The Supreme Court ruled in three separate cases that Japan Post illegally discriminated against its contingent employees in comparison with its regular staff. At first glance, this seems a victory for workers that will raise all boats, but a closer look suggests it’s part of a design to sink all boats.
Since 2008, I have always devoted my end-year columns to counting down the Top Ten human rights issues as they pertain to Non-Japanese residents of Japan. This year I’m moving this feature to the Shingetsu News Agency.
On November 16, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced the disciplinary dismissal of a 28-year-old school nurse for moonlighting as a sex worker for more than a year.
Japan has a race problem. As I’ve catalogued for a quarter century, there are “Japanese Only” signs and rules on businesses nationwide. Refusing entry and service to all “foreigners” on sight, they exclude people who don’t “look Japanese.”
Over 140 million people in over ninety countries around the world have already watched Squid Game, making the Hwang Dong-hyuk creation the most-watched series in Netflix history.
Surprise! Debito Arudou admires something about Japan! It’s time for a little “gaman” during the pandemic era.
Japanese courts have been forced to grapple with the tricky question of whether or not acting is a category of work that requires legal labor protections.
Japan’s human rights reports to the United Nations are a case study in official dishonesty.
We were told that the 1985 Equal Employment Opportunity Act marked the “dawn of a new age” for female workers in Japan. No more could employers blithely set up special marry-and-leave retirement systems for their female employees, a practice that had previously been considered perfectly legal.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are now past. This is a postmortem.
