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The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#91

Post by laurieg »

paggle wrote: post #44

Sure, Japan is a ~monoracial country and there isn't the level of racial awareness there that you have in the US. I feel like you have to accept some of this if you choose to live in Japan as a person of color. I experienced this myself when I wanted to do the "teach English abroad for a year" thing in Japan after college. I have Top 1% English skills and have won literary prizes for my writing in college, and speak…

When people talk about a mono-racial Japan it's worth mentioning that the census data for Japan doesn't record ethnicity. Depending on where the statistics come from data may have been calculated by assuming that everyone with Japanese nationality is ethnically Japanese too.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#92

Post by Grue3 »

executesorder66 wrote: post #57

This just seems like pure racism to me. I spent 2 weeks in Japan recently, and I took all kinds of trains, from the Shinkansen, to Tokyo metro to random local trains. In various cities and towns. I am, and I look white af. Not even remotely Japanese or even Asian. Not once on my trip did Japanese people "avoid" me or leave an empty seat between us. In fact some of them even slept on my shoulder! The only time there w…

Nah, it's racism, there's no other explanation. I'm also white and people were not only sitting next to me, but even offering me snacks on intercity trains. Interestingly in my own country people rarely sit next to me unless there's no other seats.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#93

Post by GreaterFool »

nrp wrote: post #80
GreaterFool wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I live in Japan and I get uneasy around foreigners. And I'd be especially uneasy around folks from my home country! > experience prejudice regarding your race I think it might be more about culture than race. Race is a good proxy for "not Japanese". While Japan is not 100% ethnically uniform, if someone doesn't look Japanese they are most likely not Japanese. When I see a foreigner I don't know if they've been i…

Somewhat ironically, Singapore is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse places in the world, demonstrating that ethnic non-uniformity shouldn't be a proxy for unknown dangers.

Everything can easily be done in a tiny controlled environment! Also Singapore is fairly uniform. There's Malaysian Singaporean part, Indian part and Chinese part. They do not overlap. Everyone stays in their lane!

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#94

Post by GreaterFool »

masonic wrote: post #79
GreaterFool wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I live in Japan and I get uneasy around foreigners. And I'd be especially uneasy around folks from my home country! > experience prejudice regarding your race I think it might be more about culture than race. Race is a good proxy for "not Japanese". While Japan is not 100% ethnically uniform, if someone doesn't look Japanese they are most likely not Japanese. When I see a foreigner I don't know if they've been i…

if someone doesn't look Japanese they are most likely not Japanese Like the Ainu?

> Official estimates place the total Ainu population at 25,000, but unofficial estimates place its total population at 200,000

Meanwhile there are 10M people living in Tokyo. If all Ainu people of Japan lived in Tokyo, how likely would it be for me to meet one?

Also, there were 30M visitors to Japan last year.

So if one doesn't know and one is making a guess, what is more likely? Foreign visitor or a member of a tiny local minority?

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#95

Post by NalNezumi »

This was a heartwarming story. I might add my own experience as a half Japanese/north European that recently moved to Japa. I've experienced the empty seat thing too, but it's not as bothersome as the people that stand up and move to other seats seconds after you sit next to them in a crowded train, now that makes me nervous. Being a foreigner does come with some perks I sometime envy though. Because I speak the language fluently, and one of my parent being Japanese, I'm sometime just labeled as "a rude person" when I act like a foreigner (where I'm born and raised), while a foreigner would just get a pass as people think "he just don't know how things work around here".

I do feel that too many foreigners (including me) jumps to the "racism" explanation too quickly though. It's not unreasonable because some things, such as finding a apartment as a foreigner are a experience filled with racism. Japan sure don't mind writing racism down on their list of preference. But most Japanese people simply runs on auto-pilot most of the day, and if they see something out of the ordinary (foreigner in the train) they just get really confused and stay away. Giving them a smile and a friendly nod usually lower their alertness pretty well.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#96

Post by nrp »

GreaterFool wrote: post #93
nrp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat ironically, Singapore is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse places in the world, demonstrating that ethnic non-uniformity shouldn't be a proxy for unknown dangers.

Everything can easily be done in a tiny controlled environment! Also Singapore is fairly uniform. There's Malaysian Singaporean part, Indian part and Chinese part. They do not overlap. Everyone stays in their lane!

I don’t disagree that neighborhoods are fairly delineated, but in the context of this article, everyone rides the same MRT lines. They all sit next to each other too!

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#97

Post by ryandrake »

legohead wrote: post #47

I experience this empty seat phenomenon in America, as a regular white man. I noticed it in college. Nobody would sit by me unless they had to, but they were never obvious about it either as far as I could tell. It just seemed like I had some social forcefield around me that pushed people away. I told me wife about it, and we had a laugh. But over the years it continues to manifest itself. I send me wife pictures of…

I don't think this has anything to do with you personally. It's just human nature. Go to a food court in a mall and observe. People will occupy the empty tables first, and only when all empty tables have at least one person sitting, will people start joining strangers at "their" table.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#98

Post by bytefactory »

legohead wrote: post #47

I experience this empty seat phenomenon in America, as a regular white man. I noticed it in college. Nobody would sit by me unless they had to, but they were never obvious about it either as far as I could tell. It just seemed like I had some social forcefield around me that pushed people away. I told me wife about it, and we had a laugh. But over the years it continues to manifest itself. I send me wife pictures of…

I've read that in body-language terms, sitting in the middle seat of a small row of seats communicates "I would like to be alone here", whereas sitting in the edges communicates "feel free to sit here". This might have confounded your experiment :)

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#99

Post by zamfi »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #86
zamfi wrote: post #2

This was truly lovely to read. A peek into how cultures change.

He explicity said that nothing changed and that the episode on the train was the rarest of exceptions...

Yeah, that's kind of the point -- cultures change one kid's unsavory attitudes altered at a time.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#100

Post by flippinburgers »

xelxebar wrote: post #72
shatobi wrote: post #56

I think there is a lot of over-interpretation of his. It never seems to happen to me. When you want to be the victim, you might seem to notice it happening. And certainly, there might be some people who don't like foreigners. But as far as I can tell I don't notice it. Perhaps the author has some other features that might make one want to sit beside someone else. The discriminative feature might not him being a forei…

Perhaps, but the discrimination one feels living in Japan is more about the sum total of a bunch of separately innocent actions that, taken together, feel kind of crappy. I've lived in Japan for about ten years now and certainly sympathize with the author. It's a great place to live, but there are still things that just plain suck about it, too. It's kind of like this. Imagine, if every time you started a conversatio…

I just do not understand this mentality. We live in a primarily homogeneous society. There will be friction there. It comes across as overly sensitive.
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