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Mainichi Daily News ran a story about a week back about a dry-cleaning firm and its treatment of foreign labour:

Six Chinese female trainees at a dry-cleaning company in Yamanashi Prefecture got into a row with the company when they complained that they were being paid under the minimum wage, and three of them suffered injuries including a broken bone, it has been learned.

The article goes on to say that the employees complained that their monthly salary of 50,000 yen (about USD $500) was far below minimum wage, and that their overtime pay of 350 yen/hour (later raised to 450 yen/hour) was less than half of the region’s minimum standards for overtime.

When the six workers submitted a written request for their wages to be raised, the dry-cleaning company showed up at the company’s dormitory with 10 other people, and tried to force the women into a van taking them to the airport and sending them to China.  During this scuffle, one woman’s leg was broken when she jumped out of a second-story window trying to escape, and two others were also injured, presumably by the company employees who were trying to force them into the van.

The company president later visited the foreign workers’ union headquarters and apologised:

“If they were Japanese I wouldn’t have done it (tried to force them to leave). I was asked for a high amount of unpaid cash and thought I couldn’t negotiate. I’m sorry for their injuries.”

Nice.  ”You don’t have to worry, Japanese government.  I wouldn’t have tried to kidnap Japanese girls after they demand that I start following employment laws, only dirty foreign ones.  Please rest assured.”

That’s OK though; the Justice Ministry has said that the company might be punished:

“The failure to pay wages, the human rights violations and other actions constitute illicit behavior, and there is a possibility that this warrants banning the firm from accepting trainees for three years,” the official said.

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

In the “Western bloggers in Japan” community, there is often a lot of grousing about what is seen as horrendous acts of racism: “I had to see 8 whole apartments before I found one that would rent to a white man!”  ”Boo hoo, when I went to buy my iPhone I had to show a different kind of ID!”  ”A lady gave me the stink-eye on the subway!”

Truthfully that stuff bothers me a bit too, but I can’t get worked up about the small stuff when I know what kind of problems the immigrants who aren’t lucky enough to have been born in a rich country face:  Not being able to rent anything but the most disgusting shacks of apartments… working long hours in poor conditions…  in some cases, being imprisoned by the Yakuza and forced to work as sex workers for Japan’s business and government elite..  And then when finally one case actually makes the news — an abuse and kidnapping and assault case — it’s met with a slap on the wrist like that.

This sort of thing is what the “Westerners in Japan” blogosphere should really concern itself with; not petty bullcrap like iPhones and video rental memberships.

I have mentioned the “Here in Japan…” speech before. This is the lecture that we tend to hear, that tries to convince us that any argument between a Japanese person and a Non-Japanese person is actually a cultural difference, rather than a simple difference of opinion.  This is because Japan is a Beautiful and Unique Flower,  and no human civilization anywhere else on the world has anything in common with the Japanese… oop, sorry, I need to take a break to refill my sarcasm tank.

Anyway, as most readers of this blog will already know, Google released its Street View service in Japan last month.  This is a service that had Google drive through the streets of Tokyo (and presumably other metropolitan areas?) and take pictures every 100 meters or so, and make those pictures viewable in Google Maps.  Like a lot of people, we all had a lot of fun with it at the office…  People were looking for their houses, favourite stores, the office…  We were checking our parking spots looking for our cars and motorcycles, we were checking favourite hangouts to see if we could see anything interesting.

But it didn’t take too long for the cries of protest to start from the Japanese blogging community. This post (english translation here) is the most famous and the one that I’ll talk about.

Anyway, there’s a reason I started off this post talking about the “here in Japan” lecture.  Mr. Higuchi’s letter to Google raises some good points, but it’s so couched in the whole “we Japanese…” us vs. them mentality that it’s really hard to read those points without emotions getting in the way.

His letter rubs the wrong way almost from the start:  He is quite convinced that the employees of Google Japan feel the same way as him (Why wouldn’t they?   They’re Japanese, and We Japanese Are All The Same), and that they have simply been unable to convince their idiot American bosses of the truth that Google Street View offends Japanese Sensibilities.

But really, let’s look at his main point about why “We Japanese” do not like Street View: “We Japanese live close to the street in small houses, and so consider the exterior of our houses to be part of our living space as well”.   He backs this up with examples of things that only “We Japanese” do, such as shoveling snow from the road/sidewalk in front of their house, and decorating the front of their house with plants and the like.

Now, those of you who have lived in non-Japan parts of the world can see where I am going with this: this is not a “We Japanese” thing; this is clearly a “We Humans Who Live In Close Proximity” thing.  If only he had started off differently, like “People in Tokyo live in even closer proximity than people in New York, so maybe you haven’t considered this…” this would be a lot more well-received than playing the “You Americans could not possibly hope to understand We Japanese” card.

It’s time for everybody, on all sides of debates, to learn:  Different culture groups aren’t really as different as first they seem, so if you are trying to make some argument like that, see if you can phrase your argument in terms of “we humans” rather than “we [race]“.

Justice Minister Hatoyama issued a press release on Friday stating that three death-row inmates had had their sentences “finalized” that morning.

Of course, this is a euphemism. To have your sentence finalized means… well, that you get killed by the state, to put it bluntly. Now, my own feelings about the death penalty aside, even its most dedicated proponents could not support the way that it’s carried out in Japan.

First of all, the method itself is hanging. Not “drop you a long way and snap your neck and you’re unconscious within a second” hanging, but “leave you in unimaginable pain as you slowly suffocate over 15 minutes” hanging. Once in a while, when that doesn’t work out so well, it’s “cut you down and have the guard do some Judo choke holds on you” hanging. At least once, it has been a “better not let the family have the body back, there is too much evidence of a botched job” hanging.  Hangings were conducted in 10 countries in 2007: Bangladesh, Botswana, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Singapore, Sudan and Syria.  Japan is the only of these that is considered to be a developed country.

The real cruelty, however, does not lie in the method of execution, or in this final agonizing 15 minutes. It’s that for 7 or 8 years, prisoners are kept in death row, never informed of the date of their execution until the day itself. Every day, they must live in a half-alive, half-dead state, never knowing if the footsteps they hear coming down the hallway each morning will herald their final day to live. If the prison officials stop by their cell one morning, the final moments of life have arrived. If not, this only signifies a 24-hour extension of life — who knows what will happen tomorrow? This means that prisoners are never given a chance to say final goodbyes to family members, never a chance to put things in order. The Justice Ministry explains that this is to lessen mental anguish and torture to inmates, who might start having problems when they know that their execution date is approaching, but psychologists argue that not knowing is even worse.

Family members, as well, are only notified once the sentence has been carried out. In one tragic story, a mother came one morning for her weekly visit with her son on Death Row. She was told by prison officials that her son was busy, and that she should come back in the afternoon. When she came back, she was informed that her son had been executed that morning, and that she should collect the body.

Hangings are usually carried out on a Friday, to limit public discourse in the media, and are almost always carried out when Parliament is not in session, to prevent questioning and debate from opposition. Most surveys still do show that Japan is overwhelmingly supportive of capital punishment, but one wonders how that might change if the general public were more aware of the way that it’s carried out here…