Embarrassed Japanese Hurry to Reject Latest Racial Remark

Suppressing racist slurs here is becoming like the game that Japanese call mogura-tataki --beating mole holes. Hit one mole and another pops up somewhere else.

The latest popup came from Masao Kokubo, 58, an assemblyman in Hyogo prefecture (state) who declared during a budget committee debate that he felt revulsion when shaking hands with blacks and ill at ease when he saw foreigners, such as Pakistanis or Indians, gather in a group.

Both Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono and Sadaaki Numata, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, slammed the hammer down on Kokubo on Friday without waiting for the customary foreign outcry to reverberate back to Tokyo.

Kono condemned the “strong racial overtones” of remarks that he said were “quite inappropriate.” Numata said the remarks “in no way represent the general feelings of the Japanese people.” Both called for an apology.

But Kokubo, in an interview Friday with the Associated Press, said an apology is “out of the question.

In a debate on illegal foreign workers, Kokubo had declared: “I understand discrimination is wrong in practice but when shaking hands with black people, I get the feeling that my hands are turning black.”

The assemblyman also said that he gets a “disagreeable feeling” when “I see people such as Pakistanis or Indians gathering in a group,” adding that “they form their own ghettos and lead their own lives. They are outsiders.”

He explained later that he “wanted to say that we (Japanese) should control such feelings by reason and should associate with (foreigners) frankly. . . .”

To AP, he said his remarks about blacks referred to his experiences 30 years ago in London.

“In the beginning, I felt uncomfortable and weird shaking hands with blacks, but once you become friends, it’s normal,” he said.

The controversy over racially derogatory remarks was the latest in a chain that includes former Justice Minister Seiroku Kajiyama in 1990, Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe in 1988 before he assumed his present post, and former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1986. All three leaders apologized after protests poured in from abroad.