assimilation | JAPANsociology

by Akie Kuwano

Although Japan used to be referred to as ethnically homogeneous, the number of immigrants reached more than 1.5% of Japanese population in 2005. Despite this shift in immigrants’ population, Japanese education system is reluctant to change. In order to keep Japan as secular nation, Japan persists in its principle of separation of religion and education. However, this attitude often creates problems between Japanese schools and migrants parents/children. The problems are mostly evident in the case of Muslim migrants because their religion, Islam, rules not only the realm of their private life, but also their behavior in the public sphere. The main problems those Muslim migrants are facing in Japanese public schools is about school lunch.

One example of Muslim faith conflicting with school lunch in Japanese school is Ramadan. Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, provides that the ninth month of the Islamic calendar as Ramadan, the month of fasting. Many Muslims start Ramadan at the age of 7, just about the time when children start going to elementary school. Although it is medically proved that Ramadan does not cause any medical illness to healthy individual, without having any knowledge some teachers feel it abuses children.

The other instance is Halal food. Islam regulates what followers can eat and cannot eat, according to Qur’an. Food that is compatible with Islamic teaching is known as Halal food, while the others are called Haraam. The most frequently used Japanese condiments like soy sauce or mirin are Haraam because they usually contain alcohol. Accordingly, many of the lunch that Japanese schools provide are Haraam to Muslim children. In order to avoid Haraam foods, Muslim children often bring their own lunch box from their home. Some school view this as unequal to other Japanese children, some school urge Muslim parents to pay for school lunch.

To sum up, it is the lack of knowledge which preventing Japanese schools from handling problems correctly and flexibly with Muslim migrants children. It is understandable that Japan wants to eliminate religion from public sphere because in Japanese sense religion is what governs people’s private life; however, Japan also needs to understand that religion is sometimes inseparable from their public life and is even forming their culture, in which the society needs to pay respect to accommodate population from foreign countries.

References

Mina, Hattori. (2007). “Development of Religious Value for Indonesian Muslim Children in Japan: A Case Study of Voluntary Educational Activities in Nagoya City”, Intercultural Communication Studies, Vol.19

樋口直人、丹野清人「食文化の越境とハラール食品産業の形成―在日ムスリム移民を事例として―」、徳島大学社会科学研究弟13号、p99-p.131

by Julia Helbing

When thinking about international migration, it came into my mind that it is somehow connected to globalization and high-tech work.

There are inevitably many poor countries. But in these countries are a lot of high-skilled workers. Because they don’t have the chance to get a proper education or a job in their country of origin, many of these workers go abroad, where they can find proper education and work. But still they take parts of their old life with them; they still want to eat food from their country of origin. So they import it from their home. Some people even opened shops just for the needs of foreign habitants, mostly foreigners, and imported the food they are used from home. As soon as normal supermarkets noticed this, they also started to offer some food from foreign countries, hoping that the immigrants would buy at their supermarket and take some other items with them. I think this is one good reason, why trade with foreign countries started and influenced globalization.

Nowadays, international migration is an all-over-the-world topic. People are going almost everywhere, because they have family in other countries, they already found a job or where they hope to find a job in the future. Many students also go abroad, to add experience and a stay abroad to their life or to learn another language and become fluent in speaking it. If they would find a job, they would also stay in this country and finish their studies there.

But going to a foreign country is really a very big step and should be considered well. When you start a new live in a country you don’t know, or you are not used to the habits, you will experience many difficulties not just concerning the language. In the other country, many things are different to the origin country, people behave different and react different. For example, whenever I go for shopping in Japan, whether it is food shopping or anything else, the employees behave different than German employees. Japanese employees seem to be friendlier, but they sometimes try to avoid speaking English with a foreign costumer. German employees seem to be a bit colder, but almost all of them can speak English or another language fluently. In Japan, you also take off your shoes when entering the fitting room, in Germany, you just keep them on.

International migrant also have strong ties to their home countries. They try to stick to their holidays, want to consume food and drinks from their own countries and they also like to speak their mother tongue at home. Of course they try to learn the language of the host country, but normally they speak it with an accent. When their children are growing, the children usually just use the mother tongue of their parents at home, but speak the host country’s language as soon as they exit the house. They find it less problematic to adapt to the behavior, language and costumes of the host country. The second or third generation of immigrants also loses the connection to their countries of origin more and more. The third or fourth generation can’t even speak the language of their grandparents anymore.

Nevertheless, immigrants have very often to fight against discrimination. Even if they can’t even speak the language of their country of origin, just because they look different, some people don’t see them as for example American habitants, despite they grew up and went to school in America. There are many laws against discrimination, but still a lot of discrimination happens, even in political environment. In Germany for example, one politician, Thilo Sarrazin wrote the book “Germany disestablishes itself” and stated that Muslims are taking away the jobs in Germany.

I think in a globalized world, there should be no space for discrimination. We can buy articles from all around the world through the internet or even in our local supermarket; a lot of foreign people are doing great jobs all over the world. And there are also some jobs that habitants born in one country don’t want to do, e.g. the care of elderly. They are happy that foreign people do this. You could say that some people don’t want to live with foreigners, but can’t live without them.