Minorities and protest in Japan: The politics of the fingerprinting refusal movement

Pacific Affairs

Volumn 79, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 641-656

  Strausz, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HUMAN RIGHTS; IDENTIFICATION METHOD; MINORITY GROUP; POLITICAL CONFLICT; POLITICS; POPULAR PROTEST; SOCIAL MOVEMENT;

ASIA; EURASIA; FAR EAST; JAPAN;

EID: 34250190183     PISSN: 0030851X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5509/2006794641     Document Type: Article

References (73)

1. Hiroshi Tanaka, Zainichi Gaikokujin - Hô No Kabe, Kokoro No Dobu [Foreigners in Japan - the Walls of Law, the Gutter of the Heart] (Iwanami Shinsho, 1995), pp. 81-82.
2. After an activist declined to be fingerprinted, she had three months to change her mind before it became a crime. This initial refusal was known as "reserving" one's fingerprint (hory_).
3. The fingerprinting refusal movement is generally associated with "old-comer Koreans," those who arrived in Japan before the end of World War II and their descendants, and the interview subjects of this paper are all old-comer Koreans. In 1984, the year before the fingerprinting refusal movement peaked, there were 587,177 old-comer Koreans in Japan (including both those with 4-1-14 status and treaty permanent residents). Thus, old-comer Koreans made up 85 percent of all Koreans in Japan, and 70 percent of total foreign residents in Japan. Zairyü Gaikokujin Tökei [Statistics on the Foreigners Registered in Japan], 1985 (Tokyo: Mömushô Nyükoku Kanrikyoku [Ministry of Justice, Bureau of Immigration], 1985). Of course, those other than old-comer Koreans refused to be fingerprinted as well, but this essay focuses on old-comer Koreans.
4. Yuji Iwasawa, International Law, Human Rights, and Japanese Law: The Impact of International Law on Japanese Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 155-56.
5. Yossi Shain and Aharon Barth, "Diasporas and International Relations Theory," International Organization, vol. 57, no. 3 (2003).
6. Michael Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
7. Frank K. Upham, Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 19. Upham is does not address the fingerprinting refusal movement in his book, but his arguments about the relationship between the Japanese bureaucracy and non-government actors pursuing social change in Japan is consistent with the argument of this paper.
8. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 2.
9. Dennis Chong, Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 4-7.
10. John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, "Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory," American Journal of Sociology, vol. 82, no. 6 (1977), pp. 1217-18.
11. Brian Mello, "Evaluating Social Movement Impacts: Labor and the Politics of State-Society Relations" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, 2006), p. 1.
12. McCarthy and Zald, "Resource Mobilization and Social Movements," p. 1236.
13. Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity, pp. 52-55.
14. Chong, Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement, p. 9.
15. Personal interview with author, 3/13/2002. In the interview he suggested that he allowed himself to be fingerprinted because had he refused and been arrested, then the materials of interest that he held might have been seized by the police. Had the anti-fingerprinting social movement placed a high premium on compliance at all costs, however, they could have arranged for important files to be kept by Japanese nationals who were not required to be fingerprinted.
16. Tarrow, Power in Movement, p. 19.
17. Tarrow, Power in Movement, p. 198.
18. Tarrow, Power in Movement, p. 76.
19. Tarrow, Power in Movement, p. 81.
20. Chan-Jeong Kim, Zainichi Korian Hyakunenshi [100 Years of History of Koreans in Japan] (Tokyo: Sango Kan, 1997), p. 24.
21. Chan-Jeong Kim, Zainichi Korian Hyakunenshi, pp. 27-34.
22. Chan-Jeong Kim, Zainichi Korian Hyakunenshi, p. 118.
23. Chan-Jeong Kim, Zainichi Korian Hyakunenshi, p. 170.
24. Chan-Jeong Kim, Zainichi Korian Hyakunenshi, p. 143.
25. Iwasawa, International Law, Human Rights, and Japanese Law, p. 130-31. See in particular footnotes 29 and 30 on p. 131.
26. Data from Nihon Tökei Nenkan [Japan Statistical Yearbook] (Tokyo: Sömushö Tökei Kenkyösho [Statistics Research and Training Institute, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications], 2005);
27. Nihon Tökei Nenkan [Japan Statistical Yearbook] (Tokyo: Sömushö Tökeikyoku [Statistics Bureau, Management and Coordination Agency], 1986);
28. Nihon Tökei Nenkan [Japan Statistical Yearbook] (Tokyo: Sörifu Tökeikyoku [Bureau of Statistics, Office of Prime Minister], 1960);
29. Nihon Tökei Nenkan [Japan Statistical Yearbook] (Tokyo: Nihon Tökei Kyökai [Japan Statistics Association], 1949). Countries featured in the table had more than 40,000 residents in Japan at some point during postwar period. In 2003 there were foreign residents from more than 43 countries in Japan.
30. Keizô Yamawaki, "Sengo Nihon No Gaikokujin Seisaku to Zainichi Korian No Shakai Undô - 1970 Nendai Wo Chiûshinni [Foreigner Policy in Postwar Japan and Social Movements among Koreans in Japan - Focus on the 1970s]," in Takamichi Kajita, ed., Kokusaika to Aidentiti [Internationalization and Identity], (Kyoto: Minerva Shobô, 2001), p. 299.
31. Sonia Ryang, North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity (Boulder CO: Westview, 1997), p. 104.
32. Erin Aeran Chung, "Non-Citizens, Voice, and Identity: The Politics of Citizenship in Japan's Korean Community" (paper presented at the First Annual Summer Institute on International Migration Conference, University of California, San Diego, 2003), p. 34.
33. Yamawaki, "Sengo Nihon No Gaikokujin Seisaku," p. 299.
34. Chung, "Non-Citizens, Voice, and Identity," p. 34.
35. Chung, "Non-Citizens, Voice, and Identity," p. 35.
36. Yamawaki, "Sengo Nihon No Gaikokujin Seisaku," p. 289.
37. Yamawaki, "Sengo Nihon No Gaikokujin Seisaku," p. 290.
38. Amy Gurowitz, "Mobilizing International Norms: Domestic Actors, Immigrants, and the Japanese State," World Politics, vol. 51, no. 3 (1999), p. 432-33;
39. Iwasawa, International Law, Human Rights, and Japanese Law, pp. 150-57.
40. Chung, "Non-Citizens, Voice, and Identity," p. 39.
41. Iwasawa, International Law, Human Rights, and Japanese Law, p. 202, footnote 331.
42. David Chapman, "The Third Way and Beyond: Zainichi Korean Identity and the Politics of Belonging," Japanese Studies, vol. 24, no. 1 (2004), pp. 31-34.
43. David Chapman, "The Third Way and Beyond," p. 34. This is Chapman's paraphrase of Kim's argument.
44. Tanaka, Zainichi Gaikokujin, p. 78.
45. Yasuaki Onuma, "Interplay between Human Rights Activities and Legal Standards of Human Rights: A Case Study on the Korean Minority in Japan," Cornell International Law Journal, vol. 25, no. 3 (1992), p. 523.
46. "Shimôn Ônatsu no Ugokihirogaru: Zenkoku de 500 Nin wo Kosu [The Fingerprinting Movement Expands: The Number Exceeds 500 Nationally]," Asahi Shinbun, 1 July 1985, p. 3.
47. Iwasawa, International Law, Human Rights, and Japanese Law, pp. 150-51.
48. "Kankokunai Dewa Shômei Undô [A Signature Drive in South Korea]," Asahi Shinbun, 11 May 1985, p. 3.
49. Kim, Zainichi Korian Hyakunenshi p. 227.
50. "Shimôn Ônatsu Kyohi, Tôgekosu [The Fingerprinting Refusal Movement has Passed over the Peak], Asahi Shinbun, 1 October 1985, p. 3.
51. Chung, "Non-Citizens, Voice, and Identity," p. 32.
52. Interview with author in March, 2002.
53. Interview with author in March, 2002.
54. Interview with author in March, 2002.
55. Tarrow, Power in Movement, p. 82.
56. Tarrow, Power in Movement, p. 82.
57. Iwasawa, International Law, Human Rights, and Japanese Law, p. 175.
58. Iwasawa, International Law, Human Rights, and Japanese Law, pp. 164-66.
59. Yamawaki, "Sengo Nihon No Gaikokujin Seisaku," p. 298.
60. Yamawaki, "Sengo Nihon No Gaikokujin Seisaku," p. 291.
61. Yamawaki, "Sengo Nihon No Gaikokujin Seisaku," p. 295.
62. Yamawaki, "Sengo Nihon No Gaikokujin Seisaku," p. 294.
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64. Tanaka, Zainichi Gaikokujin, p. 93.
65. Tanaka, Zainichi Gaikokujin, p. 80.
66. Tanaka, Zainichi Gaikokujin, p. 94.
67. Tanaka, Zainichi Gaikokujin, p. 94.
68. Tanaka, Zainichi Gaikokujin, pp. 94-95.
69. Tanaka, Zainichi Gaikokujin, p. 97.
70. Peter Gourevitch, "The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics," International Organization, vol. 32, no. 4 (1978).
71. Gabriele Vogt, "Facing the Challenge of Immigration? The State, Civil Society, and Structures of Interdependence," German Institute for Japanese Studies Working Paper 06/5 (2006).
72. Zairyü Gaikokujin Tökei [Statistics on the Foreigners Registered in Japan] (Tokyo: Nyükan Kyökai [Japan Immigration Association], 2002).
73. Masami Ito, "Diet Passes Bill to Take Foreigners' Prints, Pics," The Japan Times, 18 May 2006.