JAPAN: Finnish Lawmaker Inspires Hope among Resident Foreigners

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Feb 19 2002 (IPS) - Japan’s first blue-eyed lawmaker, a Finnish- born former missionary who took a seat in the Japanese parliament last week, faces a tough test in initiating changes in this homogenous society.

Marutei Tsurunen, 61, made history when he took over from a member of the Democratic Party who resigned from the Upper House in protest of his party’s policies, to become the first non-Asian in the Diet.

The first Western municipal assembly member of Yugawara, in Kanagawa, bordering Tokyo, Tsurunen has lived in Japan for 34 years. He obtained Japanese nationality in 1979, and is married to a Japanese national.

“I feel my time has come,” an excited Tsurunen told reporters soon after his appointment. “I am ready to work to bring changes to Japan,” said the politician whose mission is to end discrimination against resident foreigners in the country.

Commentators, however, concede the slightly-built Tsurunen, who arrived in Japan as a missionary, has it easier said than done.

“The system is too ingrained to make changes in Japan. I don’t expect (much) from Tsurunen,” opines Vietnamese Catholic priest Pham Linh Son, who works with migrant labour.

Tsurunen is campaigning for better treatment for Japan’s growing foreign migrant community and a system where foreign children can keep their own cultural identity while being part of the Japanese educational system.

“As foreigners we must be inside the system but not assimilate,” he said recently.

Japan’s foreign population is now around two million, or less than two percent of its 124 million population. Close to 90 percent of the foreigners are second or third generation Koreans who do not have Japanese nationality but speak and read the language of their country of birth.

They are lobbying hard for better protection of their human rights in a society that still harbours distrust of foreigners.

Against such a backdrop, expectations of changes by Tsurunen run high.

“Tsurunen must work hard to make Japan a better place for foreigners. Otherwise we will be very disappointed,” says Nobuyuki Sato, a spokesman for the Research Action Institute for the Koreans in Japan, a lobby group.

A major bone of contention with foreign groups has been Tokyo’s reluctance to extend voting and other rights to non-Japanese nationals, or residents of Korean descent who were born in Japan.

Thus, the Korean population here hopes that Tsurunen will work to change discriminatory practices such as the lack of public funds for Korean schools in Japan.

There are currently 640,000 Koreans — both from the north and south of the peninsula — living in Japan. About one-fourth of them have Japanese nationality, although Sato says, exact numbers are difficult since some prefer not to reveal their Korean identity.

Tsurunen, whose Finnish name is Marti Turunen, acknowledges foreigners face a hard time in Japan.

“Many Japanese feel foreigners are guests, even though many of them have lived long in Japan and are fluent in the language and well immersed in the culture,” he says, adding he is also viewed in the same light in the political world.

“I am considered an outsider in the Japanese parliament,” he explains.

But still the salt-and-pepper-haired Tsurunen says Japan has changed a lot since he first arrived here in 1967.

“The younger generation is more accepting of foreign politicians. As well, ordinary Japanese welcome foreigners and you see inroads being made by foreigners into areas such as sumo wrestling, baseball, and television,” he points out.

Tsurunen, who took a first crack at national politics in 1995 but failed, has earned a reputation for bringing in much wanted transparency in Japanese politics during his stint at Yugawara’s local assembly.

His low-key election campaign for local politics won him much appeal from a public fed up with traditional pork-barrel politics.

The politician, however, acknowledges that national politics is an altogether different arena, where working towards a consensus with bureaucrats is the norm.

Tsurunen is also prudent enough to know when not to rock the boat. “I learned I could get more done by not being confrontational, but by toeing the line,” he says.