Japan combats rise in hate speech

Japan isn't combating the rise in hate speech or any other form of racism because they refuse to acknowledge that it's even happening.   Go to any public school in Japan everyday for a month and you'll discover that it's not just students but teachers who are complicit in the scourge of racism which is pervasive within Japanese society. While schools are just a microcosm of the larger problem doesn' excuse the fact that these types of behaviours  can be witnessed across a much broader spectrum from the news media to entertainment and within the government itself.   Japan is doing what it does best pretend to confront a difficult social issue then sweep it all under the carpet after the spotlight has been removed and the intense scrutiny ends.

Japan is the only developed country without anti-discrimination laws, and ethnic Koreans are often targeted

  On a chilly February evening in 2013, Shinhae Lee, a journalist and ethnic Korean woman who has lived in Japan her whole life, was at home by herself in Osaka when her computer pinged with a message from a friend. It said the leader of the nationalist group Zaitokukai had just announced on the Internet that he was sending her a spike, known in Japanese lore for its ability to curse someone to death.Sensing she was up against thousands of faceless ultranationalists who wished her the worst, Lee went to the police, who said there was nothing they could do. She had been told the same thing two years earlier, when she reported that she felt threatened by a wave of hateful comments online and in public. A 44-year-old freelance writer who lives with her Japanese husband and teenage son, Lee got on Zaitokukai’s radar in 2011 after criticizing the group, which claims to have about 15,000 members, in a series of articles and TV appearances. Zaitokukai followers retaliated against Lee at rallies and on social media, calling her a “Korean hag” and other ethnically and sexually charged invectives. Once, after a Tokyo protest, a 28-year-old office worker wrote on Twitter, “Let’s expel Koreans, the good ones and bad ones, and let’s kill that woman,” referring to Lee. The police questioned him, and he apologized, but she was deeply shaken by how casually and gleefully strangers could champion her murder.