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Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

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Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#61
post #24

It will be interesting to see how Japan deals with it culturally. From folks I know who lived there they said that while everyone was nice, it was always clear that they were very much outsiders.

>From folks I know who lived there they said that while everyone was nice, it was always clear that they were very much outsiders.

I spend a fair amount of time in Tokyo for work, and I'd say this is accurate.

My 日本語 is far from fluent, but it's frequently better than the English being spoken by random people on the street... yet it will take a good 20-30 seconds of me replying in Japanese before they'll switch away from English.

A co-worker is from Poland, and he married a Japanese woman. Their children speak Japanese and Polish at home, and only a little bit of English. Despite being very obviously half Japanese, he says the kids frequently have trouble getting strangers to speak to them in Japanese, despite it being by far their most fluent language.

This sort of thing probably doesn't sound like a huge deal to someone who hasn't experienced it, but every day to day interaction is a frequent reminder that you're not Japanese and you won't ever be - without radical change, those kids are going to spend their whole lives with their fellow Japanese citizens defaulting to the assumption that they can't even speak their mother tongue.

I still love the city and the people - they are genuinely wonderful and incredibly nice. Many of my co-workers have invited me into their homes, had me meet their families, and gone out of their ways to make sure I have a wonderful time in the city. I've had to modify my own behavior there to not accidentally make people feel like they should be going out of their way to help me, etc. And it's a wonderfully safe place, with kids expected to be able to function independently for means of getting to school, etc. There's an emphasis on personal responsibility, even at a young age, that I think is sorely missing in much of the western world these days, with helicopter parenting, etc., being so widespread.

I don't know if the whole outsider thing will change in my lifetime - but it changing is going to require more immigration, and the native Japanese becoming more exposed to foreigners who have immigrated instead of just tourists, or the breed of expats that keep to themselves in their luxury condos in Roppongi.

I've kind of rambled here, so I guess the cliff notes version is: Japanese people in my experience have been unfailingly nice, outside of some very isolated incidents of obvious racism, but yes, even people born in Japan if they look foreign will be treated as outsiders. That changing is going to require immigration opening up.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#62
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>immigrants form enclaves that are durable and do not readily assimilate. That's not generally what happens in the US I’ve spent some time in Michigan or Minnesota and haven’t taken away the same conclusions. Maybe we could agree or disagree on “generally”.

I live in San Diego, 20 miles from the Mexican border. If you want to speak Spanish in Chula Vista or other immigrant enclaves, you'll find plenty of people who speak it. However, the number of second generation immigrants who speak Spanish exclusively is as far as I can tell, negligible. There are just too many benefits to assimilating. This isn't Quebec.

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Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#63
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does that matter to you? I don't know if I'll have children and if I do, it'll certainly be It's often said that people used to have a lot of kids in order to insure against child mortality. I understand financial stress et al may be one reason for the lower reproduction rate but less kids can also be a sign of success.

If successful people are having fewer kids than unsuccessful people then haven't we created a dysgenic system?

This view is popular, even if in jest like "haha Idiocracy was right guise!!" but in real life it smacks of eugenics and the Divine Right Of The Rich.

Success correlates well with things like wealth, education level of your parents, early-age nutrition, and other things that can be considered "inherited" in a way, but children of poor and "unsuccessful" people can become financially and socially important as well, it just happens at a lower rate.

Suggesting that more poor children than wealthy children will impoverish society in more than just a statistical sense implies there's something immeasurably special about the people who become wealthy and famous, as if the mere act of breeding with them will produce superior humans.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then the immigrants stay and get old and there is increased strain on the strained social systems. Most immigration systems in Europe assumed that the immigrants would go home once they have made some money. At some point it is going to implode anyway. The UK in the last 25 years has completely changed due to immigration and our health system is basically about to fall over, there are massive cultural tensions be…

Healthcare requires young, relatively healthy, people. It’s another system where the young pay for the old. The immigrants aren’t the immediate problem, they are the immediate solution. They may crowd the system, but they are also the ones funding it. Kick all young, relatively healthy, immigrants out and see how quickly healthcare collapses as the older people on fixed income try to find a way to balance the healthc…

You miss the point. The system is going to collapse anyway and long term thinking is needed

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#65
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in Akihabara. I see foreigners everyday. Even in Minato-ku I see plenty of non-Japanese people running around.

Add Shibuya (mainly around the station) and Shinjuku and you basically covered all foreigner hotspots! Those are the most non-representative areas! But go to Shimokitezawa or Gakuendaigaku or anywhere off the beaten path and foreigners will be few and far between.

Shimokitazawa still have a lot of foreigners. It is surrounded by universities including Todai.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#66
post #6

So sad. Another ancient unique culture to be blended and homogenized into the global mass of undifferentiated Starbucks society. At least the megacorporations will get the cheap labor and undifferentiated consumers they want.

All cultures are blended. Most of the things you think of as uniquely Japanese are in fact imports, or the hybrid cultural offspring of imports. Kanji was stolen wholesale from Chinese Hanzi, sushi evolved from fermented fish dishes from the Mekong, pagodas are a Chinese import, Buddhism is an import from India via China, the kimono came from China, manga is based on ukiyo-e which is based on Chinese woodblock printi…

>Anyone who espouses cultural purity is simply ignorant of culture.

There's a difference between gradual assimilation of cultural elements over hundreds of years, and flooding a country with change on the scale of a generation. It's perfectly reasonable to want to preserve what amounts to a cultural identity by limiting cultural influx.

>Anyone who espouses cultural purity is simply ignorant of culture

Nonsense. The fact that a given culture contains elements from others does not mean that it is not itself pure. Culture is simply information - in the form of practices, foods, clothing, ideals - and while there may be a great deal of overlap among the basis vectors that could be combined to represent the world's cultures, purity could be approximately gauged by a principle component analysis, which would most certainly show distinct, tight groupings for more homogenous, isolated cultures like that of Japan, and a more diffuse, homogenized cluster among westernized cultures.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#67

> but it’s no longer quite right to call it homogeneous Are you sure? Japan is maybe 99% homogeneous? I live in central Tokyo and I can go on for days and days without seeing a foreigner! > it will inevitably introduce social strains Sadly, yes. I've observed this on few occasions.

How can you know? Can you reliably identify Koreans from Japanese?

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#68
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? Having kids. Having a sustainable culture rather than some weird human shredder reliant on constant stream of new souls from abroad.

People can’t afford to have kids. Maybe if young people didn’t have to spend a huge portion of their paycheck supporting old people they could afford kids. The older generation doesn’t want immigrants. The older generation votes against tax increases. The older generation does everything they can to keep home prices high. Then they demand no one cut their entitlements. All take, no give. It’s not surprising people ar…

With Japan, it's not solely (or perhaps even primarily) a matter of not being able to afford kids. Even in Tokyo the fantastic public transport means you can live in one of the more inexpensive wards and still commute basically anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.

People aren't even dating in Japan, though. Marriage rates are way down, people aren't having sex, etc. Even the non-sexual aspects of relationships have been commoditized, with host/hostess bars where you pay to have conversations with people like you would while out on a date, cuddle bars where you pay just to cuddle, etc. Dating video games are huge.

Women being able to more readily progress into senior positions in white collar jobs is a relatively recent occurrence, and getting married/having kids is a good way to end your career, so they're less likely to want to date seriously.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All cultures are blended. Most of the things you think of as uniquely Japanese are in fact imports, or the hybrid cultural offspring of imports. Kanji was stolen wholesale from Chinese Hanzi, sushi evolved from fermented fish dishes from the Mekong, pagodas are a Chinese import, Buddhism is an import from India via China, the kimono came from China, manga is based on ukiyo-e which is based on Chinese woodblock printi…

>Anyone who espouses cultural purity is simply ignorant of culture. There's a difference between gradual assimilation of cultural elements over hundreds of years, and flooding a country with change on the scale of a generation. It's perfectly reasonable to want to preserve what amounts to a cultural identity by limiting cultural influx. >Anyone who espouses cultural purity is simply ignorant of culture Nonsense. The…

The ancestral post of this thread is bemoaning supposed cultural deracination in Japan because of changes to immigration policy. It is hysterical to presume that the Japanese are about to flood their country "with change on the scale of a generation".

> does not mean that it is not itself pure

By what metric is a culture pure? How can information be pure? How far back in the timeline do you want to gauge purity? And at what point is it relevant to policy?

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#70

I was in Tokyo a few years ago, went back recently and I noticed the changes described in this article too. Every sign and menu are now in Japanese/Chinese/English. Waiters, salesclerks, metro station assistants now speaks English. And every 7-Eleven, Starbucks, etc… seems to employ foreigners instead of Japanese people (mostly from countries like Vietnam, Philippine, Thailand and India tho), who speak English perfec…

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