Kathleen Morikawa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kathleen Morikawa, (born 1950) is a native of Pittsburgh who lives in Japan since 1973. Her Japanese husband Jun is a college professor. She was the first foreigner in Japan to be court-sentenced for refusing giving her fingerprint.

Under Japanese law, all non-Japanese citizens staying in the country for more than 90 days must apply for an alien registration card. Until the law was revised in 1993 [1], this required the imprint of the left index fingerprint each time the alien registration card was being renewed.

Morikawa refused to be fingerprinted on Sept. 9, 1982, because, she said "I got a bit tired of it, it's discriminatory, and I wasn't willing to accept it." [2]

During that time, an increasing number of foreigners living permanently in Japan, mostly of Korean or Chinese descent, refused to give their fingerprints because they saw it as discriminatory. Morikawa was the 27th person to refuse, but the first to be sentenced. She was fined 10,000 Japanese yen (at that time about $43) by Judge Yoshikatsu Uehara, half the penalty demanded by the prosecutor in Yokohama.

Furthermore, she wasn't issued the necessary re-entry permit for traveling abroad for several years following her sentence.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sterngold, James (May 21 1992), “Japan Ends Fingerprinting of Many Non-Japanese”, The New York Times, <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DE113EF932A15756C0A964958260>. Retrieved on 12 January 2008 
  2. ^ “Around the World; Japan Fines American Under Fingerprint Law”, The New York Times, June 15 1984, <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A04E5DD1639F936A25755C0A962948260>. Retrieved on 12 January 2008 
  3. ^ Morikawa, Kathleen (January 8 2008), “Following in our fingerprints”, The Japan Times, <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fl20080108zg.html>. Retrieved on 12 January 2008