"Colin Kaepernick is lucky he's not Japanese" — so reported Alex Marshall in the September issue of Foreign Policy magazine, amid the furor that the San Francisco 49ers quarterback provoked by not standing for America's national anthem. How was Kaepernick lucky? Because, Marshall explained, he didn't have to go through all the trouble that schoolteacher Kimiko Nezu did as an "anthem refusenik."
I'd never heard of Nezu, so I've looked her up. I conclude: Marshall may misrepresent Nezu's case in some important ways.
For one, from his article you might think Nezu has had few supporters in her objections to the Japanese national anthem "as a symbol of militarism." In truth, she had a sizable number of them, including legal and other organizational support. In 2006, she received an "anti-authority human rights" prize. In 2010, journalist and filmmaker Toshikuni Doi made a documentary about her and other objectors. The documentary won an award.
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