Tag Archives: japan

The immigrant issue in Japan

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by Asako Morita

Because the lecture last week by guest speaker was quite inspiring, I decided to research more about immigrant in Japan. Even though Japan has been welcoming more immigrants these days, it is still far from multicultural society compared to other countries. Therefore, as guest speaker insisted, the issues and problems of minority are easily ignored or invisible to the masses until minority in a trouble raises voice as a group. Then I would like to seek how Japanese government should make the policy to invite more immigrants.

First, I would like to demonstrate general information about immigrants in Japan. According to the statistic of national census, more than 2 million foreign workers are now in Japan. This number is still low compared to other developed countries such as the U.S. but it is almost increased twice than 10 years ago. 1.6 millions of people are from Asia and Chinese is the major immigrants in 2011. The next biggest number is from South America especially from Brazil. In the total number, almost half of them are women. However, like 75 percent of Philippines immigrants are women, the number of sex rate is quite different from each country. Because more and more immigrants or foreign workers have come to Japan, issues are getting defined.

Second, I would like to analyze what issues immigrants and foreign workers in Japan have. The one of the biggest issue is about an employment. Now, Japan is facing the issue of dwindling birthrate and an aging population. The concern from presence situation is shrinking of the labor force. On top of that, Japan is now in a depression so what enterprises in Japan have needed was the expectation of wage control. Then companies want 20 to 30 years old young simple labors and expected workers to go home before they get old. However, this turning over of young foreign workers cannot solve the issue of decreasing labor force. On the contrast, if a specific age group stays in Japan, Japanese composition of population becomes distorted.

Although if Japan succeeds in receiving numbers of immigrants, they may have hard time get used to living in Japanese society. Because Japanese life style is quite different from others, a friction might be caused and mass of immigrants would make a community by country where someone is from. Once Japanese government promotes to accelerate to receive immigrates, it is hard to stop it even though the situation changes.

Therefore, what I suggest is that Japan should make up the comfortable working environment for elderly people, women and foreign workers who are eager to work. And also, Japan has to break away from winning low cost competition model. Not only young simple foreign labors but also more and more skilled foreign workers should be welcomed. This is the way Japan survives in global economy under globalization.

Japanese Education Systems’ Ignorance of Muslim Migrants Children

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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

Undocumented Children

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by Yurino Kawamura

All children have equal rights. All children must have opportunity for education, access to medical care, and right to realize their dreams. Doesn’t this apply to undocumented children?

According to Lee et al, the number of undocumented children of undocumented or illegal immigrants in Japan is estimated to be 20,000 to 30,000. Some of their parents have moved to Japan in illegal means, but others are so called over-stayers, whose visas have already been expired. In most cases, children themselves had no choice but to live in a country where their parents have chosen to work. Current Japanese law says elementary and middle schools are to offer education to children if they asked for it, regardless of their nationality, and regardless of their state of documentation. However, according to Lee’s case study, many undocumented children were still unable to go to school. Some parents simply didn’t know that undocumented children can go to public schools. Others needed their 9-year-old daughter to take care of her younger sisters when they were working in the daytime. There is no doubt that similar cases may take place in the case of Filipinos. Also, some cases are reported that educational committees refuse undocumented children. Although the law admits the children’s right, more effort should be exercised to widespread that idea into schools and committees.

It seems unbelievable, but 20 years ago, children of Japanese Brazilian workers were refused to enter elementary school by education committees, because they could not comprehend Japanese. This kind of problem roots in the attitude toward foreign people. Not only by making laws, but also by changing these people’s attitudes toward emigrants should eliminate prejudice and unequal treatments toward undocumented children. What’s even worse, even if the children are raised in the Japanese community and society, once their parents are put into custody, children are exposed to the risk of being deported. In many cases, children have to choose either to “return” to their parents’ homeland or to stay in Japan apart from their family. This is a crucial and tough choice for teenagers. Although they themselves had no choice but to survive and make a good community in the environment they were brought to, they have risk of being torn apart from it all of a sudden. Could it be said that undocumented children are treated equally?

Living in a foreign country where you cannot communicate fluently may cause a huge stress upon children. Even the children of legal emigrants face some risks such as discrimination. Facing many kinds of risks, undocumented children have much tough time to grow up. We have to think about at better way to let undocumented children live better lives.

Reference

Lee et al, “A study about a non-attendance at school / the life reality of a child in a statelessness state in Japan －From a viewpoint of International Human Rights law”, Bulletin of Social Medicine, No.23 2005 (in Japanese)

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

The problem Japanese Brazilians face when going back “home”

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by Chie Munemori

Today a great number of immigrants are living with us in Japan. Each of them has various types of reasons for leaving their home countries and migrating to Japan. In the case of Japanese Brazilians whose ancestors are Japanese who migrated from Japan to Brazil in the past hundred years, they immigrated back to Japan because of financial disaster which happened in the late 1980’s. They wish to get good job and send remittance to families in Brazil, and some of them even decide to settle down in Japan for rest of their lives. In fact, in spite of their dreams, the present situation surrounding them in Japan is against their wills. The circumstances are difficult for them in the extreme. Below I present some of those problems they face and also potential resolutions of them.

One is that most of Japanese Brazilians have citizenships of Brazil and they are already not familiar with the culture, customs, and social system of Japan. It means that many of them tend to have difficulties with their daily lives right after coming to Japan. For example, in my hometown Hiroshima, many Japanese Brazilians are there and one of my friends in my schooldays is also the one. She and her family did not understand even easy sentences written or spoken in Japanese so that they always had to ask their neighborhoods problems such as how to throw out garbage and to pass of a circular in their area. Response to this situation, some mayoral governments and local communities have started providing them with free support services such as Japanese school, offices to look for a job and to rent a house, desks to teach them how to pay taxes, and so on. Komatsu city in Ishikawa prefecture is the one of those local governments.

Secondary, Japanese compulsory education system does not include foreign children as its target because the Constitution of Japan in Article 14 says “All people shall have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability, as provided by law” but Japanese Brazilians are not included in “all people”. In other words, in this article “all people” means people who have Japanese citizenship. That’s why public elementary schools in Japan do not have proper curriculum of Japanese for children who are not Japanese in it. And worse is that some of young Japanese Brazilian students in elementary school are ill-treated by classmates since they do not understand Japanese. In such cases, those students become not to go to school because of that. To result these problems, administration need to modify its educational system to give them chance to learn Japanese in public school as their human rights. Additionally, teachers in school need to teach students cross-cultural understanding between Japanese and those who have different cultural back grounds from them.

In conclusion, it is necessary to change our social system not only for Japanese Brazilian but also for us Japanese under the situation of decreasing birthrate and aging population. Japanese Brazilian is potential power in Japanese society. We have to reconsider their rights and life conditions.