These are troubling times for human rights activists. For 27 years I’ve been writing about civil, political and human rights for non-Japanese (NJ) and other minorities in Japan. And I’ve never been more confused. Not least because the United States, the putative paragon of human ...

Far-right fanboys see in Japan an ethnostate that gets a free pass on the world stage, but it's a reputation that Japan needs to shake for its own good.

The year saw a landmark human rights survey and action on hate speech and pensions — but conditions remain dire for foreign 'trainees' and other workers alike.

Ibrahim Yener discusses the lessons learned from his successful discrimination case against a used car dealership.

Carnage in Virginia shows why America needs to limit expression that necessarily leads to violence.

Government's attempt to understand the foreign experience of Japan produces valuable data despite some blind spots.

Something landmark happened late last year. Japan's government undertook a nationwide survey of discrimination toward Japan's long-term non-Japanese (NJ) residents. The Foreign Residents Survey (FRS), drawn up in 13 languages, was randomly mailed last November to 18,500 NJ residents. It was widely dispersed — to ...

Foreign correspondents should not pander to stereotypes, passing overt racism off as "tradition" practiced by those mystical, hidebound, inscrutable Japanese.

Welcome back to JBC's annual countdown of the top issues as they affected Non-Japanese (NJ) residents of Japan. We had some brighter spots this year than in previous years, because Japan's government has been so embarrassed by hate speech toward Japan's minorities that they ...

As the Republican victory in the U.S. threatens to undo eight years of progress, a silver lining in Donald Trump's success proves hard to pin down.