The myopic state we're in
Fingerprint scheme
exposes xenophobic,
short-sighted trend in government
By DEBITO
ARUDOU
(This article, which first appeared in the
Japan Times of Dec. 18, 2007,
is reproduced here in Japan Perspectives by kind permission of the
author.)
We all notice it eventually: how nice individual
Japanese people are, yet how cold — even discriminatory — officialdom
is toward non-Japanese (NJ). This dichotomy is often passed off as
something "cultural" (a category people tend to assign anything
they can't understand), but recent events have demonstrated there is in
fact a grand design. This design is visible in government policies and
public rhetoric, hard-wiring the public into fearing and blaming
foreigners.
Start with the "us" and "them"
binary language of official government pronouncements: how "our
country" ("wagakuni") must develop policy for the sake of
our "citizens" ("kokumin") toward foreign
"visitors" (rarely "residents"); how foreigners bring
discrimination upon themselves, what with their "different languages,
religions, and lifestyle customs" an' all; and how
everyone has inalienable human rights in Japan — except the aliens.
The atmosphere wasn't always so hostile. During
the bubble economy of the late '80s and its aftermath, the official mantra
was "kokusaika" (internationalization), where NJ were given
leeway as misunderstood outsiders.
But in 2000, kicked off by Tokyo Gov. Shintaro
Ishihara's "sangokujin" speech
— in which he called on the
Self-Defense Forces to round up foreigners during natural disasters in
case they riot — the general attitude shifted perceptibly from benign
neglect to downright antipathy.
As "Japanese only" signs and
exclusionary rules proliferated, up popped the "cultural"
excuses: Japan can't help itself (after all, it has an isolationist
history and deep-rooted, unique concepts of racism); Japan is catching up
with the West, and will change when the more internationalized youngsters
grow up and take the reins; international marriages and foreign neighbors
will ultimately clear up residual "gaijin allergies."
Meanwhile, high-profile anti-gaijin movements were
converging and cross-pollinating: the Otaru onsens case of 1999-2005, the
"beware of foreign criminals" police notices in banks and on
public transport, the "anti-hooligan" push during the 2002 World
Cup, the al-Qaida scare of 2005, the
Gaijin Hanzai magazine on crime by foreigners in February 2007
and the "foreign
crime is rising" (even when it isn't) police media campaigns every
six months.
It's reached saturation point. In addition to
October's new law requiring all employers to register their NJ workers
with the government, last month Japan reinstated fingerprinting for
foreigners at the border.
This time the weak excuses — about
fingerprinting being merely a sign of the times — fell flat: Japan's
program went further than the American policy it was modeled on, requiring
fingerprinting every time almost any foreigner enters Japan — even
Regular Permanent Residents. The government has also been unclear how long
the biometric data will be stored or protected, or with which government
agencies and countries — besides the U.S. — it will be shared.
More telling was Japan's officially-sanctioned
defamation: When applying these policies solely to non-Japanese,
government portrayed them as more likely to be criminals, terrorists, and
carriers of contagious diseases.
Things might have been different in a society
where the accused has the right of reply. But in Japan it's not a fair
fight. Media blackouts on minority views are commonplace. And this time it
became clear how officialdom manufactures "Team Japan vs. The
World."
After little public debate over the years,
fingerprinting was rammed through the Diet during the era of then Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi's virtual omnipotence. When it came into effect
on Nov. 20, debate was again stifled.
Nothing was left to chance that day. National
broadcaster NHK's 3-minute segment on the 7 p.m. news show only parroted
the government's line of protecting "citizens" from the outside
world, with no airtime given to the protests outside the Justice Ministry.
NHK's 6-minute segment in the 9 p.m. broadcast gave positive feedback from
a couple of tourists, but no word from any NJ residents whatsoever. NHK's
BS News at 10:50 p.m. didn't even bother to carry the story.
How can NHK ignore a story affecting well over a
million NJ residents (and millions more if you include their families)?
Why are foreigners paying NHK fees if they're not valued as an audience?
Other networks and newspapers carried news about
concerns for human rights, the malfunctioning fingerprint machines, and
angry tourists. But not one network had the presence of mind to interview
a NJ resident or immigrant.
Then, right on cue, came vindication: Hours past
midnight, the Nikkei, Sankei and Yomiuri dailies all released articles in
time for their Nov. 21 morning editions: "Five foreigners
snagged!" Huzzah for our new system!
Not so, actually. The Sankei Shimbun admitted they
were snagged for odd passports, not fingerprints, which happens every day
anyway. Thus this was not news. It was propaganda.
And man did people get mad as hell about it.
Respondents to the Debito.org blog have finally gotten sick of
contributing to Japan only to be constantly bashed. They are forming a
nonprofit group to promote the interests of immigrants.
This shouldn't be necessary. Plenty of domestic
avenues recognize the need for foreigners, and actively created policy to
bring them here. Even Japan's largest business lobby, Keidanren, is
partially responsible for the Trainee Visa regime that has doubled Japan's
NJ population since 1990. Policymakers want foreigners here.
But scratch the surface. I recently attended a
speech by a Keidanren foreign labor policy- maker. I asked why Japan would
import so many foreign "trainees" yet not take care of them. Why
exempt their visas from Japan's labor laws and social safety net?
His answer was enlightening. He claimed Japan's
labor protections are haphazard for everybody (which justifies full
exemption for foreigners?), and that Japan's society is not wired for
immigration. (So why import more than a million foreign workers? Just to
exploit them as revolving-door work units?)
Now I get it. Policymakers just don't care. In
their view, gaijin only come here to make money off the rich society we
Japanese alone built, right? So once they get here, they're on their own,
and should entertain no thoughts of planning to stay.
"Mottainai" — what a waste. Japanese
officialdom would be well-advised not to squander the potential foreign
workers offer Japan, whose aging society and withering labor force
promises to price itself out of the international market. Policymakers
know this, yet they make their own lame excuses about employing more
robots, elderly, and women. Then they wonder why the birthrate keeps
dropping. Complete policy incoherence.
The rot reaches the very top. I harbor no
illusions about who makes policy in this country (the bureaucrats, of
course), but let's take a look at our elected Diet members, since the
public has some say in their existence.
Politicians are even further out of touch. No
wonder, considering they are effectively a peerage masquerading as an
elected legislature.
After the last election, 185 of 480 Diet members
(39 percent) were second- or third- (or more) generation politicians
("seshuu seijika"). Of 244 members of the LDP (the ruling party
for practically the entire postwar period), 126 (52 percent) are seshuu
seijika. Likewise eight of the last 10 prime ministers, and around half
the Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda Cabinets. When the average turnover of
lawmakers per election is only around 3 percent, you have what can only be
termed a political class.
As the party cream floats to the top, debates
become very closed-circuit, intellectually incestuous, and even oddly
anti-gaijin. For example, Justice Minister Kunio "friend of a friend
in al-Qaida" Hatoyama was quoted by the Shukan Asahi magazine in
October, "The Japanese place more importance on the value of life. .
. . European civilizations of power and war mean their concept of life is
weaker than the Japanese. This is why they are moving toward abolishing
the death penalty." Then he approved three execution orders.
These isolated people (and our acquiescent media
cartels) are simply unable to see anyone's interests but their own. They
not only serve the country poorly — they are devastating it.
Crunch the data from the IMF
World Economic Outlook for percentage changes in GDP per
capita, at current prices between 1996 and 2006. A basket of 15 developed
countries/ mature economies (European, North American, and Antipodean) have
all grown by an average of around 57 percent. Even the laggard, Germany,
grew by nearly 23 percent. Japan, meanwhile, shrank by 1.47 percent. Since
Japan's neighbors, China and South Korea, have grown by 131.9 percent and
51.3 percent respectively, Japan's future as the leader of Asia is in
jeopardy.
Yet Japan clearly resists the forces or
globalization by having, according to The Economist (Dec. 1), the lowest
levels of import penetration, inward foreign direct investment and foreign
workers in the OECD club of developed countries, not to mention the
highest government debt, at 180 percent of GDP.
Japan even refuses to fulfill simple obligations
as a developed nation, not only because it won't pass a law against racial
discrimination. It won't even take people who would come here no matter
how poorly they're treated. Despite being the third-largest donor to the
United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Japan accepted only 34
asylum-seekers in 2006 (compared to 23,296 in the U.S. and 6,330 in
Britain that year), and a total of only 1,975 since it signed the Refugee
Convention back in 1951. Take our money, keep your aliens.
As Japan sinks into elderly obsolescence and
threatens to retire to the economic backwaters, it needs more openness,
not less. Yet our leaders insult NJ residents by calling them names and
policing them further. Not to mention the purposeful xenophobes,
capitalizing on a complicated world, who whip up public fear of foreign
terrorism and crime. The nation is being run by people out of sync with
Japan's present and future, who won't live to see the full extent of the
damage they are wreaking anyway.
We cannot expect people like these to lead us to a
world they cannot envision. Neither Japanese citizens, nor the
international residents who plight their troth here, deserve this fate. At
the very least Japan needs a change in leadership. Knock the LDP from its
half- century in power, for starters.
As for the media, let's have a pro-gaijin campaign
for a change. To paraphrase one of Japan's outspoken historical
revisionists and xenophobes, the late Diet member Eto Takami, "we're
doing good things too." Acknowledge that.
© Debito Arudou for the Japan Times 2007. All rights
reserved
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