by Miguelángel Verde Garrido
Published in: Identity and Alterity in Multiculturalism and Social Justice: "Conflicts", "Identity", "Alterity", "Solutions?" (2008). (vol. 4). (pp.128-148). Kyoto: Research Center for Ars Vivendi/Ritsumeikan University.
ISSN 1882-6539
Seven years after the Japanese government abolished fingerprinting of foreign nationals due to an unusual display of... more
Seven years after the Japanese government abolished fingerprinting of foreign nationals due to an unusual display of discontent in civil society, it has decided to amend its immigration laws (改正入管法) to allow, once more, for fingerprinting and photographing of foreign nationals, no matter their visa or residence status. In blatant contradiction with Japanese law, which makes it illegal to fingerprint anyone that has not been charged with a crime, this controversial measure is weakly justified by stating it will help to “prevent the occurrence of acts of terrorism against Japan.” However, with the exception of the Japanese Embassy hostage crisis in Lima, Peru, Japan has never suffered a terrorist act that didn’t involve Japanese nationals solely. The arrests that followed the Aum Shinrikyou’s (オウム真理経) fiendish Tokyo sarin gas incident lead approximately twenty Japanese nationals to be tried and convicted by the justice system, but none of the cult’s internationals members were ever found to be involved in the attacks. Similarly, the infamous Japanese Red Army (日本赤軍), which hijacked airplanes, bombed and stormed company facilities and embassies, and murdered civilian bystanders indiscriminately, perpetrated thirteen terrorist acts between the 1970s and the 1980s. And yet, only two on them were committed on Japanese soil, while the other eleven were committed abroad; in every case, nonetheless, the participants involved in the attacks were solely Japanese nationals.
The Japanese word for a stranger (他人) is an “other person.” Foreigners (外国人, “outside country people”), likewise, are usually called gaijin (外人), “outside people” or “outsider,” in informal circumstances. The Japanese scholar Ohsawa Masachi has forwarded that the Aum sect “can be seen as an extreme reflection of Japanese society in general,” since it “mirrors the same type of fear toward the ambivalent ‘other’ common within the Japanese population.” For Ohsawa, that fear of the ambivalent ‘other’ is “a symptom of the social disintegration brought forth by advanced capitalism,” and in that manner “not particular to the Japanese, but rather reflected in many ethnic nationalisms and religious fundamentalisms of contemporary global society.” Nowadays, when globalization leads us inevitably to attempt to constructively deal with the intricacies of multicultural contexts, the return of undeniable racisms and state-sponsored discriminatory policies must be carefully analyzed and protested.
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