How not to protest against discrimination

These people are obviously nutjobs, but I don’t see why foreign citizens should be allowed to vote in Japan. If they live in Japan long enough to feel the need to vote they should naturalise. Simple as that.

This is why Japanese should never have done any colonialism first.

It doesn’t matter anymore. The LDP right-wing nutjob politicans will be gone and there will be more understandings among Japanese and non-Japanese residents to resolve conflicts.

Here in Canada, the Japanese are the underrated minority* compare to the better communally-structured Koreans and Chinese.

*not discrimination but a lot of Canadians will assume Japanese as Koreans or Chinese automatically in a snap through distorted cultural views like only being obsessed with anime or manga

It’s been said, and proven by first-hand accounts that I’ve read, that it’s a fairly easy process to apply for naturalization and receive your Japanese citizenship if you are a Zainichi Korean.

What makes people so irritated about these demands by these people, is that they simply refuse to naturalize, refuse to acknowledge that there is a simple solution for their perceived slight for whatever their reasons may be.
It could be some form of obstinate national pride in their Korean heritage, but at the same time, they insist on continuing to live in Japan.

I’m still not sure where the truth lies in regard to their social rights, but I’m sure refusing to integrate into the Japanese system and announcing that their loyalties lie elsewhere, yet demanding with insulting imagery that the local system bend to make exception for them isn’t helping their cause.

Hi have been reading your response and you have said it well! I think more people need to be educated and know the facts of the situation!

Mostly why zainichi do demo in public place to get attention for people to feel sorry for them and make Japanese government look bad. But seriously any other countries will not let you vote unless you are a citizen of that country, zainichi have a choice to become a citizen but choose to be prideful of their korean heritage but still choose to live in Japan.

I wished that I could have dual citizenship also, right now Im living in US with a green card, I wish Japan would hurry up and allowed to have dual just like the neighbor Taiwan! >0<

@majimeaussie – yes, that was the thing, they have to choose one or the other, and they did. In a way, I actually commend them for being honest and doing that. They could have just told Japan “I’m Japanese” and told Korea “I’m Korean”, played the odds that neither would find out (since neither recognizes dual nationality) and kept both passports. But they didn’t. So, in a way, I respect their decision in that way.

Still, for someone to have full citizenship in the only country they’ve ever really known, the one they are fully acculturated in, and to throw that away because of some bizarre sense of belonging to a foreign country they’ve never lived in and have no intention of moving too (so they said – there is that mandatory military draft thing…) will forever strike me as stupid. Sorry, but I can think of no other word for it – you’ve got the rights of citizenship, but throw them away and then turn around and demand those same rights without being a citizen?

Hell, like I said – give the Zainichi an “express lane” to citizenship, let them keep their Korean names if they want, and keep that door open for a year. After that time, anyone who refuses to naturalize gets dumped into regular PR status like everyone else – no jumping into the “Japanese and SPR only” line at the airport, no free pass past the fingerprint machines, they get treated like everyone else. That would be more than fair IMHO.

“The problem is that Japan demands foreigners to naturalize if they want to enjoy civil rights, and that’s wrong because in other countries you can be a legalized foreigner and still enjoy the same civil rights, except the right to vote.”
It is the same in Japan. As a foreign resident I enjoy all the same basic civil rights as a Japanese, with reasonable exceptions (foreigner registration, having to carry and show that registration on demand) that apply to foreigners in pretty much any country.

“Also why Koreans have to change their name to Japanese name?”
They do not. There are, for example, naturalized Japanese Diet members who are ethnically Korean and Taiwanese who use their Korean and Chinese names. The pronunciation of the Chinese characters shoud correspond to Japanese standards, I believe, but as long as the Kanji is on the approved list of Kanji for names, it can be used.

“Does westerner have to change their original name to Japanese when they naturalize too?”
No, we are the same as Koreans or Chinese. People who naturalize can use Kanji (with the aforementioned limits), Hiragana or Katakana. Only Roman letters and unapproved Kanji are forbidden.

“Besides, Zainichi Koreans suffers from both legal and cultural barriers in Japan, so naturalization is not the solution for all their problem in Japan.”
The only “legal barriers” are that they are foreigners, not Japanese nationals, and thus cannot vote, be elected to office or become public servants. If they naturalize they can do all of the above without restriction. Naturalization is the solution.

Cultural barriers? What cultural barriers? Culturally, they are Japanese. Most Japanese would even admit this. Most of the resistance to accepting Zainichi I have encountered from Japanese centers around the fact that the Zainichi refuse to be accepted as Japanese – they insist on being Korean. No matter what country we were talking about, if there was a group living within that country for generations, insisting they were actually foreign nationals, with a good-sized chunk of them claiming nationality in a hostile state, they would be treated with suspicion. With pretty good reason, I think.