KITAMURA Sae
I have been active for fourteen years in Japanese Wikipedia, especially GLAM- and education-related Wikimedia projects. I am the organiser of the Wikipedia Translation Class Project, and teach Japanese university students to how to translate English Wikipedia articles into Japanese. From 1 June 2024 to 31 March 2025, I was a Wikipedian in residence at the Library of Trinity College Dublin.
Session
This talk introduces how Japanese Wikipedians tackle anti-Kurdish bias and discusses what Wikipedians can and should do to counter the anti-immigration trend. It examines the recent history of Kurd-related edits in Japanese Wikipedia, analysing various editing processes, including edit wars. Kurdish people have immigrated to Japan since the 1990s, and currently, about 2000–3000 Kurdish people live in Warabi and Kawaguchi in Saitama Prefecture. Anti-immigration pundits and organisations have spread hate speech against Kurdish people in Kawaguchi, and there are multiple ongoing legal cases about acts of defamation and threats targeting local residents. Japanese Wikipedia has been influenced by this negative sentiment towards Kurdish people in Japan. Anti-Kurdish edits have often been made with references from the very limited number of media outlets available online. To counter these edits, anti-racist Wikipedians have to rely more on library resources, such as academic articles and books.