by Kaori Isobe

According to the statistics by Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, there are about 686,246 people who came to Japan as legal foreign workers during 2011. Furthermore, there are also people coming to Japan from other countries to work illegally or overstay. But I’ll write about legal migrations in this blog article.

As increasing the number of migration, the issues between migrations and Japanese people have been increasing as well. One of the issues is that migrations tend to be together all time. Let me show an example. There are many migrations from Brazil in my hometown, Shizuoka-prefecture. When I went to Hamamatsu-city, where they work and live intensively, I found that Brazilian people gather up all time. They talk in Portuguese and place a distance from Japanese people. It means they don’t get familiar with Japanese people and they don’t have communication with local people. Is this really good situation for both migrations and Japanese society?

I definitely say NO. If migration cannot communicate with local Japanese people, migration never get along with Japanese people. For example, migration cannot follow rules which are existed in the local area in Japan, such as the way of garbage out. If migration cannot follow rules, Japanese society would criticize migration. Then, this situation would isolate migrants from Japanese society. Also, an image of migration would be so bad among Japanese society. Then, the relationship between migration and Japanese society will be getting bad and bad.

Well, how this issue should be solved? First, migrants should accept differences between migrations’ culture and Japanese culture. It may be easier to gather with who speak same language from same culture. But, to be familiar with Japanese culture, migration should try to communicate with Japanese much more, even it’s difficult.

Second, Japanese society should not have stereotype of migration. To remove stereotype, Japanese society should hold events, such as an interchange between migration and local people and Japanese language lecture. It would not be so much easy, but keep on holding event as constantly, both migration and Japanese society would open their hearts and change the images each other. Migrations and Japanese people should know each other very well.

Finally, Japanese government should move to make better society for both migration and Japanese society. As you may know, Japan is said to be a racially homogeneous country. But as increasing the number of migration, Japanese society needs to pay attention to people from other countries much more. Therefore, the government should tell about migrations to Japanese citizens, especially for young people. Why I mentioned “young people” is because young people will become leaders in next Japanese society. So, I propose that Japanese education should add lectures which are about people from other countries including migrations.

Throughout these passages, I wrote my opinions. Whether my proposals are effective or not, issues about migration and Japanese Society should be considered with Japanese government but also with Japanese citizens because this issue must influence all citizens who live in Japan.

Reference

Web Page of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare; http://www.mhlw.go.jp/