Author Archives: japansociology

Illegal immigrants in Japan

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by Natsumi Ichioka

In Japan, there are many Filipinos. I have a half-Filipino friend. She is not an illegal immigrant. Her mother comes to Japan and she cannot speak Japanese very well. On the other hand, my friend can speak only Japanese. I think there are some problems in her family.

First, she lives in poverty compared to the Japanese house. She cannot go to university, because her mother gets sick, and she has no afford of money and time. Secondly, her father was not a good worker. Her mother manages a snack bar, and sometime her father helps her mother. I think this situation is not DV, but terrible situation for her and her mother. In addition, she can only speak Japanese though she grew up in the Philippines until she was 3 years old. She cannot speak Tagalog language. She had some communication troubles with her mother because of the different languages.

As I mentioned, there are many troubles in the immigrant family. This situation will be more terrible for the illegal migrants. In Japan, July 9 in 2012, “the 60-year-old” certificate of alien registration was seized. Foreign residents will be given a “residence card”. This change has some merits. At the same time, it will appear the troubles in the illegal immigrants in Japan.

In Japan, illegal immigration is against the law. They have to go back their country forcibly. If they go back to their country, there is a trouble in language. Like my friends, some people can speak Japanese only, because they have grown up in Japan. They will have some hard troubles in their country not only language but also some cultures. On the other hand, In Japan they are not guaranteed the basic human rights. They are forced to live in terrible conditions everywhere.

Form these points, Japan needs to make a new law which guarantees the illegal immigrants with some conditions. As first step, I think Japan needs to take in the two ways of regulating of nationality: by place of birth and by blood lineage like France. For example children who live more than 5 years in Japan have the rights to get the nationality. If they can do so, they can live more actively in Japan. They are also guaranteed the basic human rights.

Secondly, Japan should change the immigration control act. Actually, there are some people who are in Japan illegally. They have some aims to stay in Japan. The government should think about their human rights. If they do not commit some crimes, they are not bad people. The government should take more exceptional instances for the serious immigration people.

Japan tries to welcome the foreigner, but they cannot take an act now. We need to make a new situation which more foreigners want to come in Japan and live in Japan. It is important to keep the past situation, but the world is changing. Japan has to change more international country.

References

http://www.gcnet.at/countries/europe/eu-cl-short.htm ヨーロッパ諸国の国籍法

http://www.moj.go.jp/nyuukokukanri/kouhou/nyukan_nyukan87.html 法務省

Immigrants and Crime in Japan

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by Anonymous

There is a general perception that immigrants are likely to commit crime more than Japanese in Japan. However, is that right realization? It seems that the mass media in Japan deal with crimes by foreigners or immigrants excessively, and it brings people a kind of prejudice.

Mass media in Japan often shows how foreigners or immigrants are dangerous with daily news, newspaper, or magazine. This phenomenon can be analyzed by closed society in Japan. Still in today, Japan is said that it has little variety of nationalities, ethnicities, cultures, and language, while the world comes to be more global. Compared with other countries like America, Japanese’s attitude of accepting immigrants is by far less flexible. People tend to have uncomfortable feeling against immigrants and it helps Japanese to have negative perception against them like committing crime. However, according to the data by National Police Agency, many cases of the crimes by immigrants have Japanese accomplices. It means that Japanese accomplices have been hidden because of the emphasized report of the crime by immigrants. Through this, I think it’s not necessarily appropriate to suggest that only immigrants tend to have high possibility to commit crime, and Japanese and they are standing in equal field.

However, it is also true that there are crimes committed by immigrant in Japan. The immigrants should have some reasons, because I think nobody commits crime without reason, Conceivable factors are that the lack of the opportunities for work, or the uncomfortable environment at working place or community. In Japan, it seems that most of immigrants have non-regular employment, and it means that they are in an insecure situation and also the payment is lower than the average. On a daily level, it is difficult for them to integrate into Japanese community, because of differences in language, culture, religion, and character of people. They might be isolated by community. I think these factors bring immigrants negative feelings, and sometimes it drives them to commit crime.

Although there is prejudice against immigrants in Japan, the problem of the crime committed by immigrants actually exists. We have to think how we can deal with it. I think the most important thing is that Japanese and immigrants should have good relationship by participation in communities. If they make connection, they will pay attention to each other, and it might help them when they are in trouble. Moreover, it might help them to understand their differences. The crimes committed by immigrants will decrease when the future that Japanese and immigrants can live together without prejudice or discrimination comes.

Citation

the status of arrest against the foreign crimes 来日外国人犯罪の検挙状況. (2011).  Retrieved Nov 10, 2012, from National Police Agency: http://www.npa.go.jp/sosikihanzai/kokusaisousa/kokusai/H23_rainichi.pdf

Globalization takes place in many different ways

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by Julia Helbing

Nowadays globalization does not only mean to produce in one part of the world and do deliver these good to the other part of the world. I think it also means that you have to move to the places, where work is offered and employees needed.

In many developed countries, the costs of living have risen constantly. People have to pay more rent, the food is more expensive and of course, electronic devices also got more expensive because they are developed all the time and should make our live more easily. Therefore, a lot of women also have to work now to pay all the expenses she and her husband face. And if they have children, they even have to pay higher expenses. But what would happen if there is no one at home who can take care of the housework? Or who would take care of the children? Because of this, many families decide to hire a nanny from developing countries. Compared to nannies from their own country, they have to pay fewer wages. In addition, those nannies from abroad also work very hard to earn maybe more money. But still the nanny leaves her own family in her country of origin to go abroad and work for other people, just to send the money she earned home to her children to pay the expenses for the children’s education. This way, the mother wants to offer a better future to her children.

In my opinion, globalization now does not just shift production from one country to another; it also shifts people to other countries. But today we also have a lot of countries that depend on those workers coming from third world countries to rich countries.

There are many jobs that people in developed countries don’t want to do. They don’t want to take care of older or ill people, for example, or they don’t want to work in the fields and harvest potatoes or salad. Therefore, they are really happy to have workers emigrating from other countries to do this kind of work.

Japan has for example a contract with the Philippines about nurses coming from the Philippines to work in Japan. Since 2009, the countries entered into a Memorandum of Understanding, which means that Philippine nurses are trained and employed in Japan to face the decreasing number of Japanese nurses and caregivers. But after their training, the potential nurses have to pass an exam, which is in Japanese. So in addition to learning how to take care of other people, they also have to learn Japanese language. This is why unfortunately, not many nurses pass this exam. Since the start of this contract, only 13 Philippine nurses were able to pass the exam and therefore work in Japan. (1)

But of course I can understand that the nurses have to speak Japanese, because the patient in Japan normally can’t speak any other languages then Japanese.  And of course it is not easy to take care of sick people, so the exam has to be difficult. If the nurse would make a mistake, she could maybe kill the ill person, so I think it is correct that the exam is not easy to pass.

Nonetheless, this example shows clearly that in developed countries, workers from other counties are needed.  People from rich countries go to other rich countries to perform work there, so the gap they leave has to be filled with people from undeveloped countries.

References

  1. http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/253140/pinoyabroad/13-pinoy-nurses-pass-tough-japan-nursing-exams

Multiculturalism in Japan

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by Yukari Deguchi

About two decades ago, the majority of immigrants in Japan were Korean whose purpose was to get right of permanent residence after WWⅡ. But today, immigrants’ home countries, their purpose, and occupations become more various. It’s not unusual to see immigrant students at even public elementary and junior high school.

Along with this change in Japan, in 2006, the Fundamental Law of Education was amended to push ahead with education of multi- cultural society (多文化共生社会). Its principle is to understand and love each student’s own culture at first and then, realize the differences in other culture. It seems to deal with the trend of globalization, but it also gives us a question—is it able to achieve multicultural coexistence (共存)? Isn’t it side-by-side existence (並存)?

The first notable point is to understand and love each student’s culture “at first”. This patriotism-like expression has already been controversial topic among teachers, policy makers, scholars, and activists. Patriotism is not bad thing, but they concerned about connection with imperial system from historical view.

The other point is to realize the differences in other culture. I particularly would like to mention about “realize differences”. I think it may draw a firm line between “my” culture and “your” culture. Without any doubt, it’s not a problem about the matter of personal preference, like preferring bread or rice. However, are there also no problems when it comes to issues that are related with us, like whether our country should make war or not? Can Japanese accept the foreigners’ opinion that Japan should do war just because they have other cultural idea? I think the answer is no. Many Japanese might deny the opinion. Multi-cultural society is epoch-making idea though, by these examples, I’d like to say that if we misunderstand it, it becomes rejection of other culture or indifference to other culture like “I don’t care, just as you like”.

These attitudes effects some immigrants issues in Japan, such as weather immigrants can have dual citizenship or not, and how should we assure the right of illegal immigrants. These issues get little attention from society and are lack of discussion. Not for politicians, but for citizens, the reason is because they are not interested in it so much, or they don’t want to be involved in the issues that have negative effect to their living. We have to change this situation to real multi-cultural society, which is coexistence of multi culture. Otherwise, there are more and more legal and illegal immigrants who are exploited and live in poverty hidden from public view.

References

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology「改正前後の教育基本法の比較(Contrast Between Before and After the amending of the Fundamental Law of Education)」 http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/kihon/about/06121913/002.pdf. Accessed 2012, 11, Nov.

Skin color and discrimination

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by Nurussakinah Mahmud

African American history of discrimination can be traced back since early 1600s when they were brought in as slaves for white people. Although slavery has been made illegal for centuries, the discrimination against them while can be said as somehow are now more discreet, it is sadly nowhere near any ending.

While racial discrimination is not something new in this world, I admit that discrimination because of skin colour or skin tone is quite new to me. The first thing that I thought of was why would people who know how hard being discriminated against, want to discriminate each other still? The documentary of students in Hampton University showed that even in black society, the tone of your skin can also causing you to be judged by people. Suddenly, it is not just a matter of black or white anymore. It is now how dark is your skin tone; is it very dark brown, dark brown, medium brown or lighter.  But this is all happening in the African American society. Are they, after so long of being discriminated by whites, start to subconsciously thinking that they ought to become nearer to whites too in term of skin tone? Is the mass media responsible for this kind of thinking?

The portrayal of black people in television can reflect a lot to this way of thinking. For example, black is always been stereotypically portrayed as the villains or the ugly ones, thus, to not be associated with being bad, they try not to look like that, ergo they want to lighten their skin. While it is said that African Americans do have higher self esteem than whites, especially women as they are always portrayed as strong and independent, the study by Keith shows that having lighter skin tone boosted the self esteem of the women. Thus we can probably say that while they are not ashamed of being black per se, having lighter skin tone is still thought as being fairer and healthier than being darker.

Another point we discussed during the presentation was the connection between skin tone, achievement and self esteem. We pointed out that Michael Jackson for example, had a quite successful career before turning ‘white’, therefore skin tone and achievement cannot be said to be in a direct relation to each other. But after discussing it, we do found the point to be a weak one since the number of successful black men is just too few in comparison to the much lighter ones. And because the focus of this chapter is on women, the scale is definitely more imbalance.  In a world where the perception of beauty is equal to having a fair skin and physical appearance is also quite an important factor considered when looking for a job, women with lighter skin tone do get higher privileges.

Furthermore, marriage, however pathetic this may sound, is also an important socioeconomic factor or an achievement in a woman’s life. Thus, to get a good husband, a woman has to put herself at par with the others in term of beauty. This is where the self esteem (as well as good whitening products) comes into equation. Even though one can be successful without having a high self esteem, self esteem definitely can boost up one’s chance to be successful and if being lighter skinned can make a woman self esteem to increase, her chance to get a good husband is also indirectly increased since she is now what people generally assume to be a beauty.

Skin Color and Self-Esteem

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by Marina Sata Khan

The chapter presented research that showed that those with lighter skin tone had been able to “achieve” more, in terms of income, jobs (even within the “Black” race), yet Black women have overall high self-esteem. To be honest, I was not surprised at all with the latter discovery.

Watching USA TV shows, Black men tend to be portrayed as criminals, gangsters, and rappers from the ghettos (other than the President). But on the other hand, I recall that Black women were portrayed simply as successful “strong” women on TV that are confident, well-spoken with an outgoing attitude. Such examples are Oprah Winfrey, Tyra Banks, Naomi Campbell, Whoopi Goldberg and Beyoncé. All these women tend portray an image of the “Strong independent black woman”, a certain identity that seems to promote and encourage high self esteem amongst black women.

Not having ever been to the USA (except for the state of Hawai’i), it was not until recent that I was truly aware of a Black and White divide. As a young child, I had been engrained with the image of ‘Sesame Street’ where to every blonde ponytail girl there was a boy with a black Afro. They lived in the same flats and played with each other on the stairs along with their Hispanic and Asian friends. ‘Arthur’ was also such TV show, although they were all animals – I believed that Arthur, a smart loveable mouse with glasses, was a Black boy, and he had many friends of different races. As a child, I thought that the USA was a perfect multiracial country.

But as I grew older I realized that this was all “just a lie”, around the time I became familiar with rap music and began to watch more than morning children shows. At school I learnt about Black slavery, but along with the Civil Rights Movement, making it seem that there was something in the past, but that did not matter anymore as things were all mended now. However, I continued to become aware of the discrimination that still existed, especially through exposure of US media. I began to think about if Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan was African American… I hardly doubt their court cases would simply be written as some “naughty party girl” issues under the gossip column. I remember hearing Naomi Campbell’s cases of assault on the afternoon news, and the image around was that she was completely “evil”, everyone conveniently forgetting her efforts that even led her to be referred to as an “honorary granddaughter” by Nelson Mandela.

The chapter went even deeper, into the issue of skin tone even within the Black community. This was the point that was shocking to me rather than the part about self esteem. As long as there is a group that benefits from a certain characteristic in society, i.e. fair skin color, I feel as though people who have lighter skin would be advantaged and the darkest of the darkest pushed to the bottom. This is certainly another form of discrimination, and doesn’t this need to be addressed alongside racism?

Mestizaje and skin color

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by Jun Sakakibara

According to the reading, “mestijaze” is a racial concept and national ideology lies in Mexican society. Mexican people understand that Mexico is such a multi-race nation and since everybody is mixed race, there should be no discrimination against racial differences. They prefer to use the word of “color” than “race” when they describe other people.

The reading also brought the fact that it may not be a complete racism, however, at least a sort of preference towards lighter skin color exists in society. People want to be their offspring white, people think white people are more attractive, and some seeks whiter skin colored partner for marriage. Mexican women try to whiten themselves and being white could be a part of beauty for them.

I guess Japanese people also have same kind of preference towards white as Mexicans do. For instance, many Japanese women are addicted to get whiter skin (“bihaku”) and they put a lot of medical efforts to get it. Since in Japan there is only one race, even though we hold preference to whiter skin people, it never is a serious problem and it never is a source to judge people. While Japanese its tendency can be seen just as “preference”, I think Mexico’s case goes a bit further than that. There would be status exchange issue behind. The image of white people can be such as “good people”, “socially better status” or “wealthier”. As I mentioned above, if you are not white and if you have dark colored skin, you want to get married with whiter skin colored partner not only for you own benefit of getting higher social status but also for your offspring. In this sense, it goes over the preference.

The discussion point was whether Mexico should have affirmative action and change to white supremacy. The book of psychology, which I am reading these days said we create oneself by interacting with other people in society and we see ourselves as how others see us. Thus it is a normal thing that we always want to be better than others and we want to be seen better and higher by others. Also, in my opinion their preference is too strong but I do not think they do as much racists’ discriminations compared to US, for instance. So I am not sure if I agree to take affirmative actions in Mexico. In addition, it sounds such a contradiction that Mexicans say they are not racists at all and in reality they do things, which seem like a racist, though, can we say Japanese people are not racists at all? We think we are not racists either, but for example, none of us would be happy to marry with burakumin unless you are burakumin. Isn’t it same kind of discrimination as Mexicans do? In fact, Mexican people’s preference can be much more stronger than Japanese’. However, for me it seems that Japanese society has contradiction of national race concept as well. I feel if we say Mexico needs change, Japan needs change too. The difference is that In Japan, this kind of racial topic is a taboo to talk whereas in Mexico it could be an open topic to discuss. In this sense, I think Mexico has a bit more process towards race issue than Japan.

The Dynamics of Color

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by Marina Sata Khan

Christina A. Sue writes on the perceptions of Mexican people regarding skin color, making apparent the tones of racism under the surface of their “mestizaje” society.

In her interviews, many Mexicans responded that they would like a lighter skinned partner, finding “white” features to be attractive. Many expressed their want to have a fairer partner lying in the fact that they wanted their children to have lighter skin. The preference towards whiter skin was more than obvious.

I grew up in Australia, a so-called “multicultural” nation. I would say “race” probably does not play a role as big as it does in the United States, however, I would find it more than wrong to say racism does not exist in Australia. I think it could even be said that it has one of the most legally racist histories in the world, especially to the indigenous Aboriginals.

The Stolen Generation refers to the Aboriginal children who were removed from their families and placed in missionaries and foster families. The idea behind this was to eventually eliminate the Aboriginal people, by encouraging intercultural marriages. If a “half-caste” married a White, and so did the next generation, eventually there will be no full-blooded dark skinned Aboriginals (although they were believed to die out anyway due to the popular belief of Darwinism). We see today that many Aboriginal cultures and languages have disappeared, and the Aboriginal people still continue to be underprivileged despite the apology by Kevin Rudd (then Australian Prime Minister) in 2007 for such actions by the government.

Although in the case of Mexican society people are simply ‘preferring’ to marry whites, there seems to be something similar. If all Mexicans choose to marry lighter skinned partners, would darker skinned African descendant Mexicans eventually disappear? Is this right? Is this natural? Is this wrong? Or is it simply something that would never happen with absolutely no similarity with the Stolen Generation example?

I think this would be a very interesting topic to discuss and think about, as not only does it apply in Mexico, but in most parts of the world where the undertones of white supremacy still seem to play a large role in societies today.

Shifting Identities

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by Karen Mori

The new type of racial approach which ignores the salience of race, claiming that there is no such thing as race and racism can be observed in Latin America and the author is predicting that this “Latin Americanization” can occur in the United States.

This Latin Americanization will form a complex racial stratification system developing a triracial system with whites at the top, an intermediary group of honorary whites, and the nonwhite group at the bottom, according to the author. Rank ordering of groups and members of groups are defined according to phenotype and cultural characteristics. As a result, these groups of races are not cleanly delineated, and unlike biracial system, intermediary group will play a role as buffer of racial conflicts. Nevertheless, the idea of racial mixing or racial democracy adopted by this racial approach does not challenge the white supremacy in colonial or post-colonial Latin America. For example, the social practice of whitening, gives a goal to move upward in hierarchical movement, instead of showing racial flexibility, so the result is white supremacy.

The authors are arguing that America will become like Latin America because racial minorities have increased, and race relations are becoming globalized in United States. While some analysts welcome Latin Americanization as a positive trend, others questions that if it is to maintain a white supremacy.

On the other hand, Japan is now believed that it is a homogeneous country, but this is an illusion. Japan used to have extended definition of Japanese during the time of Japanese colonialism. Under Japanese empire, all people in colonized country became Japanese. Japan educated Korean and Chinese to be Japanese, and gave Japanese citizenship. However, some people claim that there were racial stratification discriminating Chinese and Korean.

After the Japanese Empire collapsed, Japan started to claim Japanese uniqueness and homogeneity of shared blood, culture and language, so definition of Japanese became narrow. What we call Nihonjin-ron is a product of the war and increased a sense of Japanese identity and pride as well as the visibility of “Others”, particularly resident Koreans. Kana and I think this definition of Japanese(ness), either prewar definition or postwar definition, has some similarity to the situation of Latin America or the United States.

Mestizaje, Racism and Blackness in Veracruz, Mexico

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by Isabel Cabañas Rojas

“Latin America is a region of mixture”. Many cultures, religions and races are gathered; all condensed in one major community, unified under one idea: we are mestizos. Every country has their own particular characteristics though, but despite historical or regional small differences, we are all mestizos, latinos, sons of a common history and memory derived from the presence of Spaniards and Native Americans. At least this is what we are told since childhood.

This assumption is probably one of the most powerful discourses still present nowadays, that defines our identities, nationally and as Americanos, even transcending internal boundaries within the region. A very powerful and, yet, dangerous discourse, for it hides a latent reality that has enabled discrimination and the suffering of many, a big ‘minority’, who does not enter in this category, as are the descendants of African slaves.

This has happened in many countries of Latin America; however, the case of Mexico is very emblematic: its historical trajectory of mixture has only accepted the presence of Spaniards and Indigenous populations, and has denied and silenced a whole history of sub-Saharan African migration and its role on the Mexican society. Because of Mestizaje, and its strong presence as a national ideology since the nineteenth century, the presence of Africans started to blur, for economic and social reasons. Until today being ‘black’ escapes the limits of being Mexican, and Mestizaje has come to hidden the phenotypic features that is better to erase, by a process of whitening, in order to belong.

As Sue (2009) explains, Mestizaje has become a national ideology category, dynamic and diverse, which makes really hard the analysis of color in the Mexican society, as almost everybody can be included on it (Sue, 2009, pp. 114-115). Thus, in a practical level, Mestizaje is a denial and elimination of any difference, as “we are all mestizos”.

Veracruz–along with the localities of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Tabasco–is one of the historical settlements of African people in Mexico, since the fifteenth century. Therefore, their descendants today, even though very mixed with the local population of Indigenous and Spaniards, have a skin and background of African features, which they try to hide so as to be part of a society that also has segregated them socially and economically (Velásquez & Iturralde Nieto, 2012, pp. 110-113). In a Survey made by the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (2011) around 15% of the interviewees think that their rights have not been respected because of skin color (National Council to Prevent Discrimination, 2011, p. 41).

This case of Afro-Mexicans in Veracruz, and the outcomes of their skin-colors for their daily life, challenges the notion of mestizaje, which not only has shaped the history and culture of Mexico, but of all the countries of Ibero-America; and sheds new light on other issues, such as Racism and Discrimination. Any discussion on Race and discrimination is, in paper, not pertinent, because Mexico became a race-blind country. How, then, can we address racial minority needs if they theoretically do not exist?

References

Martínez-Echazabal, L. (1998). Mestizaje and the Discourse of National/Cultural Identity in Latin America, 1845-1959. Latin American Perspectives, 25 (3), 21-42.

National Council to Prevent Discrimination. (2011). National Survey on Discrimination in Mexico, Overall Results [ENADIS, 2010]. Mexico.

Sue, C. (2009). The Dynamics of Color. Mestizaje, Racism, and Blackness in Veracruz, Mexico. In E. Nakano Glenn (Ed.), Shades of Difference. Why Skin Color Matters (pp. 114-128). Stanford University Press.

Velásquez, M. E., & Iturralde Nieto, G. (2012). Afrodescendientes en México. Una historia de silencio y discriminación [Afrodescendants in Mexico. A history of silence and discrimination]. Consejo Nacional para Prevenir la Discriminación.