Kirk here with an old bit of news that is not Kumamoto specific but applies to Kumamoto as it does to other parts of Japan. The gist of the Japanese headline is “Questioned 30 times by the police because of his appearance (racial profiling).”
As I pointed out in a post about this topic last year, we (whether we have Japanese citizenship or not) are required by law to comply when police question us. The law also states, however, that they may use their questioning power when there is a suspicion of a crime. So, they’re not supposed to be questioning people just because they don’t appear to be Japanese. It’s been a long time since I’ve been questioned but, if it happens to me again, after politely answering all of the questions I plan to ask if there was some reasonable suspicion of a crime that caused them to want to question me. If they say “no” I’ll ask if their questioning me was within the law. If they say “yes” I’ll be curious to know what it was that they suspected or what led them to think their questioning me was reasonable under the law.
Here’s last year’s post on this topic:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20221007/k10013847801000.html
P.S. My interactions with the police in Japan have been largely positive. And, it may be that problems of this sort are more common in Tokyo than Kumamoto. Nonetheless, I have had a few negative experiences here and hope that police awareness of why racial profiling is problematic increases. The fact that the term レイシャルプロファイリング (racial profiling) is beginning to be used in Japanese strikes me as a positive sign; it’s hard to point something out if you can’t name it properly in the language of the person you are speaking to.
