Overview
- The Prefectural Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination ruled Thursday that a Mie survey question about hiring foreign prefectural staff is discriminatory and will formally recommend keeping the question and its results out of public release.
- The question was added at Governor Ichimi Katsuyuki’s initiative as part of material for his plan to reconsider a nationality requirement for prefectural employees first signaled in December 2025.
- The 10,000-person survey ran in January–February 2026 and excluded foreign residents from respondents, a design choice that a complainant said treated foreign residents as if they were a public-safety risk.
- A third-generation Zainichi Korean man filed a request under the prefectural anti-discrimination ordinance in April seeking cancellation of publication, and rights lawyers and scholars have urged the governor to retract the proposal and apologize.
- Under the prefecture’s ordinance the committee’s finding is advisory not legally binding, but the rare formal judgment against a prefectural policy could shape whether the governor publishes the results and influence wider debate over nationality-based hiring rules.