Born and raised in Japan, a 20-year-old college student anxiously awaited the response from a job-search website for new graduates when she sent in her application.

But what she received in a message was an example of the harsh difficulties she has faced in Japan of having a foreign-born father and taking his family name.

“It is very hard for us to say this, but our company is not recruiting foreign students,” part of the message read. “We are extremely sorry.”

“Why this talk of ‘foreign students’ here?” the woman thought. “Well, I am Japanese.”

The woman wiped away the tears that filled her eyes as she began typing a reply.

“To begin from the conclusion, I am Japanese,” she wrote in response. “I regret very much that you took me for a foreigner just because of my name.”

She continued: “It is very rude to assume that a person is, or is not, a foreigner on the basis of the person’s appearance or name alone. I hope you will never do this again in the future. I am declining to file an application to your company this time around.”

The incident in mid-May went viral when the young woman posted her frustration on a social media site. 

The message had come from a personnel affairs official of a consulting firm that she had applied to in a job screening process.

The woman had never told the company about her nationality, so she understood at once that was probably because of her name, which begins with katakana.

The student, born to a Nigerian father and a Japanese mother, holds Japanese nationality.

She took her father's family name. Her first name is written in hiragana, the script for Japanese words, which her mother gave her so she would grow to be lovely.

Her middle name is spelled in katakana, the script for English and other loanwords, which her father gave her so she would live happily.

Her name, which embodies her parents’ wishes, was her pride and joy.

Born and raised in Japan, the woman has never been to Nigeria.

She said she was confident that she is Japanese by identity, even though she has part of her ethnic origins in Nigeria.

“I wouldn’t have been told something like that if only it hadn’t been for this name,” she thought.

EMBARRASSING MEMORIES

The development revived memories in her about how she had often been treated as the “odd one out” since early in her life.

As an elementary school pupil, the woman had to face a steady barrage of questions from her classmates whenever the school classes were shuffled.

“Why do you have black skin?” some would ask her. “You have curly hair,” others would tell her.

An official with a real estate agency had doubts about her nationality when she visited the firm to look for an apartment when she was entering her professional training college.

“Are you really Japanese?” the official asked her. “Do you have any documents to corroborate your nationality?”

She only had an Individual Number Card and a student’s ID card with her. Neither said anything about her nationality.

The woman had no means to satisfy the official, even though she had taken matters of her own nationality for granted.

When she worked part time at a supermarket and a convenience store, customers would often praise her for speaking “good Japanese.” The only thing she could do was to shrug and say “thank you.”

She knows that nobody probably meant to offend her.

As she faced similar reactions repeatedly, however, she came to feel as if her presence was being denied.

The latest reaction shocked her in particular because it came from a personnel affairs department, which was supposed to be familiar with people of diverse backgrounds.

COMPANY’S APOLOGY

Later in the day that she received the message from the company official, she shared posts on a social media platform to explain her situation, with the company name and personal names withheld.

The woman said she did so in the hopes that the presence of Japanese with diverse origins will become more visible so that fewer people like her will feel offended the way she had been. 

“I want it to be understood that it is very rude to make assumptions about a person’s nationality on the basis of the name alone,” she said in one of her posts.

She received a number of comments from fellow internet users who criticized the company, for example, for being “anachronistic” and “thoughtless.”

The woman’s posts also caught the attention of other people of overseas origins.

“I have also experienced something like that,” one said. “I know very much what you are feeling,” said another.

“I was so grateful that many people encouraged me on social media,” the student said. “I hope this will help make certain that every single member of the public will be more considerate to diverse individuals around them.”

The company in question is World System Consultant, an information technology consulting firm based in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward.

The student said she received an apology from the company’s personnel affairs official.

“We are very sorry for having offended you because of the way we reacted,” part of the message read. “We will take it seriously and improve our practices in the future. We realize we did a very shameful act.”

World System Consultant officials declined to be interviewed by The Asahi Shimbun.

“We cannot comment on the matter because our public relations official is out,” the company said. “We cannot say when the official can be available to be interviewed.”

NOT THE FIRST CASE

Another case of discrimination against a job-hunting student of overseas origin attracted public attention in the past.

In 2022, beef bowl restaurant chain operator Yoshinoya Holdings Co. mistook a job-hunting student who held Japanese nationality for a foreign national because of her name and rejected her from participating in a recruitment event.

Yoshinoya apologized for scandals, including this one, at a general meeting of shareholders.

In a 2021 survey conducted by the Kwansei Gakuin University Institute for Human Rights Research and Education of 105 individuals of overseas origins who had conducted job hunting, 40 percent of the respondents said they had felt discrimination and prejudice because of their nationalities, names and other attributes.

The government’s Vital Statistics show that, between 2013 and 2022, some 32,000 to 36,000 of the children born every year in Japan, or about 4 percent of the total number, had one or both parents of non-Japanese nationality. The total number of similar children topped 340,000 over the decade from 2013.

The actual proportion of children with overseas origins is presumably larger because children with grandparents of non-Japanese nationalities and other similar cases are not included in the figures.

LABOR MINISTRY’S STANCE

As job-hunting students are coming to have increasingly diverse origins, government officials said they have a policy on employment discrimination based on origins, both ethnic and otherwise.

“Assumptions made by the hiring companies on the basis of one-sided information alone could lead to employment discrimination, so we hope they will open the door to a broad range of job applicants and screen them on the basis of their aptitude and capabilities,” said an official with the Employment Support Office under the labor ministry’s Employment Security Bureau.

The official also pointed out that even if an applicant is non-Japanese by nationality, it is “not desirable” for a hiring company to reject the job seeker from the recruitment process on grounds of a foreign nationality.

A labor ministry guidebook titled “Toward fair employment screening,” which describes items that require due consideration by the hiring companies, says, “It should be understood that soliciting registered domicile information from applicants is an act that discomforts many people because that could invite origin-based discrimination and prejudice.”

Labor ministry officials said that, on the basis of that policy, they make a point, whenever they have received complaints at public employment security offices or other branches of the ministry, of confirming the facts with the hiring companies and instructing them to rectify any problems.

As things now stand, however, no laws or regulations are available to ban origin-based employment discrimination under the threat of penalties in the same way the Equal Employment Opportunity Law bans gender-based discrimination.