Is Japan Really Racist?

While looking for information on Tokyo part-time governor "Blinky" Ishihara, I came across a discussion on racism in Japan. I found the following post, which very clearly explains what goes on on Japan. It only scratches the surface, but it is a pretty good distilled summary:

As a black man from LA who has lived in the ghetto (the first one a dangerous place with Cripping going on down my street which is why we moved), got himself educated and took his ass out of the US to experience life somewhere else, I aint gonna say that my home country aint racist. But just cause white supremacists or rednecks aint jumping me in Japan doesn`t mean that I can ignore the racialist/racist structures here in Japan that are fixed. Really fixed. Aint no movement towards the rest of the world here.

I`ve been called a `kuronbo` which is the Japanese equivalent of the `nga` word in the USA (and I have to point out that though I`m a hiphop head and into rap, my black brothers in music have perpetuated a word that was coming close to being unspeakable so it`s a case of black folks publicising a word that should be unknown to young folks in the USA now). The fact that I`ve been called a kuronbo openly and unashamedly by racist old assholes who also spat at the ground around me isn`t why I say Japan is a deeply racist society. A country`s laws tell you about how racist it is.

As other posters have pointed out better than I can and in detail there are so many racialist/racist laws and rules in Japan that perpetuate the myth of racial purity - without a thought. That`s real racism for me - aint no debate in the media, aint no movements against this nasty `Japanese blood` mindset, aint nobody willing to take a stand or even take much time out to think about it apart from a very few. For me, Japan is what the Deep South was before the 1970s in some ways. Just because Japanese people smile and bow and are polite doesn`t make their society`s way of viewing other folks any less unapologetically racist and backwards.

Japan is going to pay for its deep racism when it sinks further into the economic decline. Japan`s whack obsessions with `racial purity`, `the Japanese race` etc over having a population that creates demand and results in supply and economic growth is gonna come back at these folks. Racist societies throughout history have dug their own graves. Japan is doing the same.