Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Prior to the recent change, everyone working in Japan was a "skilled" worker. There was no language requirement and essentially anyone with a degree was eligible. This didn't cover manual labour jobs etc.
But at the same time, many young people were out working in convenience stores, fast food restaurants etc. Turns out they were all on student visas. With a student visa and a work permission application (essentially a rubber stamp that is never not given) you can work up to 28 hours a week.
So the changes are trying to bring the visa system more in line with what people are actually doing. People without degrees can actually get proper working visas in Japan now.
> "Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years."
Technically you can apply for citizenship without permanent residence (green card equivalent) though I don't know what your chances would be.... Also you must give up all other citizenships.
> "Some foreigners will also marry Japanese nationals, and their children will thus be citizens as well. Since the new law prevents visa holders from bringing families with them to Japan, many of the new workers will likely be single people looking for spouses, making them more likely to marry locals."
This is true. In fact, by far the fastest route to permanent residence in Japan is marriage. You can get PR in 3 years if you are married to a Japanese national vs 10 years if you aren't.
Previously there were issues with the working conditions for people on the so-called "trainee" visa. One of these conditions (imposed by the workplace) included "No relationships". I hope the new visas don't come with similar stipulations.
It seems that if you have a master's degree from top 300 universities, passed N2, aged under 30 and have high salary (10M yen+) you can easily get 100 points. Type 1 visa only requires 80 points and guarantees permanent residency in one year.
For reference, believe that's ~ USD$91k, EUR€82k, GBP£72k.
More details on that. Getting a wedding visa the first time gives 1 year. At the second application one year later, one gets once again 1 year. At the third application one year later, you get 3 three. At this point, you could ask for permanent residency. So the first three years after the wedding are a hell of paperwork, but after that there is no need to go to the immigration office (入国管理局) which is close to Shinagawa in Tokyo.
This is case-by-case. I went 1y-3y-5y. I've met people who got 3y on their first.
> but after that there is no need to go to the immigration office
You still need to renew your physical card every 7 years (new photo etc), but at least you no longer need to prepare all the paperwork.
Which is why I'm excited for a more ethnically diverse Japan. As a resident of the Bay Area I only see diversity as an advantage of introducing new thoughts and creativity. It comes with challenges of lower trust among neighbors. Though, I learned that through respectful interactions and an open mind the perspectives of someone completely different shaped me into a more mature human being, and it made me realize that my fears were only conjectures derived from no real evidence.
In this transition to a more diverse Japan, will the world lose some of its traditional beauty? Undoubtedly. But, I would like to argue that Japan is a developed country where it already lost a significant amount of its traditional culture during its modernization, and new distinctly Japanese culture emerged from the ashes of the old.
I can't wait for the new culture that will emerge from a ethnically diverse Japan. And hopefully they'll let me be Japanese again, as I was born there and still dearly love it.
When people talk about gentrification and how local culture is disappearing, from my perspective and historically speaking, the Bay Area is a place of constant change. People forget that this use to be one of the prime destination during the gold rush and the great depression. The Golden Gate Bridge welcomes immigrants that came in through the Pacific. The cities names are all in Spanish, because this used to be Mexican territory. San Bruno was used as a site for a internment camp for the Japanese.
To me the era were living in right now is just another gold rush where skilled workers and hungry entrepreneur arrive hoping to strike it rich. This wave of migration happens to be predominantly white and Asian. Is that antithesis of diversity? I personally don't think so, its another wave of change in history. Like Japan trying to preserve its traditions, I understand the fear of change, but I think we need to embrace it and try to mitigate any problems that change may bring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nationality_law#Loss_...
Interesting aside. One of my Taiwanese friends got his Japanese citizenship, and thus renounced his Taiwanese.
But plot twist: Taiwan allows (what's akin to) temporary renouncment. Now he's a dual citizen.
I have several friends that have remained in possessions of their previous passports and still renew them in case they ever need them.
You will see that the rules differ by country.
Unless you are an international criminal the US will not waste time or resources requesting that information.
This is true for most countries.
Yes, she is "all" Japanese. She grew up in Japan, with her Japanese mother, attending Japanese schools. This is the subtle bigotry toward people who are "half" (as they're called in Japan) rather than "dual". Many Japanese will always consider them "less Japanese" or outsiders.
She had dual citizenship because of her father. When asked which citizenship she would she would choose, she said, 「もちろん、日本を選ぶわ。自分では、私はとことん日本人だと思っている。そう、１００％日本人よ。肌の色の違いは、その人となりとは全く関係ないはず」
"Of course I will choose Japan. I think of myself as thoroughly Japanese. 100% Japanese. It should have nothing to do with heredity, with a different skin color."
https://www.sankei.com/premium/news/150429/prm1504290022-n3....
Just because she qualifies as Japanese from your point of view doesn't mean that the Japanese have to view it like you. White savior complex much? I've spoken with Japanese friends about hafus and their point of view was that people do not materialize out of thin air, but rather are the genetic conglomerate of their ancestors (which is hard to argue against) and thus links in a chain -- which would make her less Japanese. And that seems fine to me, as long as she is not discriminated against for being viewed less Japanese.
But that's exactly it. It's not like that. Or shouldn't be. That's not what makes a person a part of a group (town, city, region, country, etc). It's a constraining, and wrong way of looking at things. It's something to grow out of. Heck, in my hometown we consider someone as 'from' this town (to translate the term we use, approximately) even if they're not born here, maybe they even moved here in their twenties, and maybe from another continent, maybe looking totally different; if they just 'fit in' and find their comfortable place here. If they bring on something new (combining culture/music from their background with something existing), even better. They are 100% part of what's us. Except for those of the never non-existent, but still tiny minority of the "you're not one of us" group. Those telling young girls (as did an old woman the other day, not in this town but out in the countryside) "you can't wear that traditional costume, you're not one of us" (the girl's grandfather was adopted from some place, or some such).
They don't have a "wrong way of looking at things" simply because it is not your way. And your way is by no means the way.
"more modern, open view on diversity and acceptance" is not positive by itself. Unless you're looking from the point of view of those entering the country, which are people that nationals don't have to care about.
Basically all Japanese citizens perceived as 'others' face heavy discrimination. Korean minority, burakumin, Ainu, etc.
We live in a global world now. Countries that fundamentally tie their culture to ethnicities will someday be a thing of the past. It is just question of how long it will take some countries to accept it. And for the mistakes that the U.S. has made, one thing it has gotten right (for the most part) is its acknowledgement that diversity is a strength and being American has nothing to do with your bloodline.
Of course there are racists in the U.S. who would say otherwise, but I think they are short-sighted fools. One of the U.S.'s biggest competitive advantages in a global economy is its (relative) freedom from the historical baggage that weighs down other countries whose national identity is tied to a specific ethnicity or rigid cultural identity.
No we don't and no they won't be. The only countries that are making this mistake are those from Western Europe and the US & co. Others are proud of their heritage, cherish it and fight for their culture.
Your utopia may only be true once we become space-faring and encounter other species. Only then our humanity will unite us in spite of our differences.
The US... is a darn poor choice of example. Half the population voted for a president that wants to build a wall around Mexico. Half the population are short-sighted fools, are they? The US is rife with ethnic conflict, I used to think it's a success story, but now I think that it's a ticking time bomb.
The world is changing and that change is pointing in one direction however much people want to fight it.
The world order seems to be more fragile than you think, I don't understand why you're so confident.
And once you acknowledge the need for immigration, you open the door for diversity. And once you acknowledge that countries in fact have to compete for these immigrants (specifically in the technology and science fields), you open the door for acceptance as a competitive advantage.
As an immigrant with a choice in the matter, where would you prefer to live: in a country that where ethnic nationalists will always view you and your children as foreigners, or in a country that values and celebrates diversity?
The US can fuck up in so many different ways, but as long as it doesn't fuck up in this one specific way it will always have a competitive advantage over countries that have longer histories and hence more ethnic baggage: it has to value, appreciate, and celebrate diversity as a strength and not a weakness. I am confident (or maybe just extremely hopeful) that the Trump era is the one step back before the next two steps forward in this regard.
I view what has happened in U.S. professional sports as a microcosm of what is happening in the world. Professional sports teams that embraced globalization quickly gained a significant competitive advantage over other teams. And that forced those other teams to follow suit. I believe the same phenomenon will happen all over the world, albeit at a much slower pace and with a lot of racists being dragged along kicking and screaming.
What about for a German to consider Jews to be less German? Is that ok too? Its just their "culture" right?
Edit: I suggest you watch this exchange between a black Englishman Gary Young and the white supremacist Richard Spencer. It's nasty stuff right? Him telling the guy "you're not a real Englishman". Yet you have japanese friends who say exactly the same thing about non ethnically Japanese people and you think that's fine? How do you square that circle?
You are considered one of them if you have the appropriate skin color, name, accent, etc. This is so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that it's nuts to even fight it. It will only change when a large enough part of the population will have the "wrong" skin color, name or accent. Or you get large scale open conflicts, I guess, there's no guarantees of a happy end, on the contrary.
She is half japanese because half of her family and genetic history is from japan. The other half is from her african american father. Isn't it more bigoted to deny that half of her comes from her african american father?
Also, there is a difference between ethnicity and nationality. She may be a full japanese national, but she is not a full ethnic japanese.
Just like charlize theron could be a south african national, but you wouldn't call her a black woman.
I agree with her that being a japanese national should have nothing to do with heredity or skin color, but heredity and skin color most definitely has something to do with the japanese ethnicity.
To claim otherwise is to claim there is no suching thing as a japanese ethnicity and it destroys any sense of human diversity that we all pretend to love while trying to actively destroy human diversity.
Only to racists. Just as being Jewish is an ethnicity (as well as a religion), you don't have to be white or have Jewish parents to be of Jewish ethnicity.
More and more Japanese Nationals with mixed race are born all the time, and raised completely in Japan and only speak Japanese, yet would "pass as white."
And when they're famous and appear in the media, they are considered by most of the Japanese audience to be ethnically Japanese.
On the other hand, there are quite a few Japanese-Americans whose parents are both racially "100%" Japanese, yet because they speak awful or nonexistent Japanese and or "act American" or "have American values", are not considered to be ethnically Japanese.
Given that there is no prejudice or antagonism present, your accusation of racism is nonsense. In fact you're doing something as equally poisonous as racists, except in reverse: pretending that there is no race, no ethnicity. Erasing the heritage of people with a sponge in order to depict a so-called utopia that nobody except extremists wants.
I don't think so. I'm American, "all" American. I was born here and have lived almost my entire 29 years of life here. But I am also half-Korean.
I think it depends on whether OP meant Japanese as a citizen or Japanese as their sole ethnic background.
You are half-korean, so what is your other half? White? So you are half korean and half white.
You wouldn't say you are 100% korean and 100% white. That would be ridiculous right? Your ethnic history and composition can't add up to 200%. Even if you claimed to be 100% korean or 100% white, neither white nor korean people would consider you to be 100% white or korean.
That's my point. There is nationality and ethnicity. Those are two different things. A chinese person could move to germany and become a german citizen or national. But nobody would consider him an ethnic german.
Thank you! This whole top-level comment thread is just conflating the two.
1. Someone of different nationality (eg: a white Australian)
2. Someone of different ethnicity (eg: a Black American)
3. Someone of both different nationality and ethnicity (eg: a fresh off the boat immigrant from India)
4. Someone of same nationality and ethnicity (i.e., fellow white Americans).
Now one may, in principle at least, accept that all these categories of people should be treated with impartiality and respect in every sphere of life ... however can they also sincerely report not feeling these identities as separate? I think this is what anthuman is getting at.
Jewish culture exists throughout the world. All religious cultures actually. Islamic culture.
Immigrants often retain many aspects of their culture when they move to a new country.
The US itself is a huge mismash of different cultures. People in the US are not bound by a single cultural identity. They are bound by the constitution and the principles and values it represents.
Citizenship may be “dual” but biological race isn’t, it has to add up to 100%. Clearly that is what they are referring to here.
Not all countries are America, there are plenty of places with a pretty well defined ethnicity, like Japan.
That's her culture and nationality (and even the culture part could be dual). They refer to her ethnicity and ancestry.
Isn't this true of other nations?
Not as a general rule, no. What makes the distinction for me is the dialect they speak and their way of speaking. Then I'll have them firmly identified as 'from that town', or 'that particular part of the country' and there's no way for me to think of them differently. Where their parents came from has no part of it for me or for most people. It's just not possible for my mind to think of somebody who speaks like a native (as they will, when they were born here or moved here as a child) as being any kind of "outsider". In my experience small children never make any distinction either, anywhere in the world. That comes later, and they learn it from their parents. That's when the problems start.
Are you familiar with The Clarks' doll experiments?
The doll experiment involved a child being presented with two dolls.
Both of these dolls were completely identical except for the skin and
hair color. One doll was white with yellow hair, while the other was
brown with black hair. The child was then asked questions inquiring
as to which one is the doll they would play with, which one is the nice
doll, which one looks bad, which one has the nicer color, etc. The
experiment showed a clear preference for the white doll among all
children in the study.
Though the effect was less intense for children from integrated schools.
But I once heard a five year old boy complaining "I don't want to have to see naked people!" or some such thing. But he was from a country where that (nudeness) is made an issue. From other countries children of that age don't even notice or care. In other words, the complainer learned that from someone. That episode really stuck with me because I had never in my life heard a child opiniate about that before.
Tokyo certainly has. Almost every weekend right next to Yoyogi park[0] there is one, Cuban fest, Thai fest, Rainbow fest, Cambodia fest.
And they are pretty big, with at least 10's of thousands of people visiting.
I don't follow that too closely but IIRC what Japan introduced first was a guest worker visa for entry level positions such as convenience store workers. These workers would receive Japanese language training in their home countries and then come to work in Japan for 2 years, or something like that.
I think this was the pilot program. Must've gone well since later on Japan relaxed the requirements for unskilled workers in general.
Meanwhile Japan made it easier for skilled workers to get a PR. I think on "engineer" (there's nuance to what it means and how it works) one would require 10 years to get PR. Then HSFP (see my other comments) was introduced which I believe lowered that to 5 years, initially. Then HSFP was amended to to 1 and 3 years depending on Type 1 (more points on the scale) and Type 2. This happened while back. Year or two ago.
The most recent change is new visas for unskilled workers with a path to PR.
Again, all of this has been going on for years. Nothing began just now :)
TIL after wondering why Brazil was one of the prominent contributors of foreign workers in Japan.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Brazilians 1: http://isaacmeyer.net/2017/08/episode-207-across-the-sea-par...
I spend a fair amount of time in Tokyo for work, and I'd say this is accurate.
My 日本語 is far from fluent, but it's frequently better than the English being spoken by random people on the street... yet it will take a good 20-30 seconds of me replying in Japanese before they'll switch away from English.
A co-worker is from Poland, and he married a Japanese woman. Their children speak Japanese and Polish at home, and only a little bit of English. Despite being very obviously half Japanese, he says the kids frequently have trouble getting strangers to speak to them in Japanese, despite it being by far their most fluent language.
This sort of thing probably doesn't sound like a huge deal to someone who hasn't experienced it, but every day to day interaction is a frequent reminder that you're not Japanese and you won't ever be - without radical change, those kids are going to spend their whole lives with their fellow Japanese citizens defaulting to the assumption that they can't even speak their mother tongue.
I still love the city and the people - they are genuinely wonderful and incredibly nice. Many of my co-workers have invited me into their homes, had me meet their families, and gone out of their ways to make sure I have a wonderful time in the city. I've had to modify my own behavior there to not accidentally make people feel like they should be going out of their way to help me, etc. And it's a wonderfully safe place, with kids expected to be able to function independently for means of getting to school, etc. There's an emphasis on personal responsibility, even at a young age, that I think is sorely missing in much of the western world these days, with helicopter parenting, etc., being so widespread.
I don't know if the whole outsider thing will change in my lifetime - but it changing is going to require more immigration, and the native Japanese becoming more exposed to foreigners who have immigrated instead of just tourists, or the breed of expats that keep to themselves in their luxury condos in Roppongi.
I've kind of rambled here, so I guess the cliff notes version is: Japanese people in my experience have been unfailingly nice, outside of some very isolated incidents of obvious racism, but yes, even people born in Japan if they look foreign will be treated as outsiders. That changing is going to require immigration opening up.
I have only ever felt welcome. And I frequently meet foreigners with a chip on their shoulder describing how we will always be "outsiders". I find it rather odd to be honest.
It unfortunately is not the only experience, and the evidence I've seen points towards it being far from the norm. It's possible those foreigners you're meeting frequently are just jerks, and that that is contributing to it, but the possibility also exists that they might have that chip on their shoulder because their concerns are genuine.
The documentary iandanforth mentions is a good example of the stuff I'm talking about. You don't need to take my word for it - you can see the genuine experiences of others living in Japan.
"The film follows the lives of five "hafus"-the Japanese term for people who are half-Japanese-as they explore what it means to be multiracial and multicultural in a nation that once proudly proclaimed itself as the mono-ethnic nation. For some of these hafus Japan is the only home they know, for some living in Japan is an entirely new experience, and others are caught somewhere between two worlds."
Personally I'd rather live in a homogeneous society having seen how multiculturalism has decreased the quality of life for everybody in my country. I can see why the Japanese would want to avoid that. I hope they revolt.
It's undeniable that diversity offers some advantages, but if the mixing is done in an uncontrolled way as it typically is and a certain ratio of natives to immigrants is reached there will be conflict, friction and misery. Look to Western Europe for what might await, although Western Europe has failed quite spectacularly at multiculturalism in a way that's probably unattainable by the Japanese :)
I don't know how that makes sense.
People can't offer people anything outside of some described cultural boundaries?
So like US people were proud for their "Made in America" stamps?
It's like "if you change A to B, B will happen instead of A... If you want A to happen, select A..."
Another job we were processing the POS system records and tracking sales / inventory. The dates were converted from JST to UTC. Oneday the client rang and was raging on the phone because all the dates were wrong. Turns out they changed their setting from JST to some other time zone, so we converted from UTC to this other time zone. Incident report about why we store in UTC and why the values displayed wrong etc. Threats to drop us as a business because we "obviously don't know what we are doing"...
Several had so many questions they asked for the actual code for a misc set of settings....
They were always meaningless rat hole type discussions and usually with enterprise customers. I'm not sure if they were impressing their bosses with big reports but oh man it was a pain.
What he described is quite unique to Japan, particularly how many completely run of the mill situations (hey how does this widget work) go on for weeks of expiation. I'm talking about even completely predictable things. Like "Hey if I turn this thing off, is it off?" will start weeks long series of questions.
I don't fully understand it, but it is a Japanese thing for sure.
Then the form would prompt them "Are you sure, please look again", and most of the time the problem will have disappeared, right?
Gallup Data: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp...
Article Overview: https://ifstudies.org/blog/how-many-kids-do-women-want
Also, the birthrate in the USA (and most Western world) is already below the replacement rate for decades now. [1]
[1] https://www.iheart.com/content/2019-05-15-birth-rate-in-unit...
EDIT: Sorry, I wasn't understanding your point that families can't afford to have as many kids as they could one generation ago. I agree with you.
Many people assume that people have less kids because preferences and lifestyles have changed, leading to headlines like, "Millennials don't want kids" (And maybe in the same vein, "Millennials are killing cars", "Millennials want smaller homes", etc.)
Are you sure? Japan is maybe 99% homogeneous? I live in central Tokyo and I can go on for days and days without seeing a foreigner!
> it will inevitably introduce social strains
Sadly, yes. I've observed this on few occasions.
Reading comments on this thread below yours, there are a surprisingly high number of people on HN who think all Asians look alike. Spend a few months in an Asian country and white people begin to all look alike while Asians become quite distinct.
Also, it is quite easy to tell most tourists apart from foreign immigrants. The backpacks of gear, maps, constantly getting lost, or participating in things mostly designed for tourism gives it away.
If you're a tourist, you're very likely to carry certain cultural mannerisms or clothing that give you away, but otherwise stripped down naked there's very small physical differences.
If the foreign Chinese or Korean person has assimilated (learned the language), you would hard pressed to tell.
Masayoshi Son, the richest Japanese person, is ethnically Korean, and he had switched his last name back to his Korean surname so that he could be recognized as a Korean.
Much of what you perceive to be differences in phenotype among Asians are usually geographical or culturally acquired differences. For example many people think that Filipinos must have dark skin, or that if you have fair skin you must come from Japan or South Korea, but in reality that has more to do with how much sun those respective cultures manage to avoid, and skin-care products.
Facial blindness for racial features occurs when you're not accustomed to having to noticing such features. Most homogeneous regions can readily identify outsiders: they just look different. They're less likely to be able to identify where the outsider is from.
Guessing from facial features, with great but not perfect accuracy, is a skill. Like any skill it needs to be practiced. It is also never 100% accurate but I'm right most of the time.
Korean people have rounder faces and a less distinct chin than Japanese people. Chinese people are a bit in-between the two in terms of head/face shape. Koreans tend to have smaller noses and less pronounced cheek bones. Japanese have thicker eyebrows. The "double eyelid" is more common and prominent in China/Japan than Korea. China varies a bit more by region - but the people from Guangdong look different from those in Jiangxi or Gansu.
As a rule of thumb the north-south effect applies to Asian just like it applies to most of Europe: people in the northern regions are on average taller with lighter skin than people in the southern regions.
It also isn't just East Asia. Most people have difficulty telling African people apart because it isn't a skill most people need to practice. In East Africa, (eg. Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia) people tend to have larger foreheads (or more accurately: higher hairlines) than in other African countries. I actually learned a lot of this from watching a linguist, who often goes out to speak with people in public [0]. To approach and open a discussion he often has to guess their ethnicity in order to guess which language he should speak. He does so with a very high accuracy, including regional differences for Chinese people (he speaks Mandarin and Cantonese and from what I remember a few more regional dialects). He often does this without ever hearing the other person speak first, although he does sometimes overhear them speaking and butts in to chat.
>If the foreign Chinese or Korean person has assimilated (learned the language), you would hard pressed to tell.
I attend a Japanese class (in the US) with Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and Japanese students many of whom speak the language fluently. I did not have any trouble guessing except for one man who was half Korean-half Japanese. Now this isn't a topic I always bring up and it's not like I go around trying to guess peoples' ethnicity, but among friends who are learning a language together it usually comes up at some point.
Again, to reiterate: It is never 100% accurate. People are of mixed races all over the world, very few people are completely homogeneous. Recessive traits can appear, maybe they were raised in the South but by Northern parents. Maybe they're just a tall shut-in. Maybe they have a lot of makeup on. Maybe their diet was very different growing up. There's a lot more that goes into looks than just genes.
Just because most people can't play a 7-string guitar doesn't make it impossible to play a 7-string guitar.
I live in Kagoshima which has one of the lowest rates of foreigners in the country and nearly every time I go into the city centre I spot a foreigner. My daughter's (standard) daycare has at least 2 other foreign kids. Convenience stores have Chinese students working part time.
99% homogeneous still sounds about right though.
I’m quite surprised to hear this actually. I visited Japan recently and I consistently saw other foreigners around the center of Tokyo.
I think the only time I _didn’t_ see any other foreigners was when I was out in Ōtsu, but that’s sort of out there for most visitors anyway.
EDIT: I should add that I tried to make a point of walking around a bit, so I don’t think I was just taking the subway to commonly visited spots.
Of course, but those were mostly tourists?
(And they don't exactly have a mutual love for each other)
You are right though, the occasional Japanese person is going to be very hard to spot since they usually fall within the range of Korean diversity.
Korea is the country that breaks hand scanners. By that I means the sort of biometric measurement devices used for secure entry to doors. Korean hands are pretty much identical.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/03/22/national/number...
And with a population of 126.8 million people that means that 2% of the population are foreign.
But go to Shimokitezawa or Gakuendaigaku or anywhere off the beaten path and foreigners will be few and far between.
- the Japanese language is littered with loan words written in katakana even though native words of the same meaning often exist already
- office workers all wear suits
- the music scene is not very different from the west. Rock is huge and there is a great jazz scene. While bands playing Japanese instruments are rare and will be seen as a speciality, the same way bagpipes make you feel ethnic and traditional but pianos and guitars don’t.
- 'western' food is everywhere. I am not talking about what you can actually order in a restaurant in Europe, but Saizeriya and it’s peers. Western inspired cuisine. Japanese curry is also a thing.
- and don’t forget about whiskey.
And that
- no one forced Japan to do so. They have being open to foreign cultural influences since Meiji era, and I don’t see that changing. Seems to me that if it works for the Japanese people, it can and will become Japanese culture.
I am open to hear about some opinion from a native Japanese viewpoint. But from what I have read in this thread, much of the speculation about the loss of the 'unique' Japanese culture has more to do about what is happening in the west than what will happen in Japan.
Yes. Japan has become sort of an ideal example of a successful modern ethnostate for Western opponents of multiculturalism. A lot of fears Westerners express about Japan losing its cultural homogeneity are just a proxy for fears of the loss of white power and identity in the US and Europe, as an expression of the current right-wing xenophobic reactionary shift going on in the West.
It's just a weird new form of Orientalism. Instead of fetishising them for their art, or their business practices, or their "submissive" women, we're fetishizing their ethnic identity and racial purity.
I was and am not fascinated by Japan, and to be honest I didn't always enjoy my visit there. It was frustrating to feel so... foreign. I complained about them not speaking English and was annoyed that I couldn't even read a simple sign.
And yet, looking back I cherish that time and a feeling of respect has developed inside me. Because Japan was Japan, and didn't bend itself to my will, of that of other "guests" that want to change it to fit their imagination.
It was as solid as a rock and that counts for something.
Pretending it's an island untouched by and uninterested in foreign culture is changing it to fit one's imagination. Someone may well have "bent to your will" a bit had you put in a bit more effort than your comment suggests you did while there, as hospitality is deeply ingrained into their culture.
It seemed to me that they are, but at the same time managed to maintain an independent "personality" and adapt the imported things.
I'd argue that most of Europe has been westernized and English is widely spoken. This doesn't seem to be the case there, or at least it's not so visible.
But a small degree of foreign influence over thousands of years, carried out by mutual trade of objects and information, just isn't the same as the kind of mass immigration seen in the West, where the whole population becomes a minority in less than a lifetime. Such a thing has never happened in Japan in a thousand years; not even close. (It did happen before that, and the people who were there originally are not doing too well.)
There's a fundamental difference between exchanging products and ideas, and mass migration of people. Stop trying to pretend that they're the same.
Their legislature is called the Diet, after German practice, for crying out loud.
It's good that you brought up the Meiji Restoration, as the very fact that Japan became a world power, whose cultural projection is now global, was because they carefully adopted foreign practices and brought in foreign advisors as necessary for their society to flourish.
Immigration is being sold as a solution to aging and shrinking population. While opening to immigrants certainly helps solving the shrinking workfoce problem, it is nothing more than a duct tape over what is happening: people no longer want to have kids.
After it's been long enough that immigrants are not even called this anymore, if we discover that young workforce is still shrinking because people are still not having enough kids, what excuses we're going to use?
I can agree that immigration is nice and all—hell, immigrants helped to build my country, Japanese included. But, can we search for solutions to the real problem? What can we do, to help people doing things humans are supposed to do? To have children, to have a family, to be healthy, worldwide.
Immigration doesn't fix that problem completely, but it allows us to deflate the Ponzi scheme gently rather than waiting for it to collapse. We buy ourselves three or four decades to raise the retirement age, raise taxes and rebalance the economy to suit a stable population. It's not perfect, not everyone will be happy with it, but it's the only good option.
Taking a perhaps unwarranted broad view, economies of scale allow for us to achieve certain productive activities that we would otherwise not be able to. Taken to an extreme, a tribe of 100 humans would never be able to develop a space program, for example.
Even aside from that, more people means more "black swan" thinkers/entrepreneurs that can have a population-wide impact. It took just one Einstein to develop General Relativity and now humanity will benefit forever.
Obviously humans are chewing through natural resources at an astounding and unsustainable rate, and we'll extinguish ourselves in a few hundred years if nothing changes. If your view is that humanity should co-exist in much smaller numbers in harmony with nature on Earth, your statements are reasonable. I take the optimistic view that we're meant to keep growing indefinitely beyond the Earth, and so a shrinking, aging population is indeed a concern.
I'd be worried if the population was forecast to shrink below a billion, but that's highly unlikely on any reasonable timescale. I'd be worried if the population rose much above 11 billion, because then resources start getting really tight. Anywhere in the middle is fine by me.
If we do start terraforming Mars, I might be inclined to incentivise population growth. Unless we're absolutely certain that we can make it work, further population growth is a huge risk - every extra billion increases the pressure on resources, which increases the risk of conflict, which increases the risk of an extinction-level event.
There will be no stabilisation of population.
Add a couple climate catastrophes and wars for resources, and we can see the landscape in 2100 or 2200...
I'm an exmormon, birth rates are higher for Mormons, certainly, but even they've been obviously dropping. I had three batchmates out of 9 in the missionary training center with 10+ kids in their family. That used to be relatively common, now it's almost unheard of for newer families.
If Mormons have higher fertility than non-Mormons then they’ll grow as a share of the population, even if the modal difference is less than one child. If the average Mormon family has three children when others have two they’ll increase their population share by 50% a generation, neglecting immigration and apostasy.
So? Human society and culture can change absurdly fast. If the evolutionary impulse to reproduce was that strong, you wouldn't be seeing places like Singapore with comically low birth rates.
What evolution compels us to do is have sex. We've just disconnected that from reproduction.
Re:mormons, yes they have a higher fertility rate, but it's also been rapidly dropping. And without taking into account conversions/apostasy the numbers are kind of useless, and taking them into account is difficult because it's just inherently hard to predict. As an ex-mormon I'm aware that the internet has caused some major problems with retaining members for the church, because information has become so much more accessible (much of it contradicting church teachings, obviously).
It compels is to do everything we do in life. There isn't a single trait ever measured in which the heritability was zero.
It's often said that people used to have a lot of kids in order to insure against child mortality. I understand financial stress et al may be one reason for the lower reproduction rate but less kids can also be a sign of success.
Success correlates well with things like wealth, education level of your parents, early-age nutrition, and other things that can be considered "inherited" in a way, but children of poor and "unsuccessful" people can become financially and socially important as well, it just happens at a lower rate.
Suggesting that more poor children than wealthy children will impoverish society in more than just a statistical sense implies there's something immeasurably special about the people who become wealthy and famous, as if the mere act of breeding with them will produce superior humans.
Every trait we've managed to come up with an objective measure for is heritable, to a lesser or greater (but usually greater) extent. "Of course intelligence isn't heritable" - but somehow score on every test we can think of for it is. Same for creativity. Same for personality traits.
Children largely resemble their genetic parents; we don't have to like it but it's still reality. If the people who contribute the most to society, who help out their fellow humans the most (and I'm not saying that's the rich - but it is largely, as grandparent said, the successful), have fewer children than those who don't, we should be worried.
It's hard to imagine there being no negative side effects to the successful portion of the population shrinking at a faster rate.
But I agree, this is indeed what happened. Another similarly true explanation is, he used his imagination.
It's interesting to me how judging people based on heuristics is sometimes fine, even admirable, but other times it is Very Very Bad.
It's also funny how these types of ideas seem to offend people, judging by voting anyways. No looking behind the real curtain or something like that I suppose.
Are we perhaps referring to different comments? I was referring to: "This view is popular, even if in jest like "haha Idiocracy was right guise!!" but in real life it smacks of eugenics and the Divine Right Of The Rich."
>>> If [[successful] people are having fewer kids] than [unsuccessful] people then haven't we created a [dysgenic] system?
>> [This view] is popular, even if in jest like "haha Idiocracy was right guise!!" but [in real life] [it] [[smacks of] [eugenics]] and the Divine Right Of The Rich.
...
> Seems like that comment is judging a narrative or a meme, and not the person who made the comment itself.
To be extra safe, let's add some context, to make sure we're using the same definitions and "facts":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgenics
Dysgenics is the study of factors producing the accumulation and perpetuation of defective or disadvantageous genes and traits in offspring of a particular population or species. The adjective "dysgenic" is the antonym of "eugenic".
"smacks of": To be a sign or symbol of something: signify, stand for, symbolize
"eugenics": Eugenics is the science of improving the human species by selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits. It aims to reduce human suffering by “breeding out” disease, disabilities and so-called undesirable characteristics from the human population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
"The heritability of IQ for adults is between 57% and 73%[6] with some more-recent estimates as high as 80%[7] and 86%.[8] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood. This phenomenon is known as the Wilson Effect.[9] Recent studies suggest that family and parenting characteristics are not significant contributors to variation in IQ scores;[10] however, poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease can have deleterious effects.[11][12]"
To me (my interpretation):
- OP seems to be asserting that "successful" people having fewer kids is detrimental to the overall well being of society.
- The person replying implies disagreement with this popular view (narrative/meme), but then goes on to assert (again, my interpretation) that those who hold this view (when it is put forth "in real life", which is what I interpret "it" to refer to) are in support (at least implicitly) of eugenics.
Do you perhaps think OP doesn't personally hold the stated view, or the replier doesn't believe OP personally holds the stated view? Personally, when I see no language to indicate either are talking in purely theoretical/philosophical (devil's advocate, etc) terms, by default I tend to take people's statements at face value (while keeping in mind the ever-present possibility that something important was lost in translation).
I'm genuinely very curious if this is significantly different than how you view (parse the language to derive the actually intended meaning) the exchange?
a) the mechanism used by CptFribble to produce specific details where none existed before (although I think we've settled this, and are not in disagreement?)
b) how you and I came to different conclusions on whether CptFribble's comment was (or was not) judgemental of slang800 (attributing a personal support of eugenics) - this I don't think is settled?
So it's really the ultimate in traditional family values. More traditional than Shakespeare, the scientific method, religion and apple pie all put together.
Yeah, and the idea is: "Let's replace them with other people, from other cultures".
At some point, especially at the pace the modern world is changing, we need to ask ourselves how much better off we'd be if we stopped putting so much meaning into an idea that's ultimately just a nice momentary illusion at best.
The world is us. It's not a separate entity that we have to learn to work with. We don't have to adapt to XYZ. We can act in one way or another and the world will look accordingly.
"We live in a global world now, homogeneity is futile."
And they wonder, after presenting their ideology as an unstoppable, all-consuming force of nature, why people take issue with it.
As humans we have the agency to control our nations and their respective cultures and genetic makeups. This only becomes impossible when you adopt a Western value system that makes never-ending economic growth your only goal.
In multiculturalism, immigrants form enclaves that are durable and do not readily assimilate. That's not generally what happens in the US -- even second generation immigrant children speak English as a first language and are largely Americanized.
I’ve spent some time in Michigan or Minnesota and haven’t taken away the same conclusions. Maybe we could agree or disagree on “generally”.
There are just too many benefits to assimilating. This isn't Quebec.
This is not a normative statement to say that this is bad, but in this region there are immigrant groups that aren't assimilating as quickly or thoroughly as groups in other areas. Some of that is enforced temporary-ness in the case of the Chinese community in Ann Arbor, but some of it is the sheer size of the community in Dearborn -- the largest Muslim population in the Western world, not even mentioning the huge Chaldean group. (Might no longer be true after the recent refugee movement into Europe, but was true very recently.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/21/milli...
Its made Tokyo way more easily navigable though, especially combined with Google maps. :)
A survey published last week of Japanese attitudes towards sex caused a stir with the claim that about 40% of young single men and women have never had sex – a phenomenon that is being blamed for the low birthrate in Japan, where it is predicted the population will plummet from 127 million over the next century.
The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research’s poll of 5,000 single men and women aged 18-34 found that the proportion of virgins had increased significantly over the past decade: among men, 42% said they had never had sex; among women the figure was 44%.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/28/japan-poll-lin...