Article on Gaijinary and how we shall all be fingerprinted from now on. At immigration today they told me I needed my actual college diploma and a letter of release from my former employer and all of my former tax records. Is this over-kill? I think, a bit.
This article also. The e-mail is fake, but pretty much what the real one would be.
I see the 'help prevent terrorism' signs on my way to work every day. Oh Japan, you are so big and important. Everyone wants to attack your bus lines. It wasn't looney Japanese people who gassed you subways. It was us crazy foreigners, no longer content to drink your beer and chat up your daughters. If they really wanted to keep out undesirable foreigners that would start handing out chastity belts.
9 comments:
When in Rome, be prepared to get fucked by some Romans (only not in the kinda cool and creepy sexy ways a Roman would do it). I live in Mexico; if the law of the land becomes oppressive to me, I will move back where i have some standing to influence the law.
I know it is more complicated than that, but compare the horrible indignities of being a foreigner in Japan to being a foreigner in the US. Aside from the Japanese being xenophobic (a condition that i think was extant when you chose to move there, as long as you made that decision any time during recorded history), are they really asking that you do anyhting other than keep your papers in order and carry your passport?
We (the USA) fingerprint too. And require , increasingly, that employees check credentials regularly. The degree to which we refrain is about the rights of employers not to be hassled and to exploit labor rather than the rights of foreigners.
Okay, two other reactions to this entry which obviously hit a nerve with me:
Interesting that it follows the entry on a Japanese girl doing the I have a dream speech. Did she know the meaning or just do it phonetically like Pink Lady and Jeff?
Second:
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for his labours,
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted.
- Byron
and finally, just in case the Pink lady reference escaped you, this classic bit of japanamericana:
http://mx.youtube.com/watch?v=La-8dy6U1e8
a pink lady reference will never be lost on me.
I am the first to talk about everything that I think is great in Japan. They let me have insurance like a civilized country, for Christ's sake. But, as I often tell Japanese people who say that foreigners complain to much, "Complaining is the first step in a Democracy." I really think it is. I don't think I am in a horrible and unreasonable situation, but I do think there are things that are wrong with the way things work. Maybe it needs some context. Maybe not. The process we have to go through was originally for ethnically Korean people. When it was pointed out that that was discriminatory, the government agreed and thereafter made all foreigners comply. It isn't just carrying your passport and having your papers in order. It is having a card that says that you are a foreigner that you must carry at all times. I actually don't find that so terrible. It involves registering in the ward office each time that you move and having that address put on your card. It involves having your fingerprints on file. Of course this surrounded by the obviousness of Japanese criminals who flout the law in front of the police, while announcers at soccer games say things like "Please be careful on the way home, many foreigners come to soccer games." It is having the mayor of Tokyo declare that the first step after a major disaster should be to round up the foreigners, knowing full well that after the Kanto Earthquake and the Hanshin Earthquake it was the Koreans and other foreigners who were killed by mobs or left to burn. It involves paying Japanese taxes but having no legal protection against housing discrimination-a very real problem-or employment discrimination. I am a school teacher but I can't really be one. I can't be a public employee. I can't run for office. I can't go into some restaurants or hotels or onsens and this is all completely legal. Did I know that Japan was racist? Sure. Did I accept that as the way it should be? No. I live here and teach their children and pay their taxes so I feel I have some say in their society. The US immigration system is also not great. It exploits poor people. Really poor people. It does this for the benefit of rich people because it can. I am not saying they are the same. I just think that Japan's is misguided and could use more input from actual foreign people who choose to make their homes in Japan.
Good points. Maybe I'm just jealous of the idea that you CAN have some sort of input. There is no national dialogue on foreign residents in Mexico, and even if there were I couldn't join it because I am an illegal immigrant. And still i have it better than you it seems because nobody here really gives a shit. I see this as a great endorsemnt professionally, legally, and personally for people not to give a shit. Call this attitude SLACK and blame Bob Dobbs. For me, not giving a shit is the first step of a Democracy, it is the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights and the hallmark of a good friend and a good government. In this way I agree with Thoreau that "That government is best which governs least."
I understand and respect my friends who are social activists, but have never found a group that could atriculate the "don't give a shit" platform. Libertarians are cryptofascists for the most part.
Anyway, bottom line, I get your point.
But David, I was under the impression that you were a card carrying member of both the Stonecutters and the Movementarians. What movement could hope to contain you however. Or me for that matter. We are far to grand to concern ourselves with such folly. Making a living wage and keeping the power on are silly distractions that those, more feeble than us occupy themselves with. I would comment on Libertariansim but I would ramble for a while about how their policies are all perfect for 12 year-old boys and people pretending not to be Republicans. I have a severe love/hate relationship with bureaucracy. When it works well-like Japanese health insurance-it is miracle amazing and stress relieving. When it doesn't work-like the rest of the time- it is mind numbing and infuriating. I think it should be the goal to get it to work well.
Maybe it is the cynic in me, but I'd like you to show me people who have kept the power though social activism. People get power by seizing the means of production; civil rights movement without bus boycotts and support from rich capitalists= tienamen square. labor movement without the threats to the income of rich folks that only laborers can exert=haymarket riots.
I'm not above social activism, i just don't think that complaining makes anything happen, even if its thousands of people complaining in the streets, unless that complaint is also a threat.
To clarify the not giving a shit, i don't mean to not live lovingly and care about suffering in the world, i mean not to give a shit about ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, organizational affiliation, ideology, etc.
I'm neither woodsman of the world nor oddfellow, if i were to affiliate with a group it would probably be Christians, except they don't seem to take jesus very seriously when he says love your enemies, and also they believe in God, which i can't quite fathom.
White liberal "activism" is a salve for conscience, not a force for change. Looks great for martin sheen if he gets arrested in front of a nuclear facility, but it doesn't change policy one little bit.
And as for living in Japan, i guess its kinda like spending time with one's racist grandparents; it's frustrating and sad, but doesn't mean you don't love them or see their many beautiful qualities or that you aren't going to stick with them, however much it offends your conscience not to keep having the argument every time they open their mouths.
Maybe it is the cynic in me, but I'd like you to show me people who have kept the power though social activism. People get power by seizing the means of production; civil rights movement without bus boycotts and support from rich capitalists= tienamen square. labor movement without the threats to the income of rich folks that only laborers can exert=haymarket riots.
I'm not above social activism, i just don't think that complaining makes anything happen, even if its thousands of people complaining in the streets, unless that complaint is also a threat.
To clarify the not giving a shit, i don't mean to not live lovingly and care about suffering in the world, i mean not to give a shit about ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, organizational affiliation, ideology, etc.
I'm neither woodsman of the world nor oddfellow, if i were to affiliate with a group it would probably be Christians, except they don't seem to take jesus very seriously when he says love your enemies, and also they believe in God, which i can't quite fathom.
White liberal "activism" is a salve for conscience, not a force for change. Looks great for martin sheen if he gets arrested in front of a nuclear facility, but it doesn't change policy one little bit.
And as for living in Japan, i guess its kinda like spending time with one's racist grandparents; it's frustrating and sad, but doesn't mean you don't love them or see their many beautiful qualities or that you aren't going to stick with them, however much it offends your conscience not to keep having the argument every time they open their mouths.
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