0. Overview, Aims and Process of this Seminar - Mike Nix

The reports in this zemi-ron are part of a growing recognition of, and support for, the development of diversity in Japanese society in recent years. This new awareness can be seen not just in academic writing, but also in the work of civil society organisations and local government, and to some extent also in media reports. Its is an acknowledgement not just that Japan will need to accept more immigration in the future to make up for its aging workforce. It also recognizes that Japan is, in many ways, already a multicultural society with important minority groups of Japanese nationality, including Ainu people, Ryukyuan people (from Okinawan and the other Ryukyuu islands including Amami-oshima), Burakumin, and ‘old-comer’ migrants communities who have been in Japan for generations, principally ‘zainichi’ Koreans. This is in addition to ‘new-comer’ migrant communities such as ‘Nikkeijin’ Brazilians of Japanese descent, and migrants from other Asian countries such as the China, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, India and Nepal who have mainly arrived since the 1990s. Other aspects of diversity in Japanese society are also being increasingly recognized, such as the importance of sexual diversity and the growing numbers of people coming to Japan as asylum seekers.

This focus on multiculturalism in Japan challenges not only older dominant views of Japan as a homogenous society with few minorities but also questions the idea that Japan is an essentially egalitarian society with little discrimination or inequality. Attention has focused most notably on gender inequality in Japanese society, but issues of equality in the treatment of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) especially around marriage equality, unequal treatment of Ainu and Ryukyuan people, discrimination and hate speech towards Koreans residents in Japan, and a lack of rights for newer migrants groups including problems with access to education, health and other services, have also become more prominent issues. This zemi–rom reports on the research that students have done on these issues in the first year of this new seminar class on ‘Diversity and Equality in Japanese Society’. Issues of gender equality for Japanese women in the workplace are discussed by Yuri Kawata and Tetsuro Nakayama as well as in two articles by Maho Tamaki on gender inequality at work and realistic activities to achieve gender equality. Yuri looks too at how shortages of nursery places for children impacts on working women in some parts of Japan. Yuri, along with Hina Shiiya, Risako Iwamoto and Yui Tomiyama, also looks at issues for migrant women and children with roots in foreign countries, especially how educational support can be provided to these children. Yuka Nakayama who participated in the zemi in the first semester before going to North Carolina to study aboard for a year, also contributes a report on this theme, describing her experiences of supporting mainly Hispanic children with their education in the United States. In her another contribution, Risako Iwamoto also discusses the distinctiveness of Okinawan language and culture and considers the idea of Okinawan people as indigenous inhabitants of Japan. Nanako Morota takes up another important issue for migrants in Japan, health care, looking at this in terms of both foreign residents and asylum seekers held in detention centers. Kurumi Sasaki also discusses the condition for asylum seekers in detention with a particular focus on the system of provisional release from detention, as well as the situation of Rohingya asylum seekers in living in the community in Japan. Mayu Shoji and Tetsuro Nakayama both explore support for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Japan, comparing the approaches of two organizations ReBit and LGBT Youth Japan, with Mayu focusing on these issues in the ‘educational interface and Tetsuro also looking at the role of genderless fashion in supporting sexual diversity. Together these reports provide a board overview of the conditions of diversity and (in)equality for many different groups in Japan as well as an exploration of different approaches for promoting diversity and equality in Japanese society.

One main aim of the zemi was to help students to learn about these issues through their own research, using books and internet sources of information (online news articles, NGO and government websites, reports from government and international organisations, etc), sharing and discussing that research in class with other students. Participants in the seminar choose areas and issues of interest to them and do their own reading and note-taking on those in preparation for class most weeks of the semester, and much class time is spent with students explaining their research to each other in pairs and small groups to learn from each other. This research has been organized in three cycles, two in the first semester and one in the second semester. Cycle 1 was for students to gain an overview of different types of diversity and inequality in Japanese society. In Cycle 2, they focused more on specific issues for different minority groups, as well as women, in Japan. Cycle 3 looked at the work of different organisations on those issues and different approaches for supporting diversity and equality. At the end of each cycle, we had group or individual presentations by students of key points from their research in that cycle. A second aim of the seminar was for students to learn about diversity and inequality in Japan directly from organizations working in these areas, by either visiting them or doing some kind of voluntary work with these organisations. In this first year of the seminar we made connections with four organizations. Hina, Risako and Yuri (along with Mike and two other students not in the zemi, Ai Nagai and Yuya Hayakawa) visited Kalakasan Migrant Women’s Empowerment Center in Kawasaki, which works mainly with Filipino mothers and their children, to provide education support for children there. These visits began just before the summer holiday with two or three students visiting on the second and fourth Sundays of each month during the second semester. Another organisation working to support the education of children with roots in foreign countries, Stand by Me, which is based at Ichou Danchi public hosuing complex in Yokohama and Yamato cities in Kanagawa, was visited by Hina and Yui. They talked with a co-coordinator of the organisation as well as observing a Vietnamese class for children of Vietnamese background in the danchi. Kurumi and Nanako travelled all the way to Ushiku in Ibaragi where the Higashi Nihon Immigration Detention Center is located to meet the coordinator of Ushiku No Kai, an organisation that supports asylum seekers in detention, and went with her to visit some detainees in the center. Finally, Mayu and Tetsuro had a meeting with members of ReBit an organization that raises awareness of sexual diversity and LGBT rights, and as a result decided to help out at ReBit’s LGBT seijinshiki in January 2017.

Initially, the aim of including these visits to, and activities with, organizations in the zemi was to contribute to the students’ research about the organizations and about different approaches to supporting diversity and equality - as well as being a way of possibly supporting the work of these groups. It was hoped that getting involved with these organisations would help students get to know something of ‘the reality’ of civil society activity on diversity and equality, and of the experiences of minority groups in Japanese society, that they couldn’t so easily learn about from their internet- and book-based research. However, the experience of the first year of the zemi has raised questions about whether it is possible or beneficial to see working with these groups as a kind of information-gatehring ‘research’. We thought, for example, that visiting Kakakasan would enable us to learn from the Filipino women more about their situation and the problems they face, but actually after more than 6 months of contact with Kalakasan we have not been able to talk with the women about those issues because they are reluctant to share their stories with people outside of their community. Instead, though, we have found that helping those women’s children with their school work, as well as just playing with them, has been a reward of it’s own and students in the zemi would like to continue visiting Kalakasan after the seminar ends. We have seen children who were very shy and reluctant to talk with us, and who have suffered bullying and exclusion at school because of their mixed Filipino and Japanese background, become much more open and friendly and we hope this has a positive impact on their feelings about school too. And we have also found we can learn from this involvement with the children. Risako, for example, remarked in one class that she had realised that what is normal about education for many Japanese university students like herself – going to high school and getting into university – is far from normal for the children we meet at Kalakasan: many don’t go on to high school or struggle and drop out if they do, and have even less chance of going to a university. In a similar way, Mayu and Tetsuro took part in the LGBT seijinshiki not primarily as a kind of research but to support an event they felt was valuable - but also learnt a great deal from that experience.

A related ‘research’ issue that we have become more aware of this year is that some organisations themselves, not just individuals in them, may not have to the time to receive visits by undergraduate student researchers, or may not want to be the subjects of research by outsiders, whose motives they don’t know. This is particularly true of minority groups such as indigenous people and migrants communities who have suffered discrimination and lack of understanding from mainstream Japanese society when they receive requests to be ‘researched’ by members of that mainstream society. Stand By Me, for example, asked Hina and Yui to send a detailed explanation of their research project and questions before they agreed to meet with them, and then arranged to meet them together with other students from other universities who also wanted to meet and interview members of the group. Hina and Yui felt the meeting was useful and the coordinator they met was quite friendly, and they appreciated the chance to see language classes run by the group and talk with the children there, but the process of arranging the meeting made clear that there are issues for groups like Stand By Me with being researched by students and other outsiders. One other related issue with visiting and working with organizations in this zemi that has struck us in the second semester is the value, indeed the importance, of developing ongoing relationships with the groups and people in them. For myself, repeated visits to Kalakasan has helped to clarify what our role can best be, for example that we should work with the children rather than try to help the mothers with their language issues, and that playing with the children and young people, not just helping them to study, is valuable. For the students visiting Kalakasan over a period of six months or more in particular, we have seen how trust and warmth has developed in the relationship we have with the children. As well as visiting regularlyy as a group, continuity in the people who make the visits is also important, so that the children can, as much as possible, meet with the same supporters each time. It has been impossible for all the students involved in visiting Kalakasan to go there each time but we have tried to have teams of students who work with each young person so that they get to know ands trust the people supporting them. Time and money are issues here though for students to make regular visits to organisations over a semester or year. Kurumi and Nanako, for example, were interested in returning to the detention center with Ushiku on Kai, but the travel costs, the journey time (2-3 hours each way), and the fact that Ushiku no Kai visit the detention center on a Wednesday when Kurumi and Nanako have classes unfortunately made it impossible for them to go back.

Reflecting on these issues and experiences, we rethinking the way we want to work with organizations in the zemi next year. Starting to make contact with and visit organisation in the first semester with a view to making regular visits (or at least several visits) to the same organsiations through the year seems important. And we need to make our primary reason for getting involved with organisations to be to help them in their work, and make a contribution ourselves to supporting diversity and equality in Japan, rather than to do ‘research’ about them. No doubt we will be also able to learn much of value from the experience of working with organisastions but that is different from aiming to do research about organisations. In her report, Hina refers to an important point raised by Stand By Me who are cautious about having outside volunteers come to help them. They want volunteers who will work to support the aims oand needs of the orgnaisdiaotns rather than volunteer just for their own benefit. For this zemi, we aim to find a way that students can both benefit themselves and contribute to the organsiations they work with in a way that is valuable for the people in those organisations.

The reports in this zemi-ron are valuable not just because of the research work and information gathering about diversity and equality they report on but for the experiences and reflections they share about how we can work with and develop relationships with organisations working in this area and so make a contribution ourselves to supporting diversity and equality in Japan. Thanks to all the students in the zemi this year for their work and their input to developing the zemi in it’s first year. We made a great start! And the second year looks exciting! We hope that you will stay in contact, and give us any support you can, as the zemi develops.