[The recently released Harrison Ford film] “Crossing Over” is made up of a series of small but interconnected human dramas. It focuses on what the Japanese call ninjō, meaning “heart” or “humanity.” This is clear from the accompanying Japanese pamphlet, which proclaims, “Even (immigration) inspectors have ninjō.”

In recent years, this “foreign crime” (gaikokujin hanzai) discourse has become so widely promulgated by the media that it has come to drive policy, specifically the targeting of foreigners by the police and immigration inspectors. Thus, 2003 saw the implementation of a five-year plan to half the number of illegals known as the Kyodo Sengen. The resulting increase in arrests can be used as “proof” that non-Japanese are more likely to commit crime: In this way, the image, to some extent, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Recent changes to the Immigration Control and Refugee Law — to be implemented within the next three years — give little hope that the system will become less bureaucratic and more human. While there are some provisions — such as permit-free re-entry — that will make life easier for legal residents, failure to report a change of address or other personal details within three months will lead to revocation of residence status. For “illegal” residents, the revisions, which at root are about increased central government scrutiny and monitoring of non-Japanese, will inevitably result in more deportations.

There are some signs [Japan's bureaucratic immigration system] might be changing. One sign of bureaucratic softening relates to naturalization, which in recent years has become a much more straightforward process. In 2008, for example, 15,440 applied for Japanese citizenship and 13,218 were accepted. These figures would inevitably increase if Japan were to recognize dual nationality; many permanent residents, this author included, would welcome the opportunity to contribute more fully to Japanese society if they didn’t first have to give up their original citizenship. Given Japan’s growing need for jinzai (human resources) in order to remain internationally competitive, it is no surprise that more and more politicians are calling for the Nationality Law to be revised.

In 2004, the justice minister announced a more flexible and “humanitarian” stance toward over-stayers. Specifically, the minister said he would apply more discretion in granting special resident status (zairyutokubetsukyoka) in cases where deportation would result in hardships, such as the breakup of families. The Immigration Bureau’s home page explains how “worried illegal migrants” who appear at their local immigration office and fill out the relevant forms (shutto shinkoku) will be allowed to “go home” without first being detained and may even, in special circumstances, be given leave to remain in Japan (see http://www.moj.go.jp/NYUKAN/nyukan87.html ).

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091027zg.html

The government might draft legislation next year to give permanent foreign residents the right to vote in local-level elections, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Thursday.

“We are not yet in a situation where a bill has been prepared, and therefore it would be fairly difficult in the next Diet session,” Hatoyama told reporters Thursday, referring to the extraordinary session slated to open Monday. But submitting such a bill could be “an issue in the near future,” he said.

Permanent foreign residents, including ethnic Koreans who have grown roots here since the war, aren’t allowed to vote in local elections, much less national ones, despite lobbying for the right on the grounds that they pay taxes just like Japanese.

Kokumin Shinto (People’s New Party), one of the DPJ’s two junior coalition partners, has opposed giving foreign residents voting rights in local elections.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20091024a2.html

The national poverty rate stood at 15.7 percent in 2006, according to first-ever figures released Tuesday by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, a fairly high rate for a developed country.

The poverty rate for children was 14.2 percent that year, the ministry said. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development defines households with less than half the median national disposable income as poor. For Japan it was ¥1.14 million in 2006.

The OECD has published the poverty rates for member countries through 2004, but the Japanese government had not previously calculated the rate.

The rate in Japan “is quite high among the OECD countries,” welfare minister Akira Nagatsuma said at a news conference.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20091021a3.html

It’s hard to imagine that there would be much hand-wringing in Japan over poverty figures. After all, this is the market where many of the world’s top luxury brands were making a killing before the Great Recession hit. Most Japanese consider themselves to be middle class—more than 80%, if you believe the Cabinet Office’s annual lifestyle survey, released in August. In a country where corporate chieftains’ salaries pale in comparison to U.S. CEOs, the relatively narrow gap between the haves and have-nots had long been a source of pride.

So why is the media making such a big deal of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s release of national poverty figures today?

One reason: It shows that Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is serious about his pledge to put consumers before big businesses. “The government is making the plight of consumers a top priority,” Hisa Anan, secretary-general of Consumers Japan, a national network of non-profit groups, told me. “We hope they continue to follow through.”

No Japanese prime minister had ever authorized a poverty survey before. In the past, Japan had always deferred to OECD statistics. It’s not clear why: Japan could simply have teased out the figures from its National Livelihood Survey.

There was nothing shocking about the ministry’s figures. They showed that Japan’s relative poverty rate edged up from 14.6% in 1998 to 15.7% in 2007. That number is the percentage of the population that lives on less than of the country’s median annual income of just over $25,000—or about $12,500. (Child poverty had increased went up, too, from 13.4% to 14.2%.)

But, apparently, publishing poverty data would have meant that Japan had a problem.

Earlier this month, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Akira Nagatsuma focused national attention on poverty when he promised to survey the country’s so-called waakingu poa (or, working poor)–people who scratch by on every paycheck working part-time or minimum-wage jobs. It’s hard to fix a problem that you won’t acknowledge. The DPJ-led government was effectively admitting it had a problem.

The OECD had already ranked Japan’s poverty level fourth highest among wealthy nations. But there was one point of disagreement: In its October 2008 report (titled “Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries”), the OECD found that while household incomes in Japan had declined over the past decade, income inequality and poverty were less of a problem than they were five years ago.

In recent years, ordinary Japanese have had plenty to worry about. Unemployment has risen to near record levels. The country’s so-called lost decade of no growth had forced many people to seek short-term contract work or low-paying part-time and temp jobs. And companies blindsided by the global financial crisis and economic downturn have been laying off workers by the tens of thousands. It didn’t help that the government was seen as mismanaging the national pension and health care programs, which are running out of money.

Grass-roots consumer groups had pressed the government for years to do something about what they saw as a widening gap between rich and poor–or kakusa shakai, in Japanese. But bureaucrats and politicians had the final say about the national agenda. They rarely made ordinary Japanese part of the policy debate. Hatoyama’s administration has been moving quickly to change that.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/eyeonasia/archives/2009/10/japan_govts_pov.html

Nearly one in every six Japanese lives in poverty, one of the highest rates among developed countries, according to the latest survey by Japan’s welfare ministry.

In Japan’s first official calculation of its relative poverty rate, the ministry said 15.7 percent of Japanese people lived on less than half the median disposable income in 2006.

The figure, based on national statistics of income in 2006, was up from a figure of 14.6 percent for 1997 according to the newly released ministry data.

Japan is confirmed to be “among the worst” of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) member countries, Health, Labour and Welfare Minister Akira Nagatsuma said Tuesday.

“I want to implement policies to improve the figure, with child-raising allowances and other measures,” Nagatsuma said.

The ratio could be worse by now as Japanese workers’ salaries have fallen amid the economic slump following the 2008 global financial crisis.

The centre-left government, which ousted conservatives in August elections, has promised family-friendly policies, including a monthly allowance to households with young children.

An OECD report showed that Japan had the fourth-highest relative poverty rate among 30 member countries in the mid-2000s.

Japan’s rate came to 14.9 percent in 2004, behind worst-ranked Mexico with 18.4 percent, Turkey with 17.5 percent and the United States with 17.1 percent.

The OECD report also showed the poverty rate for working single-parent households was very high in Japan, reaching 58 percent, far above second-worst Luxembourg with 38 percent.

The Japanese ministry has not calculated a poverty rate for single-parent households.

Nagatsuma has said he plans to reinstate an extra allowance to financially strapped single-parent households, possibly in December.

The allowance was gradually reduced from 2005 and completely scrapped earlier this year under the previous governments’ policy of putting more emphasis on job training to help single parents earn money by themselves.

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