Published on September 17, 2019.
This essay criticizes the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Japan’s hate speech legislation, Zaitokukai, Yoshifu Arita, the Asahi Shimbun, Korean schools, and the UN human rights framework, arguing that Japan has been unfairly portrayed internationally as a racist country.

September 17, 2019.
Many Japanese people must feel furious reading this passage.
Knowing the terrible nature of Arita and the Asahi Shimbun, like traitors to the nation.
The following is a chapter published on August 18, 2018.
In connection with the United Nations, I also found the following article published by the Asahi Shimbun on November 14, 2014.
Reading this article, I thought of how an extremely small group called Zaitokukai, which 99.9 percent of the Japanese people do not even know about, and which seems almost like a gathering of resident Koreans itself, somehow assembled in front of a Korean school and hurled unbearable abuse through loudspeakers.
Then, for some reason, without a moment’s delay, Arita Yoshifu appeared at the scene, recorded it, and took it to the UN Human Rights Committee in Switzerland.
As though 99.9 percent of the Japanese people, who know nothing at all about such people, were doing such things, they publicized it.
In the end, they had the United Nations issue recommendations saying that Japan was a country of hate speech, and had Japan create a hate speech law domestically.
Reading this article, I became convinced that the so-called Zaitokukai, the Korean school, Arita, and the others were in a match-pump relationship and that it was a fixed game.
The reason is that the words shouted by those called Zaitokukai were carefully selected words to which the members of the UN Human Rights Committee, who know nothing, would certainly react.
Just as the Personal Information Protection Law that they once had created has, in reality, become a law that protects various kinds of evil people, I feel that there is something behind this hate speech law as well.
http://www.asahi.com/shimbun/aan/column/20141114.html
Asahi Shimbun Company Information > AJW Forum > Column.
We Live in a Dangerous and Shameful Age: UN Committee Takes a Strict View on Racial Discrimination.
Arita Yoshifu / Member of the House of Councillors.
November 14, 2014.
Mr. Arita Yoshifu.
The review of Japan by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was held on August 19 and 20 at the Palais Wilson in Geneva, Switzerland, the building that houses the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
After observing it, I headed for Kraków, Poland.
A short distance from the city center is the Schindler Museum.
It is a war museum named after the man known from Schindler’s List, who saved about 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust.
Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.
This is recorded in world history as the outbreak of the Second World War.
AJW Forum English-language essay.
At that time, in Kraków’s central square, banners bearing the swastika, the symbol of the Nazi Party, were hung here and there.
As I followed the museum exhibits, including weapons of the resistance, my eye stopped at one poster.
It said, “Jews are lice.”
There were also signs posted by the Nazis on streetcars and in parks saying “No Jews Allowed.”
This was the starting point for confinement in ghettos and mass slaughter at Auschwitz and elsewhere.
Japan is now “at this stage.”
That is what I thought.
＊A traitorous legislator named Arita said such a thing, and the Asahi Shimbun gleefully reported it; one is left speechless.
It is not only hate speech, discriminatory incitement and expression, that excludes other ethnic groups.
The “Japanese Only” banner displayed at a soccer venue and made into a social issue also crossed my mind.
Immediately before the review of Japan by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination began, an informal briefing was given to the committee members by Japanese NGOs.
It was striking to see the committee members watching intently a video of about five minutes summarizing hate speech being carried out in Japan.
“Koreans are cockroaches,” “We will carry out a Tsuruhashi massacre,” Tsuruhashi being a district in Osaka where many Koreans live, and so on.
The video showed ugly scenes of discrimination.
During the review, many committee members expressed harsh opinions toward the Japanese government, including their impressions of this video.
I will introduce several of those opinions.
“Implement the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination within the framework of the Constitution.”
“Responding to hate speech does not conflict with freedom of expression.”
Committee member Vázquez, United States.
“Incitement to violence is not freedom of expression but violence.”
“Advocacy of violence can be distinguished from freedom of expression.”
Committee member Diaconu, Romania.
“They say there is no serious racial discrimination, but Japan’s situation is not so bright.”
Committee member Huang, China.
＊To begin with, there was not a single Japanese committee member, and China, the world’s largest and worst state of human-rights violations and racial discrimination, not only sent committee members for two terms, but calmly said such things.
What can this be called, if not the extreme of evil, bottomless evil?
Arita’s conduct as a national traitor is beyond discussion.＊
Regarding the demonstrations, there were also harsh opinions such as, “It looks as if the police are accompanying the perpetrators,” and “In most countries, they would be arrested, taken away, and imprisoned.”
Committee member Yeung, Mauritius.
“The Japanese government ignores reality.”
In response to the results of the Japan review, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination published its “concluding observations” on August 29 and called for the enactment of a “comprehensive law prohibiting racial discrimination.”
Japanese reporting focused on the hate speech issue, but the review was in fact wide-ranging.
After the hate speech issue, the next matter taken up was the exclusion of Korean high schools from tuition-free programs.
In addition, strict recommendations were made to the Japanese government regarding the Ainu people, Japan’s indigenous people, the Ryukyu and Okinawa issues, the Buraku issue, resident Koreans, migrants, refugees, and others.
It is not only that the Japanese government’s response has been delayed.
Judging from international human-rights standards established after the war, based on the experience of the age of totalitarianism such as Nazi Germany, Japan’s present situation is dangerous.
＊Many Japanese people must feel furious reading this passage.
Knowing the terrible nature of Arita and the Asahi Shimbun, like traitors to the nation.＊
Listening to the Japanese government’s answers to the committee members’ harsh questions, the phrase “ignoring reality” came to mind.
This was the third review of Japan, following those in 2001 and 2010.
＊Stories brought in by such people were treated as though they were the reality of Japan, and the anti-Japanese discriminationists of the UN Human Rights Committee criticized Japan without being ashamed of their own shamelessness.＊
Everything was contained in the statement by Committee member Yeung, who said, “We have no choice but to repeat the same questions until we hear satisfactory answers.”
Even when recommendations are issued, the Japanese government is “deaf to them” and “like chanting a sutra into a horse’s ear.”
It is as if nothing had happened.
The only slight movement was that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito each created a hate speech project team.
However, compared with what reality demands, this is still no more than standing at the starting point.
It was symbolic that at the first meeting of the LDP project team, an opinion was voiced that demonstrations in front of the National Diet should be regulated.
Although it was later withdrawn, even the meaning of hate speech had not been understood.
In the Diet, gatherings protesting hate speech were held three times from March 2013, and a “Hate Speech Study Group” was also held.
As an extension of that, in April 2014, a nonpartisan “Parliamentary League Seeking a Basic Law for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” was formed, chaired by Ogawa Toshio.
Japan joined the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 1995.
That was thirty years after the convention was adopted by the United Nations in 1965.
Nearly twenty more years have passed since then.
The Japanese government has neglected to concretize the convention domestically.
The situation has continued in such a way that Japan cannot avoid being called a human-rights backward country.
＊There is surely not a single decent citizen who would not feel nauseated listening to this man.
What a lowest-of-the-low man this Arita is.
What a group of lowest-of-the-low people the Asahi Shimbun is, treating such a man’s story as truth, jointly reporting it to the United Nations, and gleefully reporting on it!＊
Hate speech is not only carried out on the streets by Zaitokukai and others raising swastika flags.
On the internet, even more ugly discrimination and attacks are anonymously carried out against individuals.
Japanese society is deepening its sense of stagnation.
Even in ordinary towns, abusive words such as “traitor to the nation” and “national enemy” are hurled at people one dislikes.
Even weekly magazines use such words calmly.
An atmosphere like that of prewar and wartime Japan is spreading.
In Japan, nearly seventy years after the war, there has never been an age in which such a foul current has flowed.
We live in a dangerous and shameful age.
Where is the path to breakthrough?
Among actions opposing discrimination, the younger generation is increasing.
Women in particular are becoming sensitive and raising their voices in politics.
The path toward international human-rights standards for Japan is the task of building a society based on human dignity.
＊There is no doubt whatsoever that Zaitokukai, Arita, the Korean Peninsula, Chongryon, and China are connected.＊
Arita Yoshifu.
Born in Kyoto in 1952.
As a freelance journalist, he pursued issues such as the Unification Church and the Aum Shinrikyo incident.
First elected in the 2010 House of Councillors election, proportional representation, Democratic Party.