Famous for its resistance to immigration, Japan opens its doors

According to economic theorists, Russia must be steamrolling every other high-tech economy out there, but you see the reality is different.

Fixation on "skilled professionals" is a biggest blunder of the West. Western higher education borders being worthless in its majority, yet all and every takes such pride in it as to deny immigration based on this "class attribute" which is higher education.

A guy who can till fields, and have few grams of grey matter to know how to dose fertilizers is freaking valuable for any economy.

'Racism' is a loaded term that has little meaning in most situations because it entirely depends on context.

Sure, if someone is calling a black guy the n-world, well then yes, we can safely use that term.

But if we consider that the vast majority of the world is inherently ethnocentric, then term 'racism' as a hard pejorative can only effectively be used in New World / Western / Anglosphere contexts, as elsewhere it would have an entirely different meaning.

The paradox of 'diversity' is that culture and ethnicity are the root basis of differentiation in this world, and without it, there literally is no 'diversity' - and yet, any general ideal which recognizes ethnicity is deemed 'racist' (in the pejorative sense), usually by New World / Western / Anglosphere types who generally lack perspective, in my view.

So, yes, Chinese treatment of non-Han types may be 'racist' in the ugliest sense, but it requires far more nuance than this simple term can imply.

The very essence of 'diverse' ideals should be founded upon respecting the fact that other groups have a different view of the world (and have different histories) than 'we' do; instead, we all to often end up with ideals of 'diversity' which amount to 'diversity of skin colour and last name' and utter conformity on all other levels.

The way the Japanese treat outsiders needs a whole other term of it's own, really.

There is racism in Japan, just like everywhere. When I lived in Canada, I saw a sales manager where I was working throwing how CVs with Indian names. I asked him what he was doing. "There's no point in hiring someone whose name I can't even pronounce", was the reply. In the UK I couldn't get on a bus without somebody complaining about how dark people were taking over the country. Racism is everywhere.

It's a good point that in Japan you will almost never run into racism in polite company -- because, as you say, it is considered impolite. However many expats who live here complain about racism. What's going on?

IMHO it's not racism, it's culturalism. In my experience, if you speak Japanese well and you know how to act as a Japanese person, you will see almost no racism. However, if you are a visible minority (as I am) people often expect that you are ignorant of Japanese culture. They put on the "you are a guest" routine, which is fine except that it wears thin when it is your home. One or two gestures and a word or two of fluent Japanese almost always snaps them out of it.

Just to illustrate the difference, I once went to Takayama with my wife (who is Japanese). We stayed at a traditional ryokan (inn). Takayama has a very famous festival and fairly large old town, so it is popular with tourists. Because my wife changed her surname to mine, the woman running the ryokan assumed she was not from Japan (although she is very obviously of Japanese ethnicity). It took quite a while for the woman to twig that my wife was, in fact, Japanese and lived in Japan. It was the first time my wife experienced that difference and it surprised her quite a bit.

I have experienced some racism in Japan, but I really don't think that it's all that much different than anywhere else. Sometimes I think that people don't see the racism where they live -- often because they are not a visible minority. When they become a visible minority for the first time, it's a shock. When I went to University the CS department was composed mostly of foreign students from China or India and most of my friends were from there. It was the first time that I really noticed the racism in Canada.

I've run out of time, but at least in my experience, it is relatively easy to live in Japan if you decide to be Japanese. They don't do melting pot here. If you want to hold on to your own culture and to act like you did in your home country, you're going to have troubles being accepted. But if you decide to accept Japanese culture completely, I don't think you will run into any problems. The if part is hard, though, and I've seen many people run into the brick wall that is Japanese culture.

Yes, Westerners call it this. And in our eyes, it is. Japanese don't particularly buy that brand of shame, though.

I know people in Tokyo with working visas who are architects, waiters, dish washers, cooks, English teachers, academics, programmers, International school teachers, translators, and business people. All have working (not spousal/relative visas) and none of them have a visa tied to an employer. I have never heard of a visa in Japan tied to an employer (and none of my working visas ever were), with exception of the intra-company transfers.

I also think the path to permanent residency is relatively straight forward for all groups. Stay on a working visa 10+ years with no hiccups or long periods of unemployment, then apply. I have known plenty of non-IT workers to get it.

[You, personally, may possibly have one exception on this list, roughly if you come from the edge of one of these, but never more.]

I would not even try, I'm not Japanese. I can like their culture, work there, respect their laws and all, but Japanese I am not and will never be.

Most of the world is China, India and Africa.

The rest of the developed world is vastly better than Japan when it comes to treating immigrants better.

In international companies, as purely a software engineer, you can go above 150k total comp.

If you want to make more, you want to go toward sales/marketing/etc. In that aspect, it is a bit like Europe where staying technical locks you very quickly. A good sales/marketing person can make 200k+, but that would of course require excellent Japanese skills.

[edit] Source: I am managing a machine learning group in a startup in Tokyo and manage the hiring of my team.

This was also my experience working for a US subsidiary of a Japanese multinational.

They do things very very deliberately. Which in some fields is a good thing. But that doesn't work all that well when competing against companies that "move fast and break things". Or even against companies that operate at a non-glacial pace.

Occasionally I would have loved to scream: "JUST MAKE A FUCKING DECISION!" But that's not generally part of their culture.

To be fair, there were also maverick groups within the company that did move fast and were able to compete quite successfully. But they were the exception.

But it's entirely from an individualists perspective.

Maybe your 'shooting skill' at the end of the day is not as important as your life-long commitment to the cause?

You know the African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go as a group"

Well, building a nation is 'going far' and can't be done on the basis of individuals all competing to out-do each other.

When it comes to 99% of things, surely some are a little better than others, some work harder than others, but really, 'we're all a commodity' in the long run. Even those who are spectacularly talented require legions of supporting people.

I'd also argue that they are not putting completely morons in charge, and that in the end, probably the better hands are getting promoted ultimately.

Also recognize that even the most nimble and entrepreneurial organizations are inherently pyramid-ish, and it gets really narrow at the top. There's not a lot of room for promotion - and that it might be considered selfish and bombastic to be demanding 'special recognition' for your efforts, if everyone is 'putting in effort'.

Consider that it (was) also a Japanese trait to not lay people off: this was shameful. Instead, your dignity was respected on some level, and you got to do a 'nothing job' all day at least to keep up appearances and keep your salary.

This is not so much an authoritarian structure as it is communitarian one.

Japan is a tiny island with few natural resources and yet somehow is one of the wealthiest and most advanced nations on earth, I suggest that these types of social structures are exactly why this is ... which comes at the cost of individual aspiration.

"Japanese" isn't a race, and culture isn't a function of racial identity.

If these things were true, then American culture would belong only to one race, and it clearly doesn't.