{"id":5660,"date":"2010-01-06T11:26:21","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T02:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=5660"},"modified":"2010-01-06T11:26:21","modified_gmt":"2010-01-06T02:26:21","slug":"japan-times-just-be-cause-column-with-my-top-ten-nj-human-rights-issues-for-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=5660","title":{"rendered":"Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE column with my top ten NJ human rights issues for 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Human rights in Japan: a top 10 for ’09<\/strong><\/p>\n

JUST BE CAUSE Column 24<\/a><\/strong>\/ZEIT GIST Column 53 for the Japan Times Community Page<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Japan Times January 5, 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/search.japantimes.co.jp\/print\/fl20100105ad.html<\/a><\/p>\n

They say that human rights advances come in threes:\u00a0 two steps forward and one back.\u00a0 2009, however, had good news and bad on balance.\u00a0 For me, the top 10 human rights events of the year that affected non-Japanese (NJ) were, in ascending order:<\/p>\n

10) “Mr. James”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Between August and November, McDonald’s Japan had this geeky Caucasian shill portraying foreigners to Japanese consumers (especially children, one of McDonald’s target markets) as dumb enough to come to Japan, home of a world cuisine, just for the burgers.\u00a0 Pedantry aside, McDonald’s showed its true colors — not as a multinational promoting multiculturalism (its image in other countries), but instead as a ruthless corporation willing to undermine activists promoting “foreigner as resident of Japan” just to push product.\u00a0 McD’s unapologetically pandered to latent prejudices in Japan by promoting the gaijin as hapless tourist, speaking Japanese in katakana and never fitting in no matter how hard he shucks or jives.\u00a0 They wouldn’t even fight fair, refusing to debate in Japanese for the domestic media.\u00a0 “Mr. James’s” katakana blog has since disappeared, but his legacy will live on in a generation of kids spoon-fed cultural pap with their fast food.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=4303<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=4243<\/a><\/p>\n

9) “The Cove” <\/strong><\/p>\n

Although not a movie about “human” rights (the subjects are sentient mammals), this documentary (www.thecovemovie.com<\/a>) about annual dolphin slaughters in southern Wakayama Prefecture shows the hard slog activists face in this society.\u00a0 When a handful of local fishermen cull dolphins and call it “Japanese tradition,” the government (both local and national), police and our media machines instinctively encircle to cover it up.\u00a0 Just to get hard evidence to enable public scrutiny, activists had to go as far as to get George Lucas’s studios to create airborne recording devices and fit cameras into rocks<\/a>.\u00a0 It showed the world what we persevering activists all know:\u00a0 how advanced an art form public unaccountability is in Japan.<\/p>\n

8) The pocket knife\/pee dragnets<\/strong> (tie<\/em>)<\/p>\n

The Japanese police’s discretionary powers of NJ racial profiling, search and seizure were in full bloom this year, exemplified by two events that beggared belief.\u00a0 The first occurred in July, when a 74-year-old American tourist who asked for directions at a Shinjuku police box was incarcerated for 10 days just for carrying a pocket knife (yes, the koban cops asked him specifically whether he was carrying one).\u00a0 The second involved confirmed reports of police apprehending NJ outside Roppongi bars and demanding they take urine tests for drugs.\u00a0 Inconceivable treatment for Japanese (sure, sometimes they get hit for bag searches, but not bladder searches), but the lack of domestic press attention — even to stuff as egregious as this — shows that Japanese cops can zap NJ at whim with impunity.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=3772<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=4257<\/a><\/p>\n

7) “Itchy and Scratchy”<\/strong> (another<\/em> tie<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Accused murderer Tatsuya Ichihashi and convicted embezzler Nozomu Sahashi also got zapped this year.\u00a0 Well, kinda.<\/p>\n

Ichihashi spent close to three years on the lam after police in 2007 bungled his capture at his apartment, where the strangled body of English teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker was found.\u00a0 He was finally nabbed in November, but only after intense police and media lobbying by her family (lessons here for the families of fellow murdered NJs Scott Tucker, Matthew Lacey and Honiefaith Kamiosawa) and on the back of a crucial tip from plastic surgeons.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Sahashi, former boss of Eikaiwa empire NOVA (bankrupted in 2007), was finally sentenced Aug. 27 to a mere 3.5 years, despite bilking thousands of customers, staff and NJ teachers.<\/p>\n

For Sahashi it\u2019s case closed (pending appeal), but in Ichihashi\u2019s case, his high-powered defense team is already claiming police abuse in jail, and is no doubt preparing to scream \u201cmiscarriage of justice\u201d should he get sentenced.\u00a0 Still, given the leniency shown to accused NJ killers Joji Obara and Hiroshi Nozaki, let’s see what the Japanese judiciary comes up with on this coin toss.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=4364<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=5413<\/a><\/p>\n

6) “Newcomers” outnumber “oldcomers”<\/strong><\/p>\n

This happened by the end of 2007, but statistics take time to tabulate.\u00a0 Last March, the press announced that “regular permanent residents” (as in NJ who were born overseas and have stayed long enough to qualify for permanent residency) outnumber “special permanent residents” (the “Zainichi” Japan-born Koreans, Chinese etc. “foreigners” who once comprised the majority of NJ) by 440,000 to 430,000.\u00a0 That’s a total of nearly a million NJ who cannot legally be forced to leave.\u00a0 This, along with Chinese residents now outnumbering Koreans, denotes a sea change in the NJ population, indicating that immigration from outside Japan is proceeding apace.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=2852<\/a><\/p>\n

5) Proposals for a “Japanese-style immigration nation”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hidenori Sakanaka, head of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute (www.jipi.gr.jp), is a retired Immigration Bureau mandarin who actually advocates a multicultural Japan — under a proper immigration policy run by an actual immigration ministry.\u00a0 In 2007, he offered a new framework for deciding between a “Big Japan” (with a vibrant, growing economy thanks to inflows of NJ) and a “Small Japan” (a parsimonious Asian backwater with a relatively monocultural, elderly population).\u00a0 In 2009, he offered a clearer vision in a bilingual handbook (available free from JIPI) of policies on assimilating NJ and educating Japanese to accept a multiethnic society.\u00a0 I cribbed from it in my last JBC column (Dec 1) and consider it, in a country where government-sponsored think tanks can’t even use the word “immigration” when talking about Japan’s future, long-overdue advice.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=4832<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=4944<\/a><\/p>\n

4) IC-chipped \u201cgaijin cards” and NJ juminhyo<\/em><\/strong> residency certificates<\/strong> (tie<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Again, 2009 was a year of give and take.\u00a0 On July 8, the Diet adopted policy for (probably remotely trackable) chips to be placed in new “gaijin cards” (which all NJ must carry 24-7 or risk arrest) for better policing.\u00a0 Then, within the same policy, NJ will be listed on Japan’s residency certificates (juminhyo<\/em>).\u00a0 The latter is good news, since it is a longstanding insult to NJ taxpayers that they are not legally “residents,” i.e. not listed with their families (or at all) on a household juminhyo<\/em>.\u00a0 However, in a society where citizens are not required to carry any universal ID at all, the policy still feels like one step forward, two steps back.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=3786<\/a><\/p>\n

3) The Savoie child abduction case<\/strong><\/p>\n

Huge news on both sides of the pond was Christopher Savoie’s Sept.28 attempt to retrieve his kids from Japan after his ex-wife abducted them from the United States.\u00a0 Things didn’t go as planned:\u00a0 The American Consulate in Fukuoka wouldn’t let them in, and he was arrested by Japanese police for two weeks until he agreed to get out of Dodge.\u00a0 Whatever you think about this messy case, the Savoie incident raised necessary attention worldwide about Japan\u2019s status as a safe haven for international child abductors, and shone a light on the harsh truth that after a divorce, in both domestic and international cases, there is no enforced visitation or joint custody in Japan — even for Japanese.\u00a0 It also occasioned this stark conclusion from your columnist: \u00a0Until fundamental reforms are made to Japan’s family law (which encourages nothing less than Parental Alienation Syndrome), nobody<\/em> should risk getting married and having kids in Japan.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?cat=49<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=4664<\/a><\/p>\n

2) The election of the Democratic Party of Japan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nothing has occasioned more hope for change in the activist community than the end of five decades of Liberal Democratic Party rule.\u00a0 Although we are still in “wait and see” mode after 100 days in power, there is a perceptible struggle between the major proponents of the status quo (the bureaucrats) and the Hatoyama Cabinet (which itself is understandably fractious, given the width of its ideological tent).\u00a0 We have one step forward with permanent residents probably getting the vote in local elections, and another with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama saying at the APEC Summit on Nov. 14 that Japan should “create an environment that is friendly to [NJ] so they voluntarily live in Japan.”\u00a0 But then we have the no-steps-anywhere: The DPJ currently has no plans to consider fundamental issues such as dual nationality, a racial discrimination law, an immigration ministry, or even an immigration policy.\u00a0 Again, wait and see.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=5141<\/a><\/p>\n

1) The “Nikkei repatriation bribe”<\/strong><\/p>\n

This more than anything demonstrated how the agents of the status quo (again, the bureaucrats) keep public policy xenophobic.\u00a0 Twenty years ago they drafted policy that brought in cheap NJ labor as “trainees” and “researchers,” then excluded them from labor law protections by not classifying them as “workers.”\u00a0 They also brought in Nikkei workers to “explore their Japanese heritage” (but really to install them, again, as cheap labor to stop Japan’s factories moving overseas).\u00a0 Then, after the economic tailspin of 2008, on April Fool\u2019s Day the bureaucrats offered the Nikkei (not the trainees or researchers, since they didn’t have Japanese blood) a bribe to board a plane home, give up their visas and years of pension contributions, and become some other country’s problem.\u00a0 This move, above all others, showed the true intentions of Japanese government policy:\u00a0 NJ workers, no matter what investments they make here, are by design tethered to temporary, disposable, revolving-door labor conditions, with no acceptable stake or entitlement in Japan’s society.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=2930<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Bubbling under<\/span>:\u00a0 Noriko Calderon<\/strong> (victim of the same xenophobic government policies mentioned above, which even split families apart), Noriko Sakai<\/strong> (who tried to pin her drug issues on foreign dealers), sumo potheads<\/strong> (who showed that toking and nationality were unrelated), and swine flu<\/strong> (which was once again portrayed as an “outsiders\u2019 disease” until Japanese caught it too after Golden Week).<\/p>\n

2009 was a pretty mixed year.\u00a0 Let’s hope 2010 is more progressive.<\/p>\n

Debito Arudou coauthored “Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants.”\u00a0 Twitter arudoudebito. \u00a0Just Be Cause appears on the first Community Page of the month. \u00a0Send comments to community@japantimes.co.jp<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n

1538 WORDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opening: They say that human rights advances come in threes: two steps forward and one back. 2009, however, had good news and bad on balance. For me, the top 10 human rights events of the year that affected non-Japanese (NJ) were, in ascending order: <\/p>\n

10) “Mr. James”, 9) “The Cove”, 8) The pocket knife\/pee dragnets (tie), 7) “Itchy and Scratchy” (another tie), 6) “Newcomers” outnumber “oldcomers”, 5) Sakanaka Proposals for a “Japanese-style immigration nation”, 4) IC-chipped \u201cgaijin cards” and NJ juminhyo residency certificates (tie), 3) The Savoie child abduction case, 2) The election of the DPJ, and 1) The “Nikkei repatriation bribe”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,33,5,12,26,4,10,14,16,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-fingerprinting-nj","category-human-rights","category-immigration-assimilation","category-ironies-hypocrisies","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-policeforeign-crime","category-japanese-politics","category-labor-issues","category-pension-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660","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=5660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}