In Japan, workers on the Technical Internship Training Program (TITP) are de jure protected by the employment and equality laws applying to Japanese workers. However, increasing reports of interns hiding their pregnancies owing to the fear of dismissal and deportation have been framed by the Japanese government as interns’ misunderstandings or lack of awareness about their rights to maternity leave and protection from dismissal. Yet, how interns perceive and narrate pregnancy rights has not been addressed in the literature. To address this gap, semistructured interviews were conducted with seven women who came to Japan on the TITP to better understand how pregnancy rights may be interpreted by interns. Interviewees’ narratives of disbelief in the realisability and deservingness of pregnancy rights complicate rights awareness beyond simply knowing the existence of rights. Informed by the concept of hermeneutical injustice, disbelief is theorised as underpinned by intersectional oppressions reinforced by the TITP. In contrast to the government’s framing of unclaimed pregnancy rights as interns’ misunderstandings, the narrations of disbelief express the modus operandi of the TITP, in which pregnancy rights are rendered unrealisable and undeserved and pregnant interns are effectively deportable.

With the development of human rights policies, forms and means of discrimination have transformed as society no longer accepts overtly discriminatory expressions and attitudes. Encounters with blatant discriminatory comments against Buraku communities in daily interpersonal relationships have decreased significantly.

However, recent surveys show that people are more conscious of avoiding Buraku locations when looking for their homes than avoiding partners of Buraku origin in marriages. This change was caused by a shift in reference sources for background checks because of progress in human rights measures. After public access to the family registry was restricted to protect human rights, geographical locations of Buraku became the criteria for determining whether a person had an ancestral link to the Buraku, by comparing the person’s current or permanent address against the list of Buraku locations.

Consequently, this reinforced aversive attitudes towards Buraku areas among citizens, who fear being considered of Buraku origin if they live within the communities. The fear has negatively influenced the land prices and transactions of Buraku properties, giving Buraku discrimination a market-driven nature. Buraku discrimination is no longer simply a matter of individual prejudice and attitudes; it is incorporated into the social system of the real estate market and functions as institutional discrimination. It is not enough to approach discrimination embedded in the social system by addressing individual prejudice. Institutional solutions through laws and administrative measures are necessary.

During the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections, the farright candidate Jair Bolsonaro gained popularity among Brazilians in Japan. In February 2018, Bolsonaro articulated efforts to travel to the country as the first visit of a presidential candidate to the community during a political campaign. The enthusiasm of the local Brazilian community that mobilized to attend Bolsonaro’s public meetings held in Hamamatsu and Oizumi, cities with the largest concentrations of Brazilians in Japan, was reported in news articles in the Brazilian mainstream media and the Brazilian ethnic media in Japan. In October 2018, Bolsonaro was elected president with 55.13% of the votes, but among Brazilians in Japan, he received over 90% of the valid votes. This article discusses the visit’s role as a pseudoevent (Peake & Parks, 2008), drafted to create a positive image of Bolsonaro for his presidential campaign in a controlled situation. We investigated the reflection of the long-distance nationalism of Brazilians in Japan on the visit and its repercussions in Brazil through a content analysis of 16 articles from the Brazilian ethnic media in Japan and the Brazilian mainstream media. We also analyzed the correlation between public mobilization and alignment with moral values expressed by Jair Bolsonaro during his campaign through a content analysis of the videos posted on a Facebook page targeted to Bolsonaro supporters in Japan. The results demonstrated a positive impact of the visit on the ideal representation of Bolsonaro in the press and that the Facebook page reached a larger Brazilian audience.

The process by which gay districts have been transformed is an important topic for discussion. However, such discussions mainly occur in the West and Australia; there are insufficient discussions in other regions. In this study, I examine the transformation of the gay district in the Shinjuku Ni-chome area in Japan during the period before the COVID-19 pandemic based on evolutionary gay district models. The Shinjuku Ni-chome area is the region surrounding the city center and has the largest concentration of gay and lesbian bars in Japan. I use data on the redevelopment around Shinjuku Station, Japanese national and economic censuses, gay and lesbian business addresses (mostly from gay and lesbian magazines), and interviews with gay and lesbian business owners. The findings reveal that the redevelopment of the area around Shinjuku Station progressed because of Japan’s deregulation policy, while Shinjuku Ni-chome was excluded from the redevelopment project. There were no signs of gentrification in Shinjuku Ni-chome and the number of heterosexual workers who could be customers for gay and lesbian businesses increased. The gay and lesbian business cluster was maintained in Shinjuku Ni-chome and on the east side of Shinjuku San-chome. The commodification of gay men led to heterosexuals patronizing gay bars, thereby transforming the gay district. However, the gay district in Shinjuku Ni-chome did not decline. These findings suggest that evolutionary gay district models are not fully applicable to Shinjuku Ni-chome. The transformation of gay districts should be understood in the context and social background of each region.

Facilities for the poor often tend to have conflicts with their respective communities. Nevertheless, in some cases, ‛good relationships’ have been established between the facility and the community. To understand such relationships, we must analyze both the efforts of facilities and factors of community acceptance. Note also that the social stigma of being poor is not easily resolved, while the evaluation of facilities varies continuously. Keeping these aspects in mind, through a case study of a region in western Japan, I examine the social process of creating a good relationship between a facility and a local community. Analysis of the community reveals as critical factors the ‛sense of crisis’ caused by social change in the community and the ‛moderate tension’ between the facility and the community. That is, structural changes in the community create a sense of crisis among community leaders; in turn, the facility is expected to be a resource for resolving these problems. The social stigma operating against the poor further aggravates and deepens tensions between the facility and the community, which requires concrete initiatives of coexistence. The meaning of the facility itself undergoes changes, as social relationships take on the meaning of helping to improve probation-related issues in the community. The interactions between the facility and the community in this good relationship should be understood as involving the interests of both parties as well as a sequence of crisis events followed by resistance to the crises.