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Briefing Report

Coexistence with Foreign Residents—The Case of Hamamatsu

Mayor of Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture
Mr. Yasuyuki Kitawaki

[Society] June 22 , 2006

Today I would like to speak about the approaches that we have adopted in Hamamatsu City to help accept foreigners into our community. To begin, I wish to go on record with my own basic perception of the issue of foreign residents, and then I will cover the subjects that I view as being particularly important.
In recent years there has been a sharp increase in the number of registered foreign residents in Japan. There were one million or so foreigners in this category in 1990, but the figure had nearly doubled to close to two million in 2004. As the head of one local municipality at the forefront in bringing foreigners into our society, I would like to advise that the time is right to promptly act to establish systems of acceptance so as to avoid instability into Japanese society.

The Present Situation in Hamamatsu
In Hamamatsu City, of our population of 810,000 citizens, about 30,000, or close to 4 percent, are registered foreign residents. Brazilians account for 18,000 of this total, giving us the largest number of Brazilian citizens of any city in Japan. Hamamatsu is the home of a number of world-renowned companies in the transport equipment, musical instrument, and other businesses, and we have a broad industrial base and numerous employment opportunities. Therefore, following the 1990 enforcement of the revised Immigration Control and Refugee-Recognition Law, which effectively recognized the visa status of “permanent resident” (containing no restrictions on work) for second- and third-generation foreigners of Japanese descent, Hamamatsu experienced a sharp increase in the number of foreign residents. The focus of this influx was South Americans of Japanese ancestry, who came to be called “newcomers.” In fact, the increasing trend continues at present. With regard to the phenomenon of this growth in the number of foreigners, in the beginning these new residents were seen as temporary “migrant labor,” but as improvements were made in the lifestyle foundation for foreigners in the city, there was also a rise in the number of foreigners who made the move to Japan as families. In a 2003 Hamamatsu survey tracking the lifestyles and work patterns of ethnic Japanese South Americans, we found that 51 percent had been in Japan for 10 years or more.

Conditions and Problems Faced by Foreigners
The majority of Hamamatsu’s foreign residents are employed in transport equipment manufacturing plants or similar jobs and have become an indispensable presence for the regional economy. In describing the general conditions concerning the lifestyles and work of foreigners in Hamamatsu, the foreign workers themselves have the perception that they are in fact migrant help toiling away far from home and tend to place their priority on earning as much money as possible. Because of this, these people change both jobs and addresses more frequently than Japanese workers. They also tend to continue to work days and nights in the constant pursuit of income, leaving many parents little latitude to consider their children’s education or what the future may hold. As I mentioned before, however, the trend for foreigners to become permanent residents has grown increasingly pronounced.

From the position of the employers of these foreign laborers, we have also heard talk that with business owners facing fierce demands to cut costs, it can often be tough to stay in business by strictly following the rule of law. Besides this, there is also a lack of reliable information about how some job placement agencies and contractors operate, leading to the conclusion that there are also limits to what can be achieved through administrative guidance by the supervising national government agencies.

When it comes to the problems encountered by foreigners linked to these conditions, in most cases it simply isn’t possible for Hamamatsu to come up with fundamental solutions on our own. The major problems that exist include the drawbacks that emerge from instable work environments stemming from indirect employment; the fact that, according to our survey, some half of these residents carry no health insurance; and the problems of school nonenrollment or nonattendance by the children of foreign residents. In my view, the majority of these problems result from the wide gaps between the current laws and systems and the actual situations in which foreign citizens find themselves. Taking this to heart, Hamamatsu continues to implement its own policies targeting foreigners, while joining with other cities facing similar problems to form the Committee for Localities with a Concentrated Foreign Population and mounting appeals to the central government and other authorities.

Hamamatsu’s Approach to Issues Involving Foreigners
First, I wish to mention the basic policy of Hamamatsu City concerning issues that involve foreigners. That is to say, “Based on the understanding that both Japanese and foreigners are all citizens of Hamamatsu, and in view of the correct understanding that foreign residents are supporting the economy and other aspects of the community, our desire is to do everything possible to curb friction caused by differences in lifestyle customs and other negative aspects, advancing manifestation of the cultures maintained by foreign citizens in striving to achieve a more affluent regional community.” Proceeding from this vision, Hamamatsu advances numerous projects aimed at helping foreigners benefit from stable civic lifestyles. They include supplying information and lifestyle counseling in foreign languages, dispatching school attendance support staffers to elementary and junior high schools, furnishing opportunities to learn the Japanese language, arranging learning support programs for foreign children, holding meetings of foreign citizens to encourage their participation in city government, convening community coexistence conferences as forums for communication between neighborhood associations and foreign residents, and other efforts.

Besides promoting the types of independent approaches I have described, Hamamatsu in 2001 appealed to other cities also characterized by large numbers of “newcomer” residents in an attempt to strengthen lobbying of the national government and other related authorities. The result was the banding together of 13 such cities and towns to form the aforementioned Committee for Localities with a Concentrated Foreign Population [CLCF]. That same year, a meeting of the heads of the cities participating in the CLCF was held, leading to the adoption of the “Hamamatsu Declaration and Proposals.” The Hamamatsu Declaration states that based on the mutual respect and understanding of different cultures and values, and through the participation and cooperation of all residents, we 13 cities vow to collaborate in order to shape socially cohesive societies between our Japanese and foreign resident communities, where residents respect each other’s individual rights and fulfill their social responsibilities. In this declaration, we use the term “regional coexistence” to clarify our ideology.
In the Sao Paulo-Londrina Declaration, adopted in 2002 in Brazil at a symposium held by the Japanese-Brazilian Association of Comparative Law to address issues related to foreigners in Japan, general agreement was voiced with the Hamamatsu Declaration. There are also those in Brazil, therefore, who feel the importance of acting in concert with the efforts of the CLCF. The committee has subsequently expanded from the original 13 cities to the current total of 17 cities. Key developments during these years have included the 2004 holding of a conference of city heads in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, and the adoption at that time of the Toyota Declaration proclaiming strengthened cooperation with the business community.

Proposals Accompanying the Hamamatsu Declaration
I would like to speak in a bit more detail about the proposals adopted at the conference of city heads in 2001. The contents of these proposals effectively envision the state of affairs that the CLCF has consistently lobbied the government to achieve, although I must say that we have yet to see those demands realized.

(Education)
The first sector in which we made proposals is education. On this subject, I mentioned earlier that the problem of nonenrollment in schools is extremely serious. The reasons that many of the children of foreign residents fail to enroll include the fact that those with inadequate Japanese language skills cannot adapt to school, the failure of the schools themselves to mount detailed responses to this situation (including use of the children’s native language), along with the often inadequate understanding on the part of the parents that education is an obligation. Our proposal for education seeks resolutions for these causes.

Looking at the specific contents of the proposals targeting the educational field, we first cite the need to bolster the instruction system for Japanese language and other key areas at public elementary and junior high schools. We have registered demands with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for enhanced instruction in Japanese language, lessons in the native languages of the children, studies of flexible school year placement geared to ability levels, the assigning of counselors as native language communication supporters, and other improvements. The second need is greater support for getting children to actually attend school. This includes assistance for the establishment and management of schools designed for foreign resident children, strengthened cooperation with foreign resident schools, studies into making exceptions to allow such schools to be established as official educational corporations, support for school attendance by children not enrolled at present, and other endeavors.

(Social Security)
The second sector of our proposals concerns social security. The greatest problem in this area, as I mentioned earlier, is that some 40 percent of foreign workers carry no health insurance. That is, they have failed to enroll in either the national health insurance system or social insurance. When employed by a company, workers normally must enroll in the social insurance program. However, the measures adopted to ensure compliance with this rule are hardly adequate.

There are cases in which job placement services, contractors, and other indirect employers fail to enroll foreign workers in the social insurance system. There are also instances in which the foreign workers themselves avoid signing up out of fear that their own financial burden will grow. While the national health insurance system is also available as a public health insurance plan, the requirement for enrolling in that scheme is that applicants not be company workers. This means that foreign workers hired by contractors are not eligible for national health insurance. For the factors noted, meanwhile, they also do not sign up for social insurance, leaving them in uninsured limbo between the two insurance systems.

For the specifics of our proposals for foreign resident social security, the first key area is to revise the health insurance system itself. In the proposals, we point out the need to relax the rule that demands enrollment in both health insurance and the pension plan as a set, promote the signing of international agreements to deal with instances when social security insurance premiums are paid in both Japan and overseas by computing the mutual benefits, study the feasibility of establishing an independent health insurance system capable of addressing the needs of foreign residents, and take other pertinent action. With regard to the proposal to ease the requirement for enrollment in both health insurance and pensions, because social insurance is structured as a set containing both health insurance and pension coverage, there are foreign workers who feel that because they will eventually return to their native lands, they will never collect old-age pensions. This lies behind the reluctance of many to pay pension insurance premiums as social insurance coverage. The second part of this proposal concerns improvements in the labor environment for foreigners. Specifically, we are lobbying the government to strengthen guidance systems for employers aimed at promoting greater enrollment in social insurance, spell out corporate responsibility, enhance understanding of the conditions at job placement agencies and contractors that hire foreigners, strengthen guidance to those businesses, and other steps.

(Foreign Resident Registration and Other Procedures)
The third sector of our proposals concerns revisions in foreign resident registration and other administrative procedures. Behind this demand is the fact that the current foreigner registration system impedes accurate identification of foreigners living in municipalities, which in turn makes it impossible to adequately furnish those residents with effective administrative services. This situation must be improved. Within the foreign resident registration scheme, we are particularly asking for revisions that will accurately reflect changes of address in alien registration, as well as cooperation with other administrative information systems in tracking working conditions and other factors.

This has been a brief description of the 2001 proposals presented to the government by the CLCF.

Crimes Committed by Foreigners
I also want to discuss one other problem that has emerged of late that will require action on the part of the CLCF in submitting proposals and demands to the central government. I am referring to crime countermeasures. In Hamamatsu City and the surrounding environs, there has been a series of recent cases in which foreigners suspected in murder, hit-and-run accidents, and other crimes flee Japan and return to their native countries. In Hamamatsu as well, this has prompted a surge in civic movements aimed at establishing extradition treaties—particularly between Japan and Brazil. I also feel that foreigners who commit crimes in Japan should be tried and judged for those actions here and that moving in that direction will help deter crime and lead to realizing the cohesive and coexisting regional communities that we envision. Toward that end, we at the CLCF are also determined to promote measures aimed at the signing of extradition treaties.

Government Responses
Due to the time restrictions, I will now summarize the points I have discussed so far. First, I want to mention government reactions to the appeals that we have put forth to date. Regrettably, those responses have been extremely sluggish, with little if any constructive change occurring in our cities. However, I would say that the activities of the CLCF have produced some effects, slowly but surely, with signs that government studies on the issues are getting off the ground. For example, in October 2004 the Council on the Movement of People Across Borders under Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed establishing a government system to handle problems regarding foreigners on a cross-sectional basis cutting across government offices. In another case in point, in a Cabinet decision this March 31 concerning the promotion of government deregulatory reform and greater access for the private sector, notice was given that a judgment will be rendered by the end of the current fiscal year on strengthening checks on foreign residents subsequent to their entry into Japan.

Company Responses
Concerning responses by companies, we must crack down on job placement agencies, contractors, and other businesses that need to make improvements in their working conditions. But this is only part of the problem, with vigorous approaches also required from the chambers of commerce and industry and leading companies in each specific region. On this point, there are positive approaches that deserve commendation, such as the proposals compiled by Nippon Keidanren [Japan Business Federation] in 2004. Despite such efforts, however, the degree of progress trickling down to the regional level remains far from adequate.

Future Outlook for Problems Concerning Foreign Residents
To conclude my talk, I wish to present my own views on the outlook for problems pertaining to foreigners in Japan. As I see it, the issues that Hamamatsu finds itself pressed to deal with today will become a nationwide phenomenon in the near future. At present¸ while there is much debate on the acceptance of foreigners into Japan, we need to first confront the reality that a large number of foreigners are already beginning to settle here. This brings us to the problem that the current social systems fail to adequately support the lifestyles of foreigners. I believe the cause of this can be traced to the revisions of the Immigration Control and Refugee-Recognition Law in 1990, which assumed that the foreigners categorized as “newcomers” were in fact “migrant workers” who would return to their countries of origin after short-term stays. In short, this revised legislation was not accompanied by policymaking geared to deal with the trend for such foreigners to settle permanently in Japan. To this day, in fact, no real progress has been made in addressing this situation.

Meanwhile, as I understand it, the Japanese government policy in accepting foreigners refuses to recognize the entry of so-called “unskilled laborers” into the country. In reality, however, there are foreigners who enter Japan as residents, trainees, or other visa status categories who do in fact engage in unskilled labor. Based on this, I must conclude that the government’s rules have grown antiquated in terms of the actual conditions. On this point, we can say that Japan is already confronted with the problems of immigration that so many other countries have faced to date.

For today’s Japan, immigration policy is an extremely important issue, and thus naturally one on which ample discussion is needed. As the head of a municipality confronted with problems related to foreigners, what I want to stress, at the very least, is that unified efforts by the central and regional governments and the business community to promote social systems and services that enable resident foreigners to enjoy stable lifestyles is something that must precede all debate on the subject. Simply stated, if progress is not made in establishing the social systems and services required to assimilate foreigners who have chosen to settle in Japan, an area in which the needs have already been clarified, there will be even greater confusion in the ability to deal with the steady stream of foreigners arriving here in the future. This is a problem that is steadily emerging as a reality and requires firm steps to deal with the situation and the issues that it presents.


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q: At the end of May, a Ministry of Justice project team announced proposals for entry of foreigners into Japan from here on, with one part of its ideas suggesting a halt in the open-door acceptance of persons of Japanese descent. What are your views in this area? The Justice Ministry, meanwhile, is soliciting opinions about this project on its website, and I wonder if you intend to express any opinions or proposals of your own in response?
A: With regard to the Justice Ministry project, it is my understanding that the announcement contains the disclaimer that the ideas expressed do not yet comprise an official proposal from that ministry. Having said that, I still want to respond to your question. Namely, when it comes to accepting ethnic Japanese foreigners into the country, I believe that the current situation should be maintained from two standpoints. The first refers to effectively embracing “Japanese” from a broader notion, while stressing the importance of expanding exchange. In that sense, I feel there is definite significance in accepting into modern-day Japan the descendants of emigrants who ventured forth from Japan in past generations. The second point concerns the fact that many persons of Japanese descent have already put down roots in Japanese society and are cultivating various different family ties and social environments. While it depends on the approach, the decision to not admit ethnic Japanese anymore would likely prompt a wide range of confusion and problems. I believe that considerations must be devoted to these points as well. At the same time, it will also be necessary to revamp the systems currently in force to help ensure that such ethnic Japanese send their children to school, enroll in social insurance plans, and otherwise act with responsibility.
For the second part of your question, concerning whether I intend to express these opinions, I have in fact spoken my mind right here. However, as I have not yet concluded how to respond to the proposal of the Justice Ministry, I need to ponder that issue in greater depth.

Q: You stated your concern about the rise in crimes committed by foreigners since 2001. Are there actually statistics showing that crimes by foreigners are up, or is this the result of the impression generated by the fact that crimes perpetrated by foreigners have just happened to be high-profile offenses and stand out?
A: We have statistics on crimes by foreigners, broken down at both the prefectural level for Shizuoka and the municipal level for Hamamatsu. Examining the data for Hamamatsu City, crimes by foreigners over the past five years, for example, have not charted conspicuous growth. In fact, such crimes have been committed in roughly the same volume over these years. However, when we look at the percentages of persons who commit crimes—that is, the number of arrests versus the population in Hamamatsu—the arrest rates of foreigners are considerably higher than those for all citizens. Inquiring from police sources, meanwhile, I have received reports that the percentage of foreigners held in detention centers or otherwise kept in custody is also higher than the rate recorded for citizens in general. While there is naturally no comparison to the situation 15 years ago, when hardly any foreigners resided in Hamamatsu, when we look at the statistics, we do find that the percentage of crimes committed by foreigners to the total number of crimes runs high.
In a certain sense, however, I feel there is a tendency to play up crimes that are committed by foreigners. It is critical, therefore, to constantly strive to prevent this from being taken out of context and fueling perceptions that can lead to the ostracizing of foreigners. Rather, I believe it is our responsibility to provide foreigners with stable lifestyles, because progress on that front will lead to curbs on crime.

Q: I want to return to the Justice Ministry project team mentioned previously. With regard to Japanese language proficiency of foreigners, the project team proposes that certain levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test be required from here on. The thinking there is that because one of the major reasons that many foreigners staying in Japan have difficulties in blending into their communities is poor Japanese language skills, persons failing to attain a certain degree of Japanese proficiency should be denied entry. There was also mention of the thinking that demanding respectable language skills from foreigners already living here would complete the ideal scenario. What are your feelings on this point based on your knowledge of Hamamatsu, a community with a large foreign population?
A: I touched upon the general thinking on the admission of ethnic Japanese in replying to the earlier question. With regard to how we should approach requirements for Japanese language proficiency when accepting foreigners into Japan, I agree with the common wisdom that it is important for foreigners living in Japan to become assimilated into the local society, with language skills providing a critical means toward that end. Based on that, I believe that any decisions on what level of Japanese language skills to demand should be classified by specific visa status. Then, if a policy was adopted demanding Japanese language skills, the Japanese government should take steps to supply foreigners wishing to enter Japan with opportunities to gain some proficiency in the language while they are still overseas. At the same time, if the decision were made to require specific levels of Japanese language skills at the time that foreigners in Japan apply for visa extensions, similar opportunities for Japanese study would need to be provided domestically in Japan as well. Failure by the government to take such actions and simply demand that foreigners coming or living here master Japanese would hardly be a viable policy.

Q: Does Hamamatsu City differentiate in its policies for foreigners seeking to become permanent residents depending on if they are of Japanese descent or other ethnic backgrounds? If there are differences, please explain why they exist.
A: Basically speaking, I favor consistent policies regardless of whether someone is Japanese in background or from a different ethnic group. In reality, however, in Hamamatsu the number of ethnic Japanese from Latin American countries is high, a situation that has pressured us to mount coherent responses to the needs of those people over the years to date. From here on, however, we must pursue common policies not only for ethnic Japanese but for all other foreigners coming to Japan as well. That ranks as a critical theme over the years to come.


* Given on June 22, 2006, at the Foreign Press Center/Japan. This paper is reserved for internal use; any reproduction or quotation is forbidden without prior permission from the FPC. 　

©FPC 2006