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239 “We exist.” This is what one Zainichi Korean1 woman asserted in a nongovernmental organization report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which oversees the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).2 She was also directing her words toward the Japanese government, and Japanese society in general. But why did she have to say those words? A non-Japanese reader may understand that minorities exist in all countries, and may also be interested in how they came to be there, and what their relationship with the host country is like today. But few Japanese know or care about these issues. Japanese schools do not spend much time on the history of Japan’s past feudal, caste-like social system, or its assimilation policies for indigenous peoples, or its colonizing. Perhaps therefore, many are unaware of Japanese minorities today. Hence, Doudou Diene, special rapporteur on racism of the UN Commission on Human Rights, reported in January 2006, following his visit to Japan on a formal mission, “ . . . racial discrimination and xenophobia do exist in Japan, and these affect three circles of discriminated groups: the national minorities—the Buraku people, the Ainu, and the people of Okinawa; people from and descendants of people from former Japanese colonies—Korea and China; and foreigners and migrants from other Asian countries and from the rest of the world” (Diene 2006). Especially absent in Japan is awareness regarding the lives of women in minority communities. At the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, and in the five-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing+5) held in the UN General Assembly in 2000, indigenous women3 strongly criticized the platform for action, pointing out that regarding women’s equal access and full participation in decision-making, equal status, equal pay, etc., “These objectives are hollow and meaningless if the inequality between nations, races, classes, and genders, are not challenged at the same time.”4 Yuriko Hara Translated by Malaya Ileto ainu, Buraku, and Zainichi Korean activists rise up 17 240 The United Nations took up the issue of multiple discrimination only recently, for example, in General Recommendation twenty-five of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) on “Gender -related dimensions of racial discrimination,” adopted in March 2000 (UNCERD2000).CERDpointedoutthat“Therearecircumstancesinwhich racial discrimination only or primarily affects women, or affects women in a different way, or to a different degree than men” and that “Certain forms of racial discrimination may be directed towards women specifically because of their gender.” This included “sexual violence committed against women members of particular racial or ethnic groups in detention or during armed conflict; the coerced sterilization of indigenous women; abuse of women workers in the informal sector or domestic workers employed abroad by their employers.”5 CERD made clear that it is important for each state to collect information on these issues, and analyze and make appropriate policies in response. Since then, signatories of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination have begun to include the perspective of gender, and information regarding gender, in their reports.6 Resolutions and agreements regarding multiple forms of discrimination were passed at the same time in various bodies of the UN.7 In 1985, Japan ratified CEDAW. Yet, the government seemed unaware of its duty to comply with the convention and to seek to eradicate discrimination against all women in Japan, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, civil rights, or legal status.8 Despite minority women’s efforts to communicate their situation and demands to the government, for a long time, the government showed no willingness to listen.9 In late 1999, minority women from different communities began taking part in a yearlong series of workshops on multiple discrimination against minority women sponsored by the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism—Japan Committee ((IMADR-JC).10 At each monthly session, one of the participants would raise a topic for discussion, giving Ainu, Buraku, Zainichi Korean, Okinawan, migrant, and disabled women the opportunity to learn from each other about multiple forms of discrimination, and recognize their shared concerns. Unfortunately , however, they lacked specific data to support descriptions of their realities and to allow them to work toward seeking solutions to problems. The examination by the CEDAW Committee in July 2003 of Japan’s fifth periodic report on the implementation of the convention provided the...

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