Japan Probe, which has been on the money with breaking the news about the Foreigner Crime File book that was sold at Family Mart locations across Japan has more news to report on the topic.
The Editor of the book in question did an interview with Spanish Media in Japan. Click HERE for the full article in Spanish.
…I feel I’m in danger. I want opinions, but most of the ones I receive are overreactions from the foreigners. Most complaints come from foreigners. I want to know the reactions of the Japanese. I must say I’m a little worried. I know there are some people bothered but if you read the magazine, you’ll see there’s no single discriminatory phrase, so I don’t know why should I apologize.
This is a loose translation of the interwiew. Sorry for my poor English.
Publishing date: 7/2/2007 14:11:16
Magazine [editorial] director: “I feel I am in danger”
Shigeki Saka, director of a xenophobic magazine, receives a wave of complaints and threatening mails. Interview.
Tokyo - IPCJAPAN/Shiho KohinataShigeki Saka, Eichi Shuppan’s editorial director, which published Gaijin Hanzai Ura File, a magazine accused of being xenophobic and racist, told ipcdigital.com he was conscious the magazine could arise criticism from foreigners, but he claims his intention was to lead Japanese people to discuss the increase of crimes by foreigners and the country’s internationalization.
He denied the magazine has any xenophobic sentences, claimed he’s not a racist and refused to apologize. During the dialogue with ipcdigital.com he received threatening e-mails whose content he did not want to disclose.
ipcdigital.com: What is your opinion on the reaction of the public about your magazine?
Shigeki Saka: I don’t understand it yet well. There are a lot of questions from foreign press [outlets] as Reuters or Bloomberg. I know there are a lot of complaints. But that depends on how you receive this stuff. In principle it is a magazine written in Japanese and sold in Japan. Then, it’s for Japanese people to read it. Besides, on the magazine there are not any discriminatory claims, though I imagine that foreigners who are always discriminated are a little bit more sensitive.
ipcdigital.com: What did you wanted with the approach given to the magazine?
SS: Currently Japan is facing a lot of offences starred by foreigners. There must be a why. I wanted to find that “why”. I can’t act as if nothing was actually happening. Today there are some Japanese afraid of foreigners and I wanted to survey these people’s psychology. I want you to read the magazine. You’ll see.
ipcdigital.com: And what have you discovered so far?
SS: Foreigners’ crimes in Japan have a profile which changes depending on the country and this is what I also wanted to know. For example, about Chinese and Koreans. Japan welcomes them as kenshusei and that system is officially intended to they to learn Japanese working techniques and that they take them back to their countries. But it happens that they are put to work as common employees, but with low salaries and some of them cause minor offences. The kenshushei system is the problem that has been generated by Japan. It is a problem from here.
ipcdigital.com: What are you based on to give an opinion about the crimes?
SS: We have spoken with Japanese police in order to write each article. For them this issue is serious and they have provided the data. I have also spoken with Japanese specialists, as university professors devoted to this issue. This magazine is a summary of these data and focused on the foreigners’ issue.
ipcdigital.com: Don’t you think the way the photographs are used is tendentious?
SS: If you read the magazine you will understand it. Maybe foreigners can’t read the articles in there and they only see the pictures of the discriminated. The magazine has a lot more than photographs, which is 1/4 of the total. I wanted the magazine to be read by a lot of people, so many people bought it we put shocking pictures, to call everyone’s attentiona. But I don’t want they think it’s a discriminating magazine only because of the pictures. Besides, I’m not a racist. In Japan there are a lot of contradictions and, in order to have a coexistence between different cultures we have to erase those contradictions. To solve those contradictions is one of the goals of this magazine.
ipcdigital.com: How did you get the photographs you published?
SS: There is a very special photographer. He walks the commercial districts as Roppongi, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and Shibuya. He’s around the city all day. He’s a freelancer. I did not ask him to take pictures of the foreigners, but he offered the ones he had to us. In the city there are a lot of foreigners, but he doesn’t go only after them.
ipcdigital.com: What do you think about Familymart’s withdrawal of the magazine?
SS: I’m sad about that. We can’t say anything else about the withdrawal of the magazine at the combini because Familymart has not communicated anything yet, they withdrew it without asking us. Normally distributors are more powerful. We can’t do anything, but I think that withdrawing it is a way to reject the debate. The magazine raises an issue to discuss. Why there are so many crimes by foreigners? What can we do? Without a magazine of that kind we can’t know the positive or negative opinion from the people. I want a discussion and I want to find the way to solve this problem. This is my other objective. But I see that the foreigners who are angry, but that’s because they’re afraid to be discriminated, that’s why they overreact. At the internet blogs I see they’re only putting the pictures and they discuss from that, I confess I’m discouraged about that. I want a discussion. Else, we will never be able to internationalize this country
ipcdigital.com: Will you apologize?
SS: Look. First, I’m receiving a lot of e-mails which seem like a joke.
ipcdigital.com: What do they say?
SS: I can’t tell you, but I feel I’m in danger. I want opinions, but most of the ones I receive are overreactions from the foreigners. Most complaints come from foreigners. I want to know the reactions of the Japanese. I must say I’m a little worried. I know there are some people bothered but if you read the magazine, you’ll see there’s no single discriminatory phrase, so I don’t know why should I apologize.
Anybody got a comment from a Japanese person on this magazine story yet?
Chris:
That comment is from the publisher of that very magazine.
Family Mart has decided to stop selling that book in Japan as of Monday. It was reported in the next Tuesday.
i meant last tuesday
The publisher has strange opinions about what constitutes xenophobic en racist acts. He says:” if you read the magazine, you’ll see there’s no single discriminatory phrase”. This is of course absolutely wrong. I bought the magazine at Amazon.co.jp to check the contents with my own eyes. The book is full of xenophobic insinuations. One example: A picture where you see a foreigner kissing Japanese girl in the street. The accompanying text in quite vulgar Japanese is: “This is Japan! Go back to your country!” (ここは日本なんだよ！てめえの国帰ってやりな！). Besides, what has kissing to do with foreign crime?? Is kissing forbidden?
I don’t loose any sleep on these sort of things. I’ve been here a year and haven’t had any bad experiences.
I don’t think that Japan is turning especially xenophobic but books like that is a problem.
Even the mass media sometimes announce that “foreigner crime” is increasing but my friend who is a lawyer said to me that this (and the general impression that among youth mansloater and other serious crime is increasing) is wrong from the statistics.
If what the minister of health said about woman is not tolerated then xenophobic outburst should also not be tolerated.
Ofcourse I am not saying that the publishment of this book should be stopped.
the excuses he makes are childish and stupid beyond belief. “It’s for japanese people to read”. Does that justify lying? Have these guys no basic sense of shame?
alexpappas, you Spanish?
Nope, not Spanish at all! But I posted the link for anyone who is.
Danny: They did not stop selling it on Monday. Either their stores were not complying with an order, or they were outright lying. Many people checked their local FamilyMarts and saw it still on sale as of yesterday. FamilyMart has admitted this embarrassing fact and have supposedly removed the magazine from shelves for real this time…
Thanks for update, James
“This is Japan! Go back to your country!”
This kind of anti-foreigner xenophobia rears its ugly head from time to time. I recall a “documentary” that was shown on one of the commercial networks in the early-mid 90s that purported to show loose Japanse women being preyed upon by sukebe gaijin. It later turned out that the show’s producers had hired foreign actors and staged most, if not all, of the footage.
In Korea we get the Foreign Crime Wave crap every once in a while but when you look at the foreign crime statistics over half the “crimes” are parking tickets. When you take just serious crimes like rape, murders, robbery, etc. and compile those numbers and then compare it on percentage to the Korean population it comes out that the general Korean population commits more serious crimes per capita than foreigners including USFK soldiers do.
Has any blogger in Japan compiled the foreign crime statistics to see if the foreigner crime wave is even true?
yes indeedy, GI. Not sure of the exact statistics, but I saw them somewhere and most of the so-called ‘crimes’ are things like visa overstays and so forth.
The irony of this is that many of these ‘visa overstays’ occur when foreign women convinced to work in seedy hostess bars have their passports confiscated by their bosses to prevent escape. In this way, the victim becomes criminal and the numbers are then used as proof of a foreign crime wave. outrageous.
The perception that foreign crime is climbing (if not already out of control) is mainly over-reporting and sensationalization by the press (implicitly sanctioned/encouraged by the bureaucracy). On Okinawa US soldier’s crimes are reported routinely, no matter how minor, while far more serious crimes committed by locals go unreported. It creates the false impression that as a group foreign residents are lawless.
A story on foreigner crime in The Daily Yomiuri here.