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ABSTRACT
This article examines the roles that local actors play in driving a transition to multicultural co-living, drawing on the lessons learned from the experience of two Japanese municipalities in facilitating civic and political participation by non-citizens. It seeks to ascertain the factors that drive the transition to forms of local inclusion that foster the rights of foreign nationals to civic and political participation. Effective transitions to inclusiveness in these Japanese cities, the article finds, resulted largely from effective policy entrepreneurship and leadership, which I argue was produced by forward-looking local mayors, ethnic associations, and support groups. Given their lack of voice at the national level, the two municipalities in this study had previously had little option but to act on the pressing need to extend the rights of civic and political participation to foreign residents in their local communities. Despite differences in their circumstances, the two cities both had the skills and drive to overcome challenges and seize opportunities at the local level that effected real change for their inclusive communities.
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Mitsuhiko Satake, Takao Yamada, and Susan Takao.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. By 1986, when registered foreigners became eligible for National Health Insurance, the Japanese government had taken measures to apply to legal foreign workers all national laws relating to social welfare, except the Livelihood Protection Law (direct relief to the poor). In March 2019, however, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that foreign nationals may receive direct relief through an administrative notice of national agencies to local governments, although they are not the direct object of Livelihood Protection Law application. In practice, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) has issued such a notice in the past (e.g., notice No. 1163 on 28 August 2015). According to Tōkei Yōran (Statistics Catalogue) 2021 ed. (MHLW, Citation2022), slightly over 3.5 per cent of direct relief recipients over the past decade have been foreign nationals.
2. While this article focuses on civic and political participation, economic participation is also closely linked with these two types of participation. As discussed later, barriers to non-nationals’ integration into the labour market, such as taxation without representation, employment discrimination, and housing discrimination, led to political activism by non-nationals.
3. Figures provided by International Bureau, Korean Residents Union in Japan (14 December 2020).
4. For the historical development of social movements by Korean residents in postwar Japan, see Suh (Citation1987).
5. According to a survey conducted by the Japanese government, 42.4 per cent of the marriages of Koreans registered in 1970 were intermarriages with Japanese; the ratio rose to 82.5 per cent in 1991 (Fukuoka, Citation1996).
6. See, e.g., Minutes of Special Committee on Political Ethics and Revision of Public Offices Election Act of the House of Representatives, No. 14, 22 November 2000; Minutes of Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, No. 4, 26 November 2018.
7. The reluctant government came up with its official policy of the ‘90 Regime’, under which the 1990 enforcement of the revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act made no reference to low-skilled workers and instead created four loopholes for de facto low-skilled workers: providing Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) with free access to work (‘front door’), introducing the Technical Intern Training Program to supply low-wage workers (‘side door’), allowing international students to do part-time work (‘side door’), and turning a blind eye to the problem of illegal unskilled guest workers (‘back door’).
8. See Minutes of Special Committee on Political Ethics and Revision of Public Offices Election Act of the House of Representatives, No. 2, 16 November 2004.
9. See Japan Agency for Local Authority Information Systems database (https://www.j-lis.go.jp/).
10. See Minutes of Special Committee on Political Ethics and Revision of Public Offices Election Act of the House of Representatives, No. 2, 16 November 2004.
11. In 1974, Seikyūsha was approved as a shakai fukushi hōjin (social welfare juridical corporation) by Kanagawa Prefecture.
12. The figures are based on Asahi Shimbun database (Kikuzō II).
13. Interview with a national lawmaker in Osaka, 5 July 2010.
14. Personal communication with a city employees’ union member, 14 November 2020.
15. Personal communication with former director of Fureaikan hall, 25 May 2022.
16. In 2008, Kawasaki passed a public ordinance to establish a permanent local referendum system and in a referendum granted voting rights to foreign residents who had been on the residential register for three years or more.
17. Personal communication with a former city employee, 3 December 2020; personal communication with a member of the Kawasaki City Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents, 23 May 2022.
18. Personal communication with an executive member of the Hamamatsu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 14 December 2020.