A total of 62.9% of people in Japan with foreign origins were questioned by police over the past five years, preliminary results of a recent Tokyo Bar Association survey showed, with the group saying the outcome is evidence of biased behavior by officers.
The survey on racial profiling drew responses from 2,094 people with roots in other countries. The association said it conducted the poll after receiving complaints that many such people had been questioned by police apparently due to their appearance.
Among individuals who were approached by the police over the past five years, 50.4% were stopped "two to five times," while 10.8% were questioned "six to nine times" and 11.5% "10 times or more," according to the survey conducted between Jan. 11 and Feb. 28.
A total of 70.3% of those individuals said they "felt uncomfortable" with the police questioning, while 85.4% said the police approached them upon recognizing they have roots in other countries. Most of those people believed officers were aware or their origins because of their appearance.
A Japanese law governing police officers on duty allows them to question people if there are reasons to suspect they have committed an unusual act or crime. But 76.9% of people who were questioned by police officers in the survey said there was no reason for being treated with suspicion.
Some of those who took part in the survey wrote that after officers learned of their foreign nationality, they showed "overbearing behavior" toward them.
The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo had warned on its official Twitter account last year that it had been receiving reports of "suspected racial profiling incidents" with several non-Japanese nationals "detained, questioned and searched" by the police.