Visible Minorities: The “Inconceivable” Racial Discrimination Law
Japan’s human rights reports to the United Nations are a case study in official dishonesty.
Category Archives: Column
Bread & Roses: Overcoming Transphobia in Japanese Courts
We were told that the 1985 Equal Employment Opportunity Act marked the “dawn of a new age” for female workers in Japan. No more could employers blithely set up special marry-and-leave retirement systems for their female employees, a practice that had previously been considered perfectly legal.
Visible Minorities: Tokyo 2020 Olympics Postmortem
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are now past. This is a postmortem.
Visible Minorities: The Tokyo Olympics Trap
On the eve of the Tokyo Olympics, let’s talk about the mess, both its impact on our minorities and the International Olympic Committee’s responsibility for scamming Japan.
Bread & Roses: Should Progressives Celebrate Ibuski’s Hero Award?
On July 1, the US State Department cited Attorney Shoichi Ibuski as one of seven heroes in its 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report for his long years of work fighting for the rights of foreign workers caught up in Japan’s technical intern program.
Visible Minorities: Gaijin Card Reader App Obliterates Privacy
Violations of the privacy rights of Japan’s foreign residents are routine, and the new Gaijin Card reader app could make things much worse.
Bread & Roses: Overhaul Japan’s Immigration System
During a May 30 demonstration in front of central Tokyo’s JR Takadanobaba Station, my labor union, Tozen Union, called upon the Japanese government to overhaul its immigration system and to protect the human rights of foreigners.
Visible Minorities: Interrogating the Discriminatory Quarantine Scandal
The government’s new Covid self-quarantine policies are providing yet another opportunity to demonstrate that the lives, livelihoods, and investments of foreigners don’t really count in Japan.
Bread & Roses: Covid, Not Olympics, Requires Our National Effort
The Japanese government is demanding a national effort to host the Olympics. But it’s time to cancel the Games and put the national effort into supporting nurses and other healthcare professionals who are now working to save lives.
Visible Minorities: Retrospective on 25 Years of Activism
Debito.org turned 25 years old last week. What, if anything, has it contributed to help make conditions for Non-Japanese residents and Visible Minorities better?
