Ooof….breeding, like dogs, but worse, like people who are bred to not think.

And no, having voluntarily visted Japan many times, having Japanese relatives, having learned (but sadly, mostly forgotten) Japanese language, having been engaged to someone from Japan, having minored in Japanese Studies, and professing a strong liking of Japan, is not the equivalent of an American bigot saying, “Actually, I have Black friends.”

For those of you in Rio Linda, Koizumi/Yasukuni criticism =/= Japan bashing. You’d need a lot more than that for it to be Japan bashing.

My thoughts on “Japan”? Oh, you Japanphiles really need to understand that criticism of Japan’s right-wing politicos is not the same as disliking Japan.

But go for it. Quote me. Don’t paraphrase something I’ve written; quote me and show my negative views toward Japan that are not actually just criticisms of right-wing Japanese policies or politicos.

I happen to like Japan very much. I have relatives there, I have visited it many, many times, and I hope, after getting my PhD, to spend some time doing research and/or teaching there. Don’t impugn my liking of Japan just because you have deemed by point of view about Japan’s far-right to be “anti-Japan.”

By the way, the wordiness of the “walking while looking non-Japanese Asian” was, I thought, a giveaway that I was being sarcastic.

Didn’t the woman in question say she was Japanese? Why, if your naturalized Japanese buddies are given a green light to leave at that point, was she not?

The arrested woman was half Japanese who obtained her citizenship by birth, she does not live in Japan and she does not speak Japanese. Imagine the following back and forth:

Police: Show me your foreigner registration card.
Woman: (Broken Japanese) I am Japanese.
Police: Oh really?
Woman: …
Police: Do you have any form of ID on you?
Woman: …
Police: Do you understand what I’m saying?
Woman: …
Police: If you’re Japanese why don’t you speak Japanese?
Woman: …

If illegal immigrants who didn’t speak Japanese and who could get out of all police checks by just learning, “I’m Japanese!” we’d have a mess on our hands. If the woman could knew enough to say, “I was born and raised in India but I’m a Japanese citizen” she never would have had this problem.

This was, it appears, a rare and exceptional case.

But your “defense” of the situation has piqued my interest in this now.

So you are stopped an average of less than once a year? No one in my closest circle of international residents has ever been stopped and asked to show their documents (in fact, many don’t carry them at all, which is a foolish no-no, just in case something unexpected does happen). None of the people from South or Southeast Asia that I know—and that is admittedly not a lot of people—has told me of such incidents, and it has come up in discussion.

Didn’t the woman in question say she was Japanese? Why, if your naturalized Japanese buddies are given a green light to leave at that point, was she not?

Anyway, I think this is being made into a big deal perhaps BECAUSE it is such a rare and unusual case.

In all my years in Japan I’ve been “stopped” by police on average less than once a year, all while riding my bicycle. Each time I’ve answered police questions politely and they let me go within minutes. According to the law, police are allowed to see the foreigner registration card from non-nationals (upon showing their identification). I know naturalized Japanese citizens who have been stopped after taking Japanese citizenship. The procedure is remarkably simple: “I don’t have a card, I’m a Japanese citizen.” End of story.

If a Japanese citizen who does not look ethnically Japanese and “pretends” to not know Japanese, they get exactly what’s coming to them.