Vote Issue Challenges Japan’s National Identity

A heated debate over whether to give voting rights in local elections to non-Japanese is forcing Japan to confront the wartime past and some long-held assumptions about national identity, even as it creates a deep rift within the governing coalition.

Yun Keun Ie, 52, has spent his life in Japan, is a product of Japan’s educational system, eats Japanese food, thinks in Japanese, pays Japanese taxes and knows little about the country his parents left more than seven decades ago.

“After college, I took a trip to Korea, but I couldn’t understand a word. It was a total culture shock,” he says. “I was born in Japan. I love this country.”

Yet under Japanese law, Yun and roughly 635,000 other permanent residents are considered foreigners, either because they were born abroad or their parents or grandparents were. Most are ethnic Koreans who immigrated either voluntarily or under duress during Japan’s 35-year occupation of the Korean peninsula, which lasted from 1910 to 1945, or their offspring.

“How many generations do you need before you’re considered Japanese?” says Hiroshi Tanaka, a professor of international relations at Ryukoku University. “In Japan, we reproduce foreigners.”

In May, the three-party governing coalition submitted a bill granting these residents local voting rights, and this past week saw a massive lobbying effort on the bill’s behalf by longtime residents of Korean descent.

Among the factors driving the issue are better Korea-Japan and North-South Korean ties, the rising number of foreign workers in Japan and changing social attitudes.

As the debate has intensified, however, so have the divisions it has created, both within and among the three coalition parties. The two smaller partners in the coalition, New Komeito and the New Conservative Party, want local voting rights extended to all permanent residents of Japan. And initially, the bill was supported by Liberal Democratic Party kingpin Hiromu Nonaka, a longtime defender of minority rights, and most members of the opposition.

But LDP conservatives soon went ballistic, arguing that the bill is just a ploy aimed at securing national voting rights for these “foreigners,” who don’t share Japanese values, couldn’t be trusted in times of national emergency and are secretly loyal to overseas powers no matter how long they stay in Japan.

“This will lead to the collapse of Japan,” groused LDP member Kenzo Yoneda.

Faced with an insurrection, Nonaka then floated the idea that only “special” permanent residents and their offspring should be given the vote--namely, those who were forced to come to Japan or who volunteered to do so during Tokyo’s occupation of Korea, Taiwan and other parts of Asia.

But that compromise won few converts on either side of the divide. Many permanent residents say it ignores the global spread of democracy and risks driving a wedge between different non-Japanese groups. And defining who is special and who isn’t would be a logistical nightmare.

“It’s a cheap trick,” says Chong Kap Soo, a third-generation ethnic South Korean from Osaka.

LDP conservatives, for their part, feel even this proposal goes too far. Japan needs to deliberate the entire nationality question carefully, they argue, rather than respond to foreign pressure such as that applied by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, who expressed his support for greater voting rights during a state visit in September.

“President Kim is interfering in our domestic affairs,” said Katsuei Hirasawa, a lawmaker heading a group of several dozen LDP members opposed to the bill. “And I think Nonaka is selling out the country.”

If Koreans really want to vote, they should fully assimilate and become Japanese citizens, Hirasawa argues, even as he concedes that the citizenship procedure is difficult and unpalatable. It includes, for example, a requirement that applicants take Japanese names.

“We’d have to make it easier,” he says.

Korea isn’t exactly famous itself for welcoming foreigners. Seoul recently upped the ante, however, by passing legislation to extend local voting rights to permanent residents by 2002.

Japanese, to the extent they think about it, have traditionally defined their identity by their bloodlines, according to Takeshi Inoguchi, a professor of political science at Tokyo University. In such a homogenous culture, “more often it’s just taken for granted,” he says. But this issue is forcing many to question some basic assumptions, he adds.

Local officials say most of Japan’s 3,302 local and regional governments support giving permanent residents the vote, following a 1995 Supreme Court ruling that this enfranchisement would not violate the constitution. And approximately 15% of these jurisdictions have passed legislation to grant these rights as soon as they get the national nod.

By and large, the Japanese public also seems sympathetic, particularly younger Japanese. A poll released Tuesday by the Mainichi newspaper found that 58% favor giving local voting rights to permanent residents. Those in favor include 75% of respondents in their 20s.

Now supporters are trying to persuade conservative, mostly older LDP members, to change the law and in the process give non-Japanese permanent residents a larger voice in their local communities.

“It’s not right that we’ve lived here so long and still can’t vote locally,” says Seo Won Cheol, a director of the Korean Residents Union in Japan. “The LDP just doesn’t recognize reality.”

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Hisako Ueno of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.