JAPAN’S GREATEST EXISTENTIAL THREAT: Its own new-and-improved immigrant-residency policy

JAPAN’S GREATEST EXISTENTIAL THREAT: Its own new-and-improved immigrant-residency policy

I gasped, today, at Fareed Zakaria’s praise of Donald Trump’s immigration policy. Fareed argues that above all other nation-states, the U.S.A. leads them, and that its greatest strength is its immigration policy. Here, I argue that Japan’s recent revision of its immigration policy, which adds increasing rungs on its Kafkaesque ladder to residency (and the ever out-of-reach citizenship), is its greatest weakness, and dooms it and its aging population to isolation and obsolescence. 

by Patrick Novak

Copyright ? 2019 by Patrick Novak. All Rights Reserved. Permission granted to share via social media.

PREFACE

    Without a doubt, human rights is a subject that is not synonymous with how the Government of Japan treats non-citizens located within its geographic domain. Early debates during the formation of the UDHR, through to contemporary adoption of conventions recognizing the rights of vulnerable persons, indicate that complexities continue to surface and challenge how Japan thinks about, practices, and attempts to ensure human rights. Primary challenges encompass conceptual questions of universality, individuality, difference, and pluralism. Such primary challenges become highlighted with respect to the legacy of structural violence evident when examining the inequality between the Global North and the Global South, the poor, women, and the disabled, in particular. This article traces how vulnerabilities to increased risk of human rights violations emerge contingent on the body (literally, one’s physical self), situation (context/embeddedness), and language (communication/information), artificially separated in this examination. Through these three points of analysis, this article concludes by identifying how these points converge in Japan’s immigration policy, having the power both to generate vulnerability to violations and also to undo the possibility of human rights being violated.

INTRODUCTION

    Vulnerabilities to increased risk of human-rights violations emerge contingent on body, situation, and language. These points converge and have the power both to generate vulnerability to violations and also to undo the possibility of violations. Historically, the power to undo the possibility of violations has been muzzled via human-rights law since antiquity, despite legislative facelifts, such as Japan’s recent revision of its immigration policy. Time and time again, those that suffer human-rights violations share identical characteristics: non-citizens of powerful states, poor, women, disabled. Those trying to wield a sharp human-rights scalpel find instead a clumsy, double-edged broadsword. To end this cycle, what is needed are novel definitions of such vulnerabilities, definitions that incorporate a liberatory praxis. Put differently—and, in Japan’s case, put bluntly—Japan needs to look in the mirror and author a thick description of what’s in the looking-glass.

History and continuing complexity

    1948. A world that had newly seen nuclear war—still now Japan’s greatest threat. But was it a world that universally begged for human rights? With eight abstentions in United Nations’ voting regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), certainly not. Japan didn’t sign, and neither did Germany. Nor could they, rebuilding what they could. So, what was the UDHR, then? A feelgood project by Allied nation-states (and their allies) to voice who’s friends with whom, while the Soviet nuclear machine revved into full gear? Even before adoption, the UDHR was mired in conceptual inconsistencies (Messer 1997: 293), definition disagreements (Turner 1997: 274), and theoretical problems (Messer 1997; Zhao 2015). Today, human-rights dilemmas continue, namely, material inequalities (Farmer 2004: 312; Farmer 2003b), social inequalities (Richer 2011), political inequalities (Farmer 2003e: 140), and a lack of victims’ perspectives (Scheper-Hughes 1992: 239).

Lack of victims’ perspectives

    Certainly, the Allied hand was present in the UDHR’s adoption. But this was not the first human-rights legislation intended to be universal. As Ellen Messer, in the landmark “Pluralist Approaches to Human Rights,” identified in comparative analysis of ancient historical examples, there are the proclamations of Cyrus the Great, Egyptian pharaohs, and the Babylonian Hammurabi’s Code (Messer 1997: 298). Messer found “two schematic dimensions, ruler and ruled,” with “not [...] everyone as a human being” (Id.). 

    Was, then, Hammurabi’s Code Hammurabi’s code? While that prong of query relates to disagreements as to what constitutes a human, certainly Hammurabi was not a sufferer of human-rights violations. Quite to the contrary, Hammurabi caused them, both via war campaigns, and via the Code, itself. But key here in this prong of query is that in writing the Code, victims’ perspectives were not considered. Indeed, with its lex talionis rhetoric, the Code presumes, essentially, that a rape victim, for example, would want a rapist’s reprisal to be rape.

    So, how, then, could a non-citizen, rape victim ever receive permanent residency from the Government of Japan, under its new immigration policy? Japan replaced its previous immigration policy with ludicrous hoops through which its own citizenry could not jump, while requiring those that do not meet specific ideal characteristics to commit to one decade of wage slavery or marriage (to one of its citizens). Continuing with the rape-victim example, neither marriage nor employment tend to lend themselves to rape victims; rather, such institutions encourage rape.

“In principle, in order to obtain permission for permanent residence, a foreign national is required to stay continuously in Japan for 10 years or more, but in cases where a foreign national has engaged in activities as a highly-skilled foreign professional for 3 years, or cases where a highly-skilled foreign professional, who is deemed as particularly skilled (a person scoring 80 points or more), has engaged in activities as a highly-skilled foreign professional for 1 year, the foreign national will be eligible to apply for permission for permanent residence.”

https://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/preferential/index.html

    The “points” system, available here, lists the following ideals Japan expects of immigrants:

40 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have negotiated a salary of ten-million yen, no lesser values inclusive

35 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have negotiated a salary of nine-million yen, no lesser values inclusive

30 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been able to fund a doctoral degree, and whose most recent degree is that doctoral degree, no lesser degrees inclusive

30 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have negotiated a salary of eight-million yen, no lesser values inclusive; moreover, no lesser values considered, except for persons that have not yet been alive for forty years

20 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been able to fund a graduate degree, and whose most recent degree is that graduate degree, even if in receipt of an earlier doctoral degree, no lesser degrees inclusive

20 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been able to fund patenting of an invention, to have received government funding for research, to have been able to fund academic work that was published in three academic journals, or to have been able to fund research that was recognized by the Justice Minister

15 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been allowed to receive seven years of research experience, no shorter durations inclusive

10 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been able to fund an undergraduate degree, and whose most recent degree is that undergraduate degree, even if in receipt of an earlier doctoral or graduate degree

10 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been allowed to receive five years of research experience, no shorter durations inclusive

10 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have negotiated employment with a research organization

5 “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been allowed to receive three “yaers” [sic] of research experience, no shorter durations inclusive

15 BONUS “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have funded education and examination sufficient to receive a high score on a test of Japanese-language grammar, no lesser scores inclusive

10 BONUS “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have funded an undergraduate degree at a Japan university

10 BONUS “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have funded education and examination sufficient to receive a moderately high score on a test of Japanese-language grammar

10 BONUS “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been allowed to participate in advanced government-project management

10 BONUS “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been admitted to and funded an undergraduate degree at a global top 300 university

5 BONUS “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have funded a “foreign” vocational qualification

5 BONUS “points”: those non-citizens privileged enough to have been allowed to participate in training by the Foreign Affairs Ministry

    Those that have been alive for thirty years are penalized, and are regarded as obsolete, if unable to command a salary of at least five-million yen.

    Those that have been alive for thirty-five years are penalized, even more, and are regarded as obsolete, if unable to command a salary of at least six-million yen.

    Those that have been alive for forty years are penalized, far more, and are regarded as obsolete, if unable to command a salary of at least eight-million yen.

    (One can presume that those that have been alive for forty-five years are not welcome, in Japan, at all, and, inversely, one can presume that the Government of Japan thinks that the younger one is, the more experience one probably has, which is beyond absurd.)

    So, the goal is eighty “points,” right? Not even one percent of Japan’s citizens can attain forty “points.” Less than one percent of the world’s population can attain even ten.

    What percentage of the world’s rape victims can attain eighty points? 

    What percentage of citizens of Global South nation-states can attain eighty points? 

    What percentage of the world’s poor can attain eighty points? 

    What percentage of the world’s women can attain eighty points? 

    What percentage of the world’s children can attain eighty points? 

    What percentage of the world’s disabled persons can attain eighty points? 

    Who is welcome in Japan?

    The function of Messer’s comparative analysis (Messer 1997) was not to show that legal systems are no longer so schizophrenic as to punish one human-rights violation with the same human-rights violation; rather, the function was to show that in thousands of years of human-rights legislation, nothing has changed when it comes to considering victims’ perspectives. This is true—and then some—in the work of Nancy Scheper-Hughes in Brazil, which found victims worth more dead than alive (Scheper-Hughes 1992: 239). In Brazil, victims’ perspectives are such that human-rights discourse is opposed by victims because it liberates their oppressors to oppress victims even further (Id.). Scheper-Hughes writes of victims’ “awesome fear of the judicial system,” resulting in refusal to seek judicial intervention “to redress even the most horrendous violations of their basic human rights” (Id. at 227). Could it be, then, there is no uproar in Japan because immigrants fear “justice”? Certainly, not in the Brazil observed by Scheper-Hughes, do Brazil citizens want “justice.” But, in Japan, as in Brazil, such perspectives cannot be identified unless victims’ perspectives are sought, which Japan has not done, which reveals the doubled-edged nature of human rights: requesting human rights may result in violations.

Conceptual inconsistencies, definition disagreements, and theoretical problems 

    Messer, citing Legesse (1980: 123), further considered the possibility of human rights being “ethnocentrically western,” (Messer 1997: 295) which would support a finding that not only is the UDHR an Allied project, but that human rights is, too, so to say. However, Messer’s main finding is that two theoretical camps exist as to human rights. The first of these are the cultural relativists; the second, the anti-cultural relativists. Messer finds that although these camps differ on where cultural notions of human rights fit into theory, they both agree that it is western political culture that serves as the main inspiration for the Declaration (Id.). This is compounded by definitions of “human.” 

    While the novice answer may appear to be anyone with homo sapiens DNA, there is disagreement as to what constitutes a human. For example, debates continue as to whether fetuses, embryos, or even ova constitute humans. And do humans that have suffered death constitute humans? (Certainly not, in Japan, where cryonics is forbidden and incineration is mandatory.) Such constitute debates of the word “human” in its nounal form. However, as Terence Turner so aptly illustrated, when collocated with “rights,” the word “human,” in its adjectival form, the essence of that which is “human” is compounded (Turner 1997: 273). 

    This transcends beyond questions such as whether dead humans have rights, such as the right to be resuscitated. Indeed, the great—and recently late—Prof. Turner’s greatest argument about human rights is not linguistic, but theoretical. Merely collocating the words “human” and “rights” causes massively complex theoretical problems because it “implies the existence of some general notion of justice, equity, or a general principle capable of serving as the grounds for specific rights or laws, applicable to all peoples and cultures” (Id.). The Constitution of Japan is not applicable “to all peoples and cultures”; it is applicable to less than one percent of the world’s population, and therefore cannot be an instrument to provide human rights.

    Such theoretical problems can be illustrated in prisons, where prisoners are regarded as less than human and consequently suffer structural violence in the form of tuberculosis, HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis (Farmer 2003d); in disaster planning, where “equality” has a forced approach, in that women’s unique needs are consciously neglected because women are regarded as literally equal to men (Richter 2011); in domestic settings, where those subjected to “private” violence are not regarded as human as those subjected to “public” violence (Brommer 2011); conversely, in public settings, where women, though structurally disempowered, are blamed for returning to those same, private, violent domestic settings (Alcalde 2011); in military families, such as dependents of U.S.A military members stationed at one of the 85 U.S.A. military bases in Japan, where family members that suffer violence from military member(s) will not have their human needs met as a consequence of reporting such violence (the reporting of which, will, in turn result in the military member being fired) (Lutz 2004); in peaceful protests, where participants are met with military weaponry (Amnesty International 2014); in hospitals, where those with psychopharmacologically treatable conditions are subjected to irreversible psychosurgeries, such as leucotomies (Drew et al. 2011), in legal settings, where rape victims are subjected to dehumanizing, mechanical definitions of rape (Coundouriotis 2013), in everyday settings, where those with post-traumatic stress disorder are regarded as monsters instead of humans (Gutmann and Lutz 2009); in criminal-justice settings, where those deemed to be a racial minority are more likely to be convicted (The Sentencing Project 2015); in research settings, where victims are labeled as participants, which strips them of the privilege to be actors of change (Pittaway et al. 2010); and even in human-rights violations settings generally, where victims do not have the privilege of conceptualizing violations (Adams 1998). 

    In light of Turner’s theoretical paradox, that joining the words “human” and “rights” has specific implications (Turner 1997: 273), these few examples show that, time and time again, even when humans establish specific rights or laws, they do not apply them in a just and equitable manner, including in Japan. Therefore, even were there no conceptual disagreements about universality, individuality, difference, or pluralism, violations would continue because, as the evidence suggests, humans do not believe that each other should be treated just and equitably, including in Japan. Indeed, the very essence of these concepts is each other: the essence of individuality is one’s difference; the essence of pluralism is its universality. These discourses, the canonical nucleobases of human rights’ DNA, which can be shuffled ad nauseam, further illustrate the double-edged nature of human rights. 

Material inequalities, social inequalities, and political inequalities

    Prof. Messer’s example of Hammurabi’s Code is ideal, in light of Japan’s ideals of its immigrants. The problems of material, social, and political inequalities are illustrated well, in the definition of humans that is implicit in Hammurabi’s Code: humans, quite simply, are those in Babylon literate in Akkadian. Who, then, is human, under the Constitution of Japan?

    For King Hammurabi to have cited every such “human” would not be cause to feel awe, for that would be a short list. But what was true, then, about accessing human rights, similarly remains true, today. Material inequality, then, would have ensured that none but those decked in the elite garb of the day were allowed into royal plazas where the Code was displayed. Social inequality of the day would have ensured literacy among only such persons that could afford said garb. Political inequalities would have restricted not only access to such plazas, but also to walled Babylon itself, despite the Code’s applicability to all of Babylonia.

    We see this in the structural violence of the day, the Global Civil War, North versus South, where neoliberalism is the new ius in bello, which Dr. Farmer would describe as, “an ideology that has little to say about the social and economic inequalities” (Farmer 2004: 313). We see this in discourses used to keep disabled persons battling a different war in perpetuity, yet, still, a war of inequality, described as a “global crisis” (Drew et al. 2011). We see this in structural violence applied to the poor and to women, where, in particular, as Roxane Richter found, “the poorest of the poor are women” (Richter 2011: 21).

    Each of these can produce double-edgedness. Japan’s impoverished immigrants, when rallying against unemployment or underemployment, can be accused by Japan citizens as lazy and unwilling to engage in work. Women in Japan, in struggles against inequality, descend deeper into poverty, especially when such efforts require leaving workplaces. (One hour’s wages, or one hour’s participation in a protest?) The same is true for persons with permanent medical problems, for participating in a protest necessitates foregoing medical treatment, however momentary. But this double-edgedness is not suggested as a new trend. Rather, it is a glint of something more, something bigger that warrants framing. 

VULNERABILITIES TO HUMAN-RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

    The Global South, the poor, women, and persons with disabilities are all vulnerable to human-rights violations because of convergences among body, language, and situatedness. One’s body must be situated outside what is demarcated by the Global North. The stigmatized poor are situated in a cycle that indubitably takes a bodily toll. Women are called “women” by virtue of their bodies, and thus situated differently than men. “Persons with disabilities” is a legal term, with applicability only to those whose bodies are not able to do something. But these examples of convergence points are a superficial few, connected among three-dimensional dots. True convergence requires a fourth dimension. 

Body

    Any exploration of vulnerabilities to human-rights violations as it pertains to body must begin with a definition of “body.” Such a definition must first consider bodily limitations. The human body is both frail and strong. It is frail in the sense that it cannot heal some injuries, such as decapitation, and it is strong in the sense that it can heal profound injuries, such as burns caused by fire. But it is the frailty, not the strength, that lends itself to human-rights violations. But what is the scope of that which can be deemed as frail? Is it merely the skin and everything contained within it? Or is the notion of proxemics to be considered? Is there a “body space”? Is body space (proxemics) performed differently, in Japan, than elsewhere? Does the body have less rights, in Japan, than elsewhere?

    Certainly, beyond frailty, in defining “body” in a human-rights context, one must also frame a definition of “violence”: anything that, deliberately or by neglect, causes physical pain or emotional negativity. This fourth dimension, so closely intertwined with cognition, must append any spatial definition of “violence.” With this definition, the act of stopping just short of punching someone’s face meets the definition because such is intended to cause someone to feel fear. Similarly, antisocial behavior, such as a deliberately oppositional laugh when others are overtly feeling happiness, so as to induce an immediate cessation of positivity, can be defined as “violence.” Thus, it is through this novel definition of “violence” that a four-dimensional image of “the body” becomes apparent. One allows a definition of the other; for it is truly the body that is harmed in violence, and the harm need not result in physical scars to be lifelong. Thus, the human-rights definition of “body” is that which is harmed in violence. While that has always been true, it is limited definitions of violence—“laws”—that enable its total perpetuity, forbidding physical pain, but allowing violent language.      

Language

    And it is language, absent specific threats, that has been permitted since antiquity to perpetuate violence. But the linguistic definition of language, “expression of thoughts by means of arbitrary signs” (Fichte 1794), is insufficient for human-rights purposes because thoughts can be transmitted via other means. Thus, the human-rights definition of language is that which causes others to think about violence. This can consist of a threat of physical pain. This can consist of a victim’s story (such as via an intake interview at a shelter) (Shively 2011; Jacobs 2011), a physician’s diagnosis of a condition caused by systemic violence (including a secondary condition such as PTSD), a court proceeding, a protest (including via the Internet), a transnational migration attempt, a law, a memorial (Leach 2011), an emergency declaration (Richter 2011), or even an anthropologist’s account (Babior 2011).

    Because it is the body that expresses emotion, and because it is language that expresses cognition (though language can express both), is it sufficient, then, to think of the body as emotion and language as cognition? Although it wouldn’t be farfetched, artificial separation of body and language is not done without difficulty, for it is inapposite. Take, for example, the first aforementioned example of language, a victim’s story. A victim, in such a case will have a body, and verbal language may not be necessary to make a violation known; that is, bodies can speak for themselves, even dead bodies; that is, that which is harmed in violence (body) can cause others to think about violence (language). Indeed, photographs can speak for the dead; dead bodies can provide court testimony. But, as in this article’s incipient example, that if a rape victim, an absence of visual evidence of bodily harm constitutes a need for other language. That is, rape victims often do not have the privilege of allowing their bodies to speak for themselves. That is, that which is harmed in violence (body) does not always cause others to think about violence (language), which calls for a third prong of inquiry, situatedness.

Situatedness

    The human brain, in all its might, can produce thoughts and feel emotions. But its greatest tool is imagination. It can blindly visualize something on the other side of the galaxy. It can see something that never existed, anywhere. And it is the brain where these three points of inquiry converge. Body and language enable the brain to experience violence, literally, to see it and feel it. The eyes can be opened; the eyes can be closed. But, whether open or closed, the brain can see violence, and the brain can make the body feel violence. Via the emotion empathy, mere oral descriptions of one person being punched in the teeth are enough to make another person feel actual physical pain in one’s mouth. Males feel real groin pain when seeing other males get kicked in their groins. Even a blind person will shudder at the notion of a Braille teacher dragging fingernails across a sheet of tin to punish students. Although the physical pain brought by empathy is not necessary to experience situatedness, is does illustrate the brain’s awesome power.

    But a visual component is necessary for situatedness, and it is essential for a definition of violence: where “body” is that which is harmed in violence and “language” is that which causes others to think about violence, “situatedness” is that which allows others to visualize an act of violence as if actually there. Sometimes “body” alone can do this. Sometimes “language” alone can do this. “Situatedness” can be thought of as a downloaded memory; “situatedness” can be imagining oneself in a storybook. Viewed in this light, traumatic memories are the brain’s autonomic means of ensuring the body does not allow itself again to enter situations that result in violence, resituatedness, with emotions, such as empathy, as physiological manifestations of situatedness itself.

CONCLUSION

    Body, language, and situatedness converge cerebrally and have the power both to generate vulnerability to violations and also to undo the possibility of violations. Continuing with the example of rape, for which mere body and language are insufficient to evince a violation, situatedness explains why lawyers are so graphic in their descriptions of rape, as opposed to descriptions of decapitation, for which photographic evidence suffices. It is through situatedness that lawyers try to make juries visualize an act of violence as if actually there—to feel sympathy, indignation, or horror. And it is visualization, cognition, and emotion that can unravel violations before they occur, the absence of which that explains why they do.  

    My mother, her mother, et cetera, all would receive zero “points” from the Government of Japan. There is something very wrong with that and, accordingly, it is a complete reconceptualization of “violence” that must occur, if the field of human rights is ever to pass its planning stage. And it is body, language, and situatedness that must be applied to Japan’s human immigration policy, to enable true verstehen that liberates immigrants from Japan’s endless cycle of human-rights violations.

    Do you think the new policy will improve Japan? How many "points" do you have? Please, write about your "points" in the comment section of this article. If you already have Japan citizenship, yet do not have eighty “points,” please, write about why you deserve the privilege of citizenship.