National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Minorities experienced varying degrees of societal discrimination.
Although not subject to governmental discrimination, Buraku (the descendants of feudal-era outcasts) were frequently victims of entrenched societal discrimination. Buraku advocacy groups continued to report that despite socioeconomic improvements achieved by many Buraku, widespread discrimination persisted in employment, marriage, housing, and property assessment. While the Buraku label was no longer officially used to identify individuals, the family registry system could be used to identify them and facilitate discriminatory practices. Buraku advocates expressed concern that employers, including many government agencies, which require family registry information from job applicants for background checks, may use this information to identify and discriminate against Buraku applicants.
Despite legal safeguards against discrimination, the country’s Chinese, Korean, Brazilian, and Filipino permanent residents--many of whom were born, raised, and educated in Japan--were subjected to various forms of entrenched societal discrimination, including restricted access to housing, education, health care, and employment opportunities. Foreign nationals resident as well as “foreign-looking” Japanese citizens reported similar discrimination and stated they were prohibited entry, sometimes by signs reading “Japanese Only” to privately owned facilities serving the public, including hotels and restaurants. Noting that the discrimination was usually open and direct, NGOs persisted in complaining of government inaction to prohibit it.
In general, societal acceptance of ethnic Koreans who were permanent residents or citizens continued to improve. Although authorities approved most naturalization applications, advocacy groups continued to complain about excessive bureaucratic hurdles that complicated the naturalization process and a lack of transparent criteria for approval. Ethnic Koreans who chose not to naturalize faced difficulties in terms of civil and political rights and, according to the country’s periodic submissions to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, regularly encountered discrimination in access to housing, education, government pensions, and other benefits.
During the year, ultraright-wing groups held a series of anti-Korean demonstrations in different parts of the country, including in predominantly ethnic Korean areas. Group members used racially pejorative terms and were accused of hate speech by the press and politicians. Senior government officials publicly repudiated the harassment of ethnic groups as inciting discrimination and reaffirmed the protection of individual rights for everyone in the country. According to media and NGO reports, incidents of hate speech on the internet also increased. In July the UN Human Rights Committee, in its response to the country’s sixth periodic report, expressed concern about “widespread racial discourse against members of minority groups, such as Koreans, Chinese, or Burakumin, inciting hatred and discrimination against them,” and called criminal and civil codes to protect persons from such acts “insufficient.” In December the Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings ordering a right-wing group and some of its members to pay compensation for hate speech demonstrations the group conducted against ethnic Koreans, including schoolchildren, in Kyoto.
On July 18, the Supreme Court ruled that by law foreign permanent residents are not entitled to welfare because they are not Japanese citizens. However, in practice municipalities customarily provided needy permanent foreign residents with stipends. On October 6, the minister of health, labor, and welfare stated that benefits would continue to be provided to foreign residents for humanitarian reasons.
A Pension Agency enforcement directive allows employers to forgo pension and insurance contributions on behalf of their foreign employees who teach languages, as compared with Japanese employees in similar positions. The agency also did not penalize employers who failed to enroll foreign teachers in the system. Employers may use different contracts for foreigners than for nationals, and courts generally upheld this distinction as nondiscriminatory.
Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union continued a campaign to encourage public schools to hire foreign assistant English language teachers directly rather than employ outsourcing firms to staff these positions. The union maintained that these firms refused to enroll foreign teachers in required health and pension schemes and violated labor laws by employing foreign national teachers in schools at which they are legally prohibited from taking guidance from other teachers or staff.
In October 2013 the government dropped a ban that prevented approximately 20,000 second-generation Brazilians from returning to Japan for a period of three years after they had been voluntarily repatriated to Brazil during the financial crisis. The ban on returns was decried by advocacy groups who maintained that the government was “throwing out” foreigners during the financial downturn.
Indigenous People
Although the Ainu enjoy the same rights as all other citizens, when clearly identifiable as Ainu they faced discrimination. The law emphasizes preservation of Ainu culture but lacks some provisions that Ainu groups have demanded, such as recognition for land claims, reserved seats in the Diet and local assemblies, and a government apology for previous policies.
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