GESS Who Just Got Sued?

by

Last Friday at the Tokyo Labor Commission, Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union sued executive search firm GESS International for Unfair Labor Practices under the Labor Union Act (Act No. 174 of June 1, 1949) for repeatedly refusing collective bargaining with the union.

(Unfair Labor Practices)

Article 7. The employer shall not commit the acts listed in any of the following items:

(ii) to refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of the workers employed by the employer without justifiable reasons

Are you working for or being headhunted by GESS International? Only if you are are a member of a trade union do you have the legal right to collectively bargain with your employer to improve your working conditions.

Join the union today!

Keidanren OKs regular wage hikes in ‘shunto’ talks

by

The Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) has no plans this year to pressure employers to stop making regular pay hikes during this spring’s labor-management wage talks because business conditions have improved in recent months, a final draft of the federation’s negotiating policy report showed Thursday.

“Most companies hold wage talks with the focus on maintaining regular pay hikes,” the nation’s top business lobby said in the report, indicating its willingness to reverse its stance on the matter.

In its report for last year’s “shunto” wage negotiations, Keidanren said it would consider encouraging companies to freeze regular wage hikes while the economy attempts to recover. This year it is softening its stance because earnings, particularly at big companies, have improved.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20110108a1.html

Japan Keeps a High Wall for Foreign Labor

by

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, a test so difficult that only 3 of the 600 nurses brought here from Indonesia and the Philippines since 2007 have passed.

So Ms. Fransiska spends eight hours in Japanese language drills, on top of her day job at the hospital. Her dictionary is dog-eared from countless queries, but she is determined: her starting salary of $2,400 a month was 10 times what she could earn back home. If she fails, she will never be allowed to return to Japan on the same program again.

“I think I have something to contribute here,” Ms. Fransiska said during a recent visit, spooning mouthfuls of rice and vegetables into the mouth of Heiichi Matsumaru, an 80-year-old patient recovering from a stroke. “If I could, I would stay here long-term, but it is not so easy.”

Despite facing an imminent labor shortage as its population ages, Japan has done little to open itself up to immigration. In fact, as Ms. Fransiska and many others have discovered, the government is doing the opposite, actively encouraging both foreign workers and foreign graduates of its universities and professional schools to return home while protecting tiny interest groups — in the case of Ms. Fransiska, a local nursing association afraid that an influx of foreign nurses would lower industry salaries.

In 2009, the number of registered foreigners here fell for the first time since the government started to track annual records almost a half-century ago, shrinking 1.4 percent from a year earlier to 2.19 million people — or just 1.71 percent of Japan’s overall population of 127.5 million.

Experts say increased immigration provides one obvious remedy to Japan’s two decades of lethargic economic growth. But instead of accepting young workers, however — and along with them, fresh ideas — Tokyo seems to have resigned itself to a demographic crisis that threatens to stunt the country’s economic growth, hamper efforts to deal with its chronic budget deficits and bankrupt its social security system.

“If you’re in the medical field, it’s obvious that Japan needs workers from overseas to survive. But there’s still resistance,” said Yukiyoshi Shintani, chairman of the Aoikai Group, the medical services company that is sponsoring Ms. Fransiska and three other nurses to work at a hospital outside Tokyo. “The exam,” he said, “is to make sure the foreigners will fail.”

Tan Soon Keong, a student, speaks five languages — English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien — has an engineering degree, and three years of work experience in his native Malaysia, a track record that would seem to be invaluable to Japanese companies seeking to globalize their businesses.

Still, he says he is not confident about landing a job in Japan when he completes his two-year technical program at a college in Tokyo’s suburbs next spring. For one thing, many companies here set an upper age limit for fresh graduate hires; at 26, many consider him too old to apply. Others have told him they are not hiring foreigners this year.

Mr. Tan is not alone. In 2008, only 11,000 of the 130,000 foreign students at Japan’s universities and technical colleges found jobs here, according to the recruitment firm Mainichi Communications. While some Japanese companies have publicly said they will hire more foreigners in a bid to globalize their work forces, they remain a minority.

“I’m preparing for the possibility that I may have to return to Malaysia,” Mr. Tan said at a recent job fair for foreign students in Tokyo. “I’d ideally work at a company like Toyota,” he said. “But that’s looking very difficult.”

Japan is losing skilled talent across industries, experts say. Investment banks, for example, are moving more staff members to hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore, which have more foreigner-friendly immigration and taxation regimes, lower costs of living and local populations that speak better English.

Foreigners who submitted new applications for residential status — an important indicator of highly skilled labor because the status requires a specialized profession — slumped 49 percent in 2009 from a year earlier to just 8,905 people.

The barriers to immigration to Japan are many. Restrictive immigration laws bar the country’s struggling farms or workshops from access to foreign labor, driving some to abuse trainee programs for workers from developing countries, or hire illegal immigrants. Stringent qualification requirements shut out skilled foreign professionals, while a web of complex rules and procedures discourages entrepreneurs from setting up in Japan.

Given the dim job prospects, universities here have been less than successful at raising foreign student enrollment numbers. And in the current harsh economic climate, as local incomes fall and new college graduates struggle to land jobs, there has been scant political will to broach what has been a delicate topic.

But Japan’s demographic time clock is ticking: its population will fall by almost a third to 90 million within 50 years, according to government forecasts. By 2055, more than one in three Japanese will be over 65, as the working-age population falls by over a third to 52 million.

Still, when a heavyweight of the defeated Liberal Democratic Party unveiled a plan in 2008 calling for Japan to accept at least 10 million immigrants, opinion polls showed that a majority of Japanese were opposed. A survey of roughly 2,400 voters earlier this year by the daily Asahi Shimbun showed that 65 percent of respondents opposed a more open immigration policy.

“The shrinking population is the biggest problem. The country is fighting for its survival,” said Hidenori Sakanaka, director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, an independent research organization. “Despite everything, America manages to stay vibrant because it attracts people from all over the world,” he said. “On the other hand, Japan is content to all but shut out people from overseas.”

Now, in a vicious cycle, Japan’s economic woes, coupled with a lack of progress in immigration policy and lack of support for immigrants, are setting off an exodus of the precious few immigrants who have settled here.

Akira Saito, 37, a Brazilian of Japanese descent who traveled to Toyota City 20 years ago from São Paolo, is one foreign worker ready to leave. The small auto maintenance outfit that Mr. Saito opened after a string of factory jobs is struggling, and the clothing store that employs his Brazilian wife, Tiemi, will soon close. Their three young children are among the local Brazilian school’s few remaining pupils.

For many of Mr. Saito’s compatriots who lost their jobs in the fallout from the global economic crisis, there has been scant government support. Some in the community have taken money from a controversial government-sponsored program intended to encourage jobless migrant workers to go home.

“I came to Japan for the opportunities,” Mr. Saito said. “Lately, I feel there will be more opportunity back home.”

Though Japan had experienced a significant amount of migration in the decades after World War II, it was not until the dawn of Japan’s “bubble economy” of the 1980s that real pressure built on the government to relax immigration restrictions as a way to supply workers to industries like manufacturing and construction.

What ensued was a revision of the immigration laws in a way that policy makers believed would keep the country’s ethnic homogeneity intact. In 1990, Japan started to issue visas to foreign citizens exclusively of Japanese descent, like the descendants of Japanese who emigrated to Brazil in search of opportunities in the last century. In the 1990s, the number of Japanese Brazilians who came to Japan in search of work, like Mr. Saito, surged.

But the government did little to integrate its migrant populations. Children of foreigners are exempt from compulsory education, for example, while local schools that accept non-Japanese-speaking children receive almost no help in caring for their needs. Many immigrant children drop out, supporters say, and many foreign workers in Toyota City say they want to return to Brazil.

“Japan does not build strong links between immigrants and the local community,” said Hiroyuki Nomoto, who runs a school for immigrant children in Toyota City.

The country is losing its allure even for wide-eyed fans of its cutting-edge technology, its pop culture and the seemingly endless business opportunities its developed consumer society appears to offer.

“Visitors come to Tokyo and see such a high-tech, colorful city. They get this gleam in their eye, they say they want to move here,” said Takara Swoopes Bullock, an American entrepreneur who has lived in Japan since 2005. “But setting up shop here is a completely different thing. Often, it just doesn’t make sense, so people move on.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/world/asia/03japan.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all

Trade pacts one thing, immigrant labor another

by

Japan, despite a decade of government, business, academic and media warnings that the aging population and lower birthrate mean millions of foreign workers are needed to maintain current GDP levels, has dithered, opting instead to emphasize the goal of wooing highly skilled migrant workers.

In July, Jusuf Anwar, Indonesian ambassador to Japan, told a public forum at Kyoto University that of the 500 Indonesians who took Japan’s national examinations in 2008 and 2009, only two passed and have since become certified nurses.

As of May, only one Filipino had passed the exam, even though the Philippines announced just before the EPA went into effect in 2009 that Japan might hire up to 1,000 foreign nurses by the end of 2011. In response, Tokyo has said it was open to easing the exam, especially the Japanese-language requirements.

Japan’s health ministry said in 2007 that an additional 200,000 to 500,000 long-term care workers would be needed by 2014, but even the most ambitious recruiting of foreigners would probably yield only a mere fraction of the total need.

Indonesian and Philippine government officials, health care groups and human rights activists have all heavily criticized the program for bringing foreign nurses to Japan, calling it overly strict and exploitive.

In a letter to The Japan Times on Feb. 11, 2010, Emily Honma, who has worked with Filipino nurses and caregivers who came to Japan, said the EPA had led to a nightmare for many Filipino health care givers, with a net month’s pay often only ¥60,000 and a nonsupportive work environment.

Hidenori Sakanaka, director general of the independent think tank Japan Immigration Policy Institute, says many Japanese are concerned that an open immigration policy for either low- or high-skilled foreign workers would mean a large influx of Chinese and South Koreans in particular, but a balanced approach could prevent many problems.

“An immigration policy that encourages people not only from Asia but from all over the world to settle in Japan should be pursued,” he said at a recent news conference in Tokyo.

Statistics from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry show there were 562,818 foreign laborers in Japan as of October 2009. This includes 249,325 Chinese, followed by 104,323 Brazilians and 48,859 Filipinos and 25,468 South Koreans. About 17,600 Chinese and 4,900 South Koreans were working in Japan as technical specialists.

Although the Democratic Party of Japan said in 2008, when it was the main opposition force, that it favored eventually bringing in 10 million foreign laborers, its 2009 platform for the Lower House election made no mention of the issue or any possible numbers of foreign laborers in the future.

Sakanaka noted the economic crisis of the past two years has dampened enthusiasm not only in Japan but around the world for expanded immigration, while adding that the country doesn’t really have a choice, given its declining population.

“The only way for Japan to survive is to become part of this Pacific economic zone. America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are the leading immigration nations in the Pacific region, and Japan should use the opportunity presented by the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement to join these traditional immigration powers,” he said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110105f1.html

Immigrants are equal citizens, not guests

by

There is no quick or easy way out, but Europe — and Japan — should start by making economic migration legitimate

Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Dutch philosopher, Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th-century British prime minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the 21st-century French president, have one thing in common: all are sons of immigrants. People have migrated to other countries for thousands of years — to escape, prosper, be free, or just to start again. Not a few enriched their adopted homelands by achieving great things, or producing children who did.

New waves of immigrants are rarely, if ever, popular. But they are often needed. Many people have migrated to western European countries from North Africa and Turkey during the last half-century, not because of western generosity, but because they were required for jobs that natives no longer wanted. They were treated as temporary workers, however, not as immigrants.

Once the job was done, it was assumed that the migrants would go home. When it became clear that most had elected to stay, and were joined by extended families, many were grudgingly allowed to become citizens of European states, without necessarily being treated as such.

Xenophobes, as well as leftist multi-cultural ideologues, regarded these new Europeans as utterly different from the native born, albeit for different reasons. Multi-culturalists saw attempts to integrate non-westerners into the western mainstream as a form of neo-colonialist racism, while xenophobes just didn’t like anything that looked, talked, or smelled foreign.

We who live in rapidly aging societies, such as western Europe or Japan, still need immigrants. Without them, necessary institutions, such as hospitals, would be unstaffed, and more and more elderly people would have to be supported by fewer and fewer young people.

And yet many politicians, especially in Europe, now treat immigration as a disaster. New populist parties garner large numbers of votes simply by frightening people about the supposed horrors of Islam, or of clashing civilisations. For the populists, however, the real enemies — perhaps even more nefarious than the immigrants themselves — are the ‘cosmopolitan elite’ who tolerate and even encourage these horrors. Mainstream politicians are so afraid of this populist demagoguery that they often end up mimicking it.

The failure of integration of non-western immigrants in such countries as France, Germany, or The Netherlands is often exaggerated by hysterical alarmists; Europe, after all, is not about to be ‘Islamised’. But the fact that some young people of African, South Asian, or Middle Eastern descent feel so alienated in the European countries of their birth that they are happy to murder their fellow citizens in the name of a revolutionary religious ideology, means that something is amiss. Children of immigrants in the past, however unwelcome they were made to feel, rarely wished to blow up the places to which their parents had chosen to move.

Politics in many Muslim countries is partly to blame. Islamist extremism is a handy revolutionary creed for vulnerable young people to latch onto, to gain a sense of power and belonging. Hindus, Christians, or Buddhists lack such a cause, which is why political extremism is largely confined to Muslims. But, as the occasional riots in France show, violence is not confined to Muslims. National policies have something to do with this, but so do the deeply flawed immigration policies in the European Union.

Apart from EU citizens, who in theory are allowed to seek work anywhere in the Union (Romanian gypsies in France might argue otherwise), three other categories of people have been allowed to settle in Europe: former colonial subjects, such as Algerians in France, Indians and Pakistanis in Britain, or Surinamese in The Netherlands; ‘guest labourers’ who arrived in the 1960’s and 1970’s; and political refugees, the so-called asylum-seekers. Unlike in Canada or the US, economic immigrants are not allowed to become citizens in exchange for their necessary labour.

Integration

Immigrants — not ‘guest workers’ — who come for work are more likely to want to integrate to some degree, and to be treated as fellow citizens, than people who come with the baggage of empire, or simply as refugees, or, worse, people pretending to be refugees because they have no other way to gain access to wealthy countries’ job markets. But European welfare states are better equipped to deal with asylum-seekers and other newcomers as needy dependents than as people in need of a job.

When European politicians claim that France, Britain, or The Netherlands are not traditional “immigrant countries” like the US, they are right only up to a point, as the examples of Spinoza, Disraeli, and Sarkozy show. What is true is that large numbers of de facto immigrants have accumulated in many countries in such a haphazard way that makes it seem as though no government was ever in control.

Children of guest workers feel unwanted. Refugees languish helplessly in welfare nets, or are suspected of being cheats. And former colonial subjects still bear the scars of imperial histories.

Japan, and even the US, is not immune to these problems, either. The Japanese government simply got rid of its Iranian guest workers when jobs dried up. But it won’t be as easy to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who live in Japan without the rights of citizenship. The same is true of Mexicans working in the US, often illegally.

There is no quick or easy way out of this problem, especially in bad economic times. But Europe — and Japan, for that matter — should start by making economic migration legitimate. This means working out what jobs need to be filled, and welcoming those who will fill them, not as guests, but as equal citizens.

http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/immigrants-are-equal-citizens-not-guests-1.735447

Concern over use of Japanese language in English conversation classes at high schools

by

Less than 20 percent of public high schools have been enforcing an English-only rule in their English conversation classes during the 2010 school year according to a survey, causing alarm at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

Oral communication (OC) classes were introduced for English studies at high schools in 1994 to help students improve their speaking and listening skills. Japanese students are often said to be poor at using English, even when they understand English grammar academically.

In revisions to MEXT’s national educational guidelines in 2009, it was clearly written that, “Beginning from the 2013 academic year, OC is to be a mandatory subject, and all OC classes are to be conducted entirely in English.”

The survey results, however, show that meeting that deadline might not be easy. MEXT surveyed around 3,600 public high schools on their use of English in OC classes, excluding Japanese-language lessons focusing on international study. Although still preliminary, the results suggest that in the 2010 academic year only 19.6 percent of high schools conducted their OC classes “mostly” in English, and only 32.8 percent conducted “more than half” of their OC study time in English. The values found by the previous MEXT survey — conducted for the 2007 academic year — were both higher, at 20.7 percent and 33.9 percent, respectively.

Furthermore, the number of OC teachers who meet MEXT’s stated guidelines for a teacher qualified to administer an OC class — pre-1 certification on the EIKEN English proficiency exam or a TOEIC proficiency exam score of 730 or higher — fell from 50.6 percent in the 2007 academic year to 48.9 percent in the 2010 academic year.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20101206p2a00m0na019000c.html

Japan modifies nursing licensure exam for foreigners

by

The nursing licensure exam in Japan for foreigners will be modified in February in the hope that more foreign nurses will be able to pass it and eventually work with Japanese patients, a Philippine official said Tuesday.

Philippine Overseas Employment Agency chief Jennifer Manalili said Japan has agreed to put English translations beside some Japanese technical or medical terms in its upcoming licensure exam following requests by the Philippine government.

“Japan has come up already with a commitment that for the next licensure exam, which is held every February, very difficult kanji words that are too technical for nurses will have English translations beside them, enclosed in parenthesis, so that they will be easier for our candidate nurses to understand,” Manalili said.

So far, only one Filipino and two Indonesian nurses have passed the Japanese nursing licensure exam — the one held in February this year — since foreigners were allowed to take it under free trade accords between Japan and other countries.

In February last year, none of the 82 foreigners who took the test passed. This year’s test was taken by 254 foreigners.

Since the implementation of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement in December 2008, more than 300 Filipino nurses have been deployed to Japan to undergo language training, fewer than the initial target of 1,000 for the first two years, Manalili said.

The language barrier has been regarded as the main stumbling block in the dispatch of Filipino nurses to Japan, and whether or not they could practice there.

“With this development wherein there will be translations in the exam, we hope that we can have more passers,” Manalili said.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20101214p2g00m0dm077000c.html

Abuse rife within trainee system, say NGOs

by

Foreigners report harsh job conditions, poverty-line pay, mistreatment under notorious program

Started in 1993, the aim of the Technical Intern Training Program is to “provide training in technical skills, technology (and) knowledge” to workers from developing countries, according to the Japan International Training Cooperation Organization (JITCO), which oversees the program. But in practice, say advocacy groups, the majority of both trainees and the companies who accept them think of the relationship primarily as regular employment. A convoluted placement system complicates the situation: Between the trainees — the majority of whom come from China — and the workplace where they end up, there are usually at least three intermediary organizations involved, in Japan and the participants’ native country.

Until 2009, the number of trainees in Japan had been rising steadily, with more than 100,000 participating in the program in 2008. The majority of trainees are brought in under the auspices of JITCO. After the global economic crisis, the number of JITCO-authorized trainees fell in 2009 to 50,064 (down from 68,150). According to the latest figures, the total for 2010 was 39,151 as of October.

The Tokyo-based Advocacy Network for Foreign Trainees has served as the national umbrella organization for trainee advocacy groups since 1999. The network’s members are 90 researchers, lawyers, journalists and other individuals, and 10 groups including labor unions and local trainee advocacy groups.

The network’s members exchange and compile information from cases they have dealt with locally every month, and meet once a year to draft recommendations to the government.

But information-sharing is often a one-way street, says [Zentoitsu Workers Union’s] Hiroshi Nakajima, one of the network’s organizers. When a company is turned in for abuses of the program, the Justice Ministry investigates and can punish the placement organization or company by putting a halt on new trainee visas. But Nakajima calls the process a “black box,”; questions go unanswered during investigations, he says, and the resulting punishments are not even made public.

The network is sometimes able to get information on banned companies from the ministry upon request, but not in every case. Often the group only knows that a placement organization or company has been punished when they find that a firm no longer has any trainees.

“Because the immigration authorities don’t publicize the names of the organizations that have been convicted of wrongdoing, we have no way of knowing which organizations should be banned from accepting trainees and until when,” says Nakajima.

Ichiro Takahara of the Fukui Advocacy Network for Foreign Trainees says the local labor bureau also fails to provide relevant public information. Takahara’s group has assisted around 250 interns and trainees since its formation in June 2000 following the Takefu incident.

“The fact that the Labor Standards Inspection Office doesn’t make public the names of the offending companies invites those companies to continue reaping the benefits of engaging in illegal activities,” says Takahara. This, he explains, accounts for the fact that 85 percent of the companies employing trainees that were investigated by the Fukui Labor Bureau in 2009 had committed labor or safety infractions. This was the lowest rate in five years.

“The sense of guilt over committing a labor violation is less than that over committing a traffic violation,” he says.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20101207zg.html

Diplomatic issues close door on families seeking status

by

Around 300 Kurds live in and around Kawaguchi and neighboring Warabi. Most came to Japan in the 1990s, and many have applied for refugee status due to persecution by the Turkish government.

But support organizations say not a single one of them has been recognized.

According to the Justice Ministry’s Immigration Bureau, there were 1,599 applicants for refugee status in 2008, close to double the previous year’s figure. In 2009, there were 1,388. Only 57 were recognized in 2008, and 30 in 2009.

Japan’s refugee recognition rate remains in single figures and is low compared with other developed countries. That has given Japan a reputation for closing its door on refugees.

“Refugee recognition is closely connected to diplomatic relations,” said lawyer Sosuke Seki, a supporter of [a] Kurdish family [recently granted limited special permission for residence]. “Turkey and Japan enjoy a cordial relationship, so if Japan were to recognize these refugees, they would be acknowledging the fact that they have been persecuted by the Turkish government.”

The Japanese government’s unsympathetic treatment of refugees from nations it regards as allies has also generated feelings of disaffection among Tibetans and Uighurs living in Japan.

A member of nonprofit organization Japan Association for Refugees said, “Before accepting new refugees, we should be protecting the ones who have already sought refuge in Japan.”

The country’s poor record in accepting refugees and the opaqueness of its recognition criteria have given rise to suspicions that it will not grant refugee status to immigrants from countries it counts as allies.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201012030367.html

Will there ever be a rainbow Japan?

by

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 country is now on the rise.

Japan: The new melting pot?

Japan’s national government recently announced it is turning to travelers in a foreigner-friendly mission to boost diversity — at least in tourist spots — by paying them to provide feedback on how to increase accessibility for non-Japanese speakers.

David Askew, associate professor of law at Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University, identifies more profound changes.

In 1965, a mere 1 in 250 of all marriages in Japan were international, he notes. By 2004, the number had climbed to 1 in 15 across the nation and 1 in 10 in Tokyo.

According to Tokyo’s Metropolitan Government, by 2005, foreign residents in the city numbered 248,363, up from 159,073 in 1990.

According to Askew, the upswing in diverse residents and mixed marriages has led to another phenomenon: between 1987 and 2004, more than 500,000 children were born in Japan with at least one foreign parent.

Celebrating diversity

A handful of new organizations are tied, at least in part, to the increase in multicultural marriages.

Groups such as Mixed Roots Japan and Hapa Japan, founded by children of mixed-Japanese couples, aim to celebrate the broadening scope of Japanese identity, both nationally and globally.

“There is a real need now to recognize that Japan is getting more multiracial,” says Mixed Roots founder Edward Sumoto, a self-described “hafu” of Japanese/Venezuelan ethnicity. “The Japanese citizen is not simply a traditional Japanese person with Japanese nationality anymore.”

The issue of the identity of hafu is also being explored in a new film titled “Hafu,” currently under production by the Hafu Project.

In support of multiracial families, Mixed Roots holds Halloween and Christmas parties, picnics and beach days.

The organization also sponsors a monthly radio show on station FMYY, and “Shakeforward” concerts in Tokyo and Kansai, accompanied by youth workshops and symposia.

“These events feature mixed-roots artists who promote social dialogue with their songs,” says Sumoto.

The next “Shakeforward” concert will be held on November 27 in Kobe.

One of Sumoto’s primary goals is to “enable mixed-race kids to meet and talk, so they know there are other people like them.”

Despite the statistics, achieving widespread recognition for Japanese diversity has been a struggle for Sumoto and other grassroots organizers.

“Mentally, do the Japanese think the country is becoming more multicultural?” asks Sumoto. “Possibly more than 20 years ago, because you see more foreigners, but people are still not sure what to do with it.”

Multiculturalism on the margins

Like Sumoto, Erin Aeran Chung, assistant professor of East Asian politics at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, sees the issue of Japanese multiculturalism as multifaceted.

Chung has written extensively on Japan, ethnicity and citizenship, especially as relates to Zainichi Koreans, descendents of pre-war immigrants, many of whom were brought to Japan as slave labor.

Zainichi literally means “staying in Japan temporarily.”

“The concepts of ‘multicultural coexistence’ (tabunka kyōsei) and ‘living in harmony with foreigners’ (gaikokujin to no kyōsei)” — catchwords for multiculturalism used by local government officials and NGOs — “are based on the idea that Japanese nationals, assumed to be culturally homogenous, can live together peacefully with foreign nationals, assumed to be culturally different from the Japanese,” Chung said in a series of interviews.

“Rather than expand the definition of Japanese national identity to include those who are not Japanese by blood or nationality,” Chung argues, “the concept of kyōsei suggests that Japanese nationals must rise to the challenge of living with diversity,” instead of as part of a group of diverse citizens belonging to a truly multicultural nation.

A recent move by the Japan Sumo Association (JSA) suggests not even citizenship guarantees acceptance as “truly” Japanese.

At a meeting last February, the JSA administrative board mandated limiting foreign-born wrestlers to one per stable. The upshot: even if a competitor born abroad becomes a Japanese citizen, he’s still considered the stable’s token foreigner.

The myth of mono-ethnicity

Underneath the debate over Japan’s willingness to embrace multiculturalism lies the question of how mono-ethnic the nation ever really was.

According to Ritsumeikan’s David Askew, “The idea of Japan as mono-ethnic is actually a postwar belief.”

The Ainu and Ryukyuan ethnic groups, engulfed by Japan during its prewar colonial movement, are examples.

As for Taiwan and Korea, they “were part of Japan until 1945, so you could hardly talk about a homogeneous population before then.”

“The conversation about multiculturalism today is one that focuses on accepting ‘foreign’ cultures, ignoring the broad range of cultural practices within Japan itself,” says Askew.

“Unless the Okinawas and Osakas of Japan are accepted as different cultures, the discourse will continue to promote the idea of a homogeneous Japan,” says Askew.

http://www.cnngo.com/tokyo/life/will-there-ever-be-rainbow-japan-341969#ixzz176ov3ZDy