Even with a more open system for legally accepting immigrants, Japan has an extraordinarily closed system for culturally accepting immigrants. An immigrant to Japan is considered an outsider to much more of an extent than other countries.
Yes, people in Tokyo tend to be a little curt, but no more so than people in other great metropolises like New York, Paris, or London.
I have also never experienced the permanent "outsider" stigma. I feel often the complaints boil down to people not liking that they are spoken to in English when being seated at a restaurant. Well, as someone who has quite a few friends working at restaurants, it honestly just an artifact of people trying to do their jobs efficiently, not some elaborate scheme to ostracize white people.
Japanese are indifferent and non-confrontational. If you don't care about what people think and don't try to integrate too hard, life isn't bad.
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.
Japan: 98.5% ethnic Japanese
Immigrants in the US + their US born children = 27% of the population, roughly 86 million people, or equal to 3/4 the size of Japan's entire population. Such hostility.
I suspect that’s the key right there. From friends who are the same, I get the impression that in Japan if you’re of Japanese descent the expectations had of you are very different than the typical gaikokujin.
[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 guess my criteria (for the above) are something like this: an awful lot of British people, and 100% of newspapers, will describe the sprinter Sir Mo Farah as being British, and only get to his place of birth on page two. This pretty much doesn't happen elsewhere.
Although a reverse thing does happen, in which (for example) 2nd- and 3rd-generation british indians are not only welcome to almost all the privileges of Indian citizenship, but (if they become famous) are cheered in India. There is a lot of fawning over Priti Patel in the Indian newspapers, but obviously none at all in Ugandan newspapers.
Blackface is quite common in Japan. Example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42561815
They have more work to do on their attitude towards foreigners than opening up more immigration channels.
Is the blackfaced actor used to make fun of black people? Probably racist. But that would also be the case if it were a black actor doing the same (it might just be more difficult to hire one for that).
Is it used to create tension between the obviously fake costume and the effort put into pretending that it is real? Probably not racist. I can imagine a show deriving great hilarity from casting everyone in a role they are not the least bit suited to and then trying to make it work anyway.
I remember the controversy of blackface being used in Tropic Thunder. I think you’re right that the intention behind it matters.
As an extreme and over the top example: Stalin wasn't Russian.
Are there people from Japan, or Somalia, who many Russians (and the newspapers) would unthinkingly refer to as Russian? (Not a rhetorical question!)
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.