Monday, March 08, 2004

Tokyo Alien Eyes

The newsletter edited by F. Takano, the founder of Tokyo
Alien Eyes(TAE), a nonprofit organization for international
students/residents in Japan.?@?@

NOTICES!
PARTICIPANTS WANTED
College student participants in a discussion with Chinese
students graduating from a Japanese language school
�
An indie film: adolescence and crime from a global perspective

A joint meeting by international student exchange groups and
student councils

--------------------------------------------------------------

1. TODAY’S ESSAY: TAE SUCCEEDED TO GET RID OF DISCRIMINATORY
NOTICES!

There are incessant “foreigner-bashing” taking place these days.
The Ministry of Justice started encouraging people to inform by
e-mail against foreign who are staying in Japan “illegally”. NGO’s
supporting foreigners are protesting against this. Last year, the
Tokyo Governor Ishihara and the Minister of Justice announced to
reduce the “illegal stay” into half in five years. However, there
is an easier way than the current measure of racial discrimination
(i.e. police’s questioning only foreigners) under the name of
“regulation”: To legalize guest workers, which has been proposed
since the 1980’s.

“Giving the right to stay to all foreigners with expired visas who
register to the authority during a certain period: what is called
“amnesty” in such countries as the U.S. By this measure, most (not
to mention half) of the “illegal stay” will disappear all at once.
The guest workers need not to suffer from being exploited with
extremely low wage due to the lack of their invalid visa, and they
will become able to officially complain about nonpayment, which
will lead to reduce the negative sentiment toward the Japanese.
This will also result in fewer crimes by foreigners. No one would
be disadvantaged, and 250,000 foreigners would be able to enjoy
“heavenly happiness”. Little budget will be needed for this
measure.*

TAE’s research team of foreigners’ human right has recently born
fruit again in such circumstances. One of our readers replied to
the last newsletter and informed us of notices stating “Watch out
for Delinquent Foreigners” at a branch of UFJ Bank in Azabu. At
the same time, we also found notices on all the ATM machines at
the Kojimachi branch of Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank. Our research team
immediately called the banks and the Azabu and Kojimachi police
offices that made the notices. As a result, Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank
removed all of the notices several days later, and UFJ Bank, which
once rejected to reply to our proposal, eventually removed them
voluntarily afterward. The Azabu Police promised to tell the bank
to remove the notices, and the Kojimachi Police, which first said
they saw no problem with the notices, later replies to us, stating,
“The headquarter had decided in 2001 not to use the expression of
“delinquent foreigners” to avoid misunderstanding, but that decision
has not reached to the tail end.” With this achievement, we are
planning to request the headquarter of the metropolitan police that
they, including the “tail ends” use no such expressions that lead
to discrimination against foreigners.

We are worried about the bias against international students and
foreigners in general getting worse. We will continue to try to
abolish discrimination as part of our supporting activities for
foreigners, and your support such as providing information would
be much appreciated.

* Excerpted from an article “?yViewpoint?zA Damn Lie of
“Deteriorated Security due to foreigners” by Eiichiro Ishiyama,
an editorial committeeman of Kyodo Press.
(http://apc.cup.com/index.html?no=12.8.0.0.447.0.0.0.0.0.)

Tel:03-6801-9666 Fax:03-6801-9667 (text by Takano Fumio)
?– This essay is serialized in ViVa! Volunteer Net.
http://www.viva.ne.jp/action/globalopinion/

�PARTICIPANTS WANTED FOR A DISCUSSION WITH
CHINESE STUDENTS WHO ARE ABOUT TO GRADUATE
FROM A JAPANESE LANGUAGE SCHOOL?

(Please forward this message freely)

There will be discussion between Chinese students who
are about to graduate from a Japanese language school
and Japanese college students. The Chinese students
are from various parts of China and are in their early
20’s. Japanese participants are welcomed for this
discussion.
�Topic: Advantages and disadvantages of Japan from the
viewpoint of Chinese students
�Chinese Participants: 10 Chinese students who are to
graduate from a Japanese language school
�Date and time: Wed, March 10th from 13:30
�Venue: Shibuya (Details should be given later)
�Requirement: Japanese undergraduate students
�Participants: 10 Japanese (Please RSVP)
�Co-hosted by: Non-Profit Organization Tokyo Alien
Eyes (TAE) and OLJ Language Academy
�Please contact Kou at