In this edition of the Debito.org Podcast, Arudou Debito has recorded his entire speech (a little more than an hour and a half), along with Q&A, given at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on March 18, 2008. This is the standard speech he gave during his recent three-week-long nationwide tour to promote HANDBOOK FOR NEWCOMERS, MIGRANTS, AND IMMIGRANTS TO JAPAN, so if you missed the tour, here’s your chance to see what he was on about. It’s not all about the book; he also talks about Japan’s lack of an immigration policy and issues of multiculturalization and Japan’s future. If you’d also like to see the powerpoint presentation he used that evening, download it at http://www.debito.org/HANDBOOKmarch08.ppt (note that the order of the slides is different).

Here is the speech write-up, as per the FCCJ archives:

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Book Break: Handbook for Non-Japanese residents and immigrants in Japan
Time: 2008 Mar 18 18:30 - 20:30
Handbook for Non-Japanese residents and immigrants in Japan
By Arudou Debito

Tuesday, March 18, 2008.
6:30 PM to 8:30 PM

Language:
(The speech, presentation, and Q&A will be English)

Description:

Japan has year-on-year had record numbers of registered Non-Japanese (NJ) residents, now well beyond the two million mark. However, Japan’s government has tended to treat NJ with benign neglect, if not outright hostility at times, offering them insufficient support for making a better, more secure life in Japan.

Japan still has no official “immigration policy”, despite the fact that immigration is a fact of life. In 2007, the number of “Newcomer” (foreign-born) Permanent Residents has been forecasted to surpass the shrinking numbers of “Oldcomer” (Zainichi generational foreigner) Permanent Residents by 2007. This will mean a total of more than one million “unremovable” Permanent Residents by decade’s end.

Higuchi Akira, Legal Scrivener in Sapporo, and Arudou Debito, author and activist, have authored a handbook in Japanese and English to address this readership. Offering guidance to NJ from entry until death, chapters of the book deal with how to secure a stable visa, start a business, deal with legal and interpersonal problems, even give something back to Japanese society.

Speaker Arudou Debito, a 20-year resident of Japan, frequent columnist in the Japan Times, and author of JAPANESE ONLY–The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan (Akashi Shoten, Inc, 2003, 2004, and 2006; subject of a FCCJ Book Break in June 2003), will speak on why we need this book and what good he intends it to do.

Library Committee,
THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB OF JAPAN

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