The government’s new Covid self-quarantine policies are providing yet another opportunity to demonstrate that the lives, livelihoods, and investments of foreigners don’t really count in Japan.
Debito.org turned 25 years old last week. What, if anything, has it contributed to help make conditions for Non-Japanese residents and Visible Minorities better?
With the possibility of the first “Japanese Only” Olympic Games, Japan looks likely to take the Gold Medal for Discrimination.
Former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori represents the worst of Japan’s politics, melding misogyny with racism.
Even after political leadership has finally shed Shinzo Abe, the Japanese government has found new ways to discriminate against foreign residents of Japan.
Nike’s television advertisement depicting a multiethnic Japan stands out as a bright spot to close out the dreadful year of 2020.
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.
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.
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.
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.
