Social Citizenship Guarantee for Minorities in Japan: Present and Future

Abstract

In recent years, the presence of minorities and their ways of life have become the subject of public interest in Japan. These minorities have experienced misrecognition and denial of their rights, and have been forced to live without benefiting from social redistribution. However, the lack of acceptance of minorities or their ways of life by majorities is being challenged. These aspects of recognition and redistribution are matters of universal human dignity. They are indispensable when considering issues of security in the lives of minorities. To achieve this security it is necessary to consider social citizenship. It described the way we are treated in society. In this article I examine the current state of social citizenship for minorities in Japan. An analysis of the contents and characteristics of social policy and social security systems in which social citizenship is embodied suggests that social citizenship in Japan is still strongly based on traditional social standards. This traditional orientation constitutes an obstacle to guaranteeing social citizenship for minorities. Moreover, the more serious inherent problem is that neither the concept of citizenship nor that of rights has been adequately accepted by the people. Given these points, it is unsurprising that the majority perceives minorities as deviant, and this situation has made guarantees of social citizenship for minorities much more difficult. A full guarantee of social citizenship for minorities requires further efforts to be made in human rights education and citizenship education.

What does it mean to “go beyond race”?

“…Stripped of their Japanese nationality in 1951 and becoming stateless, despite the forced imposition of Japanese nationality and assimilation during the colonization, Koreans faced severe marginalization and exclusion from the economic, social, and cultural citizenship in Japanese society. With no affirmative action in place, and despite the openness to social security system for "foreign nationals" based on employment, we continue to observe institutional exclusion of multigenerational Koreans from national pension systems, public assistance or education, due to the provision of rights based on racialized Japanese citizenship, not to mention the widespread negative attitudes that are communicated and maintained interpersonally (Hirano, 2020;Shiobara, 2020).…”

“…In the context of Japan, for example, there are two parallel and interacting forms of racial privileges: On one hand the colonial past of Japan means that Koreans, Chinese and other non-Japanese Asians in Japan have historically been racialized as second-class. Their oppressed racialized status as "Asian" (meaning non-Japanese and foreigner) is maintained multigenerationally systemically through immigration control, economic exploitation, policing and unequal provision of rights (Hirano, 2020). Simultaneously, the legacies from WWII and the aftermath locate Japan in the Global system of racial hierarchy with associated admiration towards the West; this anchors racialized power within Western phenotypes.…”