Following are some readers' responses to Debito Arudou's March 24 Zeit Gist article, "Punishing foreigners, exonerating Japanese":
It is all well and good to complain and to say that certain judgments by the courts are simply wrong. However, in order to make fundamental changes in any legal system, legislative change and the mandate of the people is required.
The problem with legislative change is that many foreigners in Japan are denied the right to vote in elections due to their status as alien noncitizens. Therefore it should fall upon those with the right to vote — i.e. Japanese spouses of noncitizen foreigners and their friends and family — to lobby government for change if they are unhappy with the present legal system.