re: #292 electrotek

I disagree. From the same piece linked:

That started with the Iranians in the 1990s. When the economy turned and these invited workers lost jobs they started selling counterfeit phone cards (provided by the yakuza). Every once in awhile a guy would get caught on a stolen bike, which is a laugh because bikes get stolen all the time by drunks needing to get home from the train station. And then there were a couple of guys busted selling pot and meth (a very popular drug in Japan). And that was it: the media went all out anti-foreigner (but everyone knew it didn’t mean white people the West). Writers at the Japan Times did great work showing how the percentage of foreigners committing crimes of the foreign community was minuscule compared to the number of Japanese committing the same kinds of crimes. It didn’t matter.

So, many of the Iranians were forced or pressured to leave. What was next? As you know, foreigners of Japanese descent, esp. from Brazil and Peru. Hey, they look like us, what could go wrong? Well, they were Brazilians and Peruvians, not Japanese.

I love a lot about Japan, but the xenophobia there can get kicked into overdrive very quickly, and it can get turned into policy quickly, too.