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Japan’s Brazilians demand job security as exports slow
Demanding better job and housing security, a demonstration by 300 Brazilians and their supporters [including members of the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus] in Tokyo Sunday is just the latest sign of the impact that the global economic slowdown is having on Japan’s Brazilian-based workforce. Waving their national flags across the busy streets of central Tokyo,…
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Brazilian workers protest layoffs in Japan
Some 200 Brazilian workers Sunday protested over layoffs by Japanese companies, which are forcing many of them to leave the country despite their community having been integrated in Japan for more than two decades. The demonstrators, who included mothers with their children [and also included members of the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus], marched through the…
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Brazilians protest in Tokyo over lack of job security
Brazilian residents from the Kanto area, Aichi and other prefectures held a demonstration in Tokyo on Sunday, campaigning for greater job security for foreign workers. Around 350 people [including Nambu FWC members following out Winter Meeting], waving Brazilian flags and carrying banners reading “A chance for employment and education,” walked the 2.5 kilometers from Shimbashi…
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Foreign worker tally tops 486,000
The number of foreign workers employed in Japan stood at 486,398 at the end of October, including 118,488 in Tokyo, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Friday. The total is more than double a previous estimate of 223,000 based on voluntary reports by employers in June 2006, before the revised employment promotion law took…
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Japan makes progress in 2009
As we start 2009, let’s recharge the batteries by reviewing last year’s good news. Here is [an abbreviated version of Arudou Debito‘s] list of top human rights advancements for Japan in 2009, in ascending order: 5. Strawberry fields forever (Feb. 11): Fifteen Chinese trainees sued strawberry farms in Tochigi Prefecture for unpaid wages, unfair dismissal…
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Multinationalism remains far from acceptance in Japan
In a country notorious for its exclusive immigration policy, the question of whether to allow Japanese to hold dual citizenship became a surprisingly hot policy topic last year after members of the ruling party breached the issue. In many other parts of the world, it’s a matter that has already been discussed in great depth,…
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Japan sees biggest population fall
Japan’s population had its sharpest decline ever last year as deaths outnumbered births, posing an escalating economic threat to growth prospects amid a global recession. With low birthrates and long lifespans, Japan’s shrinking population is ageing more quickly than any other economic power. Health ministry records estimated the population fell by 51,000 in 2008. The…
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Debate on multiple nationalities to heat up
Diet battle lines being drawn in wake of law change and amid Kono effort to rectify dual citizenship situation The issue of nationality had never been discussed more seriously than it was in 2008. In a specific legal challenge in June, the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to deny Japanese citizenship to children of…
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Don’t bring me your huddled masses
Not what the conservatives want, yet some people are beginning to imagine a more mixed Japan Inflammatory remarks by Japan?s speak-from-the-hip conservative politicians?among them the prime minister for now, Taro Aso?embroil them in endless controversy with neighbours over Japan?s wartime past. In their defence, conservatives often say that what really concerns them is the future,…
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Hard times for foreign workers
[The] bad economy is hitting the country’s foreign workers particularly hard, with nongovernmental organization volunteers warning that many who have been laid off face not only losing their homes and access to education in their mother tongue, but also that emergency food rations are now being distributed to the most desperate cases. “Of the nearly…