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.
Category Archives: Column
Bread & Roses: Scenes from a Coronavirus Crisis Village
The coronavirus continues to rampage through society, but 2021 has begun. Unnoticed by some, several coronavirus crisis villages (sodan mura) sprang up around Japan’s capital city in recent weeks. The pandemic has devastated people’s livelihoods as well as public health.
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.
Bread & Roses: Love and Money for a Japanese Princess
I wear two hats. My day job is teaching social security and labor law at a university. I also serve as executive president of a labor union. In this installment of the column, I will discuss my recent musings about welfare and the Imperial household.
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.
Bread & Roses: Japan’s Decade of Labor Law Regression
The labor union I represent, Tozen Union, this year marked its decennial anniversary–ten years since its founding on April 25, 2010.
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.
Bread & Roses: Uncle Reiwa Quickly Abuses His Power
Outright rejection of appointing certain researchers to the Science Council of Japan without disclosing the reason is an abuse of the prime minister’s power.
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.
Bread & Roses: Welfare in the Age of Climate Change
How would you feel if you didn’t have air conditioning in Japan’s current heat? Air conditioners are at issue in the nation’s welfare system.