Arudou Debito / Dave Aldwincle, 40
Human Rights Activist / University Professor
http://www.debito.org/
What is your job?
I’ve been an associate professor at a university since 1993. I teach Business English and Debate. That’s the day job.And the night job?
(laughter) Whatever comes across my radar screen I guess. I’m not sure I’d call it a job, but I’d definitely call it an occupation timewise. I take up issues of human rights, talking about issues in the public eye, or I think should be in the public eye, with the common thread of racial discrimination towards people based upon their appearance and nationality.How did you get interested in that?
I’ve always had an interest in race, since my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Chandler, an African American. She taught us about problems that blacks face in the US. Our school was about 1/3 black; we had some racial tensions in my hometown of Geneva NY.
I'm from Herkimer NY.
Oh you’re from Herkimer! Good lord, small world. Geneva is at the top of the Finger Lakes, Seneca Lake.
My teacher would tell us about what it was like being black in the 1940s 50s and 60s when she was growing up. Americans became very aware of race in the 70s, as you know, people like Mohammed Ali and Richard Pryor were becoming very mainstream criticizing racism. I of course was a “white bread” (white) American. When I came to Japan I realized that I was being treated quite similarly to the way black people were treated in the US. Of course we’re not talking about serious discrimination like cross burnings and lynchings, but it's still basically the same: seeing people based upon their skin color and nothing else, and stereotyping them in terms of preferences, lifestyle, and occupations. This robs a lot of people—foreigners—of their potential, and gives them a raw deal (unfair terms) in this society. I thought this shouldn’t be allowed. There are better ways of treating people. Children who are products of international marriages in particular, who are not here by choice, get affected by this. They are often bullied.What year did you come?
1986 was the first time, as a tourist. I returned in ‘87 to work at an English school for a year.Any particular event made you feel the prejudice here?
Don’t we all feel something? The common things that people talk about, people won’t sit next to you on the subway, or when people get drunk they say things people wouldn’t dare say in the States because they’d get punched. But it’s tolerated here as part of the cultural conceit (arrogance) towards foreigners. I can’t point to one incident. But I can point to one key event in my life.I was working for a trading company in Sapporo where I had very very bad job conditions. Fifteen months later I quit. I simply said there’s no real reason why bosses can treat subordinates this way. I was exploited, and made to feel the whipping boy for the prejudices that my bosses had. I don’t know why they hired me except to make the "white boy" suffer. Then I realized, ‘You can’t do this, legally.’ Labor laws prevent this.’
Can you give an example of a comment or behavior of discrimination you experienced?
I don’t dwell on these things, because to dwell is not productive. But okay. Once I was with my girlfriend in Sapporo and a complete stranger who was drunk came up and bullied her for going out with me. He said, “What’s it like to "get fucked by" a white boy and his big schlong?” Talk like that. It was my first year in Japan, and at times like that you don’t know what to do, punch him or walk away. My girlfriend tried to drag us away, but the guy followed us and kept on mocking us in public.You must have been tempted to hit him.
(laughter) Yes, but as my girlfriend said, and the record shows, I would have been arrested. Any time there’s an fight between Japanese and foreigners it’s the foreigner that gets locked up. Walking away was the correct thing. I’ve only been physically attacked in Japan a few times—and they threw the first punch. Another example is, I have relatives in my wife’s family who didn’t want to meet with me because I had been the wartime enemy. Fine. These attitudes are not exclusive to Japan, but of course memories are long in a defeated nation. I said, “You don’t know anything about me. Why say those things?” Those things happen in every culture, sure, but when they happen to you you have to make a decision, are you going to ignore this, or are you going to do something about this?Were you physically assaulted? By who and why?
Oh, a couple of times by drunks. Apparently I'd not laughed properly at a joke told me by a perfect stranger in the bathroom and he attacked me in the bar's genkan. And another time I had a heated debate with someone I was working with on a project and he got drunk and attacked me in the bar's toilet. I guess the lesson is for me to stay away from toilets. (laughter)Can you give examples of “white boy” treatment at the trading company?
My bosses would justify anything saying, “This is the Japanese Way.” For example, I couldn’t wear sneakers when I was on the subway because I was a representative of their trading company—this was me coming to work in the morning! They said, “From the time you leave your front door, till the time you come home at night, you’re a company representative so you can’t do anything that would break dress code.” Then they started saying things like, ‘You can’t go to the toilet more than twice a day, because that’s the Japanese Way.’ They had other rules for me as well: “You can’t watch Hollywood movies; you can’t read the Economist magazine. You can’t bicycle to work.”Sounds like your bosses were obsessed with control.
Quite. They tried to control every single aspect in life. Who I met, what I read, how I spent even my free time. Why stop me from doing things in English? Because they said I should be immersing myself in studying Japanese. And of course I had to answer the phone in Japanese and deal with people who were rather nasty. It was a small trading company.Were Japanese employees subject to some of those bizarre restrictions?
No, not at all, but they told me this is because I was a new employee. I learned there is no one Japanese way. Saying that is just a way to shut you up. So I started hitting the law books, and asking questions of lawyers to get information. The things happening in that company were illegal. When I told them, they backed off. By that I learned that when a white boy stands up for himself, they will back off. It happened during the bubble years 1991-1993. People were hiring foreigners just to prove they were an international company. Boy they sure failed to "nationalize" me.Ok. Could you tell about he onsen (hot spring) incident.
In 1999 I heard from an internet mailing list, there were onsen that were refusing foreigners entry. Why? I wondered. I found out they actually had signs up that said, “Japanese only.” My goodness, I thought, this is similar to America when they had whites-only signs. So I went there with friends, 16 friends, to check. We went with our families to show we’re residents, language abilities, and some of us permanent residents. When you refuse “foreigners” you’re refusing Japanese families too. When we went, they refused only the white people in our group: They only excluded my German friend, American friend, and myself, the three whites. They let in the Chinese lady. When we talked to the management, they said they have trouble with Russian sailors following their rules. We asked, “Do you have the bathing rules posted?” No. But they justified their refusals because they claimed an old bathhouse they used to run had gone bankrupt because of Russians. We said, “How can you go from Russian sailors to all foreigners? That's quite a jump. I mean we're not Russian sailors, and besides not all Russian sailors are not able to follow rules.” He said, "We can't tell you apart so in all fairness we refuse all foreigners equally.” Makes perfect sense, right?Then I asked, “All foreigners means Chinese and Zainichi Koreans too?” Yeah, if we know we won't let them in. “Well, you just let in this Chinese lady here.” Oops. So then they kicked her out too. So I pointed out that that's deciding who's foreign by physical appearance. They said, “Yeah, we know but we've got a business to run, we can't help it, sorry.” So then we said, “What about our kids?" I have two daughters, one who is more Asian looking, and one who is more western looking, blonde hair, green eyes. They're both Japanese citizens, born and raised in Japan. Their native language is Japanese. So what do you do in this case? They thought a bit, then said, “the older daughter can come in because she looks Asian, like a Japanese, but the younger one, because she looks like a foreigner, we'll have to refuse her.” It's absolutely crazy. Not to mention racial discrimination. We decided we can't let this go. I spent over a year talking with these local owners, talking with the local government, everyone who we could talk with, city government, to try and get these signs down, and we got them down in two places, but one place, the one I just referred to, left the "Japanese only" signs up. In 2000 when I became a naturalized Japanese citizen, I went back. Well, they still refused me. They said, “You might have Japanese citizenship; we see your driver's license. But if you're in there you're going to be naked. No one will know you're Japanese, so to avoid misunderstandings, we're going to refuse you.” Okay. There's nothing else to do. It's discrimination. So we sued them and we won. But we lost against Otaru city. We sued the city because they did nothing about this for years. "Japanese Only" signs had been up in Otaru since 1993! So we sued them for negligence under the international treaty and the constitution. We lost in the district court, the high court, and the supreme court.
Was it a satisfactory settlement?
We won. We didn't do this for the money. Satisfactory as in award, can't really say, but in terms of outcome, yes, the case has been cited in other cases, to say you can't do this to people. Happy with that.Your job now, any problems?
No problems whatsoever. Very happy with my job.What other labor issues are you involved in?
Academic apartheid, the practice of putting all foreigners on contract and all Japanese on tenure, ninkisei, which says, foreigners don't deserve real job security like Japanese, because they're foreigners. They should go back home, or if they get expensive, fire them. This has been going on for over a century. I can see firsthand what this does to people. They can't buy houses, they can't pay into social security, stringing along part-time work with no welfare benefits, they have kids, they can't go back to their home countries because they haven't paid into social security abroad. So what do they do? They work till they drop dead. Until 1997 all the Japanese that were hired fulltime got tenure automatically regardless of qualifications. According to the National Union of General Workers, NUGW, Tokyo south, 90% of foreigners are on contract work, whereas 50% of Japanese women, and only 20% of Japanese men are. That's statistically significant.You are fighting with lawsuits?
We are working on a special lawsuit against the national government, for not keeping its treaty promises by not passing any laws against racial discrimination. You know what that brings about: foreigners can't rent certain apartments, we can't get into some restaurants and bars, we can't get welfare benefits and health insurance or even a steady job. Judges will almost always rule in favor of the employer because if you signed a contract, no matter how exploitative, it means you agreed to the terms in it. Even if you signed away your rights guaranteed by labor laws. Most full-time foreigners are on contracts because that's all they can get.Are you troubled by interpersonal preferential treatment, when the foreigner is treated as royalty?
Positive discrimination? This is always a funny thing to try to argue. It's hard to argue that the positive balances out the negative. Everywhere in the world you get treated well or badly. And you say, does that justify being treated badly? I'm not so sure it does. I think it'd be nice if everyone was treated well. It's an argument delegitimizer. The good treatment is not material to the case; it doesn't offset the bad.I just mean the idea of it. It’s distinguishing based on race, the other side of the coin. Is that, in principle, troubling to you too?
In an ideal world, we would make no distinctions based upon race, right? I'm working on the downside of racial discrimination, is all.What are the good points of your job?
I'm not on a contract; I have the same standing as all others at the university. I'm treated with respect and dignity. My job is taken seriously, and in terms of interpersonal relations I don't feel I'm treated like a subordinate in any sense because I'm of a different race. In fact, when I announced my naturalization at my university, I got applause. We also have a naturalized Chinese. We don't have contract work for foreigners only. Everyone employed full time has tenure. I fulfill my part of the bargain by working hard and making sure my students are taken care of.Any bad points?
We have a couple people there who don't like my activism, we have a person there who just doesn't like foreigners. He told us to go home one time. I answered, "This is my home." No, he said, “Go back from where you came from.” So I just limited my contact with this person as much as possible.Any dreams for the future?
My “life work,” if I can put that in quotes, is getting a law against racial discrimination passed in Japan. Japan is essentially the only developed country without any form of law against racial discrimination despite being a signatory on the law against racial discriminated by the United Nations. This is unacceptable. Japan will become a multi-ethnic, multi-racial society, given the economic pressures and interracial marriages. To stop a lot of innocent people from getting hurt, you need a law, or there's no effectiveness in stopping people from judging on skin color rather than content of character. That's my biggest dream.the end
