Bread & Roses: Worker Rights in the Age of Coronavirus
Around Japan, workers still commute each day on packed trains and file into crowded meeting rooms. Some are told to stay home, with or without pay.
Category Archives: Column
Visible Minorities: No Free Pass for Shirking Responsibility
There’s an oft-used expression in Japanese: sekinin tenka. Best translated as “passing the buck,” it’s a reflex of dodging blame for one’s own actions by transferring responsibility to others. For too long, Japan has done so on the world stage with impunity—even when it affects the world adversely.
Bread & Roses: Labor Law Takes Backwards Step in the Abe Era
Japan’s labor laws have made several several distinct steps forward since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, with workers gradually gaining a degree of protection from the exploitation of business owners and managers. However, the era of Shinzo Abe has been characterized not only by a failure to progress further, but by a distinct step backwards.
Visible Minorities: Japan’s Botched Response to the Coronavirus
The drama of cruise ship Diamond Princess, currently moored at Yokohama and quarantined by Japan’s Health Ministry due to some of the 3,700 passengers and crew testing positive for the coronavirus, is a human rights crisis.
Bread & Roses: Warm Meals to Tackle Poverty in Japan
When did poverty become normal? Conventional wisdom had it that poverty didn’t exist in Japan; that the miracle recovery during the country’s rapid growth period had given birth to a middle class of 100 million people.
Visible Minorities: Carlos Ghosn’s Escape from Japan Was the Right Move
I have to admit more than a twinge of sympathy for Carlos Ghosn’s Great Escape.
Bread & Roses: How Nakasone Crushed Japan’s Labor Movement
Yasuhiro Nakasone, who served as prime minister from 1982 to 1987 and died this past November 29, broke the back of Japan’s labor movement.
Visible Minorities: Local Governments Classifying Japanese Citizens as Foreigners
The disturbing implications of yet another Japanese-language designation for foreign residents.
Bread & Roses: Challenging Japan’s Rampant Housing Discrimination
Pets, music, foreigners. Do these words ring a bell? They might if you are a foreigner who has tried to rent an apartment in Japan. They’re known as the three big barriers in rental housing.
Visible Minorities: The Xeno-Scapegoating of Japanese Halloween
After Halloween, you could be forgiven for thinking Shibuya was set aflame and Hachiko knocked off his plinth. But drop by sometime; everything is still there just fine.
