No Rudd ahead

There is an interesting gloomy article by Terrie Lloyd stirring the tiny microcosm - and how tiny it is ! - of Western residents of Japan about the starker evolution of control of we-gaijin in this country. It has been reprinted elsewhere as well, sometimes with slight but interesting modifications, but this blog is not into linguistics. It is now a matter of fact that waiting time in lines at the entrance gates has been the major practical concern topping the grumble on control tightening. I for one had never ever thought about the issue in terms of waiting time. The potential inconvenience never crossed my mind. It is also a testimony about who is writing and commenting about biometrics filtering in Japan, that is mainly people who just and simply care about getting out of that airport AFAP.

When it comes to scheduled organization, I trust the Japanese to do their job by the manual, and more than often efficiently. Narita being a small hub of transportation, and visiting gaijin despite growing in numbers being not in the dozen of millions going through the gates, clogging and the fear of it had never been on my mind. They'll pay you back for broken luggage, not for bruised dignity. Speaking about dignity doesn't pay off, sounds weeny to others and doesn't reflect in ROI estimates. But are the measures and possible intensification of cross-checking of gaijin information the signs of any hardening in terms of standard level of ostracism toward foreigners in Japan? I don't think so.

Being a white Westerner puts me in a category that is overly more advantageous than being a low paid Chinese trainee toiling in unfair conditions at a workshop somewhere in Japan's nowhere province. All these measures and potential cross-checking and over-exploitation of data about my being a gaijin are nothing but a form of "IT-zation" of state and media controlled mood toward "others", a "naturalization" of standard viewing gaijin as a risk, a pet, a weird animal. Gaijin tarento who are targets of crave and hate for all the money and sex they can acquire are the utmost example of "playing with the system and cashing while keeping the stat quo". Daily life as I feel it is telling a different varied story though. But this aside, the best remark of Lloyd's article is this :

Over the last 2 years, there have been a number of
legislatory submissions and trial PR balloons floated that
indicate that the government is intending to significantly
increase its control over foreigners living here. Given
that many other countries also impose strict tracking and
controls on foreign residents who are not migrants, this
wouldn't necessarily be such a bad thing providing that
there was some upside offered such as by those other
countries. In particular, Japan needs to make laws and
apply the proper enforcement of UN human rights to
foreign residents. Rights such as anti-discrimination,
right to impartial justice, fair treatment of refugees,
proper criminalization of human trafficking, and rights of
children are all severely lacking. But these unfortunately
don't seem to be part of the agenda at this time.


Japan is a dream nation from the point of view of immigration control, starting almost from scratch, and able to impose strict, racially based control and management of foreigners by class, that is based on wealth, considering racism at core value, as a natural trait that does not call for philosophical pondering and hand wringing. There is no Kevin Rudd at the helm, nor anyone that can lay bare some of the truths that hurt. First, because there is no Rudd. Second, because truths that hurt are relative to the listeners point of view. Human rights, racism, ostracism and the likes doesn't ring any specific bell in the mind of the average citizen or politician. These concepts are not so much rejected than they simply mean nothing. The unlashing of anti-chinese feeling with the gyoza scandal is just a reminder of that fact. And on the other side of the sea, they hate Japanese as much while or despite doing commerce and visiting each other's country. Meaning is about resonance. These concerns strike no deep inside string because they have nothing to resonate with.Interestingly enough, a measure of integration as a possibility offered is to be seen in the orientation of measures to come, meaning that one can "turn Japanese", not at the holy genetical level, but at least at the level of "behaving like a Japanese" in society. And this integration plainly means and is strictly limited to "disintegration". It is nothing new but technology will clarify it. My son came back the other day from school, Japanese school, with a simple home work to do related with food. The task was to "draw a cup of your home miso soup". What if it were minestrone? You can be sure that from the teacher's level who distributed the home work sheet, up to close to the minister of Education, probably no one would get a clue at my raising "what about chicken soup"? Gaijin are culprits-to-be in the worst of case, but never "object" of indifference. The relationship here is that of pure, honest "animality" in the most earnest case when the length of your nose is worth a word or two in the conversation. But at the core lay the ingrained belief which is equal to the total absence of intelligence at the "possibility of multiplicity". Of course, "multiplicity" exists in Ameyoko at Ueno, but besides exoticism for food magazines. Real life is the least interesting subject for media.That more than 60% of the population believe in the obvious of a relationship between (perceived) rise in crime is less dramatic than the percentage of politicians going along the same matrix of thought. That is why there is no Rudd at the helm, no guilt, no ambivalence, no hidden shame, no shame at all, no uneasiness to be tickled with discourse on racism, lack of humanism or whatever. Seeing a value in the multifarious of people making up a society comes totally at odds where this point of view is extra marginal. This is why once again Japan is a dream society from the point of view of the bland, pragmatical management of immigration, because the historical log is so light as compared with the US and colored people, France and North Africa or Australia and Aborigines. The plight of whales and the finger pointed at Japan are from that point of view simply amazing as a mean of diversion from way much more tangible issues. Experts on migration policies are feverishly observing Japan with awe, and for some, with envy. If they are not watching Japan, then they are disqualified.

Technorati Tags: gaijin, immigration, Japan

Not calling it quit, yet

In response to Mark commenting in the previous post.

Mark, thank you for your comment. Although I have not spent years researching the security issue like you, I mostly agree with you when you write that Japan is nothing but a piece of the fear and rampant state security policy shroud plaguing the world. It is a huge world market at that.This is just the beginning of "soft cool coercicion" - at least in Japan - with a majority of Westerners here tending to already approve by shunning away from the discussion, or at least keeping personal opinons shut from the public arena. The foreign "community" here is fragmented as everywhere else, and I am personally not competent at reading what the largest communities in Japan think and express about the issue.

But there is a problem of argumentation. The problem is that once you rightly enunciate the facts that the picture is bigger, what must be done is to jump beyond that fact to expose and think about what’s happening at the local level. The world is too wide for Re-Entry Japan despite the well understood fact that the puzzle is larger than the Japanese piece alone. But me being in Japan, and while aknowledging that this plague is rampant and will reach Europe as well as other countries, I see that the very true argument that the picture is indeed bigger has practically no impact but to deflate what could be left of energy to try and do something about it. The laisser-faire attitude - because it's already done somewhere else - is the pathetic and endemic argument you can read elsewhere from drooling Westerners here happily slumbering in the numbness of no-thinking. The environment certainly helps erode any reflection capacity originally brought in, if any.

The tiniest thing that one can do about this matter of fact is not give up talking about it because it doesn't matter only for the short minutes queuing at the airport gates but it's insidiously present all over the place. The challenge of a tiny blog like this one is that energy tends to wane out as fast as it flamed up the ire circa November 20th. A short grunt, a piece of cool T-shirts, then back to sleep. So while knowing things are bigger, let’s keep these local. Yes, it is happening elsewhere, and yes, the authorities are way much more polite at Narita than you name-it--airports, and yes, it doesn’t hurt (they don’t skin off fingers nor nail those out, and the camera doesn't slap you in the face, and besides, there's no thermometer to measure dignity and the loss of it). But please, let us stop the IT IS ALREADY DONE ELSEWHERE and the IT WILL GET UBIQUITOUS, because those matter of facts have usually but a single effect : make people call it quit, accept, tell their children - granted they talk with each other - that it is "their queer ways to do things and interact with the gaijin in that country but just let it go", light up the TV and jump like no-brain monkeys on the wii-fit. There's enough of that already. What is lacking is more thought. Thank you for your contribution.

Technorati Tags: fingerprinting, gaijin, immigration, Japan, Tokyo

Stealth biometrics, and who is to define my dignity, again

在留外国人の指紋採取　修学旅行で再入国なら免除へ

2008年02月15日06時00分

　日本に入国する外国人に義務づけている指紋の採取と顔写真の撮影をめぐり、法務省は１４日、日本で暮らす外国人高校生らが海外に出た修学旅行から再入国する場合に限って、免除する方針を明らかにした。同級生に国籍を明らかにしていない外国人生徒らへの教育的配慮としており、文部科学省などと検討を始める。

　在日外国人の人権問題に取り組むＮＧＯや公明党の国会議員が同日、法務省を訪れて免除を申し入れた際に、鳩山法相が年度末までに結論を出せるよう検討することを明らかにした。

　この制度は昨年１１月２０日から始まり、在日韓国・朝鮮人ら特別永住者を除く１６歳以上の全外国人が対象。しかし、制度開始当初から「高校生が人前で指紋を採取するのを見られるのは教育上問題だ」などとする批判が少なくなかった。

　文科省が１月末に全国の教育委員会などに通知を出して、外国人用ブースに並ばないで、同級生に分からないよう別室で採取・撮影するなどの対応を始めていた。

Justice minister announced on the 14th that foreign high schoolers above 16 in Japan going on school trips abroad may be exempted of biometrics scanning, for the sake of avoiding them the disgrace to be filtered out in front of the eyes of their classmates. This article from the Asahi mentions that the Education minister informed nationwide Education Committees sometimes at the end of January that the authorities were already dealing with the shame involved with the procedure by discreetly herding the foreign high schoolers above 16 years old to a hidden local for performing biometrics scanning out of sights of their unaware comrades. "Shame" and "disgrace" are of course words not used in the report, nor anywhere else, as lip service can't swallow such vocabulary. "Dignity" too is also out of scope, but who is to define what dignity should be and how it should be perceived? At least, the authorities do care about pride and prejudices, highlighting the fact that indeed the matter generates issues of pride and prejudices. And dignity. The externalization of the issue - as if the screening of permanent residents was also but a mere copy of US procedures - is an interesting implication. As for foreign university students having been through courses on moral, dignity, integrity and ostracism - granted such teaching existed - they still will have to endure behind curtains the administrative meekness when coming back from a university foreign trip, because of blood incompatibility.