Humanize the dry debate about immigration This article by Debito Arudou looks at the recent debate about how to make up Japan's labour shortage and whether immigration should be part of that, but focuses mainly on the lack of term in Japanese to describe individual immigrants. Japan Times, 4 June 2014.
Tweak the immigration debate and demand an upgrade to denizen class This article argues against using the term foreigner or gaikokujin for all non-Japanese people in Japan regardless of whether they are tourists, short-term visitors, permanent residents or people of Korean ancestry born in Japan. It suggests that it is better to use terms like denizen (a status between foreigner and full Japanese citizen) or eifu shimin (permanent citizen) for permanent foreign residents in Japan who work here and have families here. It also argues that Japanese immigration policy is based on the idea that all non-Japanese including long-term residents are foreigners and tries to prevent foreigners settling permanently in Japan. Japan Times, Apr 2, 2013.
Black Lifestyle in Japan A video from Metropolis about teenage women who live according to 'B-style' or the 'black lifestyle' and African-American popular culture.
Japan Prejudice and Black Sambo This article looks at images and stereotypes of African-Americans in Japan: "Scholars from Japan suggest that their countrymen are not intentionally racist but are insensitive toward other peoples because of centuries of homogeneous and isolated development" Time Magazine, 24 June 2001.
'A battle for Japan's future' by David O'Neill. An article on the views of liberals supporters and right-wing opponents of Noriko Calderon, the 13 year old girl born in Japan whose Filipino parents have been sent back to the Philipines, and about the background to her case. Japan Times, April 14, 2009.
Common Japanese misconceptions regarding foreigners and foreign countries The Japanese are an unusually homogenous people, bound by a very uniformising education system. As such, it is easy to say that, contrarily to many other peoples in the world, most Japanese share the same beliefs and the same preconceived ideas. This is strikingly true when it comes to their image of "foreigners", which they commonly refer to as "gaijin" or "gaikokujin", meaning "outside country person(s)". Japan Reference.
There is more to my son than the fact he’s a ‘half’ A new father discusses the way people in Japan treat his young son who has one Japanese and one non-Japanese parent. Japan Times, Jul 29, 2013.
Magazine's focus on crimes by foreigners sparks outrage A lurid "true-crime" magazine that depicts foreigners as red-eyed criminals bent on causing mayhem in Japan has been criticised by a rights group as "ignorant propaganda" which will increase intolerance towards people from other countries. Asia Media, February 7, 2007.
The 2003 PM Koizumi Cabinet Anti-Foreign-Crime Putsch is overlooked by the foreign-language press This article takes a critical view of the allegations of increasing crime by foreigners made by the Koizumi government in 2003 and of the focus on 'foreign crime and criminals' in the Japanese media. Debito.org, 7 Oct 2003.
'Multicultural Japan' remains a pipe dream: Ideology, policies, people not ready for major influx of foreigners, says Chris Burgess This article criticizes the idea that japaan is a multicultural society, arguing that ideas about immigrants in Japan, policies on multiculturalism, and the numbers of foreigners in Japan all mean Japan is not multicultural.
A longer, more academic version of this article is: 'Multicultural Japan? Discourse and the ‘Myth’ of Homogeneity'
Time to come clean on foreign crime wave Rising crime a problem for Japan, but pinning blame on foreigners is not the solution. Japan Times, Oct. 7, 2003. >>> More on Crime by foreigners >>>
Daily Yomiuri on the "gaijin" debate Miyazaki University English professor Mike Guest has weighed in on the “gaijin” issue in today’s Daily Yomiuri. He makes a very intelligent case about how the redundant use of the word “gaijin” is the problem, not the word itself. Japan Probe, November 4, 2008.
The ideology of Japanese identity Review of "Multiethnic Japan', by John Lie. This review looks at the myth of monoethnicity in Japan which makes ethnic groups such as the Ainu, Okinawans, "burakumin," Koreans and Chinese, constituting some 4-6 million people out of a population of 125 million, invisible. Japan Times, Sept. 16, 2001. >>> More on Japanese identity: debates and discourses >>>
Publicized Images of Non-Japanese in Japan This webpage looks at images and stereotypes of foreigners in Japan especially in terms of foreign crime. From debito.org >>> More on Crime by foreigners >>>
Published figures are half the story: Foreigner crime stats cover up a real cop-out This article looks at how police crime statistics, reports in the mass media, and other forms of discourse exaggerate the number of foreign crimes in Japan. Japan Times, Oct. 4, 2002. >>> More on Crime by foreigners >>>
Packaging Prejudice for the Global Marketplace: Chauvinism Incited by Tokyo Governor Ishihara by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Professor, The Australian National University. This article looks at Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara's comments in April 2000 about 'sankokujin' and increasing foreign crime in Japan and at the discussion of these comments in the Japanese media. The author suggest that Ishihara's comments treat "newcomer" foreigners and permanent foreign residents, who were born in Japan, as all the same, and by connecting them with increasing crime creates a sense of fear about 'foreigners' in general, as well as making them scapegoats for Japan's problems. Japan in the World, 2 May 2001. >>> More on Crime by foreigners >>>
"Resisting the tide: Japan's struggle with foreigners is a struggle over identity": This is a 2005 Japan Times article that starts "Social studies teacher Sho Sasaki is fiercely proud of his native Iwate's local heritage. Like many Japanese, he also, and quite self-consciously, calls himself a nationalist.So when Sasaki charged into the teachers' room at the high school where he works and loudly proclaimed his outrage at the Supreme Court's ruling on Iwate-born Korean health worker Chong Hyang Gyun..."
Anti-Korean protests trigger counter-protests against hatemongers This article looks at tension in Shi-Okubo, Shinjuku, where there have been counter-protests against right-wing nationalist Japanese demonstrations calling for Koreans to be made to leave Japan. It looks at the views of people of both Korean and Japanese ancestry who have joined the protests, which call for better relations between Japanese and Koreans, and discusses how these counter demonstrations are a new development for the Korean community in Japan. Asahi Shinbun, 26 March, 2013.
Hate aimed at ethnic Korean residents continues, but one man changes This article looks at Zaitokukai, a right wing organisation that claims ethnic Koreans in Japan receive unfair privileges and calls for them to be forced to leave or even killed. It also tells the story of one Japanese man who became an active member of Zaitokukai but who changed his views and left. Asahi Shinbun, 28 April 2013.
Contempt for China leads to insults, conspiracy theories against Okinawans This article discusses how attitudes amongst some mainland Japanese people towards Okinawa are currently becoming hostile, after the 'Okinawa boom' of about ten years ago, and at how Okinawans are sometimes connected with China or South Korea in the current territorial disputes. Asahi Shinbun, April 30, 2013.
Hashimoto likens weekly’s slur to hate speak "The clash between Toru Hashimoto and the weekly magazine Shukan Asahi over an article on the Osaka mayor’s lineage has raised a question that Japan still refuses to directly confront: What kinds of comments cross the line from criticism into hate speech that should be legally banned?" Japan Times, Nov 3, 2012.
‘Africans in Japan’ . . . not from the quill of Ishihara, thank God An article about media images of African-Americans in Japan. Japan Times, Feb 18, 2007.
Japan Prejudice and Black Sambo An article that looks at racist images of blacks and African Americans in the Japanese media and popular culture. It presents the argument that this is the result of centuries of Japanese isolation, rather than of intentional racism, but it also notes that Japan has adopted many of the racist attitudes common in the US itself Time , 24 Jun 2001.
>>>> More on Discrimination against foreigners and minorities and African-Americans and Black people >>>
Ibaraki Pref Police put up new and improved public posters portraying NJ as coastal invaders A blog post about these posters which warn Japanese people to look out for foreigners entering Japan illegally. Debito, or, 28 Nov 2008
>>>> More on Crime and foreigner residents/migrants >>>>
Chapter 7. Minority Groups: Ethnicity and Discrimination, in Sugimoto, Yoshio. (2003). An introduction to Japanese society. Cambridge [England] : Cambridge University Press. Available from: Chuo Library 中央書庫 309.152/S94 & Mike. Section I Japanese Ethnocentrism and Globalization discusses claims by politicians of ethnic homogeneity in Japan.
Burgess, C. (2007). 'Multicultural Japan? Discourse and the ‘Myth’ of Homogeneity', Japan Focus, 24 March, 2007. This is a longer version of the Japan Times article, 'Multicultural Japan' remains a pipe dream: Ideology, policies, people not ready for major influx of foreigners, says Chris Burgess. In it he critically reviews academic work since the 1980s that claims Japan is a multicultural society. And looking at discourses about multiculturalism in Japan, policies on multiculturalism, and the numbers of foreign immigrants in Japan, he argues that Japan is not a multicultural society. >>> More on policies on multiculturalism >>>
Burgess, C. (2004). Maintaining Identities: Discourses of Homogeneity in a Rapidly Globalizing Japan. electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, 19 April 2004.
Weiner, M. (1997). 'The invention of identity: "Self" and "other" in pre-war Japan', in M. Weiner (Ed). (1997). Japan's minorities: the illusion of homogeneity. 1st Edition. London: Routledge. Available from: Chuo Library 総合政策 301.45/J35 & Mike.
Creighton, M. (1997). 'Soto Others and uchi Others: Imagining racial diversity, imagining homogenous Japan', in M. Weiner (Ed). (1997). Japan's minorities: the illusion of homogeneity. 1st Edition. London: Routledge. Available from: Chuo Library 総合政策 301.45/J35 & Mike. Looks at the representation of both white and black foreigners in Japanese advertising and argues that these representations help to construct a homogenous Japanese identity by projecting out onto these 'Others' not only unwanted 'non-Japanese' characterstics but also association with ethnic minorities and heterogenity. Also looks at parallels in the representation of 'others' within Japan such as the Burakumin.
Lie, J. (2003). 'The discourse of Japaneseness', in M. Douglass & G. S. Roberts (Eds). Japan and global migration: foreign workers and the advent of a multicultural society. London; New York: Routledge. Available from Chuo Library総合政策325.252/J35 & Mike. Discusses discourses of: Japan as a middle class society, in which foreign workers are seen as lower class; Japanese cultural superiority over foreign workers; Japan as ethnically homogenous; Japaneseness and Nihonjinron.
Pollack, D. (2003). 'Aliens, gangsters and myth in Kon Satoshi's World Apartment Horror', in M. Douglass & G. S. Roberts (Eds).Japan and global migration: foreign workers and the advent of a multicultural society. London; New York: Routledge. Available from Chuo Library総合政策 325.252/J35 & Mike. Looks at the representation of mostly Asian foreign workers, male and female, and the Japanese yakuza who control them in the manga from the early 1900s, World Apartment Horror.
Murphey-Shigematsu, S. (2003). 'Identities of multiethnic people in Japan', in M. Douglass & G. S. Roberts (Eds). Japan and global migration: foreign workers and the advent of a multicultural society. London; New York: Routledge. Available from Chuo Library総合政策 325.252/J35 & Mike. Includes a section on'(Ideological and psychological constraints' that considers the myth of a Japan as a mono-ethnic or mono-racial state.