Japan’s trending ideas of tolerance are far from the reality
The following incident occurred when I joined a candlelit march organized to protest the Yasukuni Shrine, held in downtown Tokyo on Aug. 10, 2019. The demonstrators some Koreans, some Japanese marched 1.5km from the Korean YMCA Building in Chiyoda Ward to a park near Yasukuni Shrine, holding small candle-shaped glow sticks. During the march, we were interrupted by a black vehicle, bristling with big speakers, the kind of vehicle used by Japan’s right-wing activists. The sound system was blaring an awful message on a loop: “Koreans should be beaten to death.” This march has been held around Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, since 2006, and nearly every time there has been interference from the right wing. I initially didn’t pay much attention when the right-wing vehicle made its appearance last year, but a chill went down my spine when I heard the chant about Koreans being “beaten to death,” something I hadn’t heard before. Before coming to Japan, reports had made me somewhat aware of hate speech, which is to say public expressions of hate or discrimination against a particular group. But I was taken aback to be in such close proximity to talk of killing. The ethnic discrimination expressed through hate speech is enough to cause serious emotional damage to its targets, but there’s no guarantee that that discrimination will end in words. In the wake of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, rumors spread that Koreans had poisoned the wells, leading to a massacre of Koreans, with estimates placing the death toll in the thousands. This is a perfect example of the terrible consequences that can ensue when a society starts tolerating the language of hatred and discrimination. The reason that Japanese civic groups organize “counter-protests” around right-wing groups engaging in hate speech is not only because hate speech itself is wrong, but also because of their fear that it could destroy the community as a whole. On Dec. 12, as the year was drawing to a close, we got some good news: the city council of Kawasaki, a Japanese city with a large population of Korean-Japanese, had adopted an ordinance that would allow the prosecution of people who engage in hate speech, including anti-Korean demonstrations. This was the first such law to be enacted in Japan. An individual engaging in hate speech in a public space in the city can be prosecuted if they disobey an order to desist. Even then, prosecution depends on the mayor reporting the offender to the prosecutors and an investigation. The only people who are likely to be prosecuted are repeat offenders. Furthermore, hate speech that takes place online falls outside the scope of the Kawasaki ordinance. While this ordinance may not be perfect, it’s obviously a major achievement, owing to the efforts of the Kawasaki city administration, as well as Japanese and Korean-Japanese who have fought to stamp out hate speech. With the Olympics and Paralympics Games taking place in Tokyo this year, there’s been a remarkable push since last year to move toward a society of greater diversity, a society that respects differences. Take, for example, the slogan “one team,” used of the Japanese team that competed in the Rugby World Cup, held in Japan last year. The widely used slogan referred to the fact that 15 of the 31 people on the Japanese team were of foreign nationality, but they all composed a single team, despite their diverse backgrounds. According to the rules of World Rugby, the body that organizes the Rugby World Cup, individuals who have been living in a given country for at least three years can represent it in the tournament, whether or not they hold the nationality of that country. The Japanese publisher Jiyugokuminsha selected “one team” as last year’s trendiest word.
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Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent
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