The Japanese mass media has been reporting a rising number of foreign workers in Japan based on data published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The Ministry's data, however, is neither derived from a comprehensive database of foreign workers, nor is it a credible source of information about the foreign workforce. This paper explains how the ministry arrives at its figures, why the reported rapid increase over the past decade is incorrect, and pinpoints flaws in its data collection process. Finally, we suggest a new approach for estimating the total number of foreign workers in Japan at a time when the Japanese government has proposed a significant increase in the number of foreign workers.

Since the death of Okinawan Governor Onaga Takeshi on 8 August, the Henoko base construction plan has been in flux. With the issues coming to a head, the media in Japan and the world shows ever less interest, easing the way for the Abe government to have its way. Crucial phases in the long-running contest between state and prefecture have been noted many times, but perhaps none is comparable to today as the commencement of works to reclaim the base site on Oura Bay is imminent.

Since 2016 over one million Chinese civil servants have been ordered to spend a series of weeks visiting assigned Turkic Muslim “relatives.” These mostly Han urbanites have been tasked with instructing Uyghur and Kazakh farmers in political ideology and subjecting them to tests of Chinese nationalism and Han cultural assimilation. When they occupy the homes of their Turkic “relatives” they assess whether or not they should be sent into the mass “reeducation” camp system. Drawing on ethnographic field research, interviews and state documents, this essay argues that the systematic normalization of state-directed violent paternalism has produced a new kind of banality in Turkic minority experiences of unfreedom.

An unofficial translation by C. Douglas Lummis of excerpts from Chapter 5 of Henoko ni kichi wa tsukurenai (A Base Cannot Be Built at Henoko) by Yamashiro Hiroji and Kitaueda Tsuyoshi (Iwanami Booklet No. 987, 2018). Comments and words added by the translator are placed in square brackets. Three dots indicate sections left out. The purpose of translating just this section is to show that the engineering difficulties faced by the Henoko base project are not the inventions/exaggerations of anti-base activists, but are based on hard scientific data. The data concerning the probable earthquake fault is the result of research carried out by seismologists; the data indicating height limit violations comes from the Okinawa Defense Bureau and has been supported by surveys carried out by skilled surveyors; the tests that produced the N-zero result for part of the sea bottom were also carried out by the Defense Bureau. CDL