Throughout my coursework here in Japan, I have been learning a lot about what it means to be Japanese, and the notion that Japan is a homogenous, "pure" society. To begin our class discussions, we read part of John Lie's 2001 book Multiethnic Japan. He debunks the concept that the Japanese are truly a uniform population, and highlights all the different ethnic groups that make up the country.
Leading into his discussion of Japanese racial homogeneity, John Lie discusses the ambiguity surrounding the terms “race” and “ethnicity.” In different contexts, they can take different meanings. To exemplify this, he points to Jews being considered a race in the context of the holocaust, but an ethnic group within the United States. Clearly, what defines one's race is very subjective. This raises questions regarding self identification and political identification. For example, in the United States, there was the one drop rule, which classified Americans as black if they had one black ancestor, and was codified in law throughout the nineteenth century. Additionally, “black” is defined differently in the US and in Brazil. The term “black” in the US typically refers to those of sub-saharan African descent. In Brazil, any European ancestry makes a person not black. Here, the same word has different connotations in different nations. So what really makes someone “black,” and at what point are they “allowed” to identify themselves? Does one ancestor of African heritage give them permission?
The wide margins of error regarding statistics of Japanese demographics raises questions about the accuracy of the Japanese census. Japan is largely considered mono ethnic, in part because there are no racial and ethnic categories in the census itself, with no change anticipated in the foreseeable future. In 2005, Minister for Foreign Affairs Aso described the nation as "one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture and one race." This blanket statement verbally eradicates hundreds of communities. I wonder, if changes were made to the census and more boxes were added, whether this change in statistical reporting would have any social influence on discrimination or the perception of mono ethnicity.
When compared with other countries experiencing rapid population decline, Japan is unique in that there is very little emigration leading to it. The two largest contributing factors are a low birth rate and low immigration. Strains on working mothers have not been successfully alleviated by new policies. Mothers are occupied taking care of their children, because of lack of child care, and taking care of the elderly. Opening up the borders to immigrant workers would likely aid this strain and indirectly influence more mothers, free from other stress, to make the time commitment that is having children. Ideally, this would result in a population increase. While there are many social and political implications that arise from increased immigration, such as the formation of ethnic groups and subcultures that don’t assimilate well, I wonder why this has not been more seriously considered or acted upon by Japanese politicians. Japan’s population decline is drastic, and I am curious to see how politicians respond to it, and how long it will take before immigration is increased.
In Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu’s 2008 article “‘The Invisible Man, and other narratives of living in the borderlands of race and nation,” the author discusses the struggles of being a visibly mixed race man in living in Japan. Murphy-Shigematsu’s frustration towards the discrimination he has faced, even in the twenty first century, struck me greatly. Not being allowed to date certain women and being denied entry to an apartment building are oddly similar to racial discrimination in the United States in the late 1900s. There are no laws in Japan forbidding discrimination based on race, as there are in the United States. Even if there were, I don't know how effective the Japanese courts would be at enforcing them, because they are much weaker than American courts. Also, in many circumstances de facto discrimination is hard to explicitly prosecute. Murphy-Shigematsu is constantly being told he is not Japanese, despite considering himself Japanese. He writes that “I had always thought that having a Japanese mother made me Japanese, not their stamp of approval,” referring to the Japanese nationality laws.
This passage also stood out to me because it emphasized how relevant physical appearance is in Japan, the extent of which I had not before realized. The value the Japanese place on phenotype is incredible, and they are very quick to expect things from you based on your face. This is exemplified in the stern airport employee scolding the couple for mixing up their passports, and also in everyone’s surprise that Murphy-Shigematsu is really Japanese. Regardless of legal status, socially, anyone who looks different is seen as foreigners.
As an interesting extension of our discussion of citizenship laws and perceptions, I have gotten in touch with my uncle, an American citizen who has lived in Germany for the past forty years. I was curious as to his experiences with self identification as a foreigner, and how people around him define him. I thought it would be an interesting parallel because Japan and Germany have similar nationalist sentiments towards immigrants and citizenship laws, where citizenship is defined by blood and not birthplace. He plans on living the rest of his life in Germany, but has not yet applied for German citizenship out of respect of his parents (my grandparents) wishes. He works in a German university, teaching Scandinavian classes. He remarked that this puts him and his German students on the same level ground, because the languages he teaches are foreign to both of them. He wrote to me that “One of my students in those years, who took Scandinavian courses though he was majoring in another field, is a good friend today, and an active blogger. Just a few years ago he included a short "tribute" to me in one of his blogs and surprised me by revealing that he had heard other students speak of me as "the American" before he found out who I was. Somehow this revelation annoys me, even though it's completely logical!”
The use of this label emphasizes how quick humans are to put people into the easiest box that they can.I think this is an interesting example of using nationality to define someone, and a completely rational thing to be irritated with, even if it was meant well. It is a one word label that becomes his defining character trait. Much like mixed race people in Japan, who are ruled by what they look like and the words that people use to label and segregate them.
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