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Debito Arudou

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Wikipedia

, a naturalized Japanese citizen, is a teacher, author, and activist.

Background

Early life

Arudou was born David Christopher Aldwinckle in California in 1965. He attended Cornell University, first visiting Japan as a tourist on invitation from , his pen pal and future wife, for several weeks in 1986. Following this experience, he dedicated his senior year as an undergraduate to studying Japanese, graduating in 1987. Aldwinckle then taught English in Sapporo, Hokkaidō, for one year, and "swore against ever being a language teacher again, plunging instead into business." After returning to the United States to enter the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Aldwinckle deferred from the program in order to return to Japan, whereupon he married in 1989 and spent one year at the Japan Management Academy in Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture. In 1990, he returned to California to complete his Masters of Public and International Affairs (MPIA), and received the degree in 1991.

Aldwinckle then joined a small Japanese trading company in Sapporo. It was this experience, he recounts, that started him down the path of the controversial activist that he would later become. "This was a watershed in my life," Arudou writes. "… and it polarized my views about how I should live it. Although working [in Japan] made my Japanese really good — answering phones and talking to nasty, racist, and bloody-minded construction workers from nine to six — there was hell to pay every single day." Arudou said that he was the object of racial harassment. Aldwinckle quit the company. In 1993 he joined the faculty of Business Administration and Information Science at the Hokkaido Information University, a private university in Ebetsu, Hokkaidō, teaching courses in English as a foreign language. As of 2007 he is an associate professor.

Japanese naturalization

Aldwinckle became a permanent resident of Japan in 1996. He obtained Japanese citizenship in 2000, whereupon he changed his name to , whose kanji he says have the figurative meaning of "a person who has a road and is going out on it." To allow his wife and children to retain their Japanese family name, he adopted the legal name — a combination of his wife’s Japanese maiden name and his new transliterated full name. As reasons for naturalization he cited the right to vote, other rights, and increased ability to stand on his rights; he later chose to renounce his U.S. citizenship.

Family and divorce

Ayako Sugawara gave birth to two children, Amy Sugawara Aldwinckle (in Japanese), and Anna Marina Aldwinckle (in Japanese). Aldwinckle described Amy as "viewed as Japanese because of her looks" and Anna as "relegated to gaijin status, same as I" because of physical appearances. According to Arudou's writings, when he took his family to the Yunohana Onsen to test the rules of the onsen, the establishment allowed for Amy to enter the onsen and refused entry to Anna on the basis of their appearances.

In 2000 he lived in Nanporo, Sorachi District, Sorachi Subprefecture, Hokkaidō with his family.

Arudou said that he divorced his wife in September 2006. Following the divorce, Arudou petitioned the Sapporo Family Court to delete his ex-wife’s Japanese maiden family name from his koseki, or Family Registry, thus officially changing his name to Debito Arudou in November 2006.

Otaru onsen lawsuit

Arudou was one of three plaintiffs in a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Yunohana Onsen in Otaru, Hokkaidō. Yunohana maintained a policy to exclude non-Japanese patrons; the business stated that it implemented the policy after Russian sailors scared away patrons from one of its other facilities. After reading an e-mail posted to a mailing list digest complaining of Yunohana's policy in 1999, Arudou visited the hot spring (onsen), along with a small group of Japanese, White, and East Asian friends, in order to confirm that only visibly non-Japanese people were excluded.

Arudou assumed that when he returned in 2000 as a naturalized Japanese citizen, he would not be refused. The manager accepted that Arudou was a Japanese national but refused entry on the grounds that his foreign appearance could cause existing Japanese customers to assume the onsen was admitting foreigners, i.e drunk Russian sailors which were causing problems in that locality, and take their business elsewhere.

Arudou and two co-plaintiffs, Kenneth Lee Sutherland and Olaf Karthaus, in February 2001 then sued Yunohana on the grounds of racial discrimination, and the City of Otaru for violation of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a treaty which Japan ratified in 1996. On November 11, 2002, the Sapporo District Court ordered Yunohana to pay the plaintiffs 1 million JPY each (about $25,000 United States dollars in total) in damages. The court stated that "refusing all foreigners without exception is 'unrational discrimination' [that] can be said to go beyond permissible societal limits." The Sapporo High Court dismissed Arudou's claim against the city of Otaru for failing to create an anti-discrimination ordinance; the court ruled that the claim did not have merit. The Sapporo High Court upheld these rulings on September 16, 2004 and the Supreme Court of Japan denied review on April 7, 2005.

Kyōgaku no Gaijin Hanzai Ura File - Gaijin Hanzai Hakusho 2007

In February 2007, Arudou commented on Kyōgaku no Gaijin Hanzai Ura File - Gaijin Hanzai Hakusho 2007 (Secret Foreigner Crime Files) a mook (magazine/book) published by Eichi Suppan on January 31. The mook contains images and descriptions of what the magazine says are crimes committed in Japan by non-Japanese, including graphs breaking down crimes by nationality. The magazine includes a caption describing a black man as a "nigga", an article entitled "Chase the Iranian!" and calls Tokyo a "city torn apart by evil foreigners. Arudou posted a bilingual letter for readers to take to FamilyMart stores protesting against "discriminatory statements and images about non-Japanese residents of Japan."

Publications

Arudou has written a book about the 1999 Otaru hot springs incident. Arudou originally wrote the book in Japanese; the English version, Japanese Only — The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan (ISBN 4-7503-2005-6), was published in 2004 and revised in 2006.

Arudou has also written several textbooks on business English and debating in addition to many journalistic and academic articles.

Criticism

Anna Isozaki, one of Arudou's former colleagues who was initially active in the BENCI (Business Excluding Non-Japanese Customer Issho) project (unconnected to Arudou's "Community in Japan" project), said that Arudou has an unwillingness to co-operate within a larger organization and that Arudou felt resentment against being told to separate "the apparent center of activity from himself."

Alex Kerr, author of Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan (ISBN 0-8090-3943-5), believed that Arudou's tactics are "too combative." Kerr said that he was doubtful "whether in the long run it really helps." According to Kerr, "in Japan… [the combative] approach fails." Kerr said that "gaijin and their gaijin ways are now part of the fabric of Japan's new society," and feared that Arudou's activities may "confirm conservative Japanese in their belief that gaijin are difficult to deal with. On 7 April 2007, Arudou publicly criticized Kerr’s comments on his personal blog and mass e-mail newsletter lists. Following Arudou's public criticisms, Kerr responded in an open e-mail posted by Arudou elaborating on his initial impressions of Arudou’s tactics, his current impressions of Arudou’s newsletter and website, and Kerr’s own distinct techniques for being critical in the field of “traditional culture, tourism, city planning, and the environment” — “to speak quietly, from ‘within.’” Respecting Arudou's "undoubtedly combative" tactics, Kerr now concluded by stating: “I wholly support [Arudou’s] activities and [his] methods.”

Responding to Arudou's statements regarding the United States Department of State in the Hokkaido International Business Association (HIBA), Alec Wilczynski, Consul General, American Consulate General Sapporo, said that Arudou's statements contain "antics," "omissions," and "absurd statements" as part of an attempt "to revive interest in his flagging ‘human rights’ campaign." On his website Arudou responded with the statement "A surprising response from a diplomat," and posted commentary from an associate regarding the renunciation of Arudou's United States citizenship.

Gregory Clark, Akita International University Vice-President, views the lawsuit as the product of "ultrasensitivity" and "Western moralizing. Yuki Allyson Honjo, a book critic at JapanReview.net, criticized Clark's statements and referred to him as one of a group of "apologists." Clark responded to Honjo's criticism, believing that Honjo mis-characterized his statements. Honjo responded by saying that her use of the word "apologist" applied to Clark's particular stance on Arudou's case and not as a sweeping generalization of Clark's character. Honjo maintained her stance regarding Clark's statements.

Robert Neff, author of Japan's Hidden Hot Springs (ISBN 0-8048-1949-1), believes that much of Arudou's campaign is divisive, stating: "I think much of his campaign is faux because most of the places he is going after are in Hokkaido trying to protect themselves from drunken Russians. I have bathed and/or stayed at well over 200 onsen establishments and been stopped only once."

Peter Tasker, author of numerous non-fiction and fiction works on Japan, argues that in "attempting to monster [Japan] into George Wallace's Alabama, [Arudou] trivializes the real-life brutal discrimination that still disfigures our world and the heroic campaigners who have put themselves on the line to fight it." Alexander Kinmont, a former chief equity strategist of NikkoCitygroup, does not believe that a collection of bath-houses, "soaplands," massage parlors, and nightclubs is representative of Japan's civil rights situation in any meaningful sense. Tasker and Kinmont object to Arudou's statements comparing the institutionalized racial discrimination historically exhibited in the segregated American south with the examples that, according to Arudou, show racial discrimination in Japan.