Visible Minorities: The World’s First “Japanese Only” Olympics?
With the possibility of the first “Japanese Only” Olympic Games, Japan looks likely to take the Gold Medal for Discrimination.
With the possibility of the first “Japanese Only” Olympic Games, Japan looks likely to take the Gold Medal for Discrimination.
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.
Sparked by the George Floyd murder by police in the United States last month, street protests against official violence towards minorities and disenfranchised peoples have sprung up worldwide.
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.
The disturbing implications of yet another Japanese-language designation for foreign residents.
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.