I am talking from experience over 3 generations in two families in Japan and in the West. It still leaves the onus on the landlord to pursue a legal case which will take time and energy and not be compensated for … if you can find the individuals. Which is why the Japanese “tribal” system, which generally includes face, shame, being clean and generally being very nice and respectful works much better and makes them much more preferable tenants to have or individuals to in one’s community under any circumstances.

Now, the Muslim Indonesians treatment of Chinese Indonesians (not Chinese-Chinese) is racism often based on religious bigotry against Buddhists and jealousy (the Han do well in business wherever they go). You may not be aware of how bad it is there; mob killings, gangs rapes, curfews etc. I had one girlfriend who returned from the West and had piercings torn out of her face and hi-lited hair torn out of her head in the street.

Underpining all of this discussion is an issue of what is “nation statehood” and a presumption that we are all there. We are not. Our genes are not. Our shared consciousnesses are not. The Nation State is a very new and not yet resolved idea of, what, 50 or 80 years old for most peoples in this world?

I thought for a while that if capital be allowed to move freely (Free Trade) then so ought labor (Open Migration). To deny it was to have one law for the rich and one for the poor. But I realised that the social costs are too high and who pays for them are not the rich, but the poor of the host nations.

For me, the problems have been accelerated by the demands of uncontrolled capitalism creating our modern lives (mega-cities, centralization, industrialization) to serve its ends in an largely uncontrolled, unaccountable manner far quicker than our genes, minds and communities can cope with … and so frictions are arising.

“Even if you do ban them point-blank, you must not look as if you are banning them point-blank.”

Now, that is a very likely to be the evolutionary response to the courtcase above, especially amongst the landlords of Kyoto! Can we count on a similar response amongst Koreans to make smell free Kimchee and become less hotheaded? The answer is, of course, yes. There are decent Koreans.

It just strikes me that entropy tends towards decay in society and what is good, ought be protected. By that I don’t mean “Japanese”, I mean the qualities or virtues and commonwealths that communities share. I am afraid that Japan has its ambitious lawyers that are looking to the West for examples, picking up on PC-ism as a way to make a reputation or pull in clients … and that Japan is going to go to a new hell as well.

I approve of the concept of demanding more, but greatly disagree about the way to do so. If you want to achieve social harmony, one of the worst ways is bringing in a steady flow of people who know nothing about the place and aren’t encourage to learn, and aren’t encouraged to make it their home. The social contracts should, rather, take the form of social integration – this is why, for example, the Japanese spouse visa is a shortcut to PR: you have shown a commitment and social integration into Japanese society.

We can’t really look to places like Britain, which have been softened after years of excess PCism and manipulated guilt over colonialism. All sorts of woo-woo gets encourages and permitted these days – you just have to scream discrimination loudly enough to the press to get your way. China/Korea are not as bad as say Senegal or Nigeria in terms of discrepancy with the host country (Japan and the UK respectively), and in fact I’m sure the Koreans would be most upset at the implication.

“I saw we are all ‘racial discriminists’ and practise a whole load of other discrimination FOR OUR OWN SELF INTERESTS daily. I think discrimination is hardcoded into human beings and is both necessary and beneficial. What I am thinking at present, to put an evolutionary spin on it, is that it relate directly to our tribal past.”

Okay, fine. Except that we no longer live in tribes. We live in nations instead (and please, no arguments about the Japanese being a “tribe” a la Gregory Clark), and we are generally free to move around the globe. So the same distrust of the unknown that keeps us safe when we hunted mammoths is not necessarily useful in the 21st century. The fact that discrimination may be in the name of your self interest does not it morally right: you must find other ways to prevent (for example) Nigerians from eating kimchi curry all day in your apartments other than banning all Nigerians point-blank. Even if you do ban them point-blank, you must not look as if you are banning them point-blank.

Indonesia is very suspicious of Chinese. See the Wikipedian article on “Chinese Indonesians” under “Post-independence and New Order Era” for details. When I went there, the customs documentation forbade Chinese medicines and books etc written in Chinese. Don’t know how enforced that is, mind you, and things have been relaxed lately.

And it seems all your problems in the West with renters can be solved by demanding guarantors, like Japan.

Naturally, as it was for a Korean newspaper, it does not go into depth and discuss; a) why the landlord made the decision they did and b) why they were so daft/honest to give the reason they did!

Its a little off topic but sometimes I wonder what is going on in the rental sector right across SE Asia … you mention local guarantors, friends in Indonesia (Chinese Indonesians) and Chinese-Chinese are regularly made to pay one whole year in advance. Is there a long history of renters burning flats down and doing a runner. Or is renting seen as “not respectable” in general?

Skipping rent, refusing to pay the last month to avoid having a fight over the deposit with landlords for damages done, running off leaving bills, debts and trashing the place in the last week with parties etc … are all common events in the West. Sort of rites of adulthood almost which the landlord has to pay. Laws were utterly skewed towards the tenants’ benefit post-WWII, many landlords feel too far which is why we prefer the likes of Japanese tenants as they cause less trouble and look after the place.

Mac: I still uphold the landlords position. If a landlord has one, two, three Koreans that stink the place out and are argumentative; or one, two, three Gaijin, that dont take their shoes off and waste the tatami, leave the place a mess or run off owing debts … you are just going to stop taking either.

The bolded part (my emphasis) doesn’t enter the equation at all, since no landlord will rent to anyone, Japanese or not, who doesn’t have a Japanese person stamping the contract and promising to pay those debts. As hard as it might be to rent a room from a racist landlord, it’s going to be even harder to rent from a friendly guy whose apartment block looks like the UN when you don’t have a guarantor in your corner.

There was a Kyoto court ruling earlier this month related to some of this discussion.