Asia Times: Japan at odds on voting rights for foreign residents


	November 22, 2000	atimes.com

Japan

Japan at odds on voting rights for foreign residents
By Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO - Debates about giving voting rights to foreigners who live permanently in Japan are not new, but a growing number of Japanese now agree that such rights be given, although it remains a very emotional issue.

As a sign of how touchy the issue is - especially with regard to giving voting rights to ethnic Koreans - steadfast opposition among senior politicians is expected to delay acceptance of a new bill in the Diet that would allow foreign residents to vote in local elections. The new proposal, debated by legislators last week with no quick resolution in sight, seeks to allow resident Koreans, Japan's largest minority, to vote.

Ethnic Koreans, most of them forcibly brought to Japan during the country's colonization of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945, and their descendants, make up 900,000 of Japan's 1.5 million foreign population. Of the 630,000 permanent residents in Japan today, 600,000 are ethnic Koreans. Many struggle with discrimination in a country that is a mostly homogenous society.

But new polls conducted on the issue indicate widening public support for extending voting rights to foreigners, especially among the younger generation. A new survey by a student body at the prestigious Tokyo University - which polled more than 700 people attending 20 universities across Japan - showed an overwhelming 90 percent of respondents supporting the bill giving voting rights to permanent residents.

But even the Korean population in Japan is split on the bill. Forty-four-year-old Pak Yu Cha, a second-generation Korean who has decided not to take Japanese nationality, says she supports voting rights for ethnic Koreans. ''I support local voting rights because I reject the Japanese argument that voting rights should not be given to foreigners unless they have Japanese nationality. This law means that we foreigners are not whole people with rights to vote that must be respected,'' she says.

Pak, who does not speak Korean, says she has no plans to leave Japan because this is where she was born and raised. Her parents did not apply for Japanese citizenship because they had hoped to return to North Korea one day. But some Koreans of North Korean descent do not want voting rights, which they say should not be extended to foreigners. Chongryon, North Korea's official association in Japan, resists assimilating ethnic Koreans into Japanese society. It has its own schools and other institutions such as banks.

Kan, a 71-year-old Korean who escaped to Japan in 1952 during the Korean War, says the new voting bill does not matter to him at all. A rich businessman, he married an ethnic Korean in Japan and fought both official and social discrimination, such as having no rights to national pension benefits on the basis of his foreign background. ''I toyed with the idea of changing my nationality to become a Japanese. But at that time being naturalized meant overcoming many barriers such as a clause that required me to change my name to a Japanese one. I just gave up,'' he explains.

Kan's remarks highlight the social issues behind the debate on voting rights for foreign residents, especially Koreans. The bill reflects debates stemming from the rapid internationalization of Japanese society in the past decade. ''What we should really be debating is how Japan intends to meet the challenges of globalization. Within Japan there is likely to be much more diversity of ethnic groups and cultures in the 21st century,'' the Mainichi daily newspaper recently pointed out.

Japan's economic woes have forced the government to reconsider its support for its strict immigration policy, which resists opening the door to foreigners. Supporters of less immigration contend the influx will provide a threat to the nation's homogeneity. On this basis, the Mainichi newspaper rebukes older politicians such as the secretary-general of the powerful Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Hiromu Nonaka, who want to tie the new bill to Japan's wartime repatriations.

Still, the issue of voting rights for Koreans has become a political decision, criticizes the Japanese media. It also says some politicians oppose the voting-rights bill because it is supported by the South Korean government.

The bill was submitted by New Komeito party and the Conservative Party, the smaller two parties in the current tripartite coalition leading the government. Analysts point out that the underlying reason for Komeito's backing of the bill is its affiliation with the religious organization Soka Gakkai, of which a large number of ethnic Koreans are members.

Opinions on the bill are mixed in the powerful LDP, which has consistently supported the deeply entrenched policy that requires foreigners to take Japanese citizenship in order to obtain the right to vote. For instance, Nonaka has suggested that voting rights be limited to permanent residents and their descendants who have been living in Japan prior to the end of World War II.

Yoshiro Kimura, a LDP politician, said it is better for Japan to enact laws that would make the naturalization process easier for foreigners rather than give them suffrage. Other opponents of the bill, such as the Kagawa prefectural assembly in southern Japan that adopted a resolution opposing it, argues that Japan's Constitution states that the right to choose public officials does not apply to foreign residents.

The debates on voting rights will not end anytime soon, say people like Kan. This is because foreigners can never expect to be treated as Japanese in Japan, he argues. ''Even if we did become Japanese, we will still be considered outsiders because of the age-old Japanese family registration system that continues to document the family background of the applicant. That's the reality, so why the fuss over giving limited voting rights?'' Kan asks.

(Inter Press Service)

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