Japan is beginning construction today, January 12, of a new base intended to be used primarily by the US military on the uninhabited island of Mageshima in Kagoshima Prefecture, despite years of resistance to the controversial plan and a questionable process by which the island was acquired by the government.
This SNA Speakeasy features Ulv Hanssen of Soka University on the theme of “Anti-Korean Hate Books in Japan.”
Henry Johnstone Morland Scott-Stokes, patrician among Japan’s foreign correspondents since 1964, recently died in Tokyo at the age of 83, but not before he did untold damage by performing as a foreign handmaid to Japan’s fascists.
The Covid pandemic and desperation have driven many women into sex work in recent years, so what is the responsibility of society to cope with its dangers and oppressions?
The Yokohama Spring Homeless Patrol offers hope to those in the most desperate need for help within their community.
Japanese have long tended to view foreigners as sources of crime within their communities, but in recent years Vietnamese, the nation’s fastest-growing foreign community, have begun to be singled out by rightwing commentators as posing the most serious alleged threat.
Calls by business groups and the academic world have increased pressure on Japan to reconsider its overly strict border policies and to reopen the country to essential travelers, but for many of the foreign students who have been desperately trying to enter in Japan for the past two years, the damage has already been done.
The Covid pandemic has led many foreign workers to desert their places of employment in Japan, and some of them have become runaway workers and even illegal overstayers.
Japan’s decision to exclude most foreigners, including many foreign residents, from entering or reentering the national borders during the Covid pandemic has had a human and reputational cost which the mainstream media has tended to either ignore or to downplay.
The Japanese government is separating my children from me for no good reason, and I maintain that this is a violation of our human rights.
