SNA (Tokyo) — 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. Let’s get started:

10) Debito.org Turns 25 Years Old

Probably the longest-running website devoted to life and human rights in Japan, Debito.org has been cited in umpteen newspaper articles, academic journals, books, doctoral dissertations, and in discussions about underrepresented minority communities in Japan needing their voice heard. There are of course plenty of other online sites megaphoning the views and plights of Visible Minorities in Japan, but few have survived as long, maintained such an extensive online archive, or kept its mission clear and constant for a quarter century.

9) Tourism to Japan Drops 99% Since 2019

Regardless of what you think about Japan’s pandemic border policies (and you can see what I think below), there’s no denying that one of the most promising ways out of Japan’s “lost decades” of economic doldrums was inviting in foreign tourism. It exploded during the 2010s, with foreign tourists growing nearly fourfold, adding 2% to Japan’s GDP, with just about every city and town considering revitalization via foreign money. Then Covid came along and completely closed that down.

Japan has tried to encourage domestic tourism instead through its “Go To Travel” program, but as real wages for Japanese continue to stagnate, this is basically just using government money to subsidize industry shortfalls. The bottom line is that Japan needs foreigners, and other events that made the list this year are only discouraging them from coming and staying.

8) Vincent Fichot Hunger Strike against Japan Child Abduction

Japan’s family registry system is its worst kept secret. After divorces in Japan, former spouses get listed on separate government family registries (koseki), but their children must make a choice to be recorded on either their mother’s or father’s koseki. They cannot remain on both. That means after a marriage dissolves joint custody does not legally exist and child visitations are not guaranteed. Consequently, the “left-behind parent” parent is routinely denied all access to the children, affecting an estimated 150,000 children (out of around 210,000 divorces) every year.

This system is particularly disadvantageous for foreign residents, as by definition they do not have a family registry, leading to Japan becoming a safe haven for child abductions. For most of last July, Vincent Fichot, a French resident who hadn’t seen his children for three years, launched an outdoor hunger strike near the National Stadium as the Games were getting underway. This attracted much press attention, public support, and similar stories from other parents about their experiences. Ten European Union diplomats met with Fichot in support, as did representatives of French President Emmanuel Macron (who actually raised the issue with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga as a “priority”). But after three weeks and an injury requiring surgery, Fichot ended his hunger strike with no immediate, concrete results. However, international awareness of the issue had certainly been raised.

7) Tokyo Musashino City Approves, Then Defeats, Inclusive Voting Proposal

In November, the general affairs committee in Musashino, a suburb of Tokyo, narrowly passed an ordinance that would allow all city residents, regardless of nationality, to vote in local referendums. It would be the third such city government in Japan to do so, after Zushi in Kanagawa Prefecture and Toyonaka in Osaka Prefecture, as well as about forty other municipalities that restrict participation to foreigners with permanent residency.

Alas, it was not to be. Online hysteria prompted the Musashino City Council on December 21 to vote it down. But this issue gained outsized attention over what is essentially just foreigners participating in a survey, since referendums are legally non-binding. But in the xenophobes’ view, if foreigners are ever granted any say whatsoever in public policy that affects them, then Japan is “lost.”

6) Wishma Sandamali Dies Due to Immigration Agency Negligence

Last March, Sri Lankan national Wishma Sandamali, incarcerated in a Nagoya immigration detention center, died due to lack of medical care. Her case once again brought international attention to how uncharacteristically awful living conditions are for overstayers and asylum seekers, left to rot in Japan’s “Gaijin Tanks.”

The rights of detainees to adequate food, exercise, and living space in Immigration Bureau detention centers are less regulated than in Japanese prisons (which are subject to international oversight regarding standards of favorable treatment). Their inhospitable, unsanitary, and generally unmonitored conditions have occasioned protests both from human rights organizations and from the detainees themselves in the form of hunger strikes and suicides. Immigration detainees have also suffered and died from their medical conditions being neglected by detention officials, and from the over-prescription of sedatives and painkillers.

Insult was added to injury when Sandamali’s family arrived in Japan to get more information about how she died. They discovered just how thoroughly Japan’s authorities can obstruct investigations. The 15,000 pages of related documents that were reluctantly released by authorities were so heavily redacted as to have almost no content. Days of video surveillance footage was whittled down to two hours, which, when eventually shown to the family, nonetheless showed Sandamali being “treated like a dog,” and teased by detention officers when she was no longer physically able to swallow a drink. The family has filed a criminal complaint and the case is ongoing.

Fortunately, the Sandamali case has forced official reprimands and apologies from the justice minister, an acknowledgment of the problem from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and the withdrawal of a bill before the National Diet that would have only strengthened the ability for bureaucrats “to keep any foreign national in custody without the approval of a judge,” thus violating constitutional guarantees of due process for foreigners.

5) The US Embassy Acknowledges Racial Profiling by Japanese Police

Long overdue, the US government finally decided to go beyond their typical prevarications that Americans in Japan need merely obey Japanese law no matter how unequally they are treated under it. On December 5, the US Embassy singled out the Japanese police’s standard operating procedure of targeting any foreigner as “suspicious” merely by dint of “looking foreign.” They specifically called out these “racial profiling incidents.”

The usual suspects cried foul, using good old “whataboutism” to say that Japan’s treatment was better than elsewhere, or that American police are more deadly when they, too, racially profile. Point taken. But that nevertheless downplays the fact that the Japanese police can be racist in practice and brutal to anyone (regardless of nationality) behind closed doors in their custody. It’s just that if you “look foreign,” you’re more likely to be stopped and put into custody. The police in Japan have too much unaccountable power, and it needs to be curtailed with a bit of awareness about police abuses from Japan’s most influential geopolitical ally.

4) The “Hair Police” Face Judicial Disapproval

In February, the Osaka District Court ruled in favor of a girl refusing to be compelled by her school to dye her naturally brown hair to black. Kaifukan High School in Habikino, Osaka, claimed hair dyeing was simply part of their school dress code, but then took the extra nasty step of removing her name from the school roster and her desk from the classroom. That action, not the school rules themselves, was a step too far for the court, ruling that Osaka Prefecture pay the student a pittance of ¥330,000 (US$2,900) in damages. Unfortunately, the court also ruled that hair policing has “a reasonable and legitimate educational purpose” and questioned whether the school was actually “forcing” her to dye her hair.

On the plus side, an incident of school bullying in Yamanashi Prefecture finally came to a conclusion after three years and multiple lawsuits. A multiethnic Japanese girl was being bullied, not only by her classmates (who called her “long-haired,” “smelly” and “disgusting”), but also by administrators who indulged the bullies by advising her to bathe and cut her hair. Then they forcefully cut her hair short in a hallway without consulting her parents. After criminal cases filed against the school administration and the individual bullies failed earlier this year, a civil suit against the city of Yamanashi succeeded, in an exceptionally rare victory of a private party against the government.

Although it is a good precedent and a moral confirmation of the bullied girl’s standing, the court award was still a pittance: ¥110,000 (US$970). Clearly, anti-discrimination lawsuits in Japan will neither offer sufficient compensation to litigants nor financial deterrent to the perpetrators, as court awards keep getting whittled down.

3) Sumo Champion Hakuho Retires, Denied Equal Opportunities

Mongolian-born naturalized Japanese wrestler Hakuho retired in September. Even amongst his fellow Mongolian and Japanese Yokozuna grand champions, he dominated the ring over the past decade, setting records for the most wins in a calendar year, the most undefeated tournament championships, and the second-longest winning streak. On two occasions he was the only active Yokozuna on the roster, and he remains the longest-serving Yokozuna of all time.

Despite his record-breaking achievements, the Japan Sumo Association (which is so racist it even counts naturalized citizens as “foreigners”) decided to put him in his place. Mere days after Hakuho’s retirement, the organization banned him for a decade from the traditional role of operating his own sumo stable. Then, recalling the trouble they had with former champion and stablemaster Takanohana (a blood-Japanese who had also been critical of the organization), it required Hakuho to sign an oath to obey their rules, something never before demanded.

Some fans claim that Hakuho’s past behavior brought this on himself. However, the point remains that no matter how much he did for the sport, even as a naturalized citizen, Hakuho was always destined to be treated like a foreigner and denied equal opportunities. And from that flows justification for similar rules to seep into other sports, undermining fairness in general.

2) The Debacle of the Tokyo Olympics

Postponed for a year due to the pandemic, the Games went on despite all the warnings against the possibility of becoming a superspreader event. It became a master class in how to prioritize sunk costs over human lives. But add to that the trappings of xenophobia: In an unprecedented move, all foreigners who were not athletes or their immediate entourage were barred from entering Japan (even though, at the time, many foreign countries were better jabbed than Japan, meaning foreigners with proof of vaccination were more likely safer to be around than Japanese). Eventually all Japanese spectators were also banned, leaving all that record-setting costly infrastructure empty anyway.

Granted, everyone muddled through, but nothing was allowed to spoil the party. There was no widespread Covid testing of the general public, as it was reserved for the symptomatic only, thus likely underreported. And the regular public fear of foreigners whipped up whenever Japan hosts international events was awkwardly explained away, including “Japanese Only” elevators in an Olympic hotel, and duty-free stores asked by the government to target any foreign-looking customers as potential quarantine breakers. Even places far flung from the Tokyo Games, such as Nagasaki, put up signs banning all foreigners “to prevent infection.”

The biggest issue I have with the Olympics (or for that matter any international sports event held in Japan) is how they encourage racism and illiberalism. Last year we had the government issue a mobile app enabling anyone to scan any foreign resident’s Gaijin Card and invade their privacy. We have real-time Global Positioning System tracking of all foreigners crossing the border, with bugs in the system that can leave foreign residents vulnerable to deportation. And we had at least one medaling athlete, surfer Kanoa Igarashi (who was born and raised in the United States), claiming on his official Olympic profile that he could represent Japan because his blood is “100% Japanese.”

Resorting to “thoroughbredism” arguments ignores all the trouble we got into during the past century (from eugenics to the Holocaust), and it’s clear that Olympic committees don’t care who’s put at risk from spreading danger (biological or ideological) as long as the cash keeps rolling in.

1) Continuing Unscientific Closed Border Policies

Although border policies differ from country to country, no other G7 nation has had their border closed for as long, or as unscientifically, as Japan. When things first slammed shut in March 2020 with policymakers, their scientific advisors, and the media portraying Covid as a “foreign” disease, Japanese nationals were let back in to spread the disease. Moreover, the border policies turned out to be surprisingly porous, allowing for exceptions for VIPs (such as people connected with the Tokyo Olympics), prominent businesspeople, and the US military.

There was some letup in late 2021. Japan finally got its act together and vaccinated most of its residents (regardless of nationality, thank goodness) while the Delta surge subsided. Of course, some Japanese researchers, most famously the Riken center, predictably tried to claim that Japan’s low rates were due to Japanese genetic superiority.

But the world wasn’t buying that snake oil. Asahi Shinbun, in a November 14 editorial, acknowledged, “There are no scientific grounds for having to maintain tight controls across the board just because (entrants) are non-Japanese.” Even Michael Ryan of the World Health Organization, responded with exasperation, “Epidemiologically, I find it hard to understand the principle. Does the virus read your passport? Does the virus know your nationality or where you are legally resident?”

Nevertheless, the strict measures remained in place whereby foreigners regardless of visa status have only been allowed in if they have “special exceptional circumstances,” with reentrants capped at 3500 a day. Moreover, Japan demonstrated that it doesn’t accept the principle of reciprocity, expecting other countries to accept Japan’s vaccine passports but not accepting the same from other nations.

This standard even applied to foreign academics invited in by the Japanese government itself. Some, despite proof of overseas vaccination, loudly complained of xenophobia within “luxury jail” quarantine conditions, even as Japanese and rich businesspeople were still allowed in with lax quarantine policies. Meanwhile, the dwindling number of international students and researchers caught in a hellish limbo (featuring Zoom meetings with unwieldy time zones and scholarships forbidding outside incomes or requiring onsite research) felt “betrayed” after all their years of Japan fandom and boosterism.

There was a brief window in the autumn when things were opening up, but then the news of Omicron’s emergence slammed it shut again. Foreigners were once again made into a political football, with new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida instituting yet another foreigner ban, courting higher poll numbers through xenophobia. Of course, the regular border measures for Japanese only again rendered the measures largely ineffective, and Omicron is going viral anyway.

Hence, despite the best efforts of the denialists and Pollyannas to make Japan’s reactionary and unscientific border policies seem normal, 2021 confirmed once again that foreign residents simply don’t count for much in the reckoning of Japanese policymakers. No matter how long they have lived here and contributed to Japan, foreigners regardless of visa status remain on par with tourists—casually stranded abroad and separated from their livelihoods and families, losing everything they loved or accrued in the country.

Through such behavior, Japan is only accelerating its own international irrelevance, as China and South Korea increase their economic, political, and cultural sway in East Asia and beyond.

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