'We were told to target foreigners': Ex-officer on systematic racial profiling by Japan police

TOKYO -- Police in a west Japan prefecture engaged in persistent and systematic racial profiling ordered by senior officers, targeting foreigners for questioning, ID checks and searches, a former inspector with the force revealed to The Mainichi in a recent interview.

"In the time I was in the local policing section, we were told to target foreigners for questioning and check their foreign resident registration cards. There was also a 'cracking down on foreigners' month when we were ordered to put extra effort into checking cards, but also searching foreigners for drugs, knives or anything else illegal," Taro Yamada (a pseudonym) told The Mainichi. Yamada, who joined the police in the 2000s and served for over 10 years, added that the order had come from the criminal investigation division, with a particular emphasis on catching visa violators.

He continued that during the crackdown month, officers were given forms to record the personal details -- resident card number, birthday, country of origin, "everything" -- of each foreigner they stopped to question. These forms were then submitted to not just the local policing division, but also the criminal investigation and public security divisions.

"After the month-long crackdown, I saw that there had been more visa overstayers caught, and I thought we'd had a positive effect," Yamada said. "But later, I came to think that orders really emphasizing that we had to 'crack down on foreigners' -- in other words judging people by their appearance alone -- were a human rights violation."

According to Yamada, there was no focus on questioning particular ethnicities when he was a patrol officer, but he did encounter deep biases against residents with darker skin.

"Officers around me including my immediate superior often said things like, 'People with Black roots, Southeast Asians and so on study ways to kill people. So use your service revolver if you have to! You have no idea what they're going to do.'" Similarly, it was said within the force that officers "'have to be careful patrolling'" in an area with many Korean residents "'because there's no telling what they'll do.'" Yamada added that officers tossed around these comments casually during work and on break, and often referred to foreigners broadly as "aitsura" and "yatsura" -- derogatory words roughly translatable as "those people."

Furthermore, when he was in a desk position, his department passed on a request from the prefectural police chief's office "directing officers to conduct an arrest training exercise simulating a Brazilian person attacking you with a crowbar." This was issued with the justification that "there are many Brazilians in this area."

Yamada told The Mainichi that during his time as an officer and still today, there is a strong assumption in the police that foreigners are likely to be criminals.

"And I think that when police think of a 'foreigner,' they're not picturing someone (of European descent), but a person with darker skin, with Black or Southeast Asian roots and so on. I thought that way. Officers assume (light-skinned people) are tourists or have a Japanese partner. But with people with dark skin, they tend to assume they're visa overstayers."

Asked if, as a young officer, he had taken biases like these uncritically, Yamada replied, "I had no experience as an adult outside the police, so I thought whatever my superior officer said was unquestionable. I just absorbed it without thinking." He added that he was not alone, and that officers who mimicked their superiors' harsher views were praised.

In April 2022, the National Police Agency (NPA) began examining complaints, inquiries, and other consultations with police forces across the country regarding alleged racial profiling. In November 2022, the NPA announced that it had found six cases of police officers questioning people inappropriately or without cause based on national and racial stereotypes in 2021.

Referencing this, Yamada said, "First of all, the police need to admit that they have a racial profiling problem. Racial profiling is a social issue that only the police can solve, so I'd like to see police officers given a thorough education on the subject. Local police officers who do the questioning don't know about this as a problem. They need training so that it will occur to them (that targeting foreigners for questioning) 'might be a human rights violation.' And that needs to happen on an organizational level."

Yamada continued, "I assume there are a lot of racial profiling victims out there who feel there's nothing they can do every time they get questioned and searched. But every police headquarters has a consultation desk, and you can go there and tell them, 'I've been racially profiled, at this time on this date.' Police have to record every consultation, and try to solve the problems brought to them. If more and more racial profiling complaints are filed, I think that the police won't be able to ignore it and will be forced to deal with the problem. It's possible to get the number (of complaints) up to that level, though it will take time and energy."

Furthermore, "When you're approached by police, you can also ask the officers directly, 'Am I suspicious somehow?' And if they reply, 'Well, your hairstyle,' or 'You're a foreigner, aren't you?' that's a violation. Recording that, either on the spot with a voice recorder or later by taking note of the date and time and what the police said to you, is a measure you can take (to provide evidence)."

About his views of the police after leaving the force, Yamada told The Mainichi, "The police are the last resort of those in trouble, and they are there to defend residents. After I left, I realized how painful it must have been for people to be discriminated against by the very force that they needed to protect them. It was tremendously sad, and I was probably a part of that discrimination.

"I want to raise my voice for the very reason that I came from the police system. I want the police to change."

(By Robert Sakai-Irvine and Jun Ida, The Mainichi staff writers)

Police racial profiling in Japan

A Tokyo Bar Association survey of foreign residents and those with foreign roots carried out between January and February 2022 found that 62.9% of the 2,094 respondents claimed they had been questioned by police in the past five years. Of these, 85.4% said that officers approached them while acknowledging that they were someone with foreign roots based on "physical features" and other factors. And some 76.9% believed that there were no other factors than them being "a foreigner or someone with foreign roots" that prompted officers to approach them.

In January 2024, three foreign-born residents of Japan filed suit against the Japanese state, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Aichi Prefecture alleging they had been targeted for police questioning and searches because of their foreign roots, which they argue is a violation of Japan's Constitution and the law governing police conduct.

They are seeking 3.3 million yen (about $22,000) each in compensation, and demanding confirmation from the Tokyo and Aichi Prefectural governments that it is illegal for police officers to stop and question a person because of their race or nationality, and confirmation that the National Police Agency (NPA) is responsible for directing and making sure forces across Japan don't engage in racial profiling. The first hearing in the case was on April 15.