Visible Minorities: Karen Hill Anton’s Willful Ignorance of History
A prominent spokesperson within Japan’s foreign community won’t admit racism happens in Japan unless it rises to the level of racism in America.
A prominent spokesperson within Japan’s foreign community won’t admit racism happens in Japan unless it rises to the level of racism in America.
How Japan treats its non-citizen residents and diverse communities is a bellwether for how future neofascist demagogues in other countries will treat their minority voices and views.
Include foreign residents as part of the official Japan population and give us official data for just how diverse Japan actually is.
Non-Japanese politicians find that they must be the change which they hope to bring to the country.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been honored, together with South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol, with a John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage Award,” despite the fact that he personally has been unwilling to take any political risks to improve Japan-South Korea relations.
It’s the next stage of evolution in Japan’s variant of racial discrimination: a naturalized Japanese citizen was last year denied membership at a golf course—explicitly for being a former foreigner.
An interview with Jon Heese, a naturalized Canadian-Japanese and elected Tsukuba City Councillor of twelve years. A Caucasian Visible Minority of Japan, Heese has long been advocating that other Non-Japanese Residents naturalize and run for office.
Pushing Japan to remilitarize was never, and still is not, a good idea. This is not just because an arms race in Asia is the last thing the region needs. But also because Japan, consistently unable to face up to its own history, is simply not the country to represent the world’s liberal democracies in Asia, especially as a military power.
It’s difficult for me to root for Japan teams in general. It’s not an issue of nationality. It’s a matter of how Japan as a society approaches international sports; we take all the fun out of it.
This SNA Speakeasy features Ulv Hanssen of Soka University on the theme of “Anti-Korean Hate Books in Japan.”