*

A few recent incidents really from living in Japan, that just keep sticking in my head. It is difficult to extrapolate from personal experience to broad statements about an entire country, so I won’t. I will just say that it is sad to see how many overtly racist and class-ist acts I see here commited not by idiot hoodlums, but by people in traditional positions of power.

My roomate is black, and the america-raised japanese american who lives next door doesn’t want to live next to a black person. He calls the police to file a fictitious complaint, to which they respond. While the police are standing there, the neighbor makes what in the US would be classified as hate speach, or simply verbal assault, and the police reaction: a few of them laughed, while others ignored, and then they just left as if nothing had happened “hahahaha funny old guy making afraid of foreigners”. OK, fine.

I go to a store to buy an expensive camera on a great in-store zero-percent credit offer that lasts twelve months. This is an incredible offer, regardless of whether you need such a loan or not, because a thousand dollars interest free is worth taking! First they go gee hrm, foreigner, but well, he has a proper foreigner registration card, and he does have a national health insurance card, and it says right there on his ID that he is employed. But I’m not japanese, so they feel uneasy, and they actually call their boss and confirm whether it is ok. Then they see that I wrote in latin characters my address on the loan application (for instance, “Tokyo” instead of “東京”) which results in another query. Um. If it is good enough for the Japan post office, it is good enough for your form. The final insult comes when they call the request in and it is denied, when they tell me that my bank (Shinsei Bank) is too obscure, but maybe if I opened a bank account with Mitsubishi (the owner of their consumer loan company) then it would be fine. They also, as a precaution, suggest that I fill out another application, since they have a different consumer loan company that might be happy with Shinsei, and they will call me in the morning if it worked.

In the morning they call and say that actually, they are just refusing *me*, and there is nothing wrong with Shinsei bank. I ask exactly what is wrong with an application from someone with a well paying job, a proper work visa, etc. and they make pained noises unable to say beyond that well, some Japanese customers also get denied. I was thinking maybe this is just bad luck, but then I did a google search for “nicos japan discrimination” and the first result was a woman talking about the same thing happening to her, only she managed to talk to the nicos representative that had denied her, who laughed at her on the phone.

When I signed a lease on my current home, it was me, a japanese american friend of mine, and a black friend. The rental agency balked at the idea of having the rent paid from my bank account, and sat there for literally 5 minutes heming and hawing trying to convince us to just use the japanese person’s bank account.

Now, this isn’t entirely pointed at foreigners. The police here discriminate against Japanese people that look too grungy. Both walking to and from the camera shop during the preceding experience, and countless other times at night in popular parts of town, I have seen the police randomly searching japanese men in their mid twenties that simply are guilty of not wearing suits. I have NEVER seen them search someone wearing a suit. You might think this sounds insane, but what am I to make of a system where the police randomly search people whose only incriminating act is that their style of dress openly declares that they are not salarymen?

Several months ago I was walking down the street at midnight, and came across a japanese friend of mine who had been stopped while he was driving without wearing a seatbelt. The police clearly care a lot about this problem, because NO TAXI IN TOKYO HAS SEATBELTS. When I arrived the police were in the process of searching every square inch of his car in hopes of finding drugs. For a “seatbelt” traffic stop. I might add that his car was not fancy, but was in good repair, and his hair was long, and he does indeed not look like a businessman.
Enough ranting for one day. What is the point of focusing on this stuff? I can only try to ignore it and enjoy my life. These systemic problems are, blessedly, limited to a small-minded part of this society that normal people just ignore, in the way that they ignore everything that is unpleasant but in some way tolerable, the way that they ignore their government bilking them out of their life savings by propping up failing banks and businesses, pouring billions of dollars into boondoggle construction projects to keep construction firms afloat, employing countless people to stand on the street waving orange lights at road construction areas, often standing next to expensive machines that look like… a person waving an orange baton. This machine, incidentally, has now evolved in a few areas into a human-sized bright animated display panel showing an animation of a person waving an orange baton. I am sure this does wonders for the bottom line of some display panel company, but it certainly doesn’t make driving any safer.