Alien residents
If you live in Japan for more than ninety days you need to register yourself as a resident and carry the Residence Card (the “zairyu” card). It used to be called the Alien Registration Card (“gaikokumintorokumishoumeshou”). When I first came to Japan the Alien Registration Card bore my photograph as well as my fingerprint. In Japan, fingerprinting, like tattooing, is strongly associated with criminals, and thanks to the persistent protest of resident Koreans in Japan (the descendants of wartime slave labor who comprise a special element in Japan’s population, with a unique Immigration status), the fingerprinting requirement was abandoned. Later, thanks to the persistent protesting of registered foreigners who objected to being called “Aliens,” the name of the card was changed. The card was also updated. Bearing a computer chip within it, my visa is now programmed into my card rather than stamped into my passport. (My visa is called the “eijuken,” or Permanent Residence Visa.) Other vital information like my name, my address, my employment, etc., is similarly programmed into the card, which can easily be read and displayed on a computer screen by Customs and Immigration officials, or police, etc. - whoever has the equipment and software to do it. If the police stop me for anything at all - like a random identity check, which sometimes happens - I’d better be sure to have my zairyu card on me or else there will be hell to pay. The law requires us to have the card on our person at all times outside our doors. That means, even if I am just taking the garbage downstairs, or even just standing a meter or so from my door, I need the card. You think it’s ridiculous? Wait until the police happen by and ask to see it as part of their security measures.
These days, not only is foreign tourism quickly increasing in this country but, with a slow and steadily aging and shrinking population, so too is the number of foreign workers living here, most of whom are registered, long-term foreign workers. But despite the practical need for and benefits of foreign labor to keep the Japanese economy chugging along, Japanese people really don’t like foreigners very much. They prefer that we come, work for a little while, and then fuck off and go back to where we came from. They feel nervous if we stay and settle down. To address Japanese citizens’ discomfort, many of Tokyo’s 23 Wards began several years ago to erect signs like those above, warning/advising/informing citizens of the presence of foreign residents in their midst, in their neighborhoods. The blue signs, with white silhouettes, look distinctly like a movie studio alien from outer space. So, despite the zairyu card, we are back to the alien thing again. I don’t know if anyone is protesting the signs (yet). Maybe in a few years they will be abandoned and replaced by something new.