{"id":17491,"date":"2024-07-31T15:22:36","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T22:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17491"},"modified":"2024-07-31T15:26:48","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T22:26:48","slug":"sna-vm-58-japans-census-shenanigans-how-japans-registry-system-and-accounting-of-foreign-residents-has-led-to-statistical-inaccuracies-and-exclusionary-politics-july-30-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17491","title":{"rendered":"Debito’s SNA VM column 58 “Japan’s Census Shenanigans”: How Japan\u2019s registry system and accounting of foreign residents has led to statistical inaccuracies and exclusionary politics (July 30, 2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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SNA VM 58 JAPAN\u2019S CENSUS SHENANIGANS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Subtitle<\/u>:\u00a0 How Japan\u2019s registry system and accounting of foreign residents has led to statistical inaccuracies and exclusionary politics<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Debito Arudou, PhD.\u00a0\u00a0Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities column 58, July 30, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n

Courtesy https:\/\/shingetsunewsagency.com\/2024\/07\/30\/visible-minorities-japans-census-shenanigans\/<\/a><\/p>\n

A fundamental issue for any country is knowing who lives there, and this is generally measured by a national census every ten years.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Censuses are serious things.\u00a0 They should accurately reveal in granular detail who people are, where they live, and how they live, in order for public policies to effectively target social services, health and welfare.\u00a0 Censuses even have international standards, with the United Nations\u2019 Statistics Division<\/a>\u00a0providing a template.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2020, the UN approved the \u201cWorld Population and Housing Census Programme,\u201d which \u201crecognizes population and housing censuses as one of the primary sources of data needed for formulating, implementing and monitoring policies and programmes aimed at inclusive socioeconomic development and environmental sustainability.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The UN notes that, \u201cDisaggregated data are fundamental for the measurement of progress of the\u00a02030 Agenda for Sustainable Development<\/a>, especially in the context of assessing the situation of people by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographic location, or other characteristics.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet a seemingly simple act of a headcount is subject to nasty political tugs-of-war.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

POWER IN NUMBERS, IF MEASURED<\/strong><\/p>\n

For example, in the late 2010s, the\u00a0Trump Administration pushed hard<\/a>\u00a0to insert a nationality question in the US Census.\u00a0 The unstated reasoning behind not counting non-citizens (as exposed by the New York Times<\/a>) was purely political. \u00a0Republican policymakers wanted to shrink the populations of urban areas (which generally vote more Democrat) so they would get less federal funding.\u00a0 It would also shrink Democrat power in terms of electoral delegates, helping Republicans win elections and further gerrymander electoral districts in their favor.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In other words, the GOP wanted to stop counting immigrants as people because they wanted to counteract an inevitable demographic phenomenon\u2014the United States getting browner.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fortunately, the Supreme Court ultimately blocked this move<\/a>,\u00a0so the current policy of the US Census remains to count all people in the US, regardless of legal status, as denizens.\u00a0 But that\u2019s the power of a Census\u2014counting people is the lynchpin of political representation.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

JAPAN\u2019S STATISTICAL HOCUS-POCUS WITH COUNTING EVEN DOCUMENTED FOREIGNERS<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Japan it\u2019s even more politicized and nasty, but that\u2019s not news.\u00a0 Japan has steadfastly refused to account for its foreign population for generations.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For example, from 1947 onwards, despite their contributions to Japan\u2019s wartime effort as soldiers and citizens of empire, Japan stripped all resident ethnic Koreans and Chinese of their Japanese citizenship and residency.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By doing so, Japan effectively ethnically cleansed the country.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It worked like this:\u00a0 Japan has two registry systems.\u00a0 One, the koseki system, confers Japanese citizenship.\u00a0 The other, the basic resident roster (jumin kihon daicho), determines residency.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By excluding foreigners from the latter, the local resident rosters, all foreigners were rendered as legally invisible on local household (setai) registries.\u00a0 Even if they were married to Japanese\u2014foreign spouses simply weren\u2019t listed as \u201cfamily members.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Similarly, Japan refused to issue foreigners living in Japan equivalent Residency Certificates (juminhyo), which are essential to establishing basic amenities such as bank accounts.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In other words, anyone not officially a Japanese citizen on a koseki was not an official Japanese resident (jumin) either.\u00a0 Japan remained the only \u201cdeveloped\u201d country in the Postwar order doing this, long into the twenty first century.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After enough embarrassing oddities making the news (e.g., local governments granting honorary juminhyo to stray animals and cartoon characters), the system was amended in 2012 to allow Foreign Residents with legal residency visas to be issued juminhyo.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But to this day Japan still excludes foreigners from the jumin kihon daicho.\u00a0 This means they are not counted in Japan\u2019s official population tallies.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Look closely at the government\u2019s next annual announcement of population decline.\u00a0 The wording includes the caveat that they are talking about the \u201cpopulation of Japanese\u201d (nihonjin no jinko), not the \u201cpopulation of Japan\u201d (nihon no jinko).\u00a0 This despite the fact that Foreign Residents live in and pay taxes in Japan like any other Japanese?\u00a0\u00a0Again, you have to be a citizen to be countable.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nasty old habits die hard.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

CONTROL THE CENSUS AND MAINTAIN JAPAN\u2019S ETHNOSTATE<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what about Japan\u2019s broader decennial Census (kokusei chousa<\/a>)?\u00a0\u00a0Does it better account for the status of Non-Japanese in Japan?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I turned to scholar Dr. John C. Maher, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at International Christian University, and author of works including \u201cLanguage Communities in Japan\u201d (Oxford University Press, 2022), \u201cMultilingualism:\u00a0\u00a0A Very Short Introduction\u201d (Oxford, 2017), and \u201cDiversity in Japanese Culture and Language\u201d (Routledge, 2012).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

To see how diversity was measured in censuses worldwide, his approach was to look at how closely they adhered to UN census protocols.\u00a0\u00a0Let\u2019s start with what he found intriguing from a linguistics point of view:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are around 211 censuses in the world.\u00a0\u00a0Most never ask about what language is spoken by the household.\u00a0\u00a0For example, Italy, Holland, Germany, Sweden, and Greece do not.\u00a0 But Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, the United States, New Zealand\u2014in other words, the English-speaking countries\u2014do.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re going to include questions about languages spoken, Dr. Maher stresses, do it right.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cQuestions like these are tendentious.\u00a0\u00a0Some may actually create the wrong impression.\u00a0\u00a0For example in Britain, the question asked is, \u2018What is your main language?\u2019\u00a0\u00a0From a linguistics standpoint, that\u2019s poorly constructed.\u00a0\u00a0No answer will give you dispositive data.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan doesn\u2019t include a language question either, and in Dr. Maher\u2019s view this is quite \u201cnormal\u201d among the community of nations.\u00a0\u00a0What Japan does do surprisingly well, he notes, is acknowledge domestic multilinguality.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cJapan publishes its Census in 22 languages.\u00a0\u00a0Most countries, including the United States, come nowhere near that number.\u00a0\u00a0You can, of course, opt to get the Census in Japanese, so it\u2019s not forced on you.\u00a0\u00a0But that\u2019s a remarkable effort to communicate with your foreign population on the part of the government.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

However, there is one question Japan also conspicuously leaves out:\u00a0\u00a0a question on race and ethnicity.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s odd since Japan\u2019s Census is otherwise pretty nosy.\u00a0\u00a0It asks detailed questions about socioeconomic status, income, household members, etc.\u00a0 As it should, for reasons argued above.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But a number of my friends (who harbor abiding concerns about what any government does with your data) consider the Japan Census overly intrusive, and treat it like the NHK guy knocking to collect TV subscriptions.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

To get around that predisposition, the Japanese government stresses that answering Census questions is entirely optional.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But how about making it optional for respondents to reveal their racial or ethnic backgrounds?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Japan Census for decades now has refused to include that question.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It does, however, ask about nationality.\u00a0\u00a0And that\u2019s where I see the politics tiptoeing in.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For example, when I (as a Japanese citizen) fill out the Census, there is a question about nationality.\u00a0\u00a0You either choose \u201cJapanese\u201d or \u201cForeign;\u201d and if the latter, indicate your country of citizenship.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As a naturalized citizen, I tick \u201cJapanese,\u201d of course.\u00a0\u00a0But there is no means for me to indicate that I am a Japanese with American ancestry\/ethnicity\/national origin, etc.\u00a0\u00a0If I could, I would indicate my hyphenated status.\u00a0\u00a0A \u201cJapanese with American roots\u201d (beikoku-kei nihonjin).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t.\u00a0\u00a0The Census remains willfully blind to that.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I asked Dr. Maher why.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cA former member of the committee for the national census told me that questions about ethnicity and language are omitted because of concerns about privacy.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Suddenly now there\u2019s a privacy concern?\u00a0 Even though making things optional should obviate that?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a hypothesis for that.\u00a0\u00a0When I have one, I will ask the Japan\u2019s Census Committee.\u00a0\u00a0But I imagine their answer will be something along the lines of, \u2018Our privacy concerns are the same as every other country.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Maher concluded, \u201cGranted, most countries don\u2019t follow the guidance from the UN Census Committee, despite their experts from many countries on how to do a census.\u00a0\u00a0So I have little doubt that Japan believes it is not acting anywhere outside the international norm.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

WHY DOES THE JAPAN CENSUS OPT TO BE INACCURATE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Maher, being the cautious academic, doesn\u2019t have a hypothesis yet.\u00a0 But here I\u2019m writing in the capacity of a newspaper columnist, and it\u2019s my job to have an argument.\u00a0 So I will offer mine:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan doesn\u2019t inquire about race and ethnicity because that data would uncover an inconvenient truth\u2014that Japan is in fact more multicultural and multiethnic than official narratives would hold.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan has had generations of international marriages and fairly small (but unignorable) numbers of naturalized citizens.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Those people will not show up as such on the Japan Census.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This matters.\u00a0\u00a0Thanks to the bloodline assumptions (enshrined in Japanese law) that anyone with Japanese citizenship is of Japanese blood, many people (even some overseas academics who should know better) erroneously assume that Japan has few, if any, minorities; and even if they exist, they are\u00a0invisible<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Never mind the existence of Visible Minorities that ground this very column.\u00a0\u00a0Never mind the evidence of \u201cJapanese Only\u201d signs.\u00a0 Never mind all the cases of police racial profiling during street shakedowns, targeting Japanese citizens who don\u2019t \u201clook Japanese.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Their existence is officially overlooked by the Japan Census by having only a nationality question.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is essentially a means to deny policy relief to Japan\u2019s Visible Minorities, unilaterally deciding they aren\u2019t worthy of being counted.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Without any hard data, now comes the\u00a0repeated claims by the Japanese government in the United Nations<\/a>\u00a0that Japan doesn\u2019t need a law against racial discrimination.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Because Japan has no races.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s international representatives have officially and repeatedly stated that all Japanese citizens belong to \u201cthe Japanese race,\u201d and any discrimination that happens is happening to \u201cforeigners,\u201d due to their foreign nationality.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s \u201cforeigner discrimination,\u201d not \u201cracial discrimination.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Thus in Japan you are either a Japanese or a foreigner.\u00a0\u00a0The binary must hold.\u00a0\u00a0And the Japan Census\u2019s nationality-only question explicitly upholds it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Maher would not explicitly say that the Japan Census deliberately chooses to maintain the fiction that Japan is monocultural and monoethnic (tan\u2019itsu minzoku).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So I will.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s its goal. \u00a0It opts to be inaccurate.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Because it\u2019s completely within character.\u00a0 Given the long and continued history of excluding foreigners from population and residency tallies, the National Census\u2019s undercounting Japan\u2019s people with foreign roots is just another nasty old habit.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

There are another five years before Japan\u2019s next Census.\u00a0 Plenty of time to make amends and amendments.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Add the optional race and ethnicity question, include foreign residents as part of the official Japan population, and give us some official data for just how diverse Japan actually is.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n

======================
\nDo you like what you read on Debito.org? \u00a0Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? \u00a0Please consider donating a little something. \u00a0More details here<\/a>. Or if you prefer something less complicated, just click on an advertisement below.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SNA: A fundamental issue for any country is knowing who lives there, and this is generally measured by a national census every ten years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Censuses are serious things.\u00a0 They should accurately reveal in granular detail who people are, where they live, and how they live, in order for public policies to effectively target social services, health and welfare.\u00a0 Censuses even have international standards, with the United Nations\u2019 Statistics Division\u00a0providing a template.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2020, the UN approved the \u201cWorld Population and Housing Census Programme,\u201d which \u201crecognizes population and housing censuses as one of the primary sources of data needed for formulating, implementing and monitoring policies and programmes aimed at inclusive socioeconomic development and environmental sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UN notes that, \u201cDisaggregated data are fundamental for the measurement of progress of the\u00a02030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, especially in the context of assessing the situation of people by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographic location, or other characteristics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet a seemingly simple act of a headcount is subject to nasty political tugs-of-war…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,28,18,36,22,34,33,50,20,5,12,76,26,4,14,56,46,11,7,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-anti-discrimination-templates","category-academia","category-bad-social-science","category-cultural-issue","category-exclusionism","category-fingerprinting-nj","category-gaiatsu","category-history","category-human-rights","category-immigration-assimilation","category-important-statistics","category-ironies-hypocrisies","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-politics","category-nj-legacies","category-practical-advice","category-problematic-foreign-treatment","category-united-nations","category-unsustainable-japanese-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17491","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=17491"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17495,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17491\/revisions\/17495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}