I do agree that too many people complain about discrimination directed toward them while ignoring the more serious cases that happen to others. It’s a team effort, and all cases should be made public.

But, unfortunately, until there’s an aggressive foreigners’ rights group headed by a credentialed Japanese person, there likely will just be a lot of “shoganai”’s from the collective Japanese public.

As for your other point, you’re right, it could always be worse for Westerners in Japan…but honestly, isn’t it part of the same problem? Japanese society, in all its institutions, drives home the idea that non-Japanese are less, that Japan and the Japanese are unique and special and that to be different makes you somehow broken.

Yes, it is horrible the way that people from poorer nations are treated–in Japan, and elsewhere (like the US ). The fact that as Westerners/English speaking people we don’t experience the same level of exploitation does not detract from the fact that, say, half Japanese children are branded with the name “Half” for life, and that they are often mercilessly teased and tormented at school for not being “Japanese”. (True story–my friend’s daughter was teased for being “a foreigner” as a mixed race child, and the teacher’s response was “No, no, she’s Japanese, not a foreigner!”).

Any efforts to reduce racism in Japan will help all the targets, and the Western Bloggers, because of our relative wealth and voice, can do much more to help than those who are suffering more. So we should do our best to make people more aware of the true problems of racism in Japan, and everywhere, and try to combat them. That does not mean, however, that our problems are not real. When it’s ok for people on the street to walk up to you and touch your hair like you’re some kind of exotic animal, or when there is no law preventing businesses from racial discrimination, or when police openly target non-Japanese for interrogation, it is part of a very real system of dehumanization.
It hurts. It reduces your dignity as a human being. It’s not right, and just because other’s have it “worse” doesn’t mean it should slide.

Essentially, I think we have to hold Japan to the same standards that we hold any industrialized nation, and under the rubric of human dignity and human rights Japan is failing.

>>Translation: ”You might have to wait three whole years before being allowed to abuse other foreign labour in this way”.

Unless of course they should choose to quietly violate the same labour laws for which they had already shown contempt.

My own take on an article that appeared in the Mainichi last week, concerning a company who abused, kidnapped, and assaulted its employees, and the lack of reaction from either the Japanese government or the Western blogging community….