Photo/Illutration Moe Miyashita, center, a lawyer with the Tokyo Bar Association, addresses racial profiling in Japan at a news conference in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward on Sept. 9. (Takuro Negishi)

The Tokyo Bar Association released the results of a survey on Sept. 9 that suggests those with Latin American, African or Middle Eastern roots are more likely than other foreigners to be subjected to police questioning. 

Moe Miyashita, a lawyer with the Tokyo Bar Association’s committee on the rights of foreign nationals, called on the government to investigate racial profiling by Japanese police in light of the troubling survey results.

“I’m concerned that police consider people who look like foreign nationals as subjects for a criminal watch,” she said at a news conference. “It is necessary to create guidelines for police checks to prevent discrimination and a system that allows police questioning to be examined later.”

The online survey obtained responses from January to February from 2,094 people living in Japan who have a foreign background, including some Japanese nationals.

The survey revealed that 63 percent of respondents were questioned in the past five years.

Those whose outward appearances make it easy to recognize that they are foreigners were more likely to have been questioned by police.

By ethnic origins, the highest percentage had a Latin American background, at 84 percent. That was followed closely by those with African heritage at 83 percent, and those with Middle Eastern roots at 76 percent.

North Americans were less frequently questioned but still stood at 60 percent, while those with Northeast Asian backgrounds were stopped even less, at 50 percent.

The survey also revealed differences based on gender. Fifty-one percent of women said they were questioned by police officers, while 70 percent of men said they were questioned.

The Police Duties Execution Law stipulates that police officers can question someone when they identify probable cause.

Most of the respondents questioned by police, at 77 percent, said they thought police had no reason to do so.

Sixty percent said the police officers that questioned them were “polite” or “rather polite.” But 70 percent said they were offended by the police checks or by the officers’ attitudes.

Although police questioning is voluntary, 90 percent of respondents said they were not told that they did not have to respond to any questions they did not want to answer. Fifty percent said police officers searched their luggage.

One respondent wrote in an optional comment field that they were told by police, “We are checking you carefully because you are a foreign national.”

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