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"A district court in Kanagawa Prefecture has issued a first-ever provisional injunction preventing an anti-Korean activist from holding a rally near the premises of a group that supports ethnic Korean people.
The injunction, issued Thursday by the Kawasaki branch of the Yokohama District Court, comes just over a week since the nation enacted its first-ever anti-hate speech law.
The law is being seen as a powerful new tool for use against racist vitriol routinely fired at minorities in Japan."
I heard many times about the increased 'nationalist' attitude in Japan, even to the point of reading that pupils in school are taught to be naturally wary of any foreigner.
This surprises me. I have been to Japan a few times and I have encountered nothing but kind people.
Is anyone able to confirm what the article says about 'racist vitriol routinely fired at minorities in Japan' ?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I would prefer the word "xenophobia," and it's primarily directed against other Asians.
Since the Millenium, as the great deleveraging drags on endlessly, the Japanese have become a lot more inward looking and isolationist. If you visit Japan, you might be impressed by how much "shiny new" there is, especially in showcase areas, but that's merely the result of cheap money. Most people are under tremendous and increasing financial pressure. Gloom and FEAR about the future.
So, it's natural that the mood would be negative and that people would seek a scapegoat.
Into this negative enter atmosphere Prime Minister Abe, who is skillfully fanning the flames of negativity in various ways. I personally have not noticed any racist epithets thrown my way, but I am a blue eyed American. My bicultural kids get a certain amount of it, which is one reason why they go to private school, where the authorities exert more control over that kind of speech.
A little side note on AIR BnB. Tourism and AIR BnB is one of the bright areas in the Japanese economy, and it's attracted a lot of attention because it gives small property owners a chance to make some money. So, they are eager to do AIR BnB, but they don't want to have Chinese, Korean, Indian, other Asian, and Africans as guests.
This poses a number of problems for the AIR BnB vendors (Japanese owners cannot handle English customer service, so they have to outsource their ops). On the one hand, it is not AIR BnB to allow screening based on race or nationality. So it puts the vendor in violation of the TOS to honor the owners' demands. Second, it's impossible to screen customers via simply a person's name or place of origin. Third, practically speaking, the vast majority of visitors are Chinese, and that number is only going to increase, wheras the blue-eyed guests that the owners prefer constitute a small portion of the total.
In my view, everybody's everywhere's a racist and everybody votes their pocket book.
My question would be, as the yen continues its descent into oblivion as the government monetizes the debt, how nasty will the mood get? Up to now, for the past twenty five seven years, the deleveraging has proceeded fairly smoothly, without a lot of social disruption, riots in the street and so forth.
I had a Japanese friend/girlfriend when I lived in New Zealand. Though pure Japanese she experienced the most horrific bullying as her family were Catholic. Apparently the grandfather converted for some reason and that really did not sit well with people. Her father never advanced beyond a middle level in his corporation and the reason was no secret.
She described quite astonishing institutional bias, teachers, administrators, employers, neighbors you name it had no qualms about open prejudice.
Now other than going to a R.C. church 10km away on Sunday (were not talking about a cheesy US evangelical missionary church) they were normal Japanese in Tokyo. I'm not so surprised what can happen to foreigners.
I have come to the conclusion that the conditions for the Japanese to beat up on you are a) you have to be a little different, and b) you have to be perceived as weaker. Anybody weak and/or poor is a target for abuse, particularly.
I think she would have agreed with that, different yes but not really poor though possibly relatively speaking maybe. I recall her saying it was not easy for her family to afford the Tokyo neighborhood they lived in.
I like the Japanese and the world is more interesting with them in it but she (in 2001) had a theory that having checked just now seems superficially backed up by more recent WHO data.
She said that the early Japanese population came from the Korean peninsula but as a very small breeding population and possibly a disproportionate level of "autistic spectrum" genes.
So just looking at recent data from 2008 onward.
62 per 10,000 is the world median, for "Kanner's type" autism aka severe.
World rankings:
2. Autism rate: 94 cases per 10,000 people - UK (very genetically diverse population)
1. Autism rate: 181.1 cases per 10,000 people - Japan
Now when you have profound autism (highly disabling) you have accompanying lower severity spectrum such as Aspberger's syndrome etc. Its never stopped people, for example Eamon DeValera (poster-boy "Aspie") the first president of the Irish Republic from power and achievement. I'm of course not saying that all Japanese people have a disorder that affects empathy etc. however one might (without proof) deduct it could influence societal norms.
Anyway, I won't go on as I would embarrass myself and someone could feel insulted but its interesting.
Edit: I lived in Thailand for a year and I understand how the mentally affected can be regarded as 'bad character' in the older generations especially rather than suffering from a physical illness.
Highly suprising. However my impressions are based on short-term, touristic encounters and I accept they may be completely different from what I may experience if I lived there.