41–50 of 232 posts
Genetics is one thing, but Japan definitely did allow foreign culture into their mix. Just look at the movie "The Last Samurai" to see what I mean. I wonder if it's possible to put out a number for that. As for my Country, as Europeans we are heavily influenced by Americans, who we completely seem to accept as our cultural leaders. How do the Japanese feel about them though?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To uproot racism, you need to rally your population behind common denominators and values. That's all very nice but how do you apply it to the situation where you have a minority group with little to no interest in integrating into the indigenous culture?
You make them do it anyway. It's interesting to note in this context that unlike most countries, China fully assimilated its Jewish population.
For example, I could start my own cult and write all the angry blog posts I wanted.
Now, once I gain more than 100 followers, the dynamics start to change slightly.
> If I told you that the U.S. was “93.3% American”, would you conclude that the U.S. is a homogeneous country? Because that’s exactly what everyone who cites the “98% Japanese” statistic is doing for Japan. ...yes? I find both those numbers insanely high, since the proportion of non-citizens here in Switzerland is 25% (country-wide) or 32% ([0], Zurich). And this doesn't exactly make the country a melting pot either.…
Also, reasoning in cited sentence is wrong. If U.S. is "93% American" then on average 7 out 100 people you meet will not be "American", whereas for Japan only 2 out of 100 will not be "Japanese" - based on those numbers Japan is about "350% more homogeneous" country, not "5%" as suggested. It is a case of Potato Paradox, where small numerical differences between values given as percentages can hide big differences in…
Landing in Japan, I was surprised to find that people did not look that similar. I mean, this is Asia and all Asians look the same. But Japan had some yellowish, whitish, brownish people that were all, euh, Japanese. In a sense, they were Japanese because they behaved like Japanese. It seems that behavior plays a big role in how people can identify another one as being one of them. Robert Sapolsky has a great series…
> Islam had this too: Your fellow muslim is your "brother". But then comes along people who vie for political power. In the process, they start to again divide people along certain differences, one which may be racial, sometimes it is lineage. And so you see the process of unification being reversed.
Any attempt to unite people is inherently exclusionary. That is not problematic in itself but, inevitably, some people equate unity with superiority. It is a fine line.
What has improved (this is contentious) is: decline of religion, increased in shared interest, more diverse identities (i.e. people identify in more than one way), and more knowledge about people who are different with the internet/media/etc. Nationalism is, however, still understated as a cause of strife (I am in the UK so that perhaps colours my perspective).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TL;DR: ethnicity is not citizenship Switzerland has never been homogeneous and the recent immigration to Switzerland is very different from regular immigration elsewhere. It is an exception in the west, mostly due to low taxation for rich people or political reasons. for the same reasons in Lichtenstein 33℅ of the population is non-citizen and not surprisingly in Monaco an astonishing 75℅ of the residents are foreign…
Sorry for the irrelevant comment, but I’ve never seen anyone use ℅ instead of % before. If it’s a typo, how did that happen?
"About 2.2% of Japan's total legal resident population are foreign citizens" [0] "Japanese people make up 98.1%, Chinese 0.5%, Korean 0.4%, and other 1% (includes Filipino, Vietnamese, and Brazilian) of people living in Japan, according to the CIA World Handbook" [1] So Japan is exactly as ethnically homogenous as you would think. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_of_Japan [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.o…
>The refusal to gather statistics on ethno-racial diversity is unusual Is this true? I don't understand why any country would want to open the box of pandora that is gathering statistics on ethno-racial diversity. I always thought countries like the USA and China were the exception.
Not gathering racial statistics is the norm in continental Europe. It's mostly Anglo-Saxon people (us, uk) and their love for the idea of "race" that is the exception.
Genetics is one thing, but Japan definitely did allow foreign culture into their mix. Just look at the movie "The Last Samurai" to see what I mean. I wonder if it's possible to put out a number for that. As for my Country, as Europeans we are heavily influenced by Americans, who we completely seem to accept as our cultural leaders. How do the Japanese feel about them though?
Ah yes, the famous Hollywood documentary “The Last Samurai”. :-)
Well.. it is an anecdotal representation of some bigger cultural change that happened, though, is it not?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TL;DR: ethnicity is not citizenship Switzerland has never been homogeneous and the recent immigration to Switzerland is very different from regular immigration elsewhere. It is an exception in the west, mostly due to low taxation for rich people or political reasons. for the same reasons in Lichtenstein 33℅ of the population is non-citizen and not surprisingly in Monaco an astonishing 75℅ of the residents are foreign…
Sorry for the irrelevant comment, but I’ve never seen anyone use ℅ instead of % before. If it’s a typo, how did that happen?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normally that is a valid point, but for Japan there is an enormous overlap.
> enormous How enormous? We wouldn’t need words like that if we looked at the right numbers.
> As of 2015, a total of almost 581,000 people have become legally Japanese since the fall of the shogunate and the rise of constitutional "westernized" Japan.
This seems consistent with other sources I found while doing a quick search.
This suggests less than 1% of the number of citizens of japan was not born a citizen.
Of course, some of those people will have children and those children's ethnicity could be not Japanese ethnically (or partially) but still the number of citizens of Japan that are not ethnically Japanese is quite small, and the number of citizens of Japan that are not ethnically east asian is much smaller still.