual hallucination called ‘social order’ being destabilized by exactly the forces that cry loudest for its protection;
    https://japantoday.com/category/national/Japan's-'naked-men'-festival-succumbs-to-aging-population

    Maybe robots* and AI* can save their festival?🙄

    *made in Japan.

    Reply
• February 21, 2024 at 2:08 pm

  JDG says:

  UK right winger published in UK right wing rag completely ignored that Germany just overtook Japan to become world’s third largest economy due to lack of immigration = better society. And Japanese manufacturing etc.
  Guess he doesn’t know about GDP rankings, hollowing out etc. Right wingers never the sharpest tools in the box.
  Still, the Japanese will love having their own narratives parroted back at them uncritically.
  https://japantoday.com/category/quote-of-the-day/The-Japanese-look-at-the-West-and-see-that-mass-immigration-is-hardly-helping-ailing-economies-like-Britain-France-and-Germany-Japan's-national-cohesion-also-makes-for-a-very-liveable-and-safe-country-unlike-Germany-or-the-UK

  Reply
  • February 28, 2024 at 7:34 am

    Niklas says:

    I was in Berlin last week and felt incredibely save. Even walking through the red light district at night, I encountered no problems. Nobody bothered me, or tried to touch me. In Japan on the other hand, I got swarmed and sometimes touched by touts a few times (and no, not only by Nigerians or other „foreigners“, a lot of those touts were Japanese).

    I wrote it a few times here, but the „Japan is save“ meme is overstated and annoying. The vast majority of European countries are just as save as Japan, or even saver. And the ones who aren‘t so save are actually mostly right wing ones, like Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, etc.

    Let‘s also not forget that in Germany, the police can only arrest and hold you for 24 hours, after that a judge has to decide if your crime (or if you’re a flight risk) warrants an extension. Why does no one who talks about „save Japan“ ever mention that the police in Japan can make you „disappear“ for nothing for 23 days? Very „save“ indeed (if you‘re into dictatorships).

    Reply
• February 22, 2024 at 8:13 am

  TJJ says:

  Osaka local governance has long held a policy of not stopping people on the street because they look like a foreigner. I lived there for 25 or so years and was never stopped. Kobe cops will stop you though.

  Reply
• April 7, 2024 at 8:45 pm

  JK says:

  In January, a trio of foreign-born Japanese residents filed suit in the Tokyo District Court against the Japanese state plus the Tokyo Metropolitan and Aichi Prefectural governments for what they claim is frequent police questioning based solely on their ethnicities, or racial profiling. So what can you do if police officers stop you on the street for questioning in Japan?

  The Mainichi asked Moe Miyashita, an attorney on the plaintiffs’ legal team who has done extensive work on the police questioning and racial profiling issue.

  Dr. Debito, would you care to comment on this article as well as the book “Racial Profiling”?:

  What can foreign residents do if stopped for questioning by Japanese police?

  レイシャル・プロファイリング

  Reply
  • April 30, 2024 at 1:57 am

    JK says:

    On second thought, you might want to take a look at this bombshell first:

    ‘We were told to target foreigners’: Ex-officer on systematic racial profiling by Japan police

    TOKYO — Police in a west Japan prefecture engaged in persistent and systematic racial profiling ordered by senior officers, targeting foreigners for questioning, ID checks and searches, a former inspector with the force revealed to The Mainichi in a recent interview.

    “In the time I was in the local policing section, we were told to target foreigners for questioning and check their foreign resident registration cards. There was also a ‘cracking down on foreigners’ month when we were ordered to put extra effort into checking cards, but also searching foreigners for drugs, knives or anything else illegal,” Taro Yamada (a pseudonym) told The Mainichi. Yamada, who joined the police in the 2000s and served for over 10 years, added that the order had come from the criminal investigation division, with a particular emphasis on catching visa violators.

    He continued that during the crackdown month, officers were given forms to record the personal details — resident card number, birthday, country of origin, “everything” — of each foreigner they stopped to question. These forms were then submitted to not just the local policing division, but also the criminal investigation and public security divisions.

    “After the month-long crackdown, I saw that there had been more visa overstayers caught, and I thought we’d had a positive effect,” Yamada said. “But later, I came to think that orders really emphasizing that we had to ‘crack down on foreigners’ — in other words judging people by their appearance alone — were a human rights violation.”

    According to Yamada, there was no focus on questioning particular ethnicities when he was a patrol officer, but he did encounter deep biases against residents with darker skin.

    “Officers around me including my immediate superior often said things like, ‘People with Black roots, Southeast Asians and so on study ways to kill people. So use your service revolver if you have to! You have no idea what they’re going to do.'” Similarly, it was said within the force that officers “‘have to be careful patrolling'” in an area with many Korean residents “‘because there’s no telling what they’ll do.'” Yamada added that officers tossed around these comments casually during work and on break, and often referred to foreigners broadly as “aitsura” and “yatsura” — derogatory words roughly translatable as “those people.”

    Furthermore, when he was in a desk position, his department passed on a request from the prefectural police chief’s office “directing officers to conduct an arrest training exercise simulating a Brazilian person attacking you with a crowbar.” This was issued with the justification that “there are many Brazilians in this area.”

    Yamada told The Mainichi that during his time as an officer and still today, there is a strong assumption in the police that foreigners are likely to be criminals.

    “And I think that when police think of a ‘foreigner,’ they’re not picturing someone (of European descent), but a person with darker skin, with Black or Southeast Asian roots and so on. I thought that way. Officers assume (light-skinned people) are tourists or have a Japanese partner. But with people with dark skin, they tend to assume they’re visa overstayers.”

    Asked if, as a young officer, he had taken biases like these uncritically, Yamada replied, “I had no experience as an adult outside the police, so I thought whatever my superior officer said was unquestionable. I just absorbed it without thinking.” He added that he was not alone, and that officers who mimicked their superiors’ harsher views were praised.

    In April 2022, the National Police Agency (NPA) began examining complaints, inquiries, and other consultations with police forces across the country regarding alleged racial profiling. In November 2022, the NPA announced that it had found six cases of police officers questioning people inappropriately or without cause based on national and racial stereotypes in 2021.

    Referencing this, Yamada said, “First of all, the police need to admit that they have a racial profiling problem. Racial profiling is a social issue that only the police can solve, so I’d like to see police officers given a thorough education on the subject. Local police officers who do the questioning don’t know about this as a problem. They need training so that it will occur to them (that targeting foreigners for questioning) ‘might be a human rights violation.’ And that needs to happen on an organizational level.”

    Yamada continued, “I assume there are a lot of racial profiling victims out there who feel there’s nothing they can do every time they get questioned and searched. But every police headquarters has a consultation desk, and you can go there and tell them, ‘I’ve been racially profiled, at this time on this date.’ Police have to record every consultation, and try to solve the problems brought to them. If more and more racial profiling complaints are filed, I think that the police won’t be able to ignore it and will be forced to deal with the problem. It’s possible to get the number (of complaints) up to that level, though it will take time and energy.”

    Furthermore, “When you’re approached by police, you can also ask the officers directly, ‘Am I suspicious somehow?’ And if they reply, ‘Well, your hairstyle,’ or ‘You’re a foreigner, aren’t you?’ that’s a violation. Recording that, either on the spot with a voice recorder or later by taking note of the date and time and what the police said to you, is a measure you can take (to provide evidence).”

    About his views of the police after leaving the force, Yamada told The Mainichi, “The police are the last resort of those in trouble, and they are there to defend residents. After I left, I realized how painful it must have been for people to be discriminated against by the very force that they needed to protect them. It was tremendously sad, and I was probably a part of that discrimination.

    “I want to raise my voice for the very reason that I came from the police system. I want the police to change.”

    (By Robert Sakai-Irvine and Jun Ida, The Mainichi staff writers)

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• April 21, 2024 at 9:14 pm

  JK says:

  Additional reporting on this story courtesy of NNN and ANNnewsCH:

  見た目に“偏見”　人種などで職務質問「レイシャル・プロファイリング」　違法訴え国などを提訴

  “人種で職務質問は違憲”訴える　国側は争う姿勢【報道ステーション】(2024年4月15日)

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