TOKYO - Residents in Japan with foreign roots have started speaking out about being subjected to racial profiling by police, with some taking the issue to court, but supporters of their efforts warn that progress may be slow given apparent public indifference.

Although a survey suggests racial profiling has been carried out for years, only recently has the issue been publicly exposed in Japan.

“I am not saying Japanese police should not question citizens, including those with foreign appearance... but I want to know the logic behind it,” said Mr Zain Syed, a 27-year-old naturalised Japanese citizen. Born to Pakistani parents, Mr Syed has been stopped by police on the street at least 15 times.

He said that whenever he had asked officers for their reasons for stopping him, they insisted he was being treated no differently to anyone else. But convinced that he had been targeted solely based on his ethnicity, he decided to join a lawsuit, in a bid to pressure the government to prevent discriminatory interrogations.

Mr Syed, who is self-employed and lives in the suburbs of Nagoya in central Japan, is one of three male plaintiffs in a civil suit filed in January 2024 against the Aichi prefectural police, Tokyo metropolitan police and the state, seeking 3.3 million yen (S$29,300) in damages per person.

The response to his Twitter post in 2019 describing police treatment, such as being asked persistently to present a foreign resident’s card or passport despite identifying himself as a Japanese, also emboldened him to sue and help others in a similar or worse situation than him.

“I am trying to make Japanese society better by stopping questioning based on prejudice. There are many people like myself with foreign roots who are willing to make contributions to Japan,” said Mr Syed, who came to Japan as an eight-year-old from Pakistan along with his parents and received Japanese nationality at the age of 13.

But his acquisition of citizenship is a rare step in Japan, a country whose naturalised citizens accounted for less than 0.01 per cent of the total population in 2024.

A recent survey carried out by lawyers in the suit backs the plaintiffs’ view th...