A few people have been talking about this one. A freelance reporter named Chris Johnson was not allowed back into Japan sometime late last year. A blogger associated with the Economist magazine (Banyan) ran some of his story, and the internet sleuths have been on the case since.
It sounds like Mr. Johnson was doing what is known as a “visa run”, whereby someone whose visa is about to expire flies out of Japan, only to turn around and fly back in. This is in order to obtain another 90 day stamp from the immigration officials. For most countries, a citizen of that country can get permission to visit Japan for 90 days. Mr. Johnson is a Canadian, so he would be entitled to this.
The trouble comes from the fact that Mr. Johnson was working as a reporter in Japan. This would require permission to work, and the 90-day stamp does not grant that. (It’s a tourist visa.)
So it seems to me, as someone who had held a work visa for five years, is that Mr. Johnson either let his paperwork slip, or he never held a work visa to begin with. I have a feeling it’s the former.
Johnson gave an account of his troubles in detention, which is what you read on that link above to Banyan. People are skeptical, though, because, after first apparently repeating and promoting his story on Debito, he became very defensive when the same story began to be challenged. James at Japan Probe also got into the particulars, and I think some of the Tepido crowd were on hand to do the armchair sleuthing.
When you blog for the Japan-side expat community, this is one of the pitfalls or dangers—more so than outside a close community. People will come and try and use your site to promote their agenda, because they can honestly reach a couple hundred people. You sit there, and say, “well, is this really a point I want passing through here, or am I being asked to tacitly sign on to some idea or opinion that someone is looking to put out to the readership?”
Sometimes, you know, I am very happy to get the word out about something. For example, the origin of “flyjin”. Or Moises Garcia’s big success with getting his daughter back from Japan. Back a few years ago, the hoax surrounding Ron Kessler’s “Free Choice Japan” health insurance dodge.
Other times I really just get the strong feeling that I’m being played.
I don’t know what the situation was on Debito, because since he left Japan and entered a new phase in life, the theme of that blog has been more of emphasizing the ways in which Japan does not measure up to a “multicultural” standard, the kind you might find described in Ivy League universities of the 1980′s in America. So an encounter like Chris Johnson’s fits the storyline, and he gets some play. A few people get really offended by that, but it’s really an opinion site, so I still don’t get why there’s always so much hullabaloo. If someone is a reporter, then I can see. But a reporter going to a blogger and complaining, really just says something about the reporter, doesn’t it? I mean, you lay an egg, and then head over to the blogging community to defend it?
If Chris Johnson was trying to pull a fast one with immigration, how does that make immigration “bad”?
