4 - Rewriting the Meaning of Silence: Latin American Migrant Workers from Kanagawa City Union

Summary

On 21 April 2010, I attended a demonstration called the ‘Day for Foreign Workers’ Rights’. The street demonstration was organised by three trade union groups, Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus (FWC), Kanagawa City Union (KCU), and Zentouitsu Workers Union (Zentouitsu). Each union represents specific migrant groups: FWC stands for language teachers from Europe and North America, KCU manual workers from Latin America, and Zentouitsu trainees and interns from China. About 80 people participated in the demonstration to visit companies against which the unions were fighting. Setting up in front of company offices, the demonstrators appealed to the public to explain how migrant workers were being treated by their employers.

When the demonstrators moved to the entrance area of the English language school that had a labour dispute with the FWC, several FWC members took turns to make speeches about their working conditions. For this occasion the FWC had prepared an A4-size double-sided leaflet that contained information about several labour disputes involving FWC members. During the speeches, together with other FWC members, I distributed the leaflets to both passers-by and members of other trade unions.

Distributing leaflets to passers-by was not an easy task. Street demonstrations tend to carry a negative image in Japan due to the legacy of student radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s (Oguma, 2012: 140–54). Some people visibly avoided the demonstrators with their trade union flags and placards. Others looked at us with suspicion.

Handing out the leaflets was equally challenging when I approached KCU's migrant members. Some of them said, ‘No English’ or ‘I can't read Japanese’ in broken English or Japanese. When I showed them that the leaflet was written in both English and Japanese, some took it but, after a brief glace, put it into their pockets. Others simply shook their heads to decline the leaflet.

Language barriers may not have been the only reason why KCU migrant workers showed little interest in the FWC's leaflet. Most Latin American migrants in Japan, mainly Bolivians, Brazilians, and Peruvians, engage in so-called ‘3K’ jobs (or ‘3D’’ jobs in English) – kitsui (demanding), kitanai (dirty), and kiken (dangerous) – the kind of jobs ‘the Japanese no longer wanted to do’ (Sharpe, 2011: 122).