The news that the Japanese government is making "every conceivable effort" to eliminate racial discrimination makes me wonder -- as a foreigner who has lived in Japan for more than six years -- what the word "conceivable" means.
We land in Japan and get fingerprinted and photographed to help the police track terrorist suspects. Only a few countries in the world do this, boasting all the while that they have the technology and the will to fight terrorism. I wish my country would start the procedure with visiting Japanese people. When Japanese face it in other countries, their lawmakers will understand that what they started has come back on them.
Whenever foreigners travel, they are required to carry their ID card, to show it during frenzied queries by patrol cops who want to look at foreigners for God knows what reason. "Suspects" are sized up by FACIAL appearance alone. I wonder how many Japanese-looking Koreans or Chinese are identified this way.
Real estate agents are only for the Japanese and all, except a few good men, bluntly turn us away, saying they have instructions from owners not to rent to foreigners.
Foreigners are a soft target of the media whenever a foreign family overstays in Japan or whenever any foreigner is involved in a crime. Getting less attention are the thousands of Japanese who daily make short but derogatory comments about foreigners in dialects that few foreigners understand. The mere uttering of some discriminatory words should be a punishable offense.
The U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism is ensuring that there is an adequate legal framework for Japan to comply with. I ask for soul-searching on the part of the rapporteur -- that it take more feedback from the foreign community rather than the Japanese government.