‘Dear Japanese government, please let us see our mother’

On December 8, Melek Ortabasi shared a video on Twitter of her two children speaking directly to the camera. While a Christmas tree in their background could have indicated festive spirits, the words of her sons were far from merry. “Our Mama is in Japan and we were supposed to go too… what you are doing to our family is unfair… our family is separated and we are far apart… please let us in; we miss our Mama.”  Ortabasi — a professor of Japanese literature at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia in Canada— was meant to travel to Japan in August this year with her three children, with funding from the Japan Foundation. But she was able to enter Japan only in October 2021, without her children. They are currently living with their father, and were supposed to travel to Japan on December 23. But on November 29, Japan suspended the entry of all foreign travellers into the country in light of the emergence of the new Omicron variant of Covid-19. 

Even though Ortabasi has been in constant touch with the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, she chose to write to Colorado Senator Michael Bennet on Twitter, assuming that “the US has more clout”. While her children are staying with their father (who is her ex-husband), in her appeal to Bennet, she questioned the validity of these bans, deeming it to be “cruel and disheartening that Japan does not value me or my family, especially when I have devoted my career to the study of this country.”

Following the ban on November 29, Japan also suspended all inbound flight bookings. But this was quickly reversed, following uproar as it would prevent even Japanese nationals from returning home; the travel ban was not imposed on them.

Many like Ortabasi have since been separated from their families anew; thousands of other foreigners living in Japan for varying lengths of time and with different residency statuses have been eyeing the borders grimly. 

While Japan allowed the entry of nearly 11,000 international athletes during the 2020 Olympics that were held in August 2021, thousands of foreign students enrolled in Japanese universities haven’t been allowed to enter Japan, studying online during odd hours of the night, even as Japanese students have been allowed to travel abroad.

One international student wrote on her blog: “It makes me so angry to spend millions of yen on tuition fee and living expenses (I already had an apartment in Japan when I left for the Spring vacation so rent is to be paid) while not even being in Japan. While I pay millions in tuition, I can’t access the facilities or many books I need for my masters thesis.” 

Who supports the travel ban?

Through the first few months of the pandemic in 2020, Japan was the only G-7 nation to restrict travel by its long-term foreign residents, while allowing its citizens to enter and exit the country anytime. Only a selective criteria of “humanitarian” exemptions were allowed for those needing to leave Japan, and then to re-enter. More countries were added to the re-entry ban list; those who could return needed a negative PCR test not more than 72 hours prior to departure—something that was impossible in countries where test kits were inadequate or results took longer. 

Japan began to admit business travellers and students briefly in November this year. However, only 17 new long-term visas were issued in 17 days, before the travel ban of November 29.

Currently, only Japanese citizens and non-Japanese with valid residency permits are allowed to re-enter. Additional restrictions are frequently introduced or eased depending on the pandemic situation abroad.

The “Return to Japan Support Group” on Facebook, which was created in July 2020, has 35,500 members today. Since the new entry ban on November 29, there have been at least 2,000 new members in the group; there are an average of 50 posts in a day, with distressed queries for information on re-entry. This also includes foreign nationals who are married to Japanese nationals, but are still unable to enter Japan. 

There are other numerous instances of lives in a limbo, and grief in abstract suspension. An Australian man and his newborn faced the possibility of being separated from his wife and older child, when he and the newborn were not given a visa; his older child and his wife—a Zainichi, or Japan-born Korean—needed to return to Japan before the end of 2021 lest they would lose their permanent resident status in Japan. A British woman living in Tokyo—whose father passed away in 2020—has not been able to spend time with her family in the UK. When her father died, Japan had closed borders for all of its foreign residents, regardless of their residency status. More than a year later, her family in the UK was hoping she would be able to join in for his memorial in December 2021. But with the new travel ban, she had to cancel her flights, lest she and her husband are unable to return to their jobs in Japan.  

The Australian man and the newborn were finally granted a visa to travel to Japan as a family. The British woman continues to grieve from a distance. But such stories garner nothing more than a few words of sympathy from Japanese nationals. A survey conducted by the Yomiuri newspaper found 89 percent of respondents supported the ban. 

“These measures by the Japanese government, and the views of the majority of Japanese citizens, reveal their racism, passive aggression and xenophobic nature. I feel we have to urgently stand up and make the multiple damages visible that their attitudes inflict,” said filmmaker and Japanese citizen Takashi Arai, whose wife, a German national, was able to briefly enter Japan on a short-term visa, before she had to return to Germany. She was due to enter Japan on December 4. But two days prior, the Japanese government had suspended the validity of previously-issued visas without any prior notice. 

Shocked and in despair, Arai realised that many of his friends are also international couples separated in a similar manner, and created a bi-lingual online petition, appealing to the Japanese government for humanitarian considerations and the restoration of “human rights that have been infringed by these hastily-enacted measures”. Ortabasi also has a petition online, with a plea to be able to reunite with her children. Both petitions have garnered 9,000 online signatures.

Another group on Twitter has initiated a petition to the EU, concerning students who are from the EU but enrolled in universities across Japan, and remain stranded outside the country. The petition received 1,000 signatures in a few days. Earlier this year, more than 500 academics from Japanese institutions and those whose research focused on Japan, had sent a fax to Japan’s Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa, demanding more transparency regarding border control measures for foreign students. That petition didn’t yield much: it forced international researchers like Kaitlyn Ugoretz to withdraw from a prestigious fellowship after nearly two years of waiting and being assured that she would be able to travel to Japan. The fellowship terms prohibited her from taking any other employment even though her fellowship was meant to be for fieldwork in Japan. 

Several others have had their hopes dashed, and then renewed. Philippines national Arabella Cruz Carani, who works as a school teacher in Osaka, has been living in Japan since 2017, but had been discouraged by her employer to bring along her family. By 2019, she had saved up enough to apply for dependent visas for her two older children, in their 20s. She took up a second job to prove that she is able to sponsor the visa for her younger school-going children, and husband. Their visa application was denied in early January 2020, and with the pandemic thereafter, there was no scope for appeal. “I couldn’t go home either as I only have 10 regular paid holidays, which would not make sense with quarantine requirements. Besides, I would have needed an official permit to travel from Japan’s Board of Education, since we were advised against travelling,” Carani said. 

It was only on November 23 that her younger children and husband were granted a visa, and were set to travel on December 2. She said that she was assured by Japanese immigration officials on the phone that her family would face no problems entering Japan. However, upon landing at the Kansai international airport, they were asked to return. Over several hours of back and forth phone calls between Carani, her husband, and immigration officials — and her children begging to be able to see their mother, from whom they had been separated since 2017 — they were allowed to enter the country, and were sent to a hotel for three days of quarantine. Carani’s video of being reunited with her children on December 5 brought much cheer, and some hope, to the members of the “Return to Japan Support Group” on Facebook. 

Many of those without similar happy endings are openly questioning their choice to live in Japan and contribute to its economy. “The looong [sic] ban really does make you wonder if the Japanese government really sees all foreigners as threats, no matter the scientific evidence and logic about the state of the pandemic in each country. It’s not hidden that the ‘island nation’ has isolated itself through history, but is it really justified to do the same in the 21st century?” wrote one international student, stranded away from her home and life in Japan. The US Embassy in Tokyo last week has warned of the suspected racial profiling of non-Japanese residents by Japanese police, from having received reports of several people being detained, questioned and searched. The Tokyo Bar Association plans to probe into the claims and circumstances under which people had been stopped by the Japanese police. 

Arai is equally bitter about his own country: “I imagine the Japanese government does not view their measures are being racist, and their lack of imagination is absolutely terrifying. Not only us, but the majority of international couples feel like they are not being welcomed here. Japan only wants rich people, not ‘ordinary’ people who [are perceived to] bring some burden into this country.”