Criticism Mounts Over Japan’s Law Requiring Fingerprinting of Foreign Residents

Criticism is mounting in Japan and abroad against the required fingerprinting of foreign residents, even those living in Japan for decades.

In recent months, hunger strikes and street protests have focused new attention on the 35-year-old practice.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has told Japanese leaders that the fingerprinting is akin to South Africa’s former pass laws, which required blacks to carry special passes and restricted their movements in white areas.

Among Japanese, only criminal suspects are fingerprinted. Foreigners must carry their alien registration cards, which bear the fingerprint, at all times. Japanese need not carry any identification.

Minor Concessions

The government has made minor changes in an effort to quiet protests, but it has rejected demands to stop the practice.

Justice Minister Kaname Endo and other officials contend that fingerprinting is necessary because photographs aren’t adequate to verify alien residents and detect illegal foreign immigrants.

The 1952 aliens law requires all long-term foreign residents 16 years and older to submit their left index fingerprint, along with their picture, when registering with municipal offices.

Violators face a maximum penalty of one year in prison, a 200,000-yen ($1,400) fine and possible expulsion from Japan.

830,000 Affected

Japan, a nation of 120 million people, has about 830,000 foreign residents, nearly 700,000 of whom are Koreans descended from laborers brought forcibly during World War II. People born in Japan to alien parents do not have the right to citizenship and still must be fingerprinted.

In response to growing protests, the government in September agreed to allow foreigners to give their fingerprints just one time only, instead of once every five years, and to issue credit-card size alien documents in place of the current 16-page booklets, starting next year.

But the opposition remains adamant.

“One-time-only fingerprinting still is fingerprinting,” said Robert Ricketts, 42, of Plainview, Tex., a free-lance journalist who was the first U.S. citizen to be arrested for refusing to be fingerprinted. Ricketts was held for two days after his arrest last December and is awaiting trial.

Constitutional Issue

Ricketts maintains that fingerprinting violates the Japanese constitution and international covenants against discrimination.

“I’ve been in Japan all together for about 10 years,” Ricketts said. “I thought that if I gave (my fingerprint), I would be condoning this system of discrimination. I had some idea how the Koreans and Chinese felt.”

Jackson wrote in a letter to Justice Minister Endo in September: “Fingerprinting aliens is offensive to many people as it treats law-abiding noncitizens as second-class human beings, singled out like criminals.

“The eyes of the world are on Japan today. . . . No nation should have an economic surplus and a moral deficit.”

Growing Criticism

Criticism is growing among Japanese as well.

“I don’t see any reasoning in the government contention in maintaining the fingerprinting requirement, because few cases have been reported in which illegal foreigners were caught through their prints,” said Masako Yamanaka, a 22-year-old senior at International Christian University in Tokyo. “The requirement is discriminatory, and thus inhumane.”

Yamanaka was among dozens of Japanese students from nine universities in Tokyo at a recent rally against fingerprinting. Several hundred Koreans, Chinese, Europeans and other foreigners also attended.