世論 What Japan Thinks

The Cabinet Office Japan recently published the results of a survey into the lay judge system to be introduced in 2009. Over ten days in the middle of December last year they selected a random sample of 3,000 people aged 20 years or older, of which 1,795, or 59.8%, chose to respond to the survey. More detailed demographic information is yet to be published.

This is another topic where I translated a survey last year. I was always disappointed that I never got selected for jury duty when I was back home.
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A slight departure from my usual themes, but I found news of a class action lawsuit against the Japanese government regarding the lack of a specific law outlawing racial discrimination in Japan. Naturally, I support the idea of a bill being passed into law that will make such behaviour punishable, but it’s the approach (and the person doing the approach too, I suppose) that grates on me. Arudodebito Sugiwara, seems to represent the constituency of disgruntled English teachers. That’s a gross over-simplification of his position, of course, but it is a criticism that is easy to make.

Reading the statement outlining the proposed lawsuit, the text, on the whole, is commendable, and looking at the description of the planned second wave of more complex cases there is a lot to be said for this portion of the strategy, I think. However, I have issues with the proposed first wave. Putting on my statistical hat, it says:

Although our efforts have not gone ignored, the fact is that overt racial discrimination in Japan, evident in the increase in the number of businesses overtly displaying “No Foreigners Allowed” signs, is getting worse.

I wonder how he has determined that there is an increase in the number of businesses with discriminatory signs? Can we see the survey evidence that show the change in the number of signs over the years? I’m sure his collection of signs has increased over the years, but that may be just as much to do with more people photographing them, of course. (It is also interesting to note that many of the signs pictured on his web site are from places that look like dodgy hostess bars or snacks.) There may have been a spike for the World Cup in 2002, but is there any evidence of this?

Next, the claim that overt discrimination is getting worse. How has that been determined? Is it really increasing, or is it just more people reporting it to Debito (the mailing list he runs with others, for instance, constantly grows in membership), or just more people being over-sensitive and mistaking (or attributing) dislike for someone’s personality for dislike of someone’s origin? I personally have seen friends being bulls in china shops and getting offended when this behaviour has rubbed the locals up the wrong way. In addition, even if it could be demonstrated numerically that overt discrimination is increasing, the absolute number of discriminators could actually be decreasing; for instance, as the population of foreigners increases and more people have encounters with foreigners, they have opportunities to display their racist tendencies, but if at the same time some of these people change their minds, both the number of overt racists and the number of overt non-racists can increase.

Finally, the “Japanese Only” signs have been, in at least one case I know of (what percentage are so, I don’t know), trying to express that the staff only speak Japanese rather than trying to specifically exclude other nationalities.

Doing some study at work on patents, trademarks and copyright issues in Japan in Japanese, I found out that for the results of opinion polls and the like, copyright law does not apply, except in the case where the words “Reproduction Prohibited” (Japanese: 禁転載) are present along with the data, therefore this blog does not infringe copyright on the surveys as far as I can determine. The write-up on the surveys is covered by copyright, especially when opinion or other human creativity is expressed, so I still need to find out if the concept of “Fair Use” is enshrined in Japanese law. My translations and reportage are copyright as they contain considerable creative effort (although it might not seem like it all the time) but they may be derivative works, depending on how literally I translate the stories. I should be able to get away with “Fair Use” (unlike manga and anime translator who also claim it) as I don’t use all the source material, and I believe I add value only with my comments or with the uncopyrightable raw data.

Of course, I am not a lawyer, Japanese or any other nationality, so please take my advice only with a rather generous pinch of salt, and remember how much you have paid for this advice.