The coronavirus continues to rampage through society, but 2021 has begun. Unnoticed by some, several coronavirus crisis villages (sodan mura) sprang up around Japan’s capital city in recent weeks. The pandemic has devastated people’s livelihoods as well as public health.
Nike’s television advertisement depicting a multiethnic Japan stands out as a bright spot to close out the dreadful year of 2020.
I wear two hats. My day job is teaching social security and labor law at a university. I also serve as executive president of a labor union. In this installment of the column, I will discuss my recent musings about welfare and the Imperial household.
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.
The labor union I represent, Tozen Union, this year marked its decennial anniversary–ten years since its founding on April 25, 2010.
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.
Outright rejection of appointing certain researchers to the Science Council of Japan without disclosing the reason is an abuse of the prime minister’s power.
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.
How would you feel if you didn’t have air conditioning in Japan’s current heat? Air conditioners are at issue in the nation’s welfare system.
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.
