"Now!! Bad foreigners are devouring Japan," screams the warning, surrounded by gruesome caricatures of foreigners who look like savages, with blood red eyes and evil faces.
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| The subtitle along the bottom of special edition magazine Kyogaku no Gaijin Hanzai Ura Fairu (Shocking Foreigner Crime: the Underground File) asks, "Are we allowing foreigners to devastate Japan?" with a tiny qualifier "some" on the first kanji. YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO |
This is the cover of Kyogaku no Gaijin Hanzai Ura Fairu (Shocking Foreigner Crime: the Underground File), a special-edition magazine published by Tokyo-based Eichi that has triggered public outrage and caused Family Mart to call it discriminatory and pull it off the shelves.
The 125-page single edition is about crimes committed by non-Japanese.
The pages are filled with crime stories and photographs of alleged crimes being committed, drug deals, stabbings, gang fights and arrests -- all of them involving people from a wide range of countries. Some of the nationalities named are Iranian, Chinese, South Korean, Brazilian and Nigerian.
A spokesman for Family Mart, the main distributor, said that two days after the magazine was released at the end of January, it began receiving e-mail complaints.
According to a leaflet circulated by a group of protesters, the magazine "gives discriminatory statements and images about non-Japanese residents of Japan."
After receiving more than 10 complaints, Family Mart took a closer look at the magazine.
"When we read it, we found some expressions to be discriminatory and decided to stop selling the book," said the spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
On Feb. 5, the firm ordered all its 6,800 outlets nationwide to remove the magazine from the shelves and shipped them back to Eichi. It said that of the 15,000 copies in stock -- of the 20,000 to 30,000 that had been printed -- 1,000 were sold.
Shigeki Saka, editor of the magazine, claimed Eichi did not intend to discriminate against foreigners but wanted to provide an opportunity for "discussion" about the issue.
"This book was not originally published for foreign readers," Saka said. "It was to raise the issue (of crimes committed by foreigners) in Japanese society. . . . But I believe the foreigners have the fear that they will be viewed in the same way" as criminals.
Carlo La Porta, whole holds British and Italian citizenship and has lived in Tokyo for 16 years, said he thought the magazine painted foreigners as criminals.
The magazine "brings a problem into focus without adding perspective to it, and as such implies that foreigners at large commit a lot of crimes," La Porta said.
Although the headline of a feature interview with a former Metropolitan Police Department investigator, on the magazine cover, says, "In 2007, anyone could be the target of foreigner crime!!" the number of crimes committed by non-Japanese has actually fallen recently. Continued online by clicking on the title bar...........
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