Kyushu town bans foreign students

As someone who has a good amount of family in fukuoka area, I can safely say that disallowing gaijin in that area is nothing but a favor to those excluded souls. That hood is BORING.

http://www.nishinippon.co.jp/nnp/national/20061221/20061221_025.shtml

That’s the only article I could find about the issue. When making plans to invite someone to build a university, the town asked for ideas from the people in the area that the school would be built in what kind of ideas/restrictions they would like to be in place. One of the things that got on the list of demands from the general public was to not allow foreign students. The town government accepted the people’s requests without any questions asked. (Meaning either a, the town government agreed/or didn’t care, or b, they didn’t even bother reading the people’s list of demands. I’ll leave that decision up to everyone as individuals, because the article includes no evidence to support either claim.)

However later down the line someone found out about it, complained, and the town government then made an announcement that there were portions of the list of demands that were inappropriate and removed the part about the foreign students.

The people however were not happy at all, and said they can not agree with the revised list of demands as the governments explanation was insufficient. They cited their complains being about the change to allow foreign students. Yet never the less on the 20th of December at a special hearing about the plans, the people agreed on their demands (as well as including foreigns in their little utopian society) without talking specifically about them.

What interests me is the wording used to describe what the people were upset about.

外国からは一切入学させない確約

They wanted a absolute promise that no students would be accepted from abroad. However it doesn’t specify foreigners, just where they are coming from. This becomes an issue because of 帰国子女 or Japanese students coming from abroad. A Japanese person who has gone to school abroad for example is not treated as a ‘normal’ Japanese applicant to Japanese universities, and depending on the university is lumped together with all other foreign students or handled all together in a separate way.

I would understand this wording to also demand the exclusion of all Japanese students who will be coming from a foreign country for the purpose of entering the university. I would have liked to see the public from the area explain what they define 外国からは一切入学させない to be, and if 帰国子女 are included or not before the government shot them down. That would have been interesting.