{"id":17655,"date":"2025-12-15T12:29:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T20:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17655"},"modified":"2026-06-09T06:45:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T13:45:20","slug":"my-sna-visible-minorities-column-71-karen-hill-antons-willful-ignorance-of-history-dec-1-2025-on-how-a-self-declared-spokesperson-on-behalf-of-japans-visible-minorities-is-hurting-them-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17655","title":{"rendered":"My SNA Visible Minorities column 71: “Karen Hill Anton’s Willful Ignorance of History” (Dec 1, 2025), on how a self-declared spokesperson on behalf of Japan’s Visible Minorities is hurting them by deliberately ignoring info counter to her narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Karen Hill Anton\u2019s willful ignorance of history<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A prominent spokesperson within Japan\u2019s foreign community won\u2019t admit racism happens in Japan unless it rises to the level of racism in America.\u00a0 That\u2019s bad science.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Debito Arudou.\u00a0 Courtesy Shingetsu News Agency, December 1, 2025. \u00a0Text with links to sources follows under SNA link.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Courtesy https:\/\/shingetsunewsagency.com\/2025\/12\/01\/visible-minorities-karen-hill-antons-willful-ignorance-of-history\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The original fount for this essay with extra links to sources archived at Debito.org here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t heard of Karen Hill Anton, she is well known as commentator on life in Japan.\u00a0 Living in Japan\u2019s countryside since 1975 with an American husband and raising several interracial children, Anton has written and spoken widely on cross-cultural communication, her most famous work being the award-winning memoir \u201cThe View from Breast Pocket Mountain\u201d (2020).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Anton\u2019s accomplishments are impressive.\u00a0 Her LinkedIn<\/a> lists diversity training consultancies at corporations such as Shinsei Bank, Corning Japan, Eli Lilly, and Citigroup.\u00a0 A Freeman Foundation Fellow and Plenary Speaker at JALT 2022<\/a>, Anton has also been a member of the Jun Ashida Educational Foundation<\/a>, the Shizuoka Human Rights Association, and the Board of Overseers at Temple University, Japan<\/a>.\u00a0 Her gigs include 14 years writing the \u201cCrossing Cultures\u201d column for the Japan Times, and another 15 writing the \u201cAnother Look\u201d column for the Chunichi Shimbun.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

She has even advised the highest levels of the Japanese government, serving<\/a> on the Internationalization in Education and Society Advisory Councils of Prime Ministers Obuchi and Hashimoto.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I respect this mightily, and said so when I met her at her home in 2024.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve recently discovered her time-honored platform willfully ignores, minimizes, or outright dismisses the experiences of other Non-Japanese (NJ) Residents.\u00a0 That\u2019s what this column is about.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A FLAWED METHODOLOGY TOWARDS RACISM IN JAPAN<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In a recent Substack essay, \u201cWhat Racism is \u2013 and isn\u2019t \u2013 in Japan<\/a>\u201d (November 12, 2025), she offered herself as an example of a \u201cvisible minority,\u201d citing her experiences dealing with people as an African-American woman in Japan.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the essay\u2019s title, Anton notes that Japan does distinguish between people based upon their physical appearance, such as a Japanese shopkeeper who grabbed her dreadlocks and asked if they were real.\u00a0 But for Anton, in Japan it\u2019s more a matter of stupidity, rudeness, or poor behavior in individual interactions, not racism.\u00a0 Defining racism as a systemic, institutionally enforced exclusion from social, educational, or economic participation (as opposed to modern definitions involving the process of differentiation, \u201cothering,\u201d and subordination), Anton concludes that racism is not present in Japan like in the United States.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This sounds plausible until it becomes clear she is working backwards from a conclusion.\u00a0 She claims, \u201cAny foreign child can go to any public school anywhere in Japan.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s manifestly untrue.\u00a0 As reported on Debito.org<\/a> and in Japanese media for decades, foreign children have been denied entry to Japanese schools.\u00a0 Even Visible Minorities, e.g., international children with Japanese citizenship, get bullied out of the system<\/a>, as they are a frequent target of Japan\u2019s self-appointed \u201chair police<\/a>\u201d\u2014school officials who force children to cut, straighten, or dye their hair or be suspended.\u00a0 That\u2019s why there are ethnic schools in Japan\u2014so these children can somehow get an education.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

How can this happen?\u00a0 Because, even using Anton\u2019s definition, of something systemic and institutionally enforced:\u00a0 Japan\u2019s Fundamental Law on Education (Kyouiku Kihon Hou) only guarantees primary and secondary education to citizens (kokumin), and has expressly been cited by authorities to deny foreign children entry<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is should not be news to Anton, since there is, for example, an underclass of now-grown undereducated South American workers<\/a> less than an hour\u2019s local train ride from her.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Regardless, Anton narrates a story about her fourth-grade daughter dealing with a classmate who \u201csaid something mean\u201d to her.\u00a0 In Anton\u2019s telling, all it took was her husband reporting it to the principal and the very next day the boy\u2019s mother visited the Anton household offering cakes, a flower bouquet, and an apologetic son.\u00a0 Anton concluded, \u201cAs far as I was concerned, the matter was finished.\u00a0 There was no victim here.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Good that all was resolved so well, what with the school administration and the classmate\u2019s parents being so cooperative, and that scars from the experience did not seem to linger in Karen\u2019s child.\u00a0 But this experience is hardly universal.\u00a0 Debito.org has catalogued\u00a0many cases where the parents of Visible Minorities weren\u2019t so lucky in their experiences<\/a>\u00a0either administratively or interpersonally. \u00a0Some have even resulted in\u00a0lawsuits with damages awarded<\/a>, or in suicides<\/a>. \u00a0This is all available with a quick Google search, but those facts would spoil Anton\u2019s story.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Anton instead places the onus on NJ Residents to avoid being treated this way:\u00a0 \u201cIn the places I\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is reasonable advice, but not a panacea.\u00a0 It also \u201ccould be said\u201d there are systemic barriers (such as\u00a0\u201cJapanese Only\u201d signs and establishments<\/a>,\u00a0legally exclusionary government policies<\/a>, and even bullying\u00a0Neighborhood Associations<\/a>) to Visible Minorities, harassed and excluded no matter how much effort they put into community effort and assimilation. \u00a0Plenty of journalistic and government surveys evidence the effects of this<\/a>. \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the biggest flaw in Anton\u2019s essay is her constant minimizing of discrimination in Japan by comparing it to Jim Crow America of the 1950s. \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A commenter to Debito.org<\/a> responded best: \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAs a black European in Japan, this habit of American activists to hold racism in the US up as some kind of yardstick is frustrating to say the least. \u2018Bad things that happened in the US don\u2019t happen here, therefore there\u2019s no problem,\u2019 is a terrible method of evaluation, not least because the conversation is supposed to be about issues in Japan, no need to drag a different country into it. \u00a0I\u2019m not the only one whose daily life is a series of frustration and (mostly small) humiliations caused by Japan\u2019s ethnocentrism and resulting racism. \u00a0\u2018At least you\u2019re not getting lynched\u2019 offers no reassurance, it\u2019s only a bizarre way to shift the focus of the conversation to a different, unrelated, topic. \u00a0It\u2019s like telling a homeless person that they should be glad that at least they\u2019re not terminally ill. \u00a0Not helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A WILLFUL IGNORANCE OF HISTORY<\/strong><\/h3>\n

What spurred me to write this column was the essay\u2019s conclusion, where Anton discounts a famous 1999 lawsuit by a Brazilian journalist named Ana Bortz.\u00a0 Refused entry into a jewelry store in nearby Hamamatsu, Bortz won in Shizuoka District Court on the grounds of \u201cracial discrimination\u201d (jinshu sabetsu).\u00a0 It was the first court decision acknowledging that discrimination in Japan is in fact racial.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Anton\u2019s take?\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

ANTON<\/a>: \u00a0\u201cThe woman, who filed a discrimination lawsuit, and won\u2014as well she should have\u2014was described by a foreign journalist as \u2018the Rosa Parks of Japan.\u2019 Rosa Parks? \u00a0Surely 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. \u00a0She 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. \u00a0That Rosa Parks? \u00a0I don\u2019t think so.\u201d \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That was the last sentence Anton\u2019s of essay:\u00a0 A straw-man argument that because some lazy journalist compared Bortz to Parks, it\u2019s somehow\u2026 not racism\u2026 enough?\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Two issues:\u00a0 One, I worked with Ana Bortz, and she never compared herself to Parks.\u00a0 Two, Anton here commits an egregious sin of omission.\u00a0 She neglected to mention the subsequent\u00a0Otaru \u201cJapanese Only\u201d Public Baths Case<\/a>, which my friends and I took all the way to Japan\u2019s Supreme Court, and where lower courts unanimously upheld the Ana Bortz precedent. \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Or the subsequent\u00a0Steve McGowan Case<\/a>, where an African and African-American were refused entry to an eyeglass shop, and we caught the manager\u00a0on tape\u00a0expressly saying he refused Steve because he is black and he personally hates black people. \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Or the\u00a0Yener Case<\/a>. \u00a0Or the\u00a0Aigi Golf Club Case.<\/a>\u00a0 Or the\u00a0umpteen other lawsuits, many successful, regarding racial discrimination<\/a>.\u00a0 This is disrespectful to the people who toiled for years at great personal cost to fight discrimination.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

THE DAMAGE DONE<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I blogged a paragraph-by-paragraph critique of Anton\u2019s essay at Debito.org<\/a> and notified her via her Substack comments.\u00a0 She responded to say<\/a>, \u201cAnyone who wants to take me down, scold me, disagree with my experience, perspective, and opinion, is free to.\u201d\u00a0 Hours later she deleted my comment.\u00a0 When I followed up to ask why, she wrote, \u201cI do not want to clutter my site<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When counterarguments are treate<\/em>d as \u201cclutter,\u201d it\u2019s clear that what\u2019s going on here is a willful ignorance of history on a complex topic.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But given her prominent position, Anton\u2019s antics are hurting people.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Another person texted me to say, <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThank you for calling Karen Anton Hill out. \u00a0I felt the same after her plenary at JALT a few years ago…\u00a0 The few people I have mentioned this to have not liked me pointing this out about her work.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Good luck though, she is great at ingratiating herself\u2026 and is great at self-promotion.\u00a0 I have learned that I can’t overtly criticize her.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So I will, with this SNA column.\u00a0 It\u2019s about time.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But why me?\u00a0 Because this denialism goes against all our work.\u00a0 Let me establish some credibility here:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I know about racial discrimination in Japan, particularly towards Japan\u2019s Visible Minorities, to the point where I was awarded a PhD on it in 2014 from Meiji Gakuin University.\u00a0 My doctoral dissertation became monograph Embedded Racism: \u00a0Japan\u2019s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination<\/a>\u00a0(Lexington Books, 2015, 2nd Ed. 2022).\u00a0 My other books include\u00a0\u201cJapanese Only\u201d: \u00a0The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination<\/a>\u00a0(Akashi Shoten, Inc: English and Japanese 2004, updated 2006 and 2013), and Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, Immigrants and Immigrants to Japan<\/u> (coauthored with Akira Higuchi; Akashi Shoten 2008, updated 2012). \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I have also maintained Debito.org, an active archive of human rights issues in Japan, since 1995, offering more than thirty years of research and historical record.\u00a0 This includes\u00a015 years of direct fieldwork cataloging \u201cJapanese Only\u201d signs and rules on businesses nationwide in Japan<\/a>. \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

My point is this isn\u2019t just my personal experience; I speak with peer-reviewed authority on this subject.\u00a0 That\u2019s why Anton\u2019s column is such a shock\u2014it overwrites a history that people like me have curated over decades to combat the natural revisionism of time.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Granted, we could merely put it down to the shortcomings of a memoirist\u2019s methodology\u2014in other words, \u201cIf it didn\u2019t happen to me, it\u2019s not part of my life memoir.\u201d\u00a0 But the blind spot in this methodology is that it dismisses other people\u2019s cases.\u00a0 How many times have you heard naysayers argue something like, \u201cI personally haven\u2019t seen it, so did it really happen?\u00a0 It\u2019s not the Japan I know.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But there\u2019s ignorance, and then there\u2019s willful ignorance.\u00a0 Even when I presented facts and a historical record counter to her narrative, Anton refused to address any of them.\u00a0 Her retort: \u201cI do not want to engage with you<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

She can, of course, disagree with the case as I presented it, or offer other facts to counter mine.\u00a0 Instead, she chose to just delete it and not engage.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Karen is entitled to her worldview, of course.\u00a0 But if she\u2019s speaking on how to live life in Japan as a self-described \u201cvisible minority\u201d advising Japan\u2019s corporate world on issues of diversity and inclusion, even meeting policymakers at the highest levels of Japan\u2019s government, she needs to get it right.\u00a0 She\u2019s not.\u00a0 Instead she promotes a dangerous denialism of how NJ and Visible Minorities experience Japanese society.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

DENIALISM AS A MARKETING GIMMICK<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When I followed up some more, Anton did respond briefly<\/a> to say, \u201cI do not hold myself \u2018as a template about how to live in Japan\u2019 or anything else.\u00a0 That\u2019s your interpretation.\u00a0 I write about my experience.\u00a0 I do not seek agreement.\u00a0 Ever.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet in public press releases, she has been marketed not only as an \u201cauthor, columnist, and consultant,\u201d but also as \u201ca model of successful cultural adaptation<\/a>,\u201d \u201clecturing widely<\/a>\u201d as a \u201cbridge between cultures.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what makes Anton\u2019s schtick a business.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Her whole mindset of, \u201cJust get out there and contribute more to your communities and your skin color won\u2019t matter,\u201d is more gimmick than fact.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But it sells well.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A Japanese policymaker will especially like hearing it\u2019s the foreigners\u2019 fault they aren\u2019t trying hard enough to be accepted.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot easier than calling for the government to legally guarantee equal treatment and access, or for the dismantling of systems that perpetually differentiate, \u201cother,\u201d and subordinate minorities.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s especially appealing when, even in the clearest cases of discrimination in Japan, a long-term foreigner dismisses them because it\u2019s not like America.\u00a0 Even if this process excuses racism here because it\u2019s worse over there.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s classic \u201cwhataboutism.\u201d\u00a0 But it works.\u00a0 It\u2019s gotten Anton a seat the table at even the highest levels of government.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also one reason why it\u2019s been difficult to get \u201cNewcomer\u201d Visible Minorities to unite and speak with one voice in the form of, for example, domestic anti-defamation leagues.\u00a0 (The \u201cOldcomer\u201d ethnic Koreans and Chinese do it much better.)\u00a0 Because spokespeople within the minorities\u2019 own ranks undermine any potential social movement and self-disempower\u2014by saying all we have to do is cooperate and behave.\u00a0 After all, it worked for these spokespeople.\u00a0 They made a life out of it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For those who think I\u2019m unduly picking on Karen Hill Anton, let the record show I have similarly called out others who pander:\u00a0 Kyoto Seika University President Oussouby Sacko<\/a>, who similarly denies there is racism in Japan by dumbfoundingly claiming he is treated differently in Japan not because he is black, but because he does not \u201clook Japanese.\u201d\u00a0 Or Japan Times columnist Gregory Clark<\/a>, who has profiteered mightily from selling Japan\u2019s uniqueness myths in his nationwide speaking tours.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Or journalist Henry Scott-Stokes<\/a>, who staved off late-life penury by putting his name to books ghostwritten by Japan\u2019s far right denying Japan\u2019s wartime atrocities.\u00a0 Or Tony Laszlo, protagonist of the bestselling \u201cMy Darling is a Foreigner\u201d manga series, who completely deleted the online history of our pre-Debito.org activist organization, Issho.org<\/a>, before it had an impact on his wife\u2019s book sales.\u00a0 I\u2019ve even criticized sacred cows like famed translator Donald Keene<\/a>, who, on the day of his naturalization into Japan, denigrated NJ residents during a press conference by joking he, unlike them, was not a criminal.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

There are lots of people like this in Japan:\u00a0 Ideologues proffering snake-oil narratives that are popular and profitable.\u00a0 Pandering pays.\u00a0 Why wait for Japanese society to toss you a few crumbs from the table?\u00a0 Say what people want to hear and they\u2019ll even give you a seat at it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

THE PLIGHT OF THE COLUMNIST:\u00a0 TO PANDER OR NOT TO PANDER?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

One more point:\u00a0 Like Anton, I too have been a columnist for 40 years, including 17 years at the Japan Times, eleven years under the \u201cJust Be Cause\u201d byline.\u00a0 I understand that having a clear and consistent perspective sustains an audience.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But over time the question becomes:\u00a0 How do you keep that audience as you age?\u00a0 Do you continue with the topics that attracted your audience in the first place?\u00a0 Or do you pursue new avenues of inquiry and hope your readers follow?\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Either way, you should be open to learning new information, or you\u2019ll just have stale columns running on retreads.\u00a0 But as you absorb new things and get new data, you should be intellectually honest enough to change your mind.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Old stale columnists can fall into a trap of relying on personal experience as a source in itself.\u00a0 After all, the province of the elderly is the sanctity of their memory.\u00a0 Your past is yours to recall and portray.\u00a0 In your own mind, nobody can assail your impressions of what happened to you.\u00a0 Only you witnessed it all.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And memoirists by definition make this their methodology.\u00a0 But you still have to be responsible with your platform, especially if you\u2019re going to talk about a subject as complicated as racism.\u00a0 Be aware of your own limitations.\u00a0 How you\u2019re remembering things.\u00a0 How you\u2019re gathering information.\u00a0 How you\u2019re interpreting the world.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Stories not grounded in history and social science are merely extended anecdotes.\u00a0 A sample size of one.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, memoirists are entitled to their own world.\u00a0 It\u2019s their memoir, after all.\u00a0 But I have a problem when they go outside their world and try to overwrite history (especially one I\u2019ve painstakingly curated) as a marketing gimmick.\u00a0 When they minimize, ignore, deny, or even delete facts and cases because they don\u2019t fit their narrative, that\u2019s not just dogmatism.\u00a0 That\u2019s dishonesty.\u00a0 And when it\u2019s hurting people, it needs to be called out.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Look at the big picture here:\u00a0 Denialism may be Karen Hill Anton\u2019s survival strategy in Japan, but it\u2019s not going to help Japan\u2019s Visible Minorities, the very group she claims to speak for.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Remember that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi recently rose to power in part by blatantly lying about foreigners kicking park animals.\u00a0 Now watch as Cabinet minister Kimi Onoda (who herself was a dual citizen of Japan and America until she too was called out) finds new ways to scapegoat NJ Residents for Japan\u2019s ills.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

All this pandering by NJ spokespeople will mean little in the end. The powers-that-be will still treat you as second-class citizens and residents no matter how hard you try to assimilate.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The onus is not on NJ to scrape for acceptance.\u00a0 The onus is on Japanese society and legal structures to treat all of its legal residents, regardless of citizenship, as human beings with equal rights.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Karen Hill Anton\u2019s methodology doesn\u2019t lend itself to pushing for that.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly been an effective survival strategy for her, as she\u2019s accomplished a lot for herself.\u00a0 But it should be seen for what it always has been:\u00a0 An isolated sample size of one.\u00a0 Not a template.\u00a0 And as she keeps on keeping on, vigilance:\u00a0 She should not be permitted to minimize, ignore, dismiss, or overwrite the history of other NJ in Japan.<\/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":"

If you’ve never heard of author and memoirist Karen Hill Anton, her accomplishments are impressive.\u00a0 After five decades of living in Japan, Anton has been hired for diversity training consultancies at corporations such as Shinsei Bank, Corning Japan, Eli Lilly, and Citigroup.\u00a0 A Freeman Foundation Fellow and Plenary Speaker at JALT 2022, Anton has also been a member of the Jun Ashida Educational Foundation, the Shizuoka Human Rights Association, and the Board of Overseers at Temple University, Japan.\u00a0 Her gigs include 14 years writing the \u201cCrossing Cultures\u201d column for the Japan Times, and another 15 writing the \u201cAnother Look\u201d column for the Chunichi Shinbun.\u00a0She has even advised the highest levels of the Japanese government, serving on the Internationalization in Education and Society Advisory Councils of Prime Ministers Obuchi and Hashimoto.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in a recent essay, where she offered herself up as an example of how Visible Minorities live in Japan, she showed not only a willful ignorance of what other Visible Minorities have done to combat discrimination in Japan, but also essentially denied racial discrimination happens in Japan because it doesn’t rise to the level of racial discrimination in America. This needs to be called out, because when a prominent spokesperson for NJ in Japan tries to overwrite history (especially one I\u2019ve painstakingly curated) as a self-promotion marketing gimmick, by minimizing, ignoring, denying or even deleting facts and other historical case studies because they don\u2019t fit her narrative, that\u2019s not just dogmatism.\u00a0 That\u2019s dishonesty.\u00a0 And as people have been writing me since I first put this up on Debito.org, it\u2019s hurting them. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s also one reason why it\u2019s been difficult to get \u201cNewcomer\u201d Visible Minorities to unite and speak with one voice in the form of, for example, domestic anti-defamation leagues.\u00a0 (The \u201cOldcomer\u201d Zainichi ethnic Koreans and Chinese do it much better.)\u00a0 Because spokespeople within the minorities\u2019 own ranks undermine any potential social movement and self-disempower \u2014 by saying that all we have to do is cooperate and behave.\u00a0 After all, it worked for these spokespeople.\u00a0 They made a life out of it.<\/p>\n

Denialism may be Karen Hill Anton\u2019s survival strategy in Japan, but ultimately it\u2019s not going to help Japan\u2019s Visible Minorities, the very group she claims to speak for.\u00a0 Current Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi recently rose to power in part by blatantly lying about foreigners kicking park animals, and Cabinet minister Kimi Onoda (who herself was a dual citizen of Japan and America until she too was called out) promises to find new ways to scapegoat NJ Residents for Japan\u2019s ills.\u00a0 All this pandering by the likes of Anton will mean little in the end. The powers-that-be will still treat you as second-class citizens and residents no matter how hard you try to assimilate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here’s the issue: The onus is not on NJ to scrape for acceptance, as Anton essentially advocates.\u00a0 The onus is on Japanese society and legal structures to treat all of its legal residents, regardless of citizenship, as human beings with equal rights. Karen Hill Anton\u2019s methodology doesn\u2019t lend itself to pushing for that.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly been an effective survival strategy for her, as she\u2019s accomplished a lot for herself.\u00a0 But it should be seen for what it always has been:\u00a0 An isolated sample size of one.\u00a0 Not a template.\u00a0 And as she keeps on keeping on, vigilance:\u00a0 Anton should not be permitted to continue minimizing, ignoring, dismissing, or overwriting the history of other NJ in Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,75,54,28,18,36,22,44,19,34,50,52,20,5,12,26,25,73,4,14,13,56,60,2,11,48,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-japanese-only-signs","category-pinprick-protests","category-anti-discrimination-templates","category-academia","category-bad-social-science","category-cultural-issue","category-discussions","category-education","category-exclusionism","category-gaiatsu","category-hate-speech","category-history","category-human-rights","category-immigration-assimilation","category-ironies-hypocrisies","category-isshoorgtony-laszlo","category-japans-blame-game","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-politics","category-media","category-nj-legacies","category-nj-voices-ignored","category-otaru-onsen-lawsuit","category-problematic-foreign-treatment","category-shoe-on-the-other-foot-dept","category-unsustainable-japanese-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17655","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=17655"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17721,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17655\/revisions\/17721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}