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.
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.
Tokyo General Union President Hifumi Okunuki outlines an important legal battle over paid leave and workers’ rights in Japan.
It’s dehumanizing to be denied service somewhere, not for what you did, but for who you are, and to realize that discrimination is real.
Concern is growing over what is becoming of Japan’s healthcare environment, including the issues of medical interns’ death from overwork and being driven to suicide due to overwork.
In a shocking series of exposés at the beginning of this month, the Mainichi Shinbun reported that minority children of workers in Japanese schools were being segregated from their Japanese peers, put in classes for the mentally disabled, and systematically denied an education.
Hating hate speech isn’t the same as agreeing that it should be regulated under the law.
I look forward to writing for a Shingetsu News Agency that challenges the stale conventions and speaks truth to power. The point is to increase the visibility of minorities, and to assist Japanese of goodwill in dismantling the systems that keep them disenfranchised.
Between 2012 and 2018, I wrote a monthly column called “Labor Pains” for the Japan Times. I have left Japan Times. I am so delighted to begin a new column this month called “Bread and Roses” for the Shingetsu News Agency.
