Ethnic issues in Japan
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Template:Wikify-date Amongst the major countries, Japan is one of the most racially and ethnically homogenous. Many people inside and outside of Japan consider this as the main reason for the social and political stability of Japan. As a result, most of the Japanese public, at least recently, state that there are no issues concerning ethnicities in Japan. The plausibility of this statement has been disputed in recent times.
Contents |
Background
Almost 99.3% of the population of Japan consider themselves to be ethnic Japanese, according to 2004 Justice Ministry alien registration statistics.
A breakdown of the remaining:
| Nationality | Number | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| North and South Korea | 607,419 | 30.8% |
| China | 487,570 | 24.7% |
| Brazil | 286,557 | 14.5% |
| Philippines | 199,394 | 10.1% |
| Peru | 55,750 | 2.8% |
| United States | 48,844 | 2.5% |
| Others | 288,213 | 14.6% |
| Total | 1,973,747 | 100% |
The above statistic does not include about 50,000 American soldiers stationed in Japan and illegal immigrants. Moreover, there are other minority groups which are not included in this statistics. Ainu, aboriginal people of Hokkaido, Ryukyuan, who may or may not be considered ethnically Japanese, Burakumin whose distinction is not ethnicity but caste system which originates from Tokugawa era.
Japanese Minorities
There are four groups which are currently considered as minorities in Japan. They are Zainichi, Ainu, Ryukyuan, and Burakumin. Rainichi and Gaikokujin (who might be called 'new' foreigners) are a related matter.
Zainichi
Zainichi are foreign permanent residents of Japan, most of whom are Korean or Chinese. However, in terms of minority issues, it often exclusively refers to Korean. Korea was part of the Japanese empire and many Koreans migrated or were brought forcefuly to Japan before and during World War II. A number of Korean immigrants also came during the Korean War. They used Japanese names to avoid discrimination and lived their lives as if they were Japanese. This is contrasted with the Chinese, who use their Chinese names and openly form Chinatown communities. Because of their citizenship and legal status, many were relegated to low paying jobs. The Korean community in Japan was split between allegiance to Communist North Korean or the Military Dictatorial (and now democratic) South Korea. Japanese law doesn't allow dual citizenship and until the 1980s required adoption of a Japanese name for citizenship. Partially for this reason, Japanese nationality is still equated with Japanese ethnicity. For some Zainichi, becoming a Japanese citizen is still regarded as giving up being Korean. Very few Koreans keep their Korean family names after obtaining citizenship because they see no point in asserting Korean identity once they become "Japanese." The biggest problem facing the Zainichi community is the increasing number of intermarriage and naturalisation.
Ainu
The Ainu are considered to be the original inhabitants of Japanese islands. Early records of the Yamato Kingdom indicate that many battles were fought against the Ezo of the north and the Hayato of the south. While the Hayato were assimilated in a very early part of Japanese history, the Ezo remained separate from Japan. As the Japanese migrated to the north, Ainu were being pushed off further north eventually to Hokkaido. During the Edo period, Ainu in Hokkaido came under nominal control of the neighboring feudal government. Hokkaido officially become part of Japan after the Meiji Restoration. Japanese policies became increasingly aimed at assimilating the Ainu, outlawing their language and restricting them to farming on government-provided plots. Ainu were also used in near-slavery conditions by the Japanese fishing industry. As the Japanese government encouraged immigration of ethnic Japanese to populate Hokkaido, Ainu were increasingly marginalised in their own land. At present, fewer than 20,000 Ainu are considered racially distinct but in fact all of them are mixed blood. Many establishments in Hokkaido had signs stating "Dogs and Ainu not allowed". Many customs and traditions of Ainu were lost, abandoned or annhilated during this period. Ainu language is no longer in daily use. Only recently have Ainu started to become aware of the international aboriginal rights movements. Some schools were established to preserve and revive the Ainu language.
Ryukyuan people
Okinawa was formerly a nominally tribute state of China. In 1609 the Japanese Satsuma clan invaded Okinawa. Although the Ryukyu Kingdom which remained nominally independent regularly sent tribute to China to maintain trade links, it was effectively under the control of the Satsuma clan. In 1879, following the Meiji Restoration, the Ryukyu Kingdom was officially annexed by Japan as Okinawa Prefecture. Whether Okinawans are Japanese or not is debated quite intensely throughout Okinawa and recently in Japan. Okinawan is unintelligible to other Japanese but still linguistically a distant dialect of Japanese. In fact, even within mainland Japan, different regions may speak a local dialect unintelligible to other regions. Culturally, Okinawa is much closer to South East Asia and South China reflecting their long history of trade with these regions. However, because of the standard language that is used in schools, television and all print media even in Okinawa, these cultural differences are often glossed over. Consequently, many Japanese consider Okinawans to be Japanese sometimes insensitively glossing over their cultural and historical heritage. Some Okinawans intensely resent what they perceive to be second class treatment of their islands from the Japanese mainland government, especially in regard to friction about the large American military presence in Okinawa.
Burakumin
Burakumin (buraku=rural commune min=people) or Hisabetsu (discriminated) Burakumin. Burakumin refers to a Japanese social minority group and therefore, is not part of the Japanese ethnic issue. Unlike Indian Dalits, they do not have any distinct cultural heritage. Rather, their status is derived from caste policy introduced in the Tokugawa Shogun era. The system was political and was never as rigid as the Indian caste system. Nevertheless, the Tokugawa Shogun government designated certain workers such as leather workers, certain entertainers or executioners as eta (filth) or hinin (non person) and imposed various restrictions on their life including the clothes they were allowed to wear or areas they were allowed to visit. The Meiji Restoration abolished caste restriction and registered nobility as kazoku, samurai as shizoku and farmers, merchants and crafts people as heimin (commoners). However, those having eta or hinin status were registered as shin heimin (new commoners) which allowed various social and economic discrimination to continue. After the war, shin heimin registration as well as other differential registration was abolished. However, registration (koseki) in Japan was tied to the location of original (i.e. ancestral) registration. This means that one's buraku background could be outed easily in time of marriage or job application. In the past, municipal rubbish collection, sewage cleaning and cremation - jobs which Japanese associate with filth - were largely performed by people with buraku background, and discrimination is still an issue for kaihou seisaku (liberation policy) politics in the local municipalities. Unlike other minority groups, the liberation (kaihou) movement of burakumin is decidedly integrationist due to the lack of distinct cultural heritage. A law prohibiting the transfer of koseki was changed during 80s. It is now possible for Burakumin to avoid discrimination simply by changing the location of koseki.
Rainichi and Gaikokujin
Previously foreign visitors both legal and illegal were rare. The first noticeable influx of foreigners occurred when the Japanese government adopted a policy to give scholarships to large numbers of foreign students to study in Japanese universities. At the same period, a sizeable portion of Westerners from English speaking countries came to Japan to teach English in various language schools. However, it was during 80s when large numbers of foreigners from Asia and the Middle East entered Japan, often illegally, that foreigners were recognised as a visible minority in Japan. Those foreigners from China and Korea are called Rainichi (Short form of visit and Japan) in contrast to Zainichi. The main concerns of these groups are often to do with their legal status, public perception of criminality and discrimination associated with being non-Japanese as well as being illegal immigrants.
Ethnic Issues
Government Policy
Because of a small number of minorities in Japan, the law regarding this matter receives low priority in the legislative process. Still, in 1997 Ainu Cultural Revival legislation was passed which replaced now defunct Hokkaido ex-Aboriginal Protection legislation which had devastating effect to Ainu in the past.
The 14th clause of the Japanese constitution states that, all citizens are equal under the law, and they cannot be discriminated politically, economically or socially on the basis of race, belief, sex or social or other background. However, this clause does not apply to discrimination committed by private individuals or establishments or legal discrimination based on citizenship. Hate speech is not a criminal offense but speech of insult, such as calling someone "fool!", is a minor civil offense which results in monetary compensation which is lower than the cost of going through judicial process. Japan does not have human rights legislation which enforces or penalises discriminatory activities committed by citizen, business or non governmental organisation. Attempt has been made in legislature to enact human rights legislation. In 2002, a draft was submitted to the house of common but it did not reach the vote. Had the law passed, it would have set up the Human Rights commission which would investigate, name and shame or financially penalise discriminatory practice as well as hate speech committed by private citizens or establishments. Though the anti-discrimination clause raised little objection, the anti-hate speech clause received very hostile reception from Japanese media including liberals who saw it as a potential threat to the freedom of speech and publication. In 2005, the ruling coalition government attempted to resubmit a revised version of draft which somewhat limited the application of hate speech clause, but it still failed to reach consensus within the ruling Liberal Democratic party.
Another issue which is often debated but has not received much legislative attention is whether to allow permanent residents to vote in local legislature. Zainichi organisation affiliated to North Korean are against this initiative while Zainichi organisation affiliated to South Korea support it. Finally, there is debate about altering requirements for work permits to foreigners. Currently, the Japanese government does not issue work permits unless it can be demonstrated that the person has certain skills which cannot be provided by locals.
Illegal Immigrants and Crimes
Similar to other countries, many foreigners come to Japan to work, sometimes entering the country legally, and sometimes overstaying the term of their tourist/entry visa. Their employment tends to be concentrated in areas where most Japanese are not able or are no longer wish to work and consequently, accusations of foreigners stealing jobs are not heard often in Japan. Because of the Japanese perception of illegal status and the difficulty non-Japanese face finding secure employment, some of them resort to crimes. The media sensationally report these crimes as a foreigner crime wave, often emphasising the large number of Chinese arrested.
According to National Police Authority record, in 2002, 16,212 foreigners were caught committing 34,746 crimes, over half of which turned out to be visa violations (residing/working in Japan without a valid visa); of those 12,667 cases (36.5%) and 6,487 criminals (40.0%) were Chinese. Brazilians committed 5,272 crimes (15.72%) by 1186 criminals (7.3%). Koreans committed 2,815 crimes (8.1%) by 1,738 criminals (10.7%). The total number of crimes committed in the same year is 546,934 by Japanese and 24,258 by foreigners; the ratio is roughly 27-1. Within these statistics, Japanese committed 6,925 violent crimes but of those, 2,531 are arson and rape. Foreigners committed 323 violent crimes but only 42 cases are classified as such. At this point, the ratio goes up from 33-1 to 22-1. It is also the case that more foreigners commit crimes in groups. Of 24,258 cases, 14,919 cases (61.5%) have one or more accomplice while Japanese cases are only 101,911(18.6%). For Japanese, 63.7% are pairs, 19.0% are triples, 17.4% are four or more. In comparison, for foreigners, 24.4% are pairs, 34.5% are triples, 41.1% are four or more. The rate of prosecution for crimes in Japan is around 25%; that is, one in four crimes result in arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators. Many xenophobic Japanese regard the statistics as a sign that crimes committed by foreigners are more persistent and each foreign criminal represents more unsolved crimes whilst crimes committed by Japanese are less organised and more impulsive.
Access to housing and other services
Image:No Filipinos sign.jpg The Japanese constitution has an equal protection clause, that however is interpreted to apply only to the state. Japan does not have hate crime legislation or any law specifically penalizing discrimination by private establishments. Historically, public bath and beaches banned people with tattoos which are almost exclusively associated with yakuza. Presently, some rental housing, night clubs, and public baths have put up signs stating "No foreigners (unless accompanied by Japanese)". The most common reason cited for this policy is that foreigners are associated with being overly-disruptive, deliberately or unknowingly ignoring Japanese etiquette which causes other Japanese residents or clientele to feel uneasy and leave. In the case of housing, it is often stated that those who cannot bring references from their employer or professors may be illegal immigrants who may sublet their room to a large number of other foreigners, which is undoubtedly due to a lack of housing these illegal immigrants encounter.
Whether these signs represent deep rooted racism or not is often debated. Still appropriateness of proxy profiling is debated in Japan, while in the West, the debate is more associated with stop and search policy against racial or religious minority such as black or Muslim racial looks, costume or name. In Japan, very few shops have signs that say "no foreigners under any conditions" and virtually no shop has this sign if cultural difference is not an issue in the conduct of the business. Still, many regard the no-foreigners signs as representative of Japanese indifference to ethnic sensitivities.
Media
Extremely brutal robberies and rapes were uncommon in Japan in previous years and are often implied to be gaikokujin hanzai (foreigner crime) by the Japanese media. Moreover, even routine crimes, in which foreigners are caught or implicated in from linguistic or ethnic "clues" are sensationalized in media coverage because it increases television ratings and circulation of newspapers. This bias is deeply resented among foreign residents in Japan.
Another issue is presence of non-Japanese in Japanese media especially on TV. There are large numbers of Japanese Korean (often 3rd generation Koreans, who do not speak Korean, and were born and raised in Japan. The equivalent of an Italian-American or Japanese-American) celebrities in Japan, however, they do not use their Korean names, for fear of discrimination. This makes Chinese Zainich the only ethnic minority with visible but equal treatment in Japanese media. Non-oriental foreigners often appear in Japanese TV as stereotypes of their respective nationality or ethnicity, which is somewhat similar to token ethnic characters in American TV. Unsurprisingly, Americans represent the largest portion of caucasian/black celebrities (gaijin tarento in Japanese).
Political Correctness
The idea that Japan is ethnically homogenous is highly debatable and controversial. However, because a large majority of those holding Japanese citizenship assume Japan to be an ethnically homogeneous country, communal tension based on race or use of explictly pejorative words in daily life is rare. Still, there are some issues which non-Japanese find insensitive or ignorant if not explicitly racist. The debate over these issues parallel the debate over political correctness in the West. The most representative example of this issue is the Japanese use of the term gaijin, alledgedly an abbreviation of the word gaikokujin (foreigner). In Japanese, the shortening of long words is common, and to describe ethnicity or nationality in this manner is not derogatory in and of itself. However, shortened words are more informal and colloquial so in usage, the word could nuance someone's non-Japanese ethnicity. Westerners in particular, are frequently referred to as gaijin and they often strongly object to the word. The intricacies of the Japanese writing system allow for the so-called 'abbreviation' to indeed result in an altered meaning. In this case, gaijin 外人(composed solely of the characters for 'outside' and 'person') can be construed as meaning 'outsider', while gaikokujin 外国人 avoids this danger by including the character for 'country'. Koujien, one of the most complete and often used Japanese laguage dictionaries, defines gaijin first of all as 'a person who is not a friend/fellow' 仲間以外の人, while it also clarifies that in the celebrated saga The Tale of the Heike (of which the Japanese pride themselves) the term is used to mean 'one who must be considered an enemy' 敵視すべき人. Particularly unpleasant is the use of a variant where the character for 'harmful' 害 (also pronouced 'gai') is used in place of the character for 'outside' resulting in 害人 (gaijin), a term deliberately designed (it does not appear in Japanese dictionaries and is not officialy considered part of the language) to suggest the association of the idea of 'foreigner' with that of 'harm'. This term can be seen used in several patently xenophobic websites. A Google search for 害人 (gaijin, harmful person) currently (16 April 2006) yealds 3.570.000 results.
Similarly, when Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro referred to Chinese and Korean as 'sangokujin' in context of foreigners being a potential source of unrest in the time of an earthquake, it caused outcry among some media. Again, sangokujin is merely referential word and is not derogatory in and of itself. However, historically, the word was frequently used during the period immediately after the war, where rioting by Korean or communal tension between Korean and Japanese in regard to land dispute was not uncommon. Therefore, the use of the term in context of potential rioting by foreigners can be considered as provocative if not explicitly racist.
Another example, which some Westerners find shocking is a lack of sensitivity among the Japanese toward racism against blacks. For example, one Japanese doo-wop pop group (see Rats & Star) in 70s routinely appeared on stage painting their skin dark brown and wearing sunglasses to look African-American, totally oblivious to the implication of such an act in the West. Similarly, during the 1980s, Takara created and sold a doll called "Dakko-chan" (snuggle baby), an inflatable black colored plastic doll with fat lips and arms that could wrap around human arms or other pole-like objects. The doll was a commercial hit and was soon exported outside Japan as "Little Black Sambo". Americans made claims that it resembled blackface costumes worn by performers in the minstrel shows popular in early 20th century America. After receiving numerous complaints from Americans, the sales of the doll were stopped. In Japan, as a sort of hasty reaction, there were strong efforts to remove anything that people believed were racist against black people. The sale of Japanese translations of the book "Little Black Sambo", was halted. Any pictorial representation of black with fat lips especially in manga and anime were purged during this period.
Assimilation and Integration
There are a number of aspects of Japanese society which foreigners find it difficult to assimilate.
- Use of the inkan name seal, instead of a personal signature, for any significant business, like banking or purchasing a car.
- Lack of entry in Koseki (family registry). Japan does not issue birth certificates to authenticate a person's identity. Each Japanese person has an entry in their family Koseki, but a non-Japanese person may not be noted in the Koseki even if married to a Japanese citizen, although some municipalities compromise by allowing such marriages to be recorded in the "Notes" section of the Koseki. Many government services may not be rendered without authentication. Foreigners with legal reason for residing in Japan are issued an alien registration card which when presented (sometimes with one's passport, visa attached) can be used to receive such services. By law, foreigners must carry their passport or alien registration card at all times.
- Kanji (Chinese characters). Not generally an obstacle for Chinese or Koreans in Japan, kanji are used for all printed materials aimed at adults and are often not accompanied by furigana or romaji. They are also used on road signs and various warning signs. Materials specifically targeting foreigners often include translations in English, but resident foreigners faced with paperwork from their local city wards and places of employment must generally learn more than 1000 kanji before they can function independently in Japan. Much of the paperwork from local city wards may also be available in English. Most of the signs and some verbal announcements at train stations are now translated into English and Chinese and in some cases Korean as well.
See also
- Human rights in Japan
- Anti-Japanese sentiment
- Korean-Japanese disputes
- Korean arguments on Yamato period
- Ainu people
- Ryukyuans
- Burakumin
External links
- The Pan Pacific Foundation A NPO that helps arrange a homestay in Japan
- Tokyo Nihongo Volunteer Network A NPO that offers free Japanese language classes in Tokyo
- Broadcast and Human Rights/Other Related Rights Organization
- The Civil Liberties Bureau
See also:
- Reaching Across the Lines The book discussing efforts made to bridge gaps between ethnic groups
- RACE & ETHNICITY Link that studies race and ethnic issues
- racial discrimination in Japan
- electronic journal of contemporary japanese studiesko:일본의 민족문제