Racism

Recently a very popular story in Japan was that of cardboard secretly mixed in with minced meat and then put into dumplings. The story involved a pretty tiny outfit probably only catering to local people. Not only this, but this happened in China not Japan.

Japan Probe has put up a video of a news segment about a Tokyo prison. The segment claims that the foreign population at this prison in increasing to the point of becoming problematic, however a graph given in the program shows this clearly to be false; link. Talk about foreign fear mongers.

Debito has a thought provoking post about J MSDF demoting military officers with NJ spouses. Debito states:

Imagine the uproar that would ensue in the US if the US military or State Department (with their high numbers of international spouses) were to engage in these sorts of practices–treating their employees as untrustworthy because they married foreigners, naturally all suspectable as spies!

I agree with the thrust of Debito's argument, but I think he might be a little off in specifics.

Great reporting today at Tokyo Tsure Zure Gusa about a police officer randomly checking foreign looking people for their alien registration cards. Check it out!

Clearly the officer was well out of bounds. Debito has an excellent page discussing the illegality of this here. Oh, and while at Tokyo Tsure Zure Gusa, you might also want to check these great entries as well:

There's a great article on-line about Lee Soo Im: Koreans' struggle casts fresh light on Japanese immigration debate Here are few select quotes:

A third-generation ethnic Korean, Lee was born in 1953 in Osaka Prefecture.

Do whites have it better in Japan? Post your opinion in the comments section!

Now, I want to critique a passage from the essay, Japanese-ness, Whiteness, and the "Other" in Japan's Internationalization, by Etsuko Fujimoto. This essay appeared in the book Transforming Communication About Culture (2002), edited by Mary Jane Collier. The passage I am citing begins on page 10.

[Update April 12, 2007: Debito posted an entry discussing the issues raised here, and Alex Kerr responded very positively, saying he fully supports Debito's activities. Great! Only I still kind of wish Kerr wouldn't use the word "gaijin" ... ]

A well-respected author and blogger, Shigenobu Tamura (田村重信), reports in his blog that last year the monthly magazine Chichi (致知) featured an article in its April issue in which Bunmei Ibuki, the MEXT Minister, gave his opinion on the