Black Lives Matter: a View from Japan, a Nation that Simply Don't Care

A few days ago, a few hundred Japanese and (mostly) foreigners in Tokyo and Osaka marched through downtown streets to show solidarity with those protesting racism in the US and around the world. The protestors were triggered by news of a Kurdish long-time resident of Tokyo being brutally handled the Tokyo police, for no other reason than arguing back about a suspected traffic violation. No doubt protesting for a noble cause, the few hundred that marchers created little ripple in Japan aside from a few short news articles in the country's few English-language media.

Anecdotes from the Japanese general public suggest that the overwhelming reaction to the few hundred that marched in Japan, as well as tens of thousands who marched around the world, is one of slight amusement and mostly apathy. My Japanese acquaintances spoke of the interesting phenomenon of seeing so many foreigners gathered in one place and none bothered even mentioning the police brutality toward the Kurdish that triggered the marches in Japan. The little marches in Japan were perhaps discussed briefly as the weather reports, disappearing quickly as other news come to attention.

Indeed, the lack of any interest among the Japanese general public to the marches in Japan against racism extends to the entire Black Lives Matter movement that has been brewing for years in the US and gained renewed momentum in the aftermath of George Floyd's untimely death in the hands of Minneapolis police. What Japanese media reports that do cover the issue covers the issue strictly as an issue of the US, with no implication for Japan, even though a rising number of foreign residents in Japan means race relations and conflicts will become more and more pertinent at home.

The media's refusal to discuss Black Lives Matter in the Japanese context has been accompanied by a clear apathy to the issue among the common Japanese people. Watching videos of sometimes violent protests in the US and elsewhere, the average Japanese reached no other conclusion than the sentiment that they are lucky to be born in a safe and peaceful country like Japan. Few bother to discuss the possibility that failure to socially integrate foreign residents fairly in Japan can very much lead to the same violent protests in the future as the US faces today.

That apathy of the Japanese general public, unfortunately, further disincentivizes politicians from discussing the importance of race relations and policies to help improve it within the country. In a country that continues to delude itself with the view that all non-Japanese in Japan are "guests" who simply should leave if they do not like it, any serious discussion on how to treat non-Japanese individuals as equals of the Japanese may trigger an existential crisis, somehow leading to a reluctant reckoning that the country can be a home for both Japanese and non-Japanese.

Yet, the longer that the media and the government delay the process of that reckoning, the more painful it will be for the Japanese general public to accept the eventual inevitability that some parts of the Japanese economy will become so dependent on non-Japanese workers that having smooth race relations would not just be something "nice" to have but essential for the very functioning of society as it is and the maintenance of the citizenry's current standards of living. There will come a time that the foreigners acquire such leverage that they will be able and willing to voice their discontent in the open.

At that point, apathy will no longer be sufficient to keep the discontent of foreigners under wraps. The manhandling of a Kurdish man in Tokyo by the police may have been an isolated case of cultural difference, as the authorities justified, but as the non-Japanese become more numerous and more economically important for the country, it will not be as easy for the authorities to swat away the criticisms using such justifications. There will come a time when the non-Japanese feel like they will no need to stand down, knowing that their plight will pull the attention of more than just a few hundred marchers.

When that day comes, the Japanese can no longer be apathetic even if they want to. They will be in the midst of a protest of a scale and impact no smaller than Black Lives Matter is in the US today. But starting to address the problem then is already too late, as structural inequality across races has already been cemented. The general public should jolt itself out of apathy today, and push the government to address the race relations issue today when the number of non-Japanese is still few and accommodating. Putting off the matter until later will make Black Lives Matter a real concern for Japan, not just a piece of unfortunate news from a dangerous foreign country.