Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Homogeneous Is Japan?

noahpinion.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 232 posts

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#61

Post by kelnos »

1996 wrote: post #4

Carefully read the comment to realize this "feel good" piece is written for a western audience: > "This article was clearly written more from ignorance than knowledge and is not based on knowledge of the actual culture in Japan."

I saw that comment, and I think it misses the point. The author was not claiming that everyone lives in harmony and no one is prejudiced against those anyone else.

The point is that, if you look at official stats and see "98% Japanese", that ignores the fact that many of those people aren't ethnically Japanese, because the stats talk about citizenship, not ethnicity.

I think that comment actually proves the author's point, that there are many categories outside ethnically Japanese, and people there disagree on what it means to "be Japanese", lending credence to the idea that Japan is not a homogeneous society.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#62

Post by vanilla-almond »

kome wrote: post #47
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #9

>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.

"The refusal to gather statistics on ethno-racial diversity is unusual" 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.

"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."

In the UK, statistics are collected on the ethnic origin of people in order to provide insights into important issues. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that deaths from COVID-19 are higher among black and South Asian groups. Without these statistics we might not back have identified that these communities are more vulnerable to COVID-19.

Another example: statistics have identified that South Asians have a much higher incidence of diabetes. That insight means health professionals can research why the risk is higher in those communities.

Statistics that capture ethnic origin can also provide insight into issues of inequality, health, employment, housing and more. In my view, capturing this data is important and helpful. Without it, insight and analysis will be incomplete.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#63

Post by [deleted] »

bjeds wrote: post #5

Not sure how interesting this is, but since the article mentions Scandinavia and "homogeneous society", that's not really true either. Unlike Japan, Sweden keeps track, not of "race" but country of origin for migrants or children of migrants. For Sweden, 36.5% of men aged 15-44 are either foreign born, or has at least one parent foreign born. This data is from the Statistics Sweden (SCB) for 2019. In this cohort, 62.…

[deleted]

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#64

Post by andi999 »

EE84M3i wrote: post #50
b3kart wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> enormous How enormous? We wouldn’t need words like that if we looked at the right numbers.

https://www.turning-japanese.info/2016/09/totals.html says: > 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…

Also a lot of the Koreans in Japan migrated before 1940, peak in 1930. So the Koreans taking up citizenship are often third generation living in Japan, after beeing culturally fully integrated. So according to your numbers it would be fair to put the 'real foreigners' who took citizenship in the 0,1 to 0,3% range.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#65

Post by vanilla-almond »

627467 wrote: post #2

Racial stats and forms asking about it are an underestimated force that perpetuates systemic racism, increases segregation, discrimination and undermines social cohesiveness. Change my mind.

I replied to another poster about the collection of ethnic minority data in the UK. I repeat what I said previously: these stats are collected in order to provide insights into important issues such as health, employment, housing and yes, inequality.

For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that deaths from COVID-19 are higher among black and South Asian groups. Without this data we would not have been able to identify that these communities are at higher risk.

Link to my previous comment on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25891543

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#66

Post by TacticalCoder »

nvarsj wrote: post #24
arkitaip wrote: post #8

"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…

Did you read the article? The census considers anyone with Japanese citizenship to be "Japanese". Therefore it's useless as a measure of ethnic diversity.

I don't think it's useless at all in that Japan is one of the hardest country on earth to get citizenship.

I've got family in Japan. All you need to do is to go to Japan to see that it's very "japanese".

You can get residency semi-easily but getting citizenship is extremely hard.

It's not the EU or the US where a huge lot of "foreigners" can become citizen.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#67

Post by JoeAltmaier »

OP missing the point. Its about culture, not all the details they're trying to hang on it (dna, nationality).

You don't need to explain to a Japanese who's Japanese. They can tell within 2 seconds of meeting them. Its all about culture.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#68

Post by newacct583 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #66
nvarsj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? The census considers anyone with Japanese citizenship to be "Japanese". Therefore it's useless as a measure of ethnic diversity.

I don't think it's useless at all in that Japan is one of the hardest country on earth to get citizenship. I've got family in Japan. All you need to do is to go to Japan to see that it's very "japanese". You can get residency semi-easily but getting citizenship is extremely hard. It's not the EU or the US where a huge lot of "foreigners" can become citizen.

Note also that Japanese law implements blood citizenship and not birthright citizenship. Domestically born children of immigrants remain immigrants, in general.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#69

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #67

OP missing the point. Its about culture, not all the details they're trying to hang on it (dna, nationality). You don't need to explain to a Japanese who's Japanese. They can tell within 2 seconds of meeting them. Its all about culture.

As someone who doesn't know much about Japanese culture, I find this really interesting.

Can you elaborate a bit on which details would provide that info?

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#70

Post by mm983 »

"Tokyo public schools will stop forcing students to dye their hair black, official promises" (2019)

https://japantoday.com/category/national/tokyo-public-school...

"According to a new survey published by Tokyo news outlet The Asahi Shimbun, 57% of public high schools in the city require students to prove that their hair color is natural."

https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-students-hair-color...

Post reply on HN