Bridging crime and immigration: Minority signification in Japanese newspaper reports of the 2003 Fukuoka family murder case

Abstract

This article analyzes media representation of minority offenders, and argues that media practice associates a minority status with criminal propensity through a process of minority signification. The focal point of the analysis is newspaper reporting of the 2003 Fukuoka family murder in Japan, in which three students from China killed a Japanese family. Close examination of two major Japanese newspapers suggests that their reporting of the Fukuoka case connects crime and a minority group in two ways. First, the newspapers frequently utilize nationality and immigration status as descriptors of the Fukuoka case suspects, and thus encourage an intuitive mental connection between foreignness and crime. Furthermore, opinion pieces and editorial articles interpret the murder in the context of immigration policies and the financial hardship often experienced by international students, suggesting that the Fukuoka case is one manifestation of international student criminality. The article concludes that signification of nationality and immigration status in the media may help explain the disparity between the relatively minor presence of foreign national offenders in Japan’s crime scene and their major presence in the Japanese crime discourse.