Bread & Roses: University Students in the Age of Corona
The work shutdown in the wake of the April 7, 2020, emergency declaration hit one group particularly hard: students working part-time gigs.
Category Archives: Column
Visible Minorities: The Guestists and the Collaborators
We shouldn’t wait for the government to deign to divvy out what it thinks foreigners want, as if it’s the omotenashi (hospitality) Japan offers any guest. Instead, NJ residents should be telling the government what they want, on their terms.
Bread & Roses: Workers of the World! Unite and Stay Home!
Today, we see the eight-hour workday as a social norm, albeit observed more in the breech. But workers shed blood and tears to bequeath this right to us.
Visible Minorities: Pandemic Releases Antibodies Toward Non-Japanese
Treating outsiders like contagion has consequences: Society develops antibodies, and Japan’s already-normalized discrimination intensifies.
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.
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.
