Category Archives: Discrimination

Japan Keeps a High Wall for Foreign Labor

January 6, 2011 in Discrimination, Immigration, News

Maria Fransiska, a young, hard-working nurse from Indonesia, is just the kind of worker Japan would seem to need to replenish its aging work force. But Ms. Fransiska, 26, is having to fight to stay. To extend her three-year stint at a hospital outside Tokyo, she must pass a standardized nursing exam administered in Japanese, [...]

Will there ever be a rainbow Japan?

December 10, 2010 in Discrimination, Immigration, News

Government statistics suggest multiculturalism is on the rise, but social organizations for mixed-race Japanese say ‘hafus’ still face challenges Japan, which closed its borders from 1639 to 1854 and later colonized its neighbors, has an uneasy history with foreigners, national identity, and multiculturalism. Yet government statistics and grassroots organizations say multiculturalism in the famously insular [...]

Building a ‘Little Yangon’ in Tokyo

November 10, 2010 in Discrimination, Immigration, News

For Tokyo’s community of Burmese, however, Takadanobaba is something much more important: a home away from home. In fact, so many of them have gathered there that it has come to be known as Little Yangon. Although they number only a few thousand, the mutual support and sense of community have been vital for their [...]

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign

August 30, 2010 in Discrimination, Immigration, News

The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies. Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in [...]

Japanese women stand low on corporate ladder 25 yrs after law change

August 30, 2010 in Discrimination, Dispatch, News

Twenty five years have passed since the Equal Employment Opportunity Law for Men and Women was enacted to fight gender inequality at the workplace. By this time, people might think that a horde of college-educated women are calling the shots as corporate managers. But the latest Kyodo News survey shows that is hardly the case. [...]

Workplace bans on beards raise hairy questions

June 23, 2010 in Discrimination, News

In May, the city of Isesaki, Gunma Prefecture, banned all male municipal employees from sporting beards in the office on the grounds that public servants should look decent. The city took the action after some residents complained about its bearded workers. In response to the news, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said it had [...]

Inmates on hunger strike in Japan immigration centre

May 23, 2010 in Discrimination, Harassment, Immigration, News

Scores of foreigners in a Japanese immigration detention centre have been on hunger strike for more than a week, demanding to be released and protesting the mysterious death of an African deportee. Some 70 detainees — many of them Sri Lankans and Pakistanis — have refused food since May 10, also seeking to highlight suicides [...]

Is Japan becoming more insular?

May 21, 2010 in Discrimination, Immigration, News

With so much talk of globalization, it might seem counterintuitive to suggest that Japan is turning inward, but that’s what some have concluded. Take Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, where the local government last year made what seemed like a coldhearted offer to Latin American immigrants: It would pay them to go back home — as long [...]

Bar association supports woman’s claim that prefecture denied her promotions due to gender

May 21, 2010 in Discrimination, News

A bar association here has found the Gunma Prefectural Government’s reluctance to promote a female employee to a higher position to be discriminatory and made a request to the government office to improve its promotion practices. The request was made Thursday by the human-rights committee of the Gunma Bar Association. According to the committee, it [...]

Beard ban sparks controversy

May 21, 2010 in Discrimination, News

The Isesaki city government has stirred controversy with an edict to public servants not to grow beards. In a notice distributed to city workers Tuesday, Isesaki city said the ban was placed because some citizens find facial hair “unpleasant.” The notice, aimed to inform workers of the start Wednesday of the summer “Cool Biz” campaign [...]