"Osaka NPO urges labor ministry to include racial harassment in prevention law", 29 September 2019

A nonprofit organization...submitted a statement...urging Japan's labor ministry to include racial harassment as a form of power harassment under legal revisions requiring employers to implement measures against workplace harassment.

The Multi-Ethnic Human Rights Education Center for Pro-existence nonprofit argues that the move is necessary to improve the working environment in Japan, which started accepting foreign workers with "specific skills" under new residency statuses in April 2019 under the amended Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act...

...According to a survey conducted on 18,500 randomly selected foreign residents in Japan, a total of 29.8% of the 4,252 who provided valid answers stated they had often or sometimes been subjected to discriminatory remarks in the previous five years. When asked who had made the discriminatory remarks and allowed to choose multiple answers, 53.3% of respondents said strangers, while 38.0% chose work superiors, colleagues, subordinates and clients. The survey was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and disclosed in 2017...

...Racial harassment came up as a topic of discussion at a Sept. 18 meeting of a subcommittee of the labor ministry's Labor Policy Council, and some attendees voiced support for specifying harassment associated with certain statuses such as nationality in the guidelines, according to those involved...