mytest
Hi Blog. I put out Debito.org Newsletters once a month. After sending, I archive them here, and below, Debito.org Readers have been adding recent issues and articles that concern them regardless of the content of the post over the past several years. It’s been a good way to allow Readers to be heard and engaged.
I still put out Debito.org Newsletters, but since I’m only posting once a month, there’s only one article to repost (my SNA column), and I have it here as Debito.org post anyway. So it’d only be a repeat if I dedicated another post to the Newsletter.
But I don’t want to deprive Readers of a forum, so let me create this “Issues of Concern” section (still categorized under “Newsletters”) and let it be a free space for articles and comments germane to the mission of Debito.org. Have at it. And thanks as always for reading and contributing to Debito.org. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
21 comments on “DEBITO.ORG READERS’ ISSUES OF CONCERN, DECEMBER 2024”
I’d like to launch the new section with this particular Issue of Concern:
Lacking support, asylum seekers in Japan end up living on streets / 妊婦の食べ物はゴミ箱から 苦しむ日本の難民申請者 支援なく路上に (Japanese language paywall version)
From the article:
40+ years of the GoJ failing to live up to its commitments?: Check!
Ah, no problem — Sarah and Rashid (i.e. the two asylum seekers whose plight is detailed in the above articles) received this “protection allowance”, right?
Nope!:
40+ years of the GoJ taking a distinctly hands-off approach to the welfare of refugee applicants? Check!
OK, Sarah and Rashid got the raw end of the deal, but hey, at least there’s plenty of yen in the Foreign Ministry’s “protection allowance” budget for other applicants, right?
Nope!:
LOL, it’s obvious that GoJ (and specifically, the Foreign Ministry) places scant value on the livelihood of refugee applicants, so the “protection allowance” budget gets cut; why is that so hard to explain?
Well, hey, at least the GoJ recognizes that there are legit reasons (e.g. war in the Middle East and Ukraine) as to why the number refugee applicants has increased (per the article, 3.6 times from 2022 to 2023, and about 7.4 times compared to 2011), right?
Nope!:
12+ years of the GoJ tilling at windmills? Check!
This ““We cannot provide support,” an official told Rashid, without giving a reason.”
Ah, the old “Japan Org takes 6 months to say no” phenomenon. Well, the cat’s out the bag on that one from the CIA guidebook to Hofstede, from shoe companies to record companies (Kraftwerk, no less)- they just can’t be assed dealing with Japan’s tendency to procrastination with an almost certain risk avoiding “no” because although 9 people in the room said yes, that grumpy oyaji in the corner looks a bit sulky because his homegrown product what his cousin introduced in the 70s isn’t getting the respect he feels it deserves.
So its a “no” to avoid alienating him.
This is a tangent obviously, but it has visible economic repercussions on the Japan because the attitude is now well known outside Japan-which is seen as “difficult” – thus, “Japan passing” for, err. “Other Asian Markets”.
This is just yet another example of their hopeless, helpless bureaucracy, and why no one should bother trying to achieve anything at all here.
And also they actually now seem strapped for cash.
Good job Denmark! Another European country realises that Japan‘s justice system can‘t be trusted.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/17/denmark-refuses-to-extradite-whaling-activist-paul-watson-to-japan-says-lawyer
From the article:
TL;DR: Japan is a democratic country guided by the rule of law, except when it is forced to put its yen where its mouth is!
And to think that: if the GoJ hadn’t been so petty on the 5-month deal, they could have gotten their gaijin pound of flesh and put on another spectacle in front of J-media a la Carlos Ghosn!
Ah yes the good old „Japan is a democratic country guided by law“ quote, which only gets used by foreign dignitaries when Japan does something which makes it look like China, ie. taking away a tshirt with s certain message from a detainee. I‘m not surprised he used that quote since Japan is an ally of „the West“, but in my opinion it‘s pretty clear what he really thinks about Japan‘s justice system. I mean, the lengthy detainment is literally one of the major critiques of Japan‘s legal system and has been critiqued by the UN and various NGOs for decades. I‘m not at all surprised that Japan failed to assure that the 5 months would be deducted. Their whole system is build around letting people rot in jail until they confess.
And you‘re right of course, the whole thing is just a spectacle and has nothing to do with justice, but politics. Let‘s not forget that the whole reason why Japan is openly whaling again is because Abe didn‘t want that dirty gaijin from the International Whaling Commission tell the Japanese where they can and can‘t whale, so he just decided to leave it. They just wanted to parade him around like Ghosn to show that Japan is still a „powerhouse“. I guess since the economy is so bad and the yen so weak, the only thing left is to raise the prices for tourists and to trump over all the evil gaijin who oppose the Japanese tradition of whaling. Too bad most foreign countries are nowadays aware of Japan‘s almost infinite detention period.
“TL;DR: Japan is a democratic country guided by the rule of law, except when it is forced to put its yen where its mouth is!”
As I just concluded on another thread, Japan is actually quite ketchi and strapped for cash these days.
Not much of a “powerhouse” then.
Tangent but someone in the UK was complaining about UK houses’ small size and standards of living, and interestingly they said,
“UK is way behind Europe. It is more like Japan”
So Japan is now a byword for “struggling isolationist fading power, with a messed up economy and small, crappy housing”. Oh, dear. So much for all that anime.
Even I was surprised this perception is gaining traction and entering the vernacular, as it were, overseas.
Does it come in my size, and where can I order one??:
Police confiscate ‘I refuse to be interrogated’ T-shirt of suspect「取調べ拒否」Tシャツは危険物? 大阪府警が取り上げ、弁護人抗議
Right Against Interrogation Society
2024 Rewind: Can Japan transform into a legitimate immigrant nation?
Spoiler alert: Nope!
From the article:
Also, going back to 2023 is this: 2023 Rewind: Is Japan ready to accept foreigners as part of its society?
Another spoiler alert: Nope!
From the article:
Oh, how nice: for 2024, the Japan Private Railway Association now has a dedicated section for ranking annoying foreign tourist behaviors!:
2024年度 駅と電車内の迷惑行為ランキング ～訪日外国人旅行者のマナーについても調査を実施～
Here’s a summary courtesy of Microsoft 365 Copilot:
##########################################################
Regarding the Misbehavior of Inbound Tourists (Foreign Visitors to Japan)
Overall Results (up to 2 responses allowed):
1. Noisy conversations and boisterous behavior – 51.8%
2. Handling and placement of luggage (e.g., suitcases, backpacks) – 37.1%
3. Blocking pathways or stopping in stations, not paying attention to traffic flow – 24.8%
4. Poor boarding and alighting manners (not lining up, not waiting for passengers to disembark) – 16.5%
5. Other – 12.1%
6. Talking on the phone inside the train – 10.3%
7. Improper seating (not moving over, stretching legs) – 9.6%
8. Leaving trash or bottles behind – 5.9%
9. Poor manners in priority seating areas – 4.4%
10. Sitting on the train floor – 4.2%
11. Eating and drinking inside the train – 3.3%
With the increase in inbound tourism, a survey was conducted this year to investigate the misbehavior of foreign visitors on trains. Out of 5,314 respondents, 3,344 (62.9%) reported experiencing some form of misbehavior.
The most common complaint was “noisy conversations and boisterous behavior,” noted by 51.8% of respondents. Other significant issues included the handling and placement of luggage and blocking pathways in stations, which are often seen among tourists unfamiliar with Japanese train etiquette.
##########################################################
Unsurprisingly, gaijin tourists aren’t held to same standards of etiquette as wajin:
‘Coughing, sneezing’ chosen as most annoying behavior on trains for 1st time: Japan survey / 「せき、くしゃみ」が初の1位 電車や駅での迷惑行為 コロナ影響か
From the article:
#1 “Boisterous” -adjective
noisy, energetic, and cheerful. Similar:
lively active animated exuberant spirited
Hmmm. A few years back Dr. Debito wrote about the “tyranny of “Genki” so its quite rich that now how the obviously negatron, killjoy and most ungenki Japanese people who made these complaints are.
I get the “noisy” bit, I mean Japanese are never noisy after a few drinks,right? And not a few of them go out drinking most nights as its part of the corporate entertaining culture. (My secretary commented to me,”You’re going to the gym again tonight? Most Japanese would rather tend to go drinking”).
Complaining about “energetic” and “cheerful” behavior? I think that says more about the lethargic and gloomy nature of the Japanese these days rather than foreign tourists.
I have too many anecdotes to mention about j-killjoys jumping in and pouring cold water on any spontaneous excitement about Japan’s cultural treasures (which are rapidly becoming NOT to include the people themselves), from Hachiman Jinja (“You cannot gather here” “OK, where can we?” “No answer”) to Yasukuni (well, that one almost shouts out for po-faced facial roleplaying as an “act of contrition/taking on the “correct understanding” of Japan’s history in WW2)” as opposed to my fanboy outburst, “Wow, its a Zero fighter!” upon which I was shushed and hushed into self’abasement)
to even musical and visual art events- apparently including a personal message on a screen to friends “violated a taboo” and angered the organizer, etc etc etc.
Ah, Japan. It makes actors of us all. Faking it a day at a time while trying to internally hold onto our genuine enthusiasm for the things that drew us here in the first place.
What’s “kill-joy” in Japanese? I need a one-worder for on the spot jibes/negative Karma refunding to brand said kiljoy before walking away.
Any suggestions? I am not sure “喜びを殺す” works. Need something to personally shame the person so they get a life lesson (maybe) from the interactions, along the lines of “cancel-chan” カンセルちゃん or 弱虫 (sissy), the former has actually motivated a few people to prove me wrong and turn up to show they are not a “Cancel Chan”.
Given the following…
Osaka Expo 2025 ticket sales falling short; measures under review / 大阪・関西万博、入場券販売が低迷 前売り目標の半分にとどまる
2024 Rewind: Japan offers unique experiences, faces issues amid record-high tourism
Over 60% of quake-affected Noto residents see little recovery: survey
Japan marks 1 year since powerful Noto quake, rebuilding remains slow
…here’s some free advice for the GoJ:
a) Halt construction on Osaka Expo 2025.
b) Re-focus on rebuilding the devastated and neglected regions of the Noto Peninsula.
c) Offer gaijin tourists a ‘unique experience’ they’ll never forget — a guided tour of aforementioned rebuilding effort so that they can be amazed by the GoJ’s construction prowess!
So let me get this straight: Japanese capitalists stage a „special seating“ area accompanied by alcohol in order to lure in tourists and take their money, but the Mainichi article (especially the headline) doesn‘t blame the Japanese capitalists who set all of this up. No! It‘s the tourists fault for buying something that‘s specially catered to them and the tourists are the ones destroying tradition!
You can‘t make this up anymore. It‘s exactly like I wrote here a few months ago. 5 years ago you actually had to committ a crime, or at least be „rude“ in order to end up in the news as „bad foreigner“. Nowadays even just existing makes you a bad foreigner. If the sheer sight of foreigners drinking is ruining Japanese traditions then don‘t advertise to tourists and close the border just like during covid.
Japan wants to take the money out of foreigners‘ pockets by selling them „premium seats“, but having to look at foreigners sitting in the front row is an insult to tradition lol. I actually had to double-check that I‘m reading the mainichi and not the Onion.
“Japan wants to take the money out of foreigners‘ pockets by selling them „premium seats“, but having to look at foreigners sitting in the front row is an insult to tradition lol. ”
What they want to do is, as has been discussed here recently, have a higher price for Gaijins. The premium seats should be, in this logic, kept for “Japanese Only” or rather, “our regular VIP customers’Erai Hito/Season ticket holders” but I suspect a lot of these have died off from old age or disappeared due to rising costs and falling (in real terms) salaries/corporate entertainment accounts.
I have been saying for a long time now, and so did Powers in 1990 (“Working in Japan”) tangentially “loving foreign things does not equate loving you, the foreigner”
They just wanted foreign stuff. Now they just want the money. Unfortunately for some ham-fisted reason Abe decided to prioritize tourism which does not sit well with Japan, ditto holding international events here as Dr Debito commented on before- with heavy, inappropriate policing and irresponsible, sensationalist media escalating xenophobia.
If Japan wants money they should simply do what they used to do best which is to manufacture and export good quality, innovative products. A weak Yen means the prices would not be too exorbitant either.
I really do not understand the J-Gov’s obsession with tourism. It is just asking for trouble-which they caused themselves.
Well I’m sure they would’ve done that if they could, but the reality is that the US, China and South Korea completely beat Japan when it comes to user electronics. Japan completely missed the smart phone boom and Sony is the only Japanese company making one, the Sony Experia, which is not popular anywhere, not even in Japan. Compare that to Samsung, Apple, Huawei, LG, and so on. Sony used to be the biggest TV maker, now they’re number 3 after Samsung and Hisense. They used to be innovators with the walkman, CD,DVD, PlayStation, etc. The only reason Sony managed to survive 2008-2016 is the PlayStation brand (Sony get’s 30% for every game sold) and Sony Bank. Sony, Panasonic and Canon are still pretty much number 1 when it comes to professional cameras, pretty much every TV production crew uses a camera from them and even most smartphones use a Sony camera sensor (iphone for example), but the time Japan dominated the tech industry is long over. Especially since nowadays the big money is made with software rather than hardware and Japan still doesn’t understand that. Software engineers are threated as “not real engineers” and are underpaid and overworked.
Abe tried the good old scam of telling people “we don’t need immigration, we have robots”, but forgot that even though Japan is pretty decent in the robotics department, it’s a very young industry with not much everyday usage outside of very specific cases. Robotics nowadays are basically like the car industry from 1850-1910. People still preferred horses due to cost and reliability and it’s the same with workers over robots. Also, Japan has a labor shortage in pretty much every market. While you could technically one day (like 50 years from now probably) get enough robots to perform a lot of menial tasks, who will replace doctors, engineers, pilots, artists, scientists, etc?
So at one point even Abe realized that robots won’t work, so the only thing left was a modern and realistic immigration policy, or tourism, and he basically picked tourism as “lesser evil”. Now of course, even tourism won’t save Japan’s economy. Even immigration won’t save Japan by now to be honest, Japan would have to go through a masive cultural shift in order to be competitive on the global market again. But I see no way in hell that Japan will ever abandon fax and hanko, and embrace innovation. Like you perfectly said yourself, if one oyaji says no, a whole deal falls through, even though it makes no logical sense and loses the company money. But the erai hito get’s to decide everything because it has been done for decades, so there’s no room for logic.
-Like you perfectly said yourself, if one oyaji says no, a whole deal falls through
Ha, there have been several cases of a room of staff welcoming me in for a recent success but there is one silent, sullen looking oyaji in the corner, but they don’t want to alienate him so….no change or no deal.
And one of these was indeed at SONY!
They watered down the product by including his demand for a 14 year old girl…………………………………………………………………… to appear in the ad, or whatever.
Sorry, forgot to paste the link again.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250101/p2g/00m/0na/005000c#cxrecs_s
Bwahahaha… a Shinto priest being offended by alcohol.
Ibaraki to open door to foreign nationals for clerical positions / 外国人から選ばれる街めざす 茨城県が事務職枠で外国人を採用へ but it’s just more of the same:
EDITORIAL: Listen to views of foreign residents in designing inclusive society / （社説）未来をつくる共生 聞かれなかった声を聴く
TL;DR: it’s time for the GoJ to get involved rather than let local governments do all the legwork.
“Maternity harassment”? OMG, it’s bullying for crying out loud!
FEATURE: Firms urged to end “maternity harassment” of technical interns
The fact that both Michael Taylor and Carlos Ghosn were tortured in J-prison shouldn’t come as a surprise…
…but this might:
Too bad Michael Taylor didn’t read Debito.org before accepting the job: Denying the GoJ their pound of flesh from a globetrotting gaijin CEO? That’s definitely an arrest-worthy offense!
Ghosn accomplice calls for inmates to be treated humanely in Japan