International Aspects of Local Communities : Legal Analysis

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Japanese systems of local community hitherto presupposed that its inhabitants were all Japanese, both legally and ethnically. Foreigners have no right to vote in not only national but also local elections. They have no right to be employed as teachers or officers of local communities. Local governments have not provided any services appropriate to the specific needs of foreign inhabitants.In short foreigners have not been considered inhabitants.In recent time increasing number of foreigners came to live in Japan, and lots of measures were taken to treat them as equal members of local communities. This progress should be welcomed from the viewpoint of Japanese. Because local governments which take the specific needs of foreign inhabitants into consideration must, we think, take into consideration those of Japanese social minorities, for example, aged, infants, females, disabled and so on. This is the basic standpoint of our project.We, at first, investigated the measures which local governments had taken in receiving foreigners and analyzed the policies and basic ideas behind them. The result is that huge portion of local governments welcome foreigners, but as visitors and as incentives for the vitalization of local communities. The policy is very rare to accept foreigners as equal citizens and to made local government good for social minorities including foreigners.Then we analyzed the status of foreigners in the spheres of education, labor, medicine, welfare and others. The result is that equal treatment in law was attained in various spheres as the result of new legislations in 1980s, but that true equality is not yet realized in default of factual conditions. Refusal of the right to vote in local election and the right to be employed for public officers seem to be the decisive impediments in realizing Japanese-foreign co-living communities.