If you would like to support the aims of this organization, please join it. An annual membership fee of 3000 yen will entitle you to receive the newsletter by post, wherever in the world you may be. We will try to make your membership worthwhile in other ways as well -through the establishment of a communication, information, and fellowship network facilitating our collective interests, the development of a data base, the provision of legal information, and so on. If you can attend meetings, great, but if you cannot you can still be part of the loop through e-mail and access to this site/our web site. If 3000 yen is more than you can afford, get a few friends to chip in. It is important that you join because this organization will be what we and you make it to be. "Virtual" members are welcome and needed, though we shall surely hope to see your face (s) some day! At the very least, help us to maintain a Japan-wide network for information and communication. What other medium do we have?!

REMEMBER! The national bureaucracy reaches everywhere with remarkable standardization but nonetheless combined with local and individual variation, and so, too, must we. We already have members representing numerous nationalities scattered all over Japan, but it is scarcely a fraction of the membership we should have and need to have in order to be effective as an organization.

Finally, it is easy to focus on bad news, but let us know the good news too! If you are living somewhere where something has happened to further your rights and interests as a non-Japanese married to a Japanese member the community, let us know about it. Precedents are important. The more we are able to identify local variation, the more we will be able to encourage innovation. One of the gigantic myths perpetuated in Japan is that policy and customs are the same throughout the country; this reason is often cited as an excuse for making no changes at a particular somewhere, and that somewhere is what matters most to those of our members who happen to be living there.

That said, we would also like to issue a disclaimer: We are not responsible for any consequences (good or bad) that may accrue to someone who thinks they are acting on advice or information contained in our newsletter or published on this site/our web site. We are a resource, perhaps, but hardly a cure-all. We are human beings, above all else, bungling along like everyone else, trying to help make conditions better for all of humanity, which we are presumptuous enough to assume have similar interests that we do, ultimately if not immediately. We, ethnically compounding and becoming yellow or brown through our children (if we are not already), are tiny but certain precursors of the future world. Our meetings, too, would make that clear to you. Please attend!

The Editors & Administrative Officers, United for a Multicultural Japan

Copyright 1996-2001 United for a multicultural Japan, All rights reserved.