Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama's advocacy of the fingerprinting law is full of holes. His recent remarks tell us that no one is to be trusted, least of all a government that mishandles everything it touches, from pensions to Japan Self-Defense Force missions. I had never been fingerprinted before coming to Japan some years ago. The practice was once terminated because it was obviously outrageous.
To re-introduce it now on the pretext that it is necessary is as bizarre as it is ridiculous. Hatoyama's nonsensical justification of the practice is the case in point.
With Japan vying to host the Olympics in the near future, it is to be wondered whether he has any inkling of what he is doing. Even during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics or, more recently, the FIFA World Cup, blanket fingerprinting was not foisted upon the millions of visitors. If in the unlikely event that Japan's Olympics application were to be successful, no doubt the fingerprinting law would be temporarily suspended. That would be another absurd paradox in a long history of absurd paradoxes involving international relations.
The recent Rugby World Cup clearly illustrated Japan's stance. While determinedly denying any fair and meaningful immigration/asylum policy despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, Japan brazenly exploits foreign labor for its own short-term benefits. Thus a third of the Japanese rugby team was non-Japanese, even though non-Japanese make up less than 1 percent of the nation.
Nowadays many Japanese live and work abroad, and it seems that nearly everyone else has been or is planning to go abroad. Maybe it's time for the rest of the world to wise up and start reciprocal fingerprinting. What kind of outcry would that start?