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My partner and I are writing our East Asia Seminar paper on migrant workers in Japan. We attempted to set up interviews with several migrants’ rights groups and international associations, but our efforts came to naught. Luckily, Professor Akaha was able to secure an interview through his connections with Professor Hiroshi Tanaka, a former lecturer at Hitotsubashi Daigaku who has been at the forefront of the push for political and social rights for foreign residents – specifically for Zainichi Koreans, people of Korean descent, whose families were brought to Japan during the colonization of Korea and WWII, who reside in Japan as special permanent residents.

Professor Tanaka spoke with us for two hours on a range of topics. Keeping up and interpreting to my partner would have been impossible if we had kept to our original plan to interview him alone. Luckily, we had our two Japanese-English interpreters with us. The day before they kindly volunteered to come along with us in case we needed them – and we did! Our discussion ranged from Japanese society and media perceptions of migrants, to gaps in protections for migrants, to the April 2019 changes to Japan’s Immigration Control Act, to the Japanese government’s concept of ‘immigrants.’ The MIIS interpreters are close to goddesses, because they managed to interpret almost non-stop for those full two hours.

Our chat with Professor Tanaka was immensely helpful as he was the only person, we spoke to who was able to answer questions related to our topic. He was also able to give us a very liberal perspective, a rights-oriented viewpoint which we may not have received if asking similar questions to a government source. According to Professor Tanaka, the biggest problems facing migrant laborers and other foreign residents in Japan is the lack of a comprehensive bureau for migrant integration and support (the new Immigration Services Agency doesn’t cut it, in his opinion), the lack of voting rights, and the “lack of hope for migrant support and integration at the national level.” In his view, Japanese society as a whole sees allowing foreign residents in Japan as a kindness, not a right – Japan is for Japanese.

Our conversation carried on up to the very last second of our two hours. In the end, we were able to hand him a thank you gift in the form of a MIIS hat and a MIIS pen before we rushed out the door, only to realize we hadn’t taken a picture with him. We did, however, have a lot of notes!