IBARAKI RACISM!

Le Monsieur doesn't like this kind of thing.

The poster above is from Ibaraki, a prefecture near Tokyo where they apparently have such an issue with invading "foreigners" that they feel the need to place posters on the walls to tell everybody that they should be on the look out for them a la the not so hot uniformed officers in the picture who could be of any nationality, if we're honest!

If it wasn't for the vaguely racist intentions of this, it'd be funny. But, it isn't. Why is it that during my almost four years in Tokyo I saw nothing on this scale in the poster area? To be honest, I'm all for rooting out the illegals who make life Hell for all the honest people who make an honest living, contributing to society as anybody in their own country would, but this is ridiculous! Sad thing is that the average just off the plane foreigner in Japan who can't read Japanese without the aid of a friend is unlikely even to realise that they are being violated in public by posters like this.

Personally speaking, I've never had any such problems with racism in Japan, in fact the most racist people of all are the foreigners themselves to my mind, but I realise that with posters like this things aren't going to get better soon. Thank God Tokyo is used to it's foreign population to a degree - not comfortable, but used to them -whilst rural areas have less in general so tend to make a bigger fuss of their presence than in really necessary. I'm not forgiving them or even excusing them, if people put up anti Japanese posters in London there'd be an outcry, so why the authorities of Ibaraki consider it appropriate to place blatantly discriminate literature on their walls and stations is both beyond me and offensive.

Although I do think that there people of a suspicious nature in Japan - even I have my suspicion alarm on with some foreigners, but that's common sense rather than the pure unabated racism that many local authorities seek to promote so openly - I do think there are better ways of doing it than the present system. If people actually did something about it, rather than merely tolerate it things might change sooner rather than later. Easier said than done, of course, but every seed needs to be planted to grow. And removing the weeds is even more vital along the way!

Le Monsieur.