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3/11 and the “Flyjin”phenomenon

ARUDOU DebitoAffiliate Scholar, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii

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3/11/12 Great East Japan EQCa.16K dead, 27K injured, 3K missing from tsunami

Fukushima nuclear power plant disasters

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NJ wags coin “Flyjin” on Twitter

(Also“Bye-jin”) a corruption of gaijin (the more racist epithet for “foreigner”) (Hoofin blog 4/2).

Flyjin.com also set up to depict NJ as panicky, overreacting to flawed overseas media depictions of disaster.

Self-deprecating humor soon escalates beyond sarcasm and irony into media epithet.

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Flyjin Fallout hits J mediaWall Street Journal 3/23 reports in E and J of

“fly-jin exodus”, blames NJ culture of “allegiance” of NJ to family 1st, company 2nd.

Although not called “Flyjin” in vernacular (e.g., Nikkei 4/9: nihon o saru gaikoku rōdōsha), NJ reported as fleeing Japan.

NJ portrayed as deserting their work stations (Zakzak 4/15: affecting fast-food restaurant chain Yoshinoya’s profitability?, conjectured)

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Media frenzy buildsAsahi’s influential Tensei Jingo column 3/20

has tone of betrayal: NJ (tourists, business travelers, students, diplomats) “scrambled” abroad, concludes “rebuilding our country is ultimately the task of none but Japanese”.

Nikkan Gendai headline 4/11: “All NJ have fled Japan”. SPA! 4/12: “Bad NJ” (Asians, Arabs, Africans) massing in Ueno where NPA, Yakuza “order-keeping ability” is weak.

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Open season on NJ beginsMainichi Shimbun 4/25: Factories crippled

by shortage of NJ workers, conjectures that Yokohama Chinatown and entire J textile industry could suffer “serious damage”, if not “fall apart”.

Tokyo Sports Shimbun 4/14 blames closure of Tokyo Disneyland not on power outages, but on NJ; says can’t run the facility without NJ dancers in parades (TDL reopens 4/15).

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The media wave crests

Asahi 3/26: Rumors swirl about “NJ criminal gangs” carrying out muggings, lootings, rapes. Yet Sankei 4/1 reports no cases.

J-cast.com 4/7: GOJ unusually intervenes to quash internet rumors, avoid debacle of 1923 Kantō earthquake’s mass murder of 100s of Koreans/Chinese etc. due to rumors of well poisonings, rebellion, sabotage.

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Restoring sanity

Shingetsu News Agency 4/13: NPA, ministries establish task force, notify media (including net providers) to erase, inter alia:

Descriptions of EQ as man-made (3/17)Claims of EQ caused by NJ terrorism (3/28)

(Critics decry this as censorship, as means to keep information on TEPCO and GOJ from public, avoiding responsibility for disaster.)

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What was drowned out by the NJ blame game

More domestic reportage on what NJ were doing to help out in disaster areas.

Figures on/critique of J “flyjin”, who were also fleeing potential disaster areas (Sankei 3/19).

Other issues of discrimination, such as J fleeing from disaster areas being refused at hotels (Yomiuri 3/18, 4/9).

More accurate info re facts on the ground.

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Aftershocks3/14 Tokyo Gov. Ishihara calls tsunami “divine

punishment” (tenbatsu) to wash away Japan’s identity as “greed”, then retracts; still gets reelected to 4th term on 4/10.

Unexamined was Ishihara’s claim on 4/9/00 (the “sangokujin speech”) that “bad NJ” committing “heinous crimes” would riot in the event of a natural disaster, proposes JSDF round them up. Clearly didn’t happen.

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Aftershocks

Also running in Ishihara’s 4/10/11 election was overt xenophobic candidate Furukawa Keigo, whose policy stump included:

“Safeguard the capital, safeguard Japan. Japan belongs to the Japanese people.”

“Expel the foreign barbarians” (i.e., Chinese and Koreans) from Tokyo, etc.

Furukawa still garners 6000 votes.

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The unexamined life: NJ population drop in Flyjins’ wake

Source: Ministry of Justice, at http://www.moj.go.jp/content/000094842.pdf

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The unexamined life (2)Raw stats for NJ population

Source: Ministry of Justice, at http://www.moj.go.jp/content/000094842.pdf

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The unexamined life (3):NJ crime keeps falling

Source: National Police Agency, npa.go.jp/sosikihanzai/kokusaisousa/kokusai/H23_Z_RAINICHI_ZANTEI.pdf

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The unexamined life (4):Every NJ crime significantly down

Source: National Police Agency, npa.go.jp/sosikihanzai/kokusaisousa/kokusai/H23_Z_RAINICHI_ZANTEI.pdf

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The unexamined life (5)

Irony: J workers, companies fleeing during Bangkok’s October 2011 floods, even bringing 6-month Thai workers to Japan.

Why blame NJ for a crisis created by domestic negligence? Because disenfranchised NJ are easy distraction, or as “Flyjin”, a scapegoat.

Still little to no J media or official acknow-ledgement of the good things that NJ do and have done for Japan’s economy and society.

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Conclusion: Beware dodgy journalism misleading public

Cherry-picking data (e.g., Small-size or narrow-sample sources).

Using aggregate numbers that are inapplicable to regional/local numbers.

Not comparing with J in same position.Using linguistic hedgers like “…to mirareru”, “…

sō da”, “there are cases of…” etc.Falling for hegemonic discourse of J as victims

and NJ as disloyal, criminals, unreliable etc.

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More on this and other issues:www.debito.org

ISBN 4 7503 9018 6 English version, Japanese version ISBN 4 7503 9001 9

www.debito.org/japaneseonly.html

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More on this and other issues:www.debito.org

English and Japanese ISBN 4 7503 2741 9 ISBN 978 1 257 02640 1

www.debito.org/handbook.html www.debito.org/inappropriate.html

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ご清聴ありがとうございました！THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Download this presentation at

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