Japan: Fingerprinting divides family

Blogger Lionel Dersot wonders what parents of mixed children should do when the family is split at the airport, the foreign parent subjected to Japan's new fingerprinting regulations. Remarking that no one has yet raised the issue, he asks: “Is it too intimate in the age of no-privacy to think and talk with others about it?”

2 comments

  • Jimi

    Its total Racism and xenephobia… this shows that Japan is on the road to Facism again… I feel sorry for people here who have half Japanese kids…. Japan should be boycotted..

  • Hobbsy

    Just another brick in the wall!
    I speak and teach Japanese, my wife is Japanese and my daughter is half Japanese.I really enjoy Japan and all the wonderfull things it has to offer but I don’t want to live there any more. Countless experiences relating to not being able to open bank accounts,credit cards, not being able to rent, problems relating to exchanging of driving licenses (even though my country and the Japanese government have an agreement to do so). The payment or rather non payment by law of your social insurance and pensions by large Eikaiwa corporations and the effects it had on the English teaching industry.The base salary cap of 250 000 yen that hasn’t changed in 20 years. Over 4 and a half years it all added up and one day I decided my quality of life wasn’t worth sacrificing any longer just to further the quaility of English in Japan so I returned home.Now I’ll just have to be finger printed once a year and bite my tongue when I return for a holiday and tell my daughter that she will probably have to do the same when she turns 21 as she will have to choose between her Japanese and Australian citizenship as Japan doesn’t allow dual citizenship after that age.
    Japan a nice place to visit but ya wouldn’t want to live there!

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