Visible Minorities: Latest Visa Rules Could Purge Any Foreigner
Even after political leadership has finally shed Shinzo Abe, the Japanese government has found new ways to discriminate against foreign residents of Japan.
All posts by Debito Arudou
Visible Minorities: Nike Japan Does Some Good
Nike’s television advertisement depicting a multiethnic Japan stands out as a bright spot to close out the dreadful year of 2020.
Visible Minorities: US Elections Repudiate Trump’s Japan-Style Ethnostate
The US elections captured the world’s attention. No wonder. Given its hegemony as an economic, political, cultural, and military power, the results underpin the future of geopolitics and world order.
Visible Minorities: New Covid Foreign Resident Re-Entry Rules Still Racist
Sometime during your life in Japan, you will probably feel a chilling attitude in Japan’s bureaucracy: as a foreign resident, you don’t really matter. To Japan’s policymakers, you’re at best an existence to be tolerated, at worst an unpredictable element that needs constant policing.
Visible Minorities: Weaponizing the Japanese Language
On August 28, Toshimitsu Motegi, Japan’s foreign minister, was giving an official press conference to reporters in Japanese. A foreign reporter for Japan Times, Magdalena Osumi, asked some questions in Japanese. When Osumi followed up on a point he left unclear, Motegi responded to her in English.
Visible Minorities: Japan’s Cult of Miserable Happy
These are sobering times for Japan fans. Thanks to the pandemic, even the most starry-eyed and enfranchised foreigners are having their bubbles burst, realizing that their status in Japan, no matter how hard-earned, matters not one whit to Japan’s policymakers.
Visible Minorities: A Despotic Bridge Too Far
How bad does it have to get? I’m talking about Japan’s cruelty and meanness towards its Non-Japanese residents. How bad before people think to step in and stop it? With Covid-19, we might have an answer.
Visible Minorities: Advice to Activists in Japan
Sparked by the George Floyd murder by police in the United States last month, street protests against official violence towards minorities and disenfranchised peoples have sprung up worldwide.
Visible Minorities: The Guestists and the Collaborators
We shouldn’t wait for the government to deign to divvy out what it thinks foreigners want, as if it’s the omotenashi (hospitality) Japan offers any guest. Instead, NJ residents should be telling the government what they want, on their terms.
Visible Minorities: Pandemic Releases Antibodies Toward Non-Japanese
Treating outsiders like contagion has consequences: Society develops antibodies, and Japan’s already-normalized discrimination intensifies.