Visible Minorities: Local Governments Classifying Japanese Citizens as Foreigners
The disturbing implications of yet another Japanese-language designation for foreign residents.
Category Archives: Column
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.
Bread & Roses: Tokyo Tribunal Turns Tables on Shane Language School
Tokyo General Union President Hifumi Okunuki outlines an important legal battle over paid leave and workers’ rights in Japan.
Visible Minorities: Racial Profiling at Japanese Hotel Check-Ins
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.
Bread & Roses: Is Your Attending Physician Working for Free?
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.
Visible Minorities: Educating the Non-Japanese Underclass
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.
Bread & Roses: A Leftist Case Against Hate Speech Laws in Japan
Hating hate speech isn’t the same as agreeing that it should be regulated under the law.
Visible Minorities: Debito’s New Column for Shingetsu News Agency
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.
Bread & Roses: My New Column for Shingetsu News Agency
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.
