Opinion No Dogs, No Foreigners By TONY LASZLO	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
犬お断り、外国人お断り あからさまな人種差別は昔のものだと言いたいが 日本では今も、差別がまかり通っている 人種差別撤廃条約もうまく機能しているとは言えない それならばもっと地域社会で差別反対を表明し、 具体的な行動を起こしていくべきではないか

In one key scene of "La Vita e Bella" (Life is Beautiful), the Academy Award-winning tragi-comedy set in Italy before and during World War II, a Jewish bookstore owner attempts to explain the growing racial discrimination against the Jews to his inquisitive son. As they pass a sign which reads "no dogs and Jews in this shop," the boy asks, "And do we let anyone and everyone in our own shop?"

Quick on his feet, and determined to shield the boy from the painful truth, the father quips: "Look, for some it's dogs and Jews. Other shops don't allow horses and ... uh ... Spaniards to enter. What about us? You don't like spiders, right? Why don't we make it `no spiders and no ... Visigoths"'

With this segment, the film subtly reminds the viewer that such shops did and do exist in the world. It also points out how difficult it would be to answer the questions of an innocent child who was experiencing firsthand the pointy end of racial discrimination for the first time.

For most developed societies, this sort of socially condoned, blatant discrimination is something of the past — a sad part of history that one reflects upon but doesn't experience directly. Unfortunately, this is not quite the case in Japan.

Even setting aside the real estate sector, where "No Foreigners/ Japanese Only" business practices run rampant and largely unchecked, there is a small but significant minority of establishments that discriminate against foreign nationals — and Japanese whose appearance differs from the "norm" — on an everyday basis. Sadly, such restaurants, department stores, bookshops, pubs, pools, hotels and convenience stores can be found among ordinary establishments in communities across Japan, from Okinawa to Hokkaido.

Though Japan ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, unlike the other signatories, it has done very little to enable the police and other authorities to penalize the management of establishments that discriminate. In the hopes that Japan will revise its laws and live up to its obligation to "eliminate discrimination," ISSHO Kikaku (a non-profit organization that I direct) recently sent a report containing 23 cases of the more outstanding of these violations to both the Ministry of Justice and to the U.N. committee that oversees the above-mentioned treaty.

In it, the organization cites a case in Monbetsu (Hokkaido) in which about half of the 200 restaurants and pubs in the center of town posted identical "Japanese Only" signs on their doors. Also included in the report: a sign visible from the entrance of the Shinjuku Ward office (Tokyo), which reads "No Chinese" and a futon shop in Hamamatsu (Shizuoka) whose employees turn their backs on anyone who looks foreign. The report also points out that, even in cases in which the Japanese authorities wish to act against the violations, they are unable to do more than issue a warning.

Of course, while not a replacement for legal remedies, community-based measures are also needed. I think that more people must come to vocally condemn such discrimination and offer advice to the private sector on how they may establish practices that do not exclude people because of ethnic difference.

Shukan ST: Feb. 23, 2001

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