Tsuyoshi Amemiya, 74, a retired Aoyama Gakuin University professor, recalls the day he got a lesson on the status of refugees in Japan — and how shocked he was by his own ignorance of the issue.
On his way to a dentist appointment in 2004, Amemiya came across some Kurdish asylum seekers handing out fliers near United Nations University in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo.
The Kurds told him they had been involved in antigovernment activities in Turkey and had fled to Japan to seek political asylum, only to be rejected several times.