The problems of the homeless and refugees

Posted on by

by Hitoshi Haruki

In this class, I have learned about refugeeism, such as net café refugees and homelessness. Especially I have been interested in homelessness. Homeless people have little money because they often do not work as full-time employees, but instead have part-time jobs.

These days many people tend to think homeless people do not deserve human rights. For example, homeless people do not have a home, so they use fast-food restaurants as a place to sleep. They buy a cup of coffee, which is 100 yen, and they stay in a fast-food restaurant all night. For fast-food restaurants, these customers are troublesome because the homeless are shabbily clothed, and customers dislike homeless people. Furthermore, homeless people may be malodorous, so restaurants want to kick homeless people out. I think this action is legal, but the method used to remove homeless people from the restaurants and the correspondence of homeless people should be very careful. In McDonald’s, they made a notice about refusing entrance of homeless people. Some people criticize this as a violation of human rights. I agree with that criticism, because homeless people have the right to enter McDonald’s. That being said, I still think homeless people should not use fast-food restaurants to stay overnight.

According to Anne Allison, in this situation homeless people have no hope and I agree with that idea, so the government should help homeless people so they can have hope for the future. I suggest that the government should help many homeless people to work as regular employees. For instance, the government can increase the number of employment offices and government offices should hire homeless people. Another good idea is to give companies subsidies if they hire homeless people.

In some developing countries, wars are currently happening, and people who live there are in danger. Under the threat of losing their lives they may decide to escape from their country. So, there are many refugees in developing countries. For some people it is inevitable to be refugees. When refugees leave their countries, they have to find new connections such as workplaces. However, many refugees cannot work for a good company. They work in dangerous places and have to do hard work. Moreover, they get less information about workplaces than normal citizens. Therefore, they are less likely to get a good job.

To summarize, these days the number of refugees in Japan such as homeless people and net café refugees as well as the refugees in developing countries rise. In response the government should work quickly to create a policy to deal with homelessness. Also, refugees are less likely to get a good job because they do not know a lot of information about workplaces. Thus, people must think of methods to solve this problem.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Jiko Sekinin: cold-blooded responsibility

Posted on by

by Marina Furuichi

First of all, I need to think of the meaning of “jiko sekinin”. In a Japanese dictionary, there are two meanings: to have responsibility for one’s own behavior and to have responsibility for only own fault. We often use this word in various situations, in accordance with the situation.

Now, I think there are some pros and cons of “jiko sekinin”. First, I’m going to state pros of “jiko sekinin”. I think that people aren’t allowed to pass things back to someone when people use the word. In other words, we must make up our mind to have responsibility for our own behavior. In Precarious Japan, Anne Allison says:

Related to this, others see in hikikomori a rejection of the dictum to be independent (jiritsu)-becoming stronger in today’s atmosphere of jiko sekinin (individual responsibility).

In this context, I think that having consciousness that we must have responsibility for our own behavior leads us to be independent. This is good point. On the other hand, there are some cons. One is the case in which people who should be responsible for others uses the word “jiko sekinin” to avoid one’s own responsibility. Another bad point is this: people who have power use the word as an excuse to ridicule some people who are weak.

Now, I think that “jiko sekinin” is used to justify “muen shakai” (society in which individuals are isolated and have weak personal links between each other). There is a following reason. Recently, I often see some people those who insist that they are unrelated to other who fail or are in trouble using the word “jiko sekinin”. I feel that they are very cold-blooded persons. Japan has precarious environment such as “muen shakai” because there are such people. Anne Allison says:

Basically, these are: aligning with (and protecting) big business, privatizing more and more of (what once were) government services under the banner of “individual responsibility” (jiko sekinin) and investing too little in social programs, including welfare (for, but not only, the newly flexible labor force with low wages).

Today, there are some people who don’t get enough wages to live sufficiently in Japan. Most of them work at part-time jobs or are non-regular workers. They have a lot of problems. However, the Japanese government doesn’t save such people because they think it is “jiko sekinin”. I think that we never simply say that everything is “jiko sekinin”. We should not say that because it is possible that we may abandon some people those who have problem they can’t solve by their own ability before we realize it.

Reference

Allison, Anne. 2013. Precarious Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Struggles of living in Japan on minimum wage

Posted on by
English: Homeless man, Tokyo. Français : Un sa...

English: Homeless man, Tokyo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Teppei Funatani

In my opinion, if people live poor lives, there are three steps that they have to overcome.

First, uneasiness for my future. Living in Japan costs a lot of money. Food, rent, medical expenses, and so on. Also we should pay about 15,000 yen every month for a pension when we reach 20 years old. How do I manage my everyday life if I can only earn minimum wage?

In the article “Homeless face uphill fight to get life back,” a man who was in his mid-40s worked for a data management company as a temporary worker and earned only 160,000 yen a month. He lived alone and had no hope for his future. As this article tells you, if you live hand-to-mouth, there is no room in your mind to think about your future. You can barely support yourself and this vicious circle probably never ends unless a miracle happens.

Next, apathy of my life. Let’s imagine that even though you work as hard as you can, you can only get the lowest salary yen a day and you cannot get a bonus. It is likely that you will lose interest your job and don’t want to work anymore. It is natural that you complain about your lower salary, although you work as long as white-collared workers do. However, you soon realize that your dissatisfaction does not bring you anything and you have no choice but to give up.

Finally, a sense of despair for everything. As above, you feel anxiety for your future at first, and next you give up having hope. And you come to the final stage of your poor life. As Anne Allison said in her book Precarious Japan, because of depression and insecurity over jobs, the number of people who commit suicide has remained around 30,000 ever since 1998 (2013). The number of unemployment was 2,460,000 people in March, 2014 (Statistics Bureau, May 5, 2014). Even in large companies, a lot of employees are fired. It is easy to imagine that you lose your job and be homeless. This idea gradually is damaging your heart and you think that your hopes for the future come to nothing. Then you decide to commit suicide.

References

Anne Allison. 2013. Precarious Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Homeless face uphill fight to get back life. (May 20, 2014). Retrieved from http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001271711

Labour Force Survey, Monthly Result-March 2014-. (May 2, 2014). Retrieved from http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/results/month/index.htm

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

The struggles of unstable life

Posted on by

by Marie Fudaba

I’m living a happy and stable life in Japan. My stable life is all thanks to my parents. I was born in a two-parent family and both of my parents work. My father has his own business and my mother teaches many children piano. They work hard for my family. Therefore, I have enough to live on and receive enough food every day. I can also attend Ritsumeikan University because my father has saved money for my college education since I was born. Owing to their stable wages, I can be free to study what I want. However, Japanese society has serious problems in that irregular employees struggle. Particularly, many single mothers are suffering from an unstable life now in Japan. In my future, if I am a single mother and work as an irregular worker and earn minimum wage, I will struggle with two things.

First, I will have trouble making a living. An irregular worker’s income is less than a regular worker’s. The minimum wage is a monthly income of approximately mere 100,000 yen in Japan even if you work hard full time. However, 80 percent of single mothers in their twenties earn less than 1,140,000 yen a year. The wage is far from sufficient to live with stability because single mothers have to cope alone with a child in a low-paid environment. They have the potential but they cannot afford the money living costs, such as rent and the cost of food. There were incidents in which children died because their single mother did not give the child enough food, because of her serious financial trouble. Moreover, the Japanese government raised the sales tax recently. This must makes worse the difficulties of making a living.

Second, I will struggle with the expenses of bringing up children. Even if my child wants to go high school or university, I will not able to pay school expenses because the entrance fee and tuition are too expensive. Therefore, my child needs to sacrifice the desire to go to university for economic reasons. Although there is a scholarship system, a single mother may feel stressed out and strapped because under the scholarship system, families have to pay back the money with interest. If I am a single mother, I must felt guilty about it because my economic reasons could wreck child’s dreams and future.

Actually, there are many people who are suffering at the minimum wage in Japan. However, the Japanese social security system is too weak. Japanese government should beef up social security and provide a basic level of subsistence through it.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Jiko sekinin—does it help us?

Posted on by

by Tomoki Bischel

Is jiko sekinin (individual responsibility) a good thing? For a long time I have thought of it not as a good thing but more of a matter of course. Therefore, I was for jiko sekinin. A few experiences made me think this way. One of them was during junior high school. Two classmates of mine had started a fight during lunch break and the teacher got very disappointed about this and decided to make us stay late after school and discuss about this topic, saying it was rentai sekinin (group responsibility). However, although I was for jiko sekinin, reading Anne Alison’s book gave me a new point of view: the aspects of jiko sekinin being a bad thing. So, I have decided to sort out the pros and cons of jiko sekinin in order to make things clear.

One of the pros of jiko sekinin is the aspect that helps us have responsibility over what we do. Being told that what you do is up to you, and that you have to take responsibility for it, people will stop to think if what there about to do is sufficient. So, in a way, jiko sekinin can act as a sort of legal force and help us not do the things we should avoid.

However, there are cons to this, and the biggest con, I believe, is that it can turn to something very cruel. This connects to what Anne Allison mentions in her book. Too much coercion can cause stress against people and start to build fear against society in them and be unable to feel at ease. Therefore, looking at this aspect, it may be said that jiko sekinin is one of the reasons of this precarious Japan that we live in now. However, does this tell us that we should lose the idea of jiko sekinin?

As I mentioned, jiko sekinin has both sides of the coin, and both sides have a really important role. So, what can we do or what should we do? I believe that just ignoring the idea of jiko sekinin will not solve the problem but cause more. What we need to do is to respect human-to-human relationships, and try to help each other above the idea of jiko sekinin. Although this may sound very vague, I strongly believe that this is very important and in the future, jiko sekinin will be something a lot better for the society than it is now.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Living on minimum wage in Japan

Posted on by
Minimal Minimum Wage

Minimal Minimum Wage (Photo credit: PropagandaTimes)

by Tomohiro Doi

I am talking about minimum wage in Japan. In Japan, the minimum wage is determined. However, this tackling is relieved with Abe’s government and the workers are difficult to work and live and it is easy to run companies for the administration. Namely, it is easy to live for the administration and it is difficult to live for the workers in Japanese society.

If I get minimum wage in the future, if I am living by myself, it might not have any problems. However, if it is a part time work, in my old age, it is uneasy because it do not have social security and an employee pension. And if I get married to somebody and I become parent in the future, it is hard to support my family. In other thing, Japanese society will become the age of a declining birthrate and aging population more and more in the future. Households what the son support the son’s parents will increase. If I support my parents, it will be hard to manage to make a living more and more.

To think this problem about if I get minimum wage, first in Kyoto, the minimum wage is about 773 yen. In this wage, for instance, I work five days for a week and work for eight hours for a day. And its simple total is 6,184 yen for a day. For a week, its total is 30,920 yen. For a month, its total is 154,600 yen. However, this is simple total. If I am a part time worker, it is very difficult to work every day and to get 154,600 yen for a month because a non-regular employee is not stable, for instance even if the non-regular employee is taken on, it is rather difficult to get work and to get money.

Now, to think this, for example, I live in Kyoto in minimum wage. First, the most important thing is the place of live what is house. The market of house rent is about 40,000 yen. To deduct house rent from revenue, it is about 114,600 yen. Others one, most important thing is food. For a month, it is thought it is about 45,000 yen. This is 500 yen each a one meal and 1500 for a day. And the power, gas and water rate is collectively about 7000 yen. Therefore, what is left is 62,600 yen. At first sight, it has a surplus. However, it is extremely hard and it is as I say above so this life will be very harsh.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Skin Lightening in South Africa

Posted on by

by Yutaro Nishioka

The trend of skin lightening, especially among women, is getting increasingly common all over the world, including South Africa, where the major part of its population is black. According to a study from the University of Cape Town, as many as one in three African women use bleaching products to lighten their skin.

Skin lightening products often create serious medical complications; many patients suffer from diseases caused by a combination of use of lightening products and sunlight (africa.com).
The World Health Organization (WHO) has also mentioned the negative effects of some skin lightening products. Mercury, one of the common ingredients in lightening creams, is said to have harmful effects and could also lead to kidney damage, as well as other side effects such as “skin rashes, skin discoloration and scarring, as well as a reduction in the skin’s resistance to bacterial and fungal infections” (africa.com).

Why is skin lightening becoming so common in South Africa despite its negative health effects? Professor Lynn Thomas, co-author of the book Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters, mentions the history of South Africa being colonized by Europeans. The Europeans and South Africans were not treated equally, and there was the notion that light skin was somehow better, not much unlike Hitler’s idea that Jews were inferior. More recently, apartheid, the government policy of racial segregation against black Africans in South Africa, was renounced officially only in 1992.

The effects of the history of discrimination can still be seen in the current South African society. For example, Nomoto “Mahoza” Mnisi, a famous South African musician, is known for her extensive use of skin lightening products. She says, “I just want to be light skinned… I was tired of being ugly.” She is assuming that dark skin is “ugly” and light skin is not.

People that have heard of this news have reacted differently, but the majority of the comments on the internet do not seem to approve of her changed appearance: “she was so much prettier before; her husband must be blind”, “God created her black and she looked so pretty. She looks pretty now but she looked better before”, “She is insecure and that’s bad.”

As there is a difference between Mahoza’s view and that of her fans, it is questionable to say that the history of the colonization and discrimination is the sole cause of the contemporary trend of South Africans’ skin lightening, but it is probably one of the factors that have contributed to the trend.

Reference

“Not Happy Being Black?” – Posted by Africa.com Editorial Staff. http://www.africa.com/blog/not-happy-being-black/

Thomas, Lynn M. 2009. “Skin Lighteners in South Africa: Transnational Entanglements and Technologies of the Self.” Pp. 188-210 in Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters, edited by E. N. Glenn. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Color complexes in the Philippines

Posted on by

by Lulu Maginde

In ‘Filipinos and the Color complex,’ Joanne Rondilla questions the reader, especially readers here in Asia, what the ‘ideal’ concept of beauty is, and how different people within Asia perceive beauty. As Rondilla focuses specifically on the Philippines and how skin whitening is utilized, or rather highly emphasized, it was interesting to find how skin-lightening products are marketed and sold as well as what these products are saying about beauty.

Rondilla claims that this concept of having a fairer complexion/lighter skin, stemmed from the Philippines’ deep history of colonization, after having been occupied by Spanish for over 300 years. This history most indefinitely influenced the way of life, culture and traditions, not to mention language and the concept of what is deemed beautiful.

After the departure of the Spaniards, then came the Americans, and many Filipinos will claim that until present, the Philippines is still a colony of the US, as most of the way of life in the Philippines has been greatly structured around a more Western way of life. Of course the country still has its rich culture and heritage, as well as its strict religious value system, however it is not hard to deny that US presence has greatly affected life in the Philippines.

This ties in perfectly to my next point of how Rondilla compares standards of skin color between Asian immigrants to the US to Asian Americans born and raised in the US. The main difference between these two groups is that while Asian Americans chose to tan, as it symbolizes wealth and a more luxurious life, Asian immigrants, for instance the Filipinos who immigrate to the US, are more likely to use skin lightening products in order to assimilate  into society. In the Philippines, having darker or more of a tanned complexion immediately reflected what social class one belonged to. If one had a fairer or lighter complexion, they belonged to an a higher social class, simply because they were not as exposed to the sun as working-class laborers.

This notion of a ‘relatable ideal’, or the claim that a certain type of beauty is the shared/common ideal amongst women in the Philippines is what is striking. Consciously or unconsciously, these women buy into an industry, in conjunction with certain media institutions, that greatly influences what may be deemed as beautiful. Thus, they buy into the idea that, due to capitalism, ‘everything can be bought and exchanged’.

Reference

Rondilla, Joanne L. (2009). “Filipinos and the color complex.” Pp. 63-80 in Glenn, E. Shades of Difference: Why skin color matters. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

The trend of Japanese whiteness

Posted on by

by Yusuke Shiga

For women in modern society, whitening the skin by cosmetic products is so prevalent, and this trend is becoming more significant in terms of racial discrimination today. The influence of colonialism on not only developing, but developed countries is incalculable in various aspects. Still today, one’s appearance, especially skin color, plays a tremendous role in one’s access to essential stuff, from necessities for life such as housing, food, and clothing, to social security and social welfare. By lightening the skin color, people can more easily get these kinds of advantages and live more comfortably in a society. This social structure promotes the preference of whiter skin, however the skillful advertising and marketing strategies of cosmetic firms also affects this social inclination to white skin. Evelyn Nakano Glenn (2009) argues that the giant multinational corporations have grown by meeting the needs of women in each nation, thus the market for cosmetic products has expanded. When you focus on the Japanese case, the complicated contents can be seen.

Recently, Japanese women have sought white skin, as they think that white skin is beautiful or healthy and they persist in trying to to have whiter skin. There are some arguments about the reasons for this tendency, and some claim that Japanese ideal image of women is almost Caucasian because of the advertisements of media and companies. They insist that in most cases, whites are chosen as the models of cosmetic companies, and regarded as beautiful women, and therefore Japanese women try to mimic Westerners. On the other hand, others claim that whitening one’s skin color is part of Japanese traditional culture, because even in the Nara period, people already had customs to whiten their skin tone by using “Oshiroi” (White powder). However, in my opinion, these arguments neglect some important points toward this question “Why do Japanese women seek white skin?”.

Of course, we cannot define the main cause of Japanese preferences for white skin, since there are lots of causes and all of them are associated with each other. Through the discussion of my class, many of the interesting, persuasive ideas are came up and I consider this issue deeply, then I came to the conclusion.

In my opinion, we Japanese all share the misleading idea “Japanese must have nearly same white skin tone naturally”. Therefore, we sometimes discriminate against “Jiguro people (people who naturally have blacker skin compared to other Japanese)” regardless of their birthplace, and draw the line between “naturally white Japanese” and “naturally black Japanese”. Furthermore, because of this premise, “skin whiteness” symbolizes one’s youth or health. Having white skin implies that you make an effort to keep your youth by caring for your skin condition.

In Japan, a proverb says “stand out from the crowd and you just invite trouble for yourself”. Not to be “others”, to keep one’s youth, and to become healthy, Japanese women are paranoid to have white skin, I guess.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

What a close read of the Isla Vista shooter’s horrific manifesto, “My Twisted World,” says about his values—and ours

Posted on by

In one of my classes, we’re studying colorism in a global context, focusing on the global market for skin lighteners. The horrific violence that just took place in Southern California highlights the dangers of the systematic valuing of lighter skin over darker skin, and a “white is right” ideology. Truly understanding Elliot Rodger’s ‘manifesto’ requires understanding how race, class, gender, sexuality, and mental illness all intersected to shape his view of the world. Terrifying stuff.