{"id":15804,"date":"2019-10-23T09:08:35","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T16:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=15804"},"modified":"2021-02-14T12:20:43","modified_gmt":"2021-02-14T20:20:43","slug":"my-shingetsu-news-agency-visible-minorities-col-3-racial-profiling-at-japanese-hotel-check-ins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=15804","title":{"rendered":"My Shingetsu News Agency Visible Minorities col 3: “Racial Profiling at Japanese Hotel Check-Ins”, October 23, 2019 (full text)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hi Blog. My latest SNA column 3 is now up. And here is a link to sources for claims within the article<\/a>. Enjoy. Debito Arudou Ph.D.<\/p>\n

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Visible Minorities Column 3<\/strong>
\nRacial Profiling at Japanese Hotel Check-Ins<\/strong>
\nShingetsu News Agency OCT 23, 2019, by DEBITO ARUDOU<\/strong>
\nCourtesy http:\/\/shingetsunewsagency.com\/2019\/10\/23\/racial-profiling-at-japanese-hotel-check-ins\/<\/a><\/p>\n

SNA (Tokyo) \u2014 It\u2019s dehumanizing to be denied service somewhere, not for what you did, but for who you are, and to realize that discrimination is real.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In Japan, your first experience might be with your apartment search\u2014realtors may deny you a home simply because \u201cthe landlord doesn\u2019t like foreigners.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sadly, there\u2019s little you can do: racial discrimination is not illegal in Japan<\/a>, even in 2019. You could report what happened to the Ministry of Justice\u2019s Human Rights Bureau (which will generally do nothing<\/a>), or take them to court where you\u2019re at the mercy of a judge susceptible to narratives of \u201cforeigners are different\/difficult, so refusing them is okay,\u201d which is known legally as \u201crational discrimination<\/a>.\u201d Still, you will need a place right away to call home.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Eventually, after getting an interlocutor to negotiate or an employer to vouch for you, you find one. You\u2019ll forget about what happened. Something like this doesn\u2019t happen every day, right?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But it may occur the next time you want a hotel room. Given the tourism boom and hosted international sports events, racial profiling and discrimination have become widespread in Japan\u2019s hoteling industry<\/a>. This is particularly insidious because it\u2019s not just the occasional bigoted landlord calling the shots; this time it\u2019s the Japanese police.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It begins when you arrive at a hotel and try to check in. Clerks are trained to demand a passport from any customer who \u201clooks foreign\u201d as a precondition for service<\/a>. This includes Non-Japanese Residents of Japan, even though Non-Japanese Residents are not required to carry their passport, and even though the law says hotels cannot do it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Explicitly stated in laws related to hotel management<\/a> is that if you are a Japanese or a Non-Japanese with an address in Japan, you merely enter your name, address, contact details, and occupation into the guest book. No ID is necessary<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you are a tourist with no address in Japan, however, the law is different. In that case, you must display your passport to the hotel clerk, have your passport number taken down, and (under some prefectural ordinances) have your passport photocopied in case the local police want to see it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Overseas governments discourage such practices. The Canadian government<\/a>, for example, makes it clear: \u201cNever give out personal information from your passport or your passport application unless you\u2019re sure it is for a trusted organization or individual. This includes photocopies. You take all responsibility for giving information in your passport to a third party.\u201d So if you check in and become a victim of identity theft, that\u2019s your own responsibility.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But here\u2019s where hotel practices get racialized: Some require \u201call foreign guests,\u201d regardless of residency, to display ID.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

People who refuse to comply can be, under some prefectural ordinances, denied entry into the hotel, and sometimes the police are to be called. And how do clerks tell who a \u201cforeign guest\u201d is? If they have a foreign-looking face or name, of course. Hence the racial profiling at check-in.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But what happens to residents, Japanese children of international marriages, and foreign-looking citizens, such as myself, who brave the harassment and inform them of the actual letter of the law? Clerks will then claim the local police are demanding all foreign guests produce ID. Sometimes they even pull out a handy-dandy multilingual poster<\/a> produced by those police<\/a> saying as much. Nevertheless, that\u2019s not what the law says.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been following this issue since 2005, when I encountered my first hotel ID checkpoint while attending a conference<\/a>. After more than a decade of these shenanigans (and official confirmations from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, local police agencies retracting erroneous posters, and even the US Embassy<\/a> that ID checks only apply to overseas tourists), it\u2019s clear that the Japanese police are deliberately making up law to enlist hotels in their racial profiling.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why do the police keep lying? Because, according to their posters<\/a>, they\u2019re looking for terrorists. (Naturally, Japanese cannot be terrorists, never mind Aum Shinrikyo or the Japanese Red Army.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So here\u2019s the bottom line: If you live in Japan with a Japanese address, you check in like any other Japanese citizen. You should only need to write your name and contact details in the guest book and get your key. No ID is necessary.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But since the Japanese police prioritize their power over actually following the law, it\u2019s likely your protest about being treated like a terrorist will fall on deaf ears.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In fact, the cops have doubled-down. For example, the Shizuoka police<\/a> recently issued yet another poster making up a rule that everyone must show their passport. (As if that\u2019s going to apply to Japanese guests?)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Most people, tired at the end of a day, are probably not in the mood to fight the casual racial profiling at the hotel counter, or deal with a phalanx of paranoid cops. Claiming your legal rights might mean that you lose your room for the night, or at worst mean you enjoy a couple of weeks of hospitality at the local police detention center.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The ultimate solution is for some brave soul to suffer these indignities and to sue the hotel and police for damages, and to make it clear that this practice is not grounded in statute.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is what happens when you encourage multitudes of overseas tourists come to a place like Japan, a society hobbled by strong xenophobic narratives and a weak system of checks on police power, without preparing the legal and social groundwork. Even after all these years, Japan\u2019s officials and law enforcement still haven\u2019t cottoned on to the fact that some people who look like tourists actually live here. Once again, Japan\u2019s Visible Minorities<\/a> get snagged in the dragnet. Unlawfully.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/<\/p>\n

NB: If you want to do something to stop this happening to you, download a file substantiating that you don’t have to show any ID as a resident of Japan here: https:\/\/www.debito.org\/newhotelpassportlaw.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n

=====================
\nLike what you read on Debito.org? Support our activities by making a donation here.<\/a> Or just click on an advertisement below.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SNA: It\u2019s dehumanizing to be denied service somewhere, not for what you did, but for who you are, and to realize that discrimination is real.<\/p>\n

In Japan, your first experience might be with your apartment search\u2014realtors may deny you a home simply because \u201cthe landlord doesn\u2019t like foreigners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, there\u2019s little you can do: racial discrimination is not illegal in Japan, even in 2019. You could report what happened to the Ministry of Justice\u2019s Human Rights Bureau (which will generally do nothing), or take them to court where you\u2019re at the mercy of a judge susceptible to narratives of \u201cforeigners are different\/difficult, so refusing them is okay,\u201d which is known legally as \u201crational discrimination.\u201d Still, you will need a place right away to call home.<\/p>\n

Eventually, after getting an interlocutor to negotiate or an employer to vouch for you, you find one. You\u2019ll forget about what happened. Something like this doesn\u2019t happen every day, right?<\/p>\n

But it may occur the next time you want a hotel room. Given the tourism boom and hosted international sports events, racial profiling and discrimination have become widespread in Japan\u2019s hoteling industry. This is particularly insidious because it\u2019s not just the occasional bigoted landlord calling the shots; this time it\u2019s the Japanese police…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,28,18,43,34,33,50,5,12,10,46,11,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-anti-discrimination-templates","category-academia","category-bad-business-practices","category-exclusionism","category-fingerprinting-nj","category-gaiatsu","category-human-rights","category-immigration-assimilation","category-japanese-policeforeign-crime","category-practical-advice","category-problematic-foreign-treatment","category-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15804"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16424,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15804\/revisions\/16424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}