Chances to get through

First thing first. The article by Tokai University Professor Kim Kyung-Ju referred to in a previous post entitled "The face of the other" was deleted by the publisher to due a deluge of hate mails from Japanese bloggers. Fortunately, it had been copy/pasted in several sites elsewhere and you can now read it in Japanese in Re-Entry Japan as well in the original post here. Related to this and not for the purpose to boast, I should be featured in the Asahi evening edition of this coming Friday in a short article with picture that mentions Re-Entry Japan, and I must state that I am somewhat not confident with the potential to get targeted with a few hate and trash mail. But that's life probably.

Second. In the same blog where I read about the deletion of that article, there are a few comments about the fingerprinting procedure, with one valuable perspective on the chances to get through:

"Well, it may not be indicative of any widespread racism, but I think it’s pretty clearly representative of xenophobia and paranoia on the part of government officials in Japan, much like our own ballooning security apparati are representative of xenophobia and paranoia in our government here in the USA.

I think it’s worth noting that the new fingerprinting rules in Japan have an exception for special permanent residents, since these are the same people whose protests got the previous system canned, as well as the only group of aliens in Japan who have any real collective political clout. If the foreign community in Japan wants to get the current system removed (unlikely at this point, unless the global security fetish starts to recede in a few years) their chances are probably even further diminished without the help of the Zainichi population, which is explicitly not affected by the new fingerprinting system."

The government fueled xenophobia and paranoia cannot indeed be ignored, neither the fact that it is in no way specific to Japan but part of the globalization blueprint. The second good point is that indeed, without bridges linking to the Zainichi population who have the experience of protesting and winning exemption, chances to get through are slim at best.