BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 X-WR-CALNAME:www.indybay.org PRODID:-//indybay/ical// v1.0//EN BEGIN:VEVENT UID:Indybay-18765235 SEQUENCE:18883084 CREATED:20141209T012400Z DESCRIPTION:12/12/14 Press Conference And Action-Yumiko Yamamoto And "Nadeshiko Not Welcome In US!\nProtest Japanese Rightist Re-Writing of History Of "Comfort Women" and Further Militarization Of Japan And Asia \nStop Denying The History Of Japanese Military In Subjugation of Women In 2nd WW\nHands Off Korean Japanese children and people in Japan\nYamamoto and "Nadeshiko Action" Not Welcome In US With Racist Ideology and Revisionist Japanese Imperialist History\n\nFriday Dec 12, 2014\nPress Conference 5:00 PM\nProtest 5:30-7pm,\nRedwood City Community Center\n1400 Roosevelt Ave. Redwood City, CA 94061\n\nYumiko Yamamoto is the director of the Japanese group "Nadeshiko Action". Yumiko Yamamoto and her organization denies that the Japanese military subjugated women as sex slaves or as they are called "comfort women". Women from Korea, China, Taiwan and the Philippines were kidnapped by the Japanese military and held as sex slaves. She will be speaking in Redwood City, CA to build support for her reactionary and racist ideology and organization.\nDespite the massive evidence and actual testimony of many of these women who are still alive the Japanese government Prime Minister Abe and the government is seeking to rewrite the history books to censor this history, attacking public school teachers and encouraging the militarization of Japan by eliminating clause 9 of the Japanese constitution which bans offensive military action. The Abe government has also repressed anti-nuclear activists and passed a secrecy law to stop information about these issues from getting out. Even the New York Times has protested these dangerous rightwing repressive laws and whitewashing the real history of the sex slaves.\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/whitewashing-history-in-japan.html?\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/world/asia/japan-fights-a-political-battle-using-history-texts.html?hp&_r=0\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/30/opinion/international/japans-illiberal-secrecy-law.html?ref=opinion\nYumiko Yamamoto and her group "Nadeshiko Action" are part of this effort to deny the history and rebuild Japanese militarism. Yamamoto was also previously the vice president and secretary general of Zaiokukukai, a racist anti-Korean hate group which has organized racist attacks on the Korean Japanese community in Japan. Her group called elementary school children "cockroaches", children of North Korean spies and other harassed the community whipping up nationalism and racism with their call for the elimination of Koreas in Japan.\nwww.youtubel.com/watch?v-a8rd1kXMUM8\n\nPeople in the United States need to let Yamamoto and the growing racists and nationalists in Japan that people in American are opposed to these racist attacks and the censorship of history to deny the role of the Japanese military in subjugating women of Asia as sex slaves.\n\nPlease join the rally and press conference\n\nYamamoto Go Home- Racists and War Mongers Not Welcome In The US\nStop Lying and Falsifying The History of Japanese Military In 2nd World War\nAmericans Oppose Japanese militarization, secrecy laws and US military bases in Okinawa and Japan\nStop The Japanese US War Drive and \n\nEndorsers,\nVeterans For Peace\nNo Nukes Action Committee\nhttp://nonukesaction.wordpress.com/\nUnited Public Workers For Action\n\nTo Endorse And For information call (415)282-1908\ninfo@upwa.info\n\nJapanese Court Rules Against Anti-Korean Hate Group\nAn ultranationalist Japanese group has been fined $120,000 in a landmark case.\nhttp://thediplomat.com/2013/10/japanese-court-rules-against-anti-korean-hate-group/\nBy J.T. Quigley\nOctober 08, 2013\n\nA Japanese court has ordered a far-right hate group to pay 12 million yen ($120,000) to a Kyoto elementary school after the group staged anti-Korean rallies that disturbed classes and frightened students. The landmark ruling marks the first time that insults spewed at such demonstrations have been deemed racial discrimination – deeming the proclamations unprotected by Japan’s constitutional right to free speech. It also bans ultranationalists from rallying outside the pro-Pyongyang elementary school in the future.\n\nThe hate group, called the Zaitokukai (an abbreviation of a name meaning “Citizens’ League to Deny Foreigners Special Rights”), claims to have 14,000 members across Japan. Drawing comparisons to the skinheads and neo-Nazis of the West, Zaitokukai are often young Japanese men seeking a scapegoat for their personal frustrations. Many are unemployed or underemployed and blame foreigners, especially ethnic Koreans, for taking jobs and receiving government welfare. Unlike Western hate groups, however, Zaitokukai generally avoid physical violence.\n\n“Japanese society has been too insensitive to racial discrimination,” said Yoshifu Arita, a lawmaker who is pushing for hate speech legislation in the Japanese parliament, in an interview with Japan Today. “We must take steps to eradicate hate speech against Korean and Chinese people, and address broader discrimination problems.”\n\nKoreans make up the largest ethnic minority group in Japan, with about half a million residing across the country. Many can trace their roots to forced laborers and “comfort women” who were sent to Japan during its colonial expansion in the first half of the 19th century. Koreans still face discrimination when searching for jobs or marriage partners.\n\nThis year has seen a spike in anti-Korean protests, with many Zaitokukai groups descending on the Shin-Okubo neighborhood of Tokyo, known as the city’s “Koreatown.”\n\n“Hundreds of group members and supporters called Koreans ‘cockroaches,’ shouted ‘Kill Koreans’ and threatened to ‘throw them into the sea,’” at a recent demonstration in Tokyo, reported The Japan Times.\n\nCounter-protesters who clashed with Zaitokokai at “hate parades” earlier this year provided a positive signal that Japanese attitudes toward discrimination are changing.\n\n“We are here to protect you. We will never let the right wing protesters come here,” said one anti-hate advocate, according to KoreaBang.\n\n“We can’t hold the Olympics with ethnic discrimination. We shouldn’t hold it with such shame,” said another.\n\nHate aimed at ethnic Korean residents continues, but one man changes\nhttp://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201304280053\nApril 28, 2013\n\nBy HIDEAKI ISHIBASHI/ Staff Writer\nIn early afternoon on a Sunday in March, Makoto Sakurai was spewing words of hate over a loudspeaker from the lead car of a convoy of vehicles in Tokyo’s Shin-Okubo district, known as a Korea town.\n\n“Good afternoon, cockroaches in Shin-Okubo. We are demonstrators from ‘Zen-Nihon Shakai no Gaichu wo Kujoshiyo Seiso-Iinkai’ (All-Japan cleaning committee to expel insects that are noxious to society),” said Sakurai, 41, chairman of the Zainichi Tokken wo Yurusanai Shimin no Kai (Group of citizens that do not tolerate privileges for ethnic Korean residents in Japan), called Zaitokukai.\n\n“Let’s tie ethnic Korean residents in Japan to (North Korea’s) Taepondong (ballistic missiles) and fire them into South Korea,” he said.\n\nAsked why he utters such harsh remarks directed at ethnic Korean residents in Japan, Sakurai replied, “As we are really angry at the behavior of South Korea and North Korea, we even say, ‘Kill them.’ Don’t regard our activities as xenophobia. Don’t misunderstand our anger.”\n\nZaitokukai is a citizens’ group that asserts that ethnic Korean residents in Japan have unfairly obtained or are seeking privileges. The group has protested one issue after another, such as the seeking of suffrage for foreigners, the offering of welfare benefits and the waiving of tuition fees at pro-Pyongyang Korean schools. It has held repeated demonstrations with its members strongly criticizing those measures.\n\nZaitokukai was established at the end of 2006. It claims to currently have 12,000 members.\n\nWhen its hatemongers were holding a demonstration in the Shin-Okubo district on the Sunday in March, counter-demonstrators gathered on the opposite side of the road holding placards. Some shouted, “Zaitoku (meaning Zaitokukai), go home.”\n\nThe skirmish line has been repeated since February.\n\nMeanwhile, a 39-year-old man was watching the protest from the crowd of onlookers as if he was concealing himself.\n\nThe man, whose name is withheld, had participated in demonstrations on behalf of Zaitokukai and other rightist citizens groups 65 times. It was the first time that he witnessed the demonstration from the outside. What he saw made him feel like crying.\n\nHe discovered Zaitokukai several years ago when he was working as an employee of a manufacturing company. In those days, he often felt that Japan was being unfairly treated in business dealings with overseas clients. He also felt that, even in such issues as historical recognition and territorial disputes, Japan was always criticized by other countries.\n\nAt that time, he found Zaitokukai’s videos on the Internet on his home computer. His wife later told him that he was pounding his desk repeatedly in excitement as he watched them.\n\nThe man participated in a Zaitokukai demonstration for the first time in August 2011 in a protest against Fuji Television Network Inc. At that time, Zaitokukai asserted that the broadcaster was biased because it was airing many South Korean dramas.\n\nIn October of that year, he joined a sit-in in front of the headquarters of the Democratic Party of Japan, then the ruling party. He could not overlook the DPJ-led government’s weak attitude to China and South Korea.\n\nIn drinking sessions held at "izakaya," or Japanese-style pubs, after demonstrations, he became friendly with many other members of the group. Some were company employees and others were housewives. He quit his company and started his own business. He now has two children, both of whom are elementary school students.\n\nThe man undertook shooting videos for Nico Nico Nama-Hoso, or the live broadcast portion of the Nico Nico Douga video-sharing website.\n\nCarrying a PC and a video camera, he followed demonstrations and sent videos to the site. Wherever he was asked to go, he went in his car.\n\nHis videos always received many positive comments from viewers. Many of these people were also excited about the demonstrations and later joined them.\n\nIn the campaign for the Dec. 16 Lower House elections, some Zaitokukai members, carrying “hinomaru” national flags, went to hear the campaign speeches being given on the street by Liberal Democratic Party President Shinzo Abe and other LDP lawmakers, who vowed to take back Japan.\n\nThe man heard about the LDP’s crushing victory on election night in his car while he was returning home from a demonstration in a local town. After that, the Abe administration was established.\n\n“(In those days) I felt elation,” he recalled.\n\nAfter that, however, the man felt that he had lost his path. The number of tweets on the social networking site Twitter among Zaitokukai members also decreased sharply.\n\nThen, harsher words began to be used in the group’s demonstrations.\n\nWhen he had been shooting videos for the live Internet broadcasts, he had felt the growing gap of awareness between demonstrators and passers-by. When he voiced his conflicting opinions in drinking sessions held after demonstrations, other members immediately became angry.\n\n“What is the basis of their anger?” he thought.\n\n“I feel that they are only gaining a consensus among themselves by collecting information favorable to their beliefs on the Internet,” he said.\n\nThe man read books written by people in different positions. He learned for the first time the historical process that led to the settlement of ethnic Korean residents in Japan.\n\nIn February, he saw a video of a demonstration held in Osaka, in which he did not participate. In that video, the demonstrators were repeatedly yelling, “Kill Koreans.”\n\nHe took a large drink of his beer.\n\nIn March, a day before the Sunday demonstration in the Shin-Okubo district, he thought seriously about breaking free from Zaitokukai, and finally decided to do so. That night, he aired his break-away declaration from his home in a live broadcast on Nico Nico Nama-Hoso.\n\n“I cannot join any more in demonstrations in which participants yell ‘kill’ or ‘cockroaches.’ Probably, people with different opinions will regard the demonstrators as monsters,” he said.\n\nHis ashtray was filled with cigarette butts.\n\n“They (Zaitokukai members) say that they will break social taboos to convey their anger. But can’t they do so without using such (harsh) words?” he asked.\n\nAfter he aired his declaration in the video, he received a total of 5,471 comments in an hour. One of them read, “You were recognized as an ethnic Korean resident.” Another said, “You should die.”\n\nThis time, the hate was directed at him. He felt extreme fear.\nhttp://www.democraticunderground.com/10024683718\n\nBy HIDEAKI ISHIBASHI/ Staff Writer\n\nTokyo: Ultra-Nationalist Demonstrators Overwhelmed by Anti-Racist Counter-Protest\n\n\nhttp://tokyodesu.com/2014/03/17/pictures-ultra-nationalist-demonstrators-overwhelmed-by-anti-racist-counter-protest/ \n\nYesterday, a hard right, ultra-nationalist group known as the Zaitokukai (roughly translated as: “Citizens Against the Special Privileges of Koreans in Japan”) held a meeting of around 100 members in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district, with a demonstration march planned directly after. \n\nMuch to the surprise and chagrin of the Zaitokukai, however, they found themselves outnumbered three to one by a huge cluster of counter-protesters holding anti-racist signs and shouting down the right wingers as they marched. Taken together with the momentous J-League punishment of the Urawa Reds for racist fan behavior doled out last week, this clash falls just shy of marking a new trend in Japanese anti-racist sentiments, but it certainly points to an increased dialogue on the topic – possibly in light of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. \n\nJapanese court: Anti-Korea 'hate speech' illegal\nhttp://bigstory.ap.org/article/japanese-court-anti-korea-hate-speech-illegal\nBy MARI YAMAGUCHI\n Oct. 8, 2013 12:37 AM EDT\n1278\n4 photos\n •\nIn this photo taken Sunday, May 19, 2013, nationalist protesters with Japanese flags, left, and... Read more\n\nTOKYO (AP) — A Japanese court has ordered a group of anti-Korean activists to pay a Korean school in Kyoto 12 million yen ($120,000) in compensation for disturbing classes and scaring students by shouting "kimchi stinks," ''children of spies" and "destroy Korean schools" and other threats in hate speech rallies outside the school.\n\nMonday's ruling acknowledged for the first time the explicit insults used in the rallies constituted racial discrimination, said human rights experts, lawmakers and others calling for restrictions on hate speech. They said the ruling could prompt a move to exempt such speech from Japan's constitutional right to free speech.\n\nThough attendance at such rallies has been limited to a few hundred people at most and they are far from becoming mainstream, similar demonstrations of nationalists targeting ethnic Koreans and other minorities have escalated since earlier this year, amid Japan's chilly diplomatic relations with its Asian neighbors.\n\nThe rallies highlight why Japan's conformist society has been criticized at home and abroad for being less accepting of racial and ethnic diversity. Discrimination against ethnic Koreans and Chinese dates from Japan's expansionist era in the first half of the 20th century and still runs deep.\n\n"Japanese society has been too insensitive to racial discrimination," said Yoshifu Arita, an opposition lawmaker who is starting a parliamentary panel with a dozen colleagues to introduce hate speech legislation. "We must take steps to eradicate hate speech against Korean and Chinese people, and address broader discrimination problems."\n\nIn the Kyoto District Court ruling, Presiding Judge Hitoshi Hashizume said the language that members of the anti-Korea group Zaitokukai and their supporters shouted and printed on banners during rallies in 2009 and 2010 was illegal, and had disturbed classes and scared the students. The judge said that posting video footage of the rallies on the Web was illegal.\n\nHe said the rallies "constitute racial discrimination" defined under the United Nations' convention on the elimination of racial discrimination, which Japan has ratified.\n\nMonday's ruling banned the group from staging further demonstrations in the neighborhood of the pro-Pyongyang Korean elementary school in southern Kyoto, according to court spokesman Naoki Yokota.\n\nLater Monday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said he was "concerned that similar hate speech rallies might have been disturbing store operations and school classes." Suga promised to take proper actions against the problem by law, but did not elaborate if the government would consider new hate speech legislation.\n\nArita said he hoped the ruling would put a brake on such hate speech rallies elsewhere in Japan.\n\nIkuo Gonoi, an associate professor Takachiho University In Tokyo who researches democracy and demonstrations, said legal restrictions on hate speech need to be carefully considered so the government won't use them arbitrarily to restrict freedom of speech.\n\nThere are about 500,000 Koreans in Japan — the country's largest ethnic minority group — and many are descendants of forced laborers shipped to Japan during its 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea. They still face discrimination in education, marriage and jobs.\n\nAnti-Korean rallies have escalated this year and spread to other cities with Korean communities. In Tokyo's Shin-Okubo district, dotted with Korean restaurants and shops popular among South Korean pop-culture fans, hundreds of Zaitokukai members and supporters have called Koreans "cockroaches," shouted "Kill Koreans" and threatened to "throw them into the sea."\n\nThe rallies have grown more intense, with anti-racism activists yelling back and sometimes getting into scuffles. In June, Zaitokukai leader Makoto Sakurai and seven others from both sides were arrested.\n\nOfficials from Zaitokukai, which has more than 10,000 members, said they were protesting the Kyoto school's use of a nearby city-run park without permission. They say they are protesting alleged "special privileges" given to ethnic Koreans, and say Japan's welfare system is abused by Korean residents.\n\n"Saying 'Let's kill Koreans' isn't illegal, so it's OK to say that. We've kept quiet for too long and we've had enough," Sakurai told The Associated Press at a rally earlier this year. "Koreans hate us so much so we just tell them to go home. Call us racists if you want."\n\nShinichi Tokunaga, a lawyer for the group, criticized the ruling Monday for restricting political expression.\n\nThe school filed the lawsuit in June 2010 against the group and eight activists over rallies held on three occasions between December 2009 and March 2010. The activists threatened Koreans and called them names, causing some children to develop stomach pains, the lawsuit said.\n\nHuman rights experts say Zaitokukai and its sympathizers have intensified their campaign since the Liberal Democratic Party of nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned to power last December.\n\nDuring a parliamentary session in July, Abe called the group's activities "regrettable."\n\nZaitokukai Chairman Makoto Sakurai (left, with fist raised) leads an anti-Korean rally in Tokyo's Akihabara district on May 18. \nhttp://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/11/12/national/head-of-anti-foreigner-group-zaitokukai-to-step-down/#.VIZN8jm5JUQ\n\n\nZaitokukai Chairman Makoto Sakurai (left, with fist raised) leads an anti-Korean rally in Tokyo's Akihabara district on May 18. | KYODO\nNATIONAL\nHead of anti-foreigner group Zaitokukai to step down\nBY TOMOHIRO OSAKI\nSTAFF WRITER\n • NOV 12, 2014\nARTICLE HISTORY\n • PRINT\n • SHARE\n •\n\nThe longtime chairman of the ultranationalist group Zaitokukai has announced he will step down and even give up his membership in the group, saying the move will eventually bolster the organization’s influence.\n\nMakoto Sakurai, whose real name is Makoto Takada, said during a program streamed online on Tuesday that he has decided not to run in Zaitokukai’s biennial leadership election, which is currently underway. He has been chairman of the group for eight years.\n\nHis successor, Sakurai said, will likely be Yasuhiro Yagi, who is currently the group’s deputy chairman and the only candidate running in the election.\n\nSakurai said his tenure will end Nov. 30, at which point he will dissociate himself from the group altogether so “Yagi-san can do his job without having to worry about me.”\n\nHow his resignation will affect future activities of the group, which is often associated with racist remarks including death threats against ethnic Koreans in Japan, remains to be seen. But in a blog post dated Wednesday, Sakurai said he hopes the change in leadership will enable the group to enter a new phase and increase its presence in society.\n\n“I’m really proud that I have been able to be at its top” as the far-right Zaitokukai has evolved into “the most influential group ever in Japan’s (social) campaign history,” he claimed in the blog post.\n\n“I think it’s time for the group to advance to the next step, which is to wield its (growing) influence to take on a full-fledged social revolution. I hope Zaitokukai under (Yagi’s) leadership will carry out that responsibility.”\n\nSakurai wasn’t immediately available for comment.\n\nHe said on the Internet program that after officially leaving the group, he will remain true to his conservative ideology, and participate in future Zaitokukai events in a private capacity whenever possible. If the group asks, he will even consider appearing as a guest speaker, he said.\n\nZaitokukai, which claims on its website to have 15,000 members, decries what it calls the “privileges” of Japan’s ethnic Koreans and their descendants, particularly their special permanent residency status. The group frequently stages vitriolic rallies in Korean neighborhoods such as Tokyo’s Shin-Okubo.\n\nIn what was widely viewed as a political embarrassment for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, recently appointed Cabinet minister Eriko Yamatani was found in September to have been photographed alongside several senior Zaitokukai members in 2009.\n\nSakurai, who is known for his provocative style, grabbed headlines last month when he went on a hostile rant against Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto during what was supposed to be a constructive debate on hate speech, even gesturing in a threatening manner only a minute into the event.\n\n https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/12/08/18765235.php SUMMARY:Stop Racist Attacks In Japan-Press Conference And Action-Yumiko Yamamoto And "Nadeshiko No LOCATION:Redwood City Community Center\n1400 Roosevelt Ave. Redwood City, CA 94061 URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/12/08/18765235.php DTSTART:20141214T010000Z DTEND:20141214T030000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR