One afternoon in November 2021, I was riding my bicycle past Hachioji Station in Tokyo’s western suburbs when a police officer stood in front of my path and signaled me to stop.
The residual trauma of being a Black American hit me, and I felt a tinge of fear and indignation, which really serves no purpose in Japan, these are not American cops, after all.
The officer told me he wanted to check my bike registration. I asked why. He said he had to make sure I hadn’t stolen the bike. I told him he didn’t have to, it was definitely my bike. He smiled and said he was sorry to detain me, but he just needed to make sure. You see, some bikes had been stolen recently so he had to check. It was routine. He apologized again.
I asked the officer if the police routinely stopped and checked every cyclist they encountered. If so, they must be overworked. He grinned again and said, “No, we only stop some people.”
“Some people?”
Naturally, I wondered what I’d done to get lumped in with the “some people” cohort, just so I could avoid doing whatever that was in the future. “Do you mean the checks are random?” I said. “Or do you use your ...” I didn’t know the word for “intuition” (I know now, it’s “chokkan”). “Maybe you have some system?”
He had stopped engaging in the friendly banter by this point and asked to see my residence card.
It was about that time that I had noticed, several other officers had emerged from the nearby kōban (police box). It wasn’t aggressive, but I couldn’t help but notice they had stealthily “soft surrounded” me, all smiles, like I was a street performer and they were there for a show.
Hachioji Station was bustling at the time, so it did feel like a show — and I was the star attraction. The vibe had stopped being friendly, and I felt a bit of shame, with passersby shooting me disapproving looks. I told the officer I was uncomfortable and that I would like to be on my way, immediately, if there wasn’t a problem.
He scanned my residence card as if he suspected it was counterfeit, apologizing and bowing perfunctorily for delaying my departure. Politeness was a priority, but my humiliation was none of his concern.
I realized then that — for the first time in my life, and on two continents — I had been personally targeted by law enforcement for harassment, that I was likely being purposely humiliated, and that their suspicion about my criminality was likely linked to my race.
It delivered a gut punch to my soul, like someone spitting on my bound and gagged naked body. The whole thing took 15 minutes.
I vomited in the gutter on the way home.
Being Black history
Three foreign-born residents of Japan — Maurice Shelton, Zain and Matthew (who are using just the one name each) — had the same experience I had, repeatedly. But they’re responding in a different way, by filing a lawsuit against the state (National Police Agency), the city (Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department) and Aichi Prefecture (the Aichi Prefectural Police).
They claim the “practice of racially discriminatory police questioning both at institutional and individual levels is unconstitutional and illegal” based on Article 14 of the Constitution, which allows for equality before the law and prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, adding that a line in Article 13 also affirms the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — which is hard to achieve when you’re being harassed by your neighborhood cops.
The lawsuit also points out that Japan is a signatory to both the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which both call for equal treatment before the law regardless of race, color, gender, language, religion and so on.
On Feb. 1, I went down to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan and watched a press conference delivered by Shelton and his attorney, Motoki Taniguchi. The date of the press conference wasn’t lost on me; it was the first day of Black History Month, and here I was looking at this lone Black man on the podium with a sense of admiration. Shelton is the embodiment of what I once wrote here in Black Eye about the relevancy of Black History Month to those of us in Japan: Black people here need to do more than celebrate Black history — we need to be Black history.
This is the first such lawsuit of its kind in Japan and according to Taniguchi, it wasn’t just Black history I was witnessing, it could be Japanese history, too.
The plaintiffs are not taking this extraordinary risk to make history, though. Shelton has been living in Japan for nearly 10 years. He has permanent residency status and Japanese family members. He wants to live his life and not get stopped unnecessarily by the police (he has been stopped 16 or 17 times by them according to his claim). Zain, a naturalized Japanese citizen of Pakistani descent has been stopped 15 times, according to his claim, and Pacific Islander Matthew says he has been stopped between 70 and 100 times.
Chances are, if you are a visible minority, you’ll have found yourself in the same situation at some point. The Tokyo Bar Association carried out a survey of foreign residents in 2022 and found that, of 2,094 respondents, 62.9% claimed they had been stopped and questioned by a police officer in the past five years. Of these, 72.7% said they had been stopped more than once in that period.
According to Taniguchi, his team has been able to get its hands on a manual published by the Aichi police and given to new recruits that says, “Those who at first glance are identified as foreigners and do not speak Japanese ... you should have a strong belief that they are involved in some illegal activity.”
After a warning was issued by the United States Embassy in Tokyo in December 2021 stating racial profiling was suspected to be a problem, there was some effort by the National Police Agency to investigate themselves on whether such practices were rampant in their ranks. In November 2022, they said they were able to find six such cases.
A father’s duty
According to Taniguchi, the plaintiffs and the lawyers representing them are not focused on huge cash settlements but ensuring racial profiling in Japan becomes a relic of the past. The three plaintiffs have some sort of security here thanks to their visa statuses and citizenship, so they are doing this for people out there who don’t feel they have the ability to speak up.
As the number of visible minorities — already in the millions — continues to grow, and the racial makeup of Japan changes ever so slightly, the country’s approach to many social issues will need to keep pace. Policing is a part of that. Therefore, this lawsuit is requesting “confirmation of illegality regarding the systemic practice of racially discriminatory police questioning” and for “confirmation of the state’s obligation to control and supervise police operations for the prevention of racially discriminatory police questioning.”
After the press conference, I was able to speak with Shelton about what pushed him to do what he was doing.
“My students and clients, even people in my family, all members of the majority, they’ve never had to deal with being the outsider, like we have as people of the African diaspora,” he said.
“I want to battle apathy, willful ignorance, wrong-headedness and the narrow-mindedness that pervades not only Japan but exists at large.”
Shelton originally comes from Alabama. He believes there has been a turn, globally, toward anti-intellectualism, fascistic ways of thinking, authoritarian tendencies and parochialism. He’s determined to do his part to combat such dangerous mindsets, and he hopes that his actions will awaken other people who feel the same way.
During our conversation, two things struck me. The first was the risk he was taking going public, specifically with regards to the possible retaliation his wife fears, and the safety of his family.
“Realistically, I understand that this lawsuit is not going to move the needle momentously,” he said. “We’re not gonna have a utopia of people who understand we are all equal and we’re all people. I have no illusions about that.
“But, I have children and family here. They look like the next generation, like Rui Hachimura and Naomi Osaka. I must carve out a space for them as best I know how before I go. If I don’t, I haven’t done my duty as a father.”
The second thing that struck me was that Shelton used vocabulary like “workers” and “people” throughout his comments. I kept resorting to the idea of “sides,” but he spoke of us all as one team. After a while, I began to understand, it’s a mindset I should strive to acquire myself. The us-versus-them dynamic is reinforced in almost every interaction we have here. It’s pretty rare to be able to hold an extended conversation with a Japanese person and not be reminded at some point that there’s “difference.” It happens so often in my case, I seemed to have internalized it.
Shelton didn’t get that memo.
He reminded me that it is still possible to see myself as part of this society, despite the constant otherization that comes from things like police questioning. We are the same — all workers, residents and people, and that’s worth standing up for.
I couldn’t have hoped for a better reminder in Black History Month.
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