David Chart's Blog

Category: Japan

  • Shinto Essay Patreon

    Today, I launched a Patreon for essays about Shinto. If people are interested enough to support it, my plan is to write essays that are “accurate and objective”, insofar as that is possible, and use the associated website (Mimusubi) to publish my personal opinions and individual approaches. If you are interested in the topic, please…

  • The Empty Seat Thing

    If you read online accounts of foreigners’ experiences in Japan, you are likely to come across the “Empty Seat Thing”. This happens on crowded trains or buses. The foreigner is sitting down, crowded in by all the people standing around him or her, but there, right next to the foreigner, is an empty seat. No-one…

  • Japanese

    As of today, I am a Japanese citizen.

  • Stateless

    I am currently stateless. But this is a good thing. Because Japan does not recognise multiple citizenships, you are required to renounce your existing citizenship as part of the process of becoming a Japanese citizen. If your current countries of citizenship will allow you to renounce those citizenships before you gain Japanese citizenship, you must…

  • Renouncing UK Citizenship

    Today, I had a phone call from the Legal Affairs Bureau handling my application for Japanese citizenship. The Ministry of Justice wants me to renounce my UK citizenship, and will send the necessary documents. That means that my application for Japanese citizenship has been successful. People who have followed my citizenship application process know that…

  • Are There Any Black People In Japan?

    Recently, I read a couple of articles that made me think. One was an open letter to Japanese people from a black man, listing a lot of “microaggressions” that black people suffer here, and posted on another blog. Another was the article “The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois’s “The Conservation…

  • “Diversity” and American Dominance in RPGs

    The US dominance of both the pen-and-paper RPG industry and the diversity debate is a real problem, one that, I think, is actively hindering attempts to address the problems created by a lack of diversity. Let’s take an example I’m intimately familiar with: Japan. (For people who don’t know, I’ve lived here for 12 years,…

  • Racism in Japan

    Actually, the content of this post would be more accurately described as “reflections on the results of a survey of experiences of discrimination on grounds of foreign nationality in the municipality of Kawasaki”, but that isn’t snappy enough for a blog title, and quite a lot of what I say will be directly relevant to…

  • Results of the Kawasaki Survey of Foreign Residents

    The results of the questionnaire-based survey of foreign residents of Kawasaki were published yesterday. Most of the results are, of course, published in Japanese, but there is an English summary. (I had nothing to do with the English part of the English summary. I feel the need to make that clear.) I’ve been working on…

  • Actually Formally Applying to Naturalise

    Today, I formally applied to naturalise in Japan. I went to the Legal Affairs Office in Kawasaki, and Yuriko met me there (we were both going from work). I arrived a bit early, but my case worker soon came to speak to me. First, she took all my application documents off me, and took them…