A new controversy over intolerance has sprung up around Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who last year apparently wasn’t terribly embarrassed when members of his cabinet turned out to have consorted with known neo-nazis.  This time, a top government advisor on education says the races ought to be kept apart, apartheid-style.

Ayako Sono used her regular column in the conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper to call for Japan to solve the problem of a aging and shrinking population by bringing in foreign workers.  But, she wrote, Japan should make sure that the newbies live segregated from the natives, based on race. 

Sono’s justification is an unnamed condominium building “in Johannesburg where black people started living after apartheid was abolished.”  She claims that “black people are basically believers in big families,” and says the black families began packing in 20- to 30-family members per unit, ruining the facilities, until eventually all the white people left.  I kid you not, this idiot actually believes this tripe.

Sono didn’t provide the address, the name of the building, or even when this supposedly took place.  Despite this complete lack of evidence, she declares, “I have said since, ‘Humans can work, research and exercise together.  But it is better to keep the living space separate.’”

Keep in mind that Sono is a member of the Education Rebuilding Implementation Council that advises the Prime Minister on education issues and curriculum.  While her pal Shinzo Abe paying lip serving to having more women in the workplace, Sono’s recommendation to the Council was to oppose maternity leave and tell women to stay at home.

Comments on social media were overwhelmingly negative, and many condemned Sankei Shimbun for actually printing the incredibly offensive column.  Some are wondering – if  this is what she writes in public, what is Sono telling Abe behind closed doors?  And the attitude behind the column may undermine Japan’s very real need to bring in workers to fill the gaps in its aging workforce.

“I already deal with enough subtle racism at work. If a major newspaper is going to print this kind of bullshit, they empower all the racists in the country.  I’ve almost had enough.  Maybe we all should leave and just leave Japan to rot in its own xenophobic dementia,” said one 30-year old from South Africa who came to Japan to work in communications to veteran Japan reporter Jake Adelstein.  “If the sexism here is as bad as the racism, no wonder women don’t want to give birth – it seems hopeless.”