Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
japantimes.co.jp
japantimes.co.jp
They've opened up the gates.
Funding minimum is 5 million JPY.
The issue is language barrier and price.
You can go to China, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia to get much cheaper labor.
But not the infrastructure or trust and safety.
Japanese work culture also seems very particular. It seems likely that a business run by a foreigner would result in cultural clashes with employees, with customers, and with the general public.
If what you all said was true, why do foreign enterprises profit in Japan then?
Language is culture.
Culture is people.
You seem to be missing the big picture, and that isn't bad - it just means you should try to improve your ignorance.
Plus, all the issues you said apply anywhere in the world.
As someone who have a lot of first hand experience in Japan I must say most of "liberation" that government declare are mere declarations. This applies not just to visa or enterpreneurship policies but to most of local matters as well. And then some people are surprised - government did something so why no-one is coming?
> If what you all said was true, why do foreign enterprises profit in Japan then?
If we look at list of companies that left Japan and compare it to list of companies that succeeded, the first one would be much longer. You still need to be a part of keiretsu to operate, to open a bank account, to get rid of all those ridiculous requirements business usually fights with, and so on.
> They've opened up the gates.
That's a very strong definition of what is happening. I'd say they reduced the code from the lock from 48 character password to 24, but still keep the passphrase :)
Despite declaration of "opening", Japan still preserves all possible barriers for emerging business and protecting it's own, largely inefficient, keiretsu companies and businesses.
> But not the infrastructure or trust and safety.
While it's debatable, it's not an exclusive thing. Singapore, Hong Kong, offers better safety with significantly better taxation.
I'm just working in a Japanese company that's trying to go global.
But imagine, starting your own business, legal papers that need to be in Japanese. Compliances. Paperworks. It is tough.
Even filing taxes here is tough for a foreigner.
I think this is kind of a 'new world' view. Japan is not Canada/America/New Zealand, or even UK which is easy to adapt into for historical reasons.
The issue is 'culture' - of which 'language' is only the most apparent barrier.
Japan has 1) a very complicated culture and 2) it's ethnocentric. These two things are related, because with such a complicated culture, it can take a very long time to adapt, and probably a lot of effort. Newcomers who don't make a concerted effort over a very long time won't ever make it to that level. One might argue that to be truly integrated, one might have to be 'born and raised' there. To boot, because there are so few who don't fit this mould, this has the additional effect of reinforcing in the minds of Japanese (or any such culture), that even individuals who have conquered the cultural artifacts but who 'look different' aren't really 'Japanese'.
Aside from ethnocentric concerns over 'what makes a Japanese person Japanese' which is surely controversial ... it makes it very difficult for newcomers to participate.
These things are neither 'government mandates' nor can they simply be bound into issues such as 'language and food' (although language is a big one) - it's a pervasive and intrinsic nature of the nation.
It's such a 'big thing' that I'd say whatever they do to attract foreign talent probably has to address this Elephant in the room.
My understanding is they're also very financially conservative, I think it was pinboard who was talking about his experience as an independent entrepreneur?
If you read Phil Knights autobiography about starting Nike, he couldn’t get funding in the US and actually raised a lot of capital from Japanese financiers in the 70s.
It seems to me that speaking a language is a skill. I know from my own experience trying to learn a second language that it isn't an easy skill for many people to acquire. Why should I be more irritated that someone doesn't speak English than that they, say, can't make a cabinet or can't write Java, or any other mildly demanding skill?
I get the argument that someone who doesn't speak your language doesn't participate fully in your culture either, but I guess I'm still not sure why I should be upset about that. Seems like something for them to be worried about.
Sorry if I'm making an argument here, but I hear this quite a bit and it doesn't make sense to me.
Societal harmony matters. It's why universal healthcare exists. It's why welfare exists. It's why affirmative action exists. Why countries spend money integrating immigrants. Everything that helps out poorer people is done with societal harmony in mind, these programs aren't 'fair' to the middle class that largely pays for them. But they reduce crime and increase social cohesion.
Countries exist that have dozens of languages and tribes. They usually have endless social problems, unrest, civil wars and often break up. Homogenous societies (culturally) almost always work better. It's why the US creation myth exists, ditto for Canada, it's why France and Germany try to teach their language to newcomers, etc...
Oh yeah, the history of the Swiss in the context of Europe is just non-stop insanity and violence. If only they could aspire to be more monocultural and peaceful, like their neighbors, the Germans...
> Oh yeah, the history of the Swiss in the context of Europe is just non-stop insanity and violence. If only they could aspire to be more monocultural and peaceful, like their neighbors, the Germans...
The Swiss, and their cantons, have almost un-heard-of amount political power and freedom. There is direct democracy where state matters are directly voted by the people. Also the Swiss cantons are sovereign don't have to follow federal law!
There is no need to rebel, if you can do whatever you want.
In some sense, the Swiss works more like a collection of tribes than a country.
What is clear from the history of the 20th century is that appeals to nationalism and uniformity of culture, broadly constructed, drive more violence and conflict than they prevent. Organizing around their ideology led to two world wars, bloodshed and destruction at a previously unforeseen scale.
Arguably, the postwar peace was only restored by a return to an older form of sovereignty: that as semi-autonomous subjects of a multicultural empire (in this case that of the US and USSR). These have long standing historical precedents for their durability (e.g. the Roman and Ottoman empires).
Also, all those powers also attempted to spread their culture, language and religion. Hence Latin based languages, Arabic being spread as far as it has, Russian being spoke all over the former USSR, English being the new lingua franca.
You state this as if it's a fact, but it simply isn't. There's lots of monocultural nations that don't have any violence problems whatsoever: Scandinavian nations come to mind immediately.
Moreover, the "golden" days of the Cold War were pretty awful for a lot of people. The US and USSR didn't go to war directly, but instead conducted a bunch of proxy wars: Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, etc. The 20th century after WWII was full of violence, it was just kept away from the two imperial powers mostly. Instead they instigated violence in other places to pursue their "interests", such as when the USA overthrew the democratically-elected government in Iran and installed a brutal dictator.
As for stability, I would argue that stability is something we've never had anywhere, not long-term. I don't think you can point to anything that's been continuously stable for a long time, so I would argue that instability is the norm. Trying to keep a society stable is like trying to balance on a beach ball: you can do it for a little while, but eventually you're going to fall.
If language isn't the thing that matters for national harmony, then this is at best a red herring and at worst a fig leaf.
Culture is language + religion + food + social norms + ideology and probably other things. Not everything needs to be the same, but if too many are in conflict, social problems arise.
I feel like the more this is being explained to me the more unsavory it seems.
But evidence of this is all around the world. Hindu mobs attacks butchers who sell beef in India, there's tons of contention over the rise of halal butcher shops and Muslim demands for halal options in the west, or even vegans that protest butcher shops for a non-religious example.
For religion itself, tons of wars have been started over it, that's easy.
As for ideology, look at the US and how fractured it is because of politics today. Or the historic communist revolutions. Or political violence in South and Central America. Both left-wing and right-wing violence against the other side are a thing.
People shouldn't care about these things, but they do, it's a thing.
Not getting it. Starting to lean towards the "fig leaf" theory.
But it's pretty obvious that tribalism isn't dead. And what makes a tribe? And of course, we're trying to kill tribalism by simply making a more inclusive, bigger tribe. So what are the commonalities we'll have as part of that bigger tribe?
When borders don't exist anymore, racial discrimination doesn't exist, religion is dead, it won't be because we simply killed them. It'll be because we created a new ideology to supercede it.
The OP on this thread said they would be irritated by (and I'm paraphrasing) someone coming in who spoke a different language. I am aware that such a thing exists, but wanted an answer to why. What you're addressing is the unasked first question, does such hostility exist?
I got confused because it appeared earlier in the thread that you were trying to justify that viewpoint on its own consequence. But now it seems like you were just steelmanning, which honestly isn't that useful to me on questions that are basically "how does your worldview work?".
No historian worth their salt would be foolish enough to compare the circumstances of individual European countries with that of their former colonial subjects, nor things like the shifting borders and variations of thousands of years of Chinese history. Strife in China and India isn’t even independent from the influence of “homogenous“ countries in Europe!
Do you think a Japanese person who doesn’t speak English could build a successful company in the US without the help of someone who speaks English? It would be impossible.
A few years ago I worked with a Taiwanese company and we had to use translators because some of their engineers didn't speak English (and I don't speak Chinese). The person translating was also an engineer which helped massively as she understood what we were talking about and could sometimes anticipate our questions and "fluidify" the discussion but it was still a huge annoyance, it made every interaction more painful than it needed to be, you often wondered if they really understood what you meant etc... I can't really imagine myself working full time in such an arrangement.
I now live in Portugal and there's a massive American and French community in Lisbon. Many of them don't bother learning Portuguese and just interact with everybody in English. As such Portuguese people looking to work in Lisbon pretty much have to speak English. Actually you can now find restaurants where the waiter speaks English but not Portuguese (or at least not fluently). You can encounter similar situations all around the world where there's a huge foreign community. That can be fairly irritating for locals who end up feeling that they're the ones living in a foreign country...
Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-speaking immigrants over the years and no plausible threat to the primacy of English in the US. Shouldn't that be reason to think "maybe the thing I fear won't happen"?
For Portuguese people, perhaps it is. Who really wants to feel like a foreigner in their own country (esp. when that country is as small as Portugal)?
I know I'd be really irritated if I tried going to local restaurants around me and all the servers there only spoke Spanish. How would you feel about that?
>Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-speaking immigrants over the years and no plausible threat to the primacy of English in the US.
Yes, but that's because most of them either learned the dominant local language (English), or were not present in sufficient numbers to cause a situation like above. Sure, some formed little enclaves here and there, but that's a little different from what the OP described. And their kids grew up speaking English and fit into the new society. Finally, America is a really huge country, much larger than Portugal, and has historically accepted immigrants from many different places, so English (already being in place as the dominant language) was naturally the language everyone would learn so they could survive here. Given how huge English is now as a worldwide "lingua franca", I don't think you can compare America's history with what other non-English-speaking countries are experiencing today.
And the second part feels is framed as disagreeing with my point, but actually seems to support it: we've dealt with this issue before, the fear was the same, and the feared thing didn't happen. Shouldn't that mean we should dial down the fear this time around?
Who's "we", and where did I say "we" should fear this? I just pointed out the people of Portugal might not like this, nor might people in other places that might be having similar issues. If you're talking about the US, then no, that's not a well-founded fear at all.
>But at a glance Lisbon seems to be doing pretty well for itself-- certainly better than lots of places in the US.
Does that matter to the Portuguese? This idea that economic well-being (which frequently doesn't "trickle down" that much) trumps everything is exactly how we got Brexit and Trump.
>Besides your sense that such cultural changes are bad, what makes them bad? Why, objectively, should they be feared?
Well, I'd say electing people like Trump is demonstrably bad, and this is what happens when you simply ignore cultural changes. You end up with people voting for right-wing politicians, so we're seeing this in the US, the UK, and many other European nations.
>we've dealt with this issue before, the fear was the same, and the feared thing didn't happen.
Again, who's "we"? The US is not the world, and other countries are not like the US. You can't apply the US's experience with immigration to countries like Portugal; they have extremely different cultures and histories. Try going to Portugal and telling everyone there "you need to accept mass immigration and you all need to stop speaking Portuguese and switch to English", and see how friendly people are to you.
"We" in this case is shorthand for you and I. It seems you resent that association, so I apologize for extending it.
Regarding economics, I didn't say economic harm. I was simply asking what the actual harm is. Setting aside the question of whether something that can't be measured exists, let's try for an easier bar: can a harm that can't even be articulated exist?
Regarding Trump and Brexit, my views there are not germane to this conversation-- but since you asked and will undoubtedly try to force the issue, I'll state that I oppose both.
On the topic of telling the Portuguese to start speaking English-- if you think that was where I was heading here you're way off the mark and I don't think that's my fault.
It seems that for many people, loss of local culture and language is something they perceive as "harm", and they're resisting it. You can't objectively say whether this is harm or not, because most cultural things are purely subjective, so it's all a matter of perspective.
So if people in Portugal are worried their local culture and language are going to be bulldozed by outsiders, when a bunch of non-Portuguese speakers are moving in and restaurants are only operating in English as a result, I can't say they're wrong to feel that way. Personally, I think it's better to have more cosmopolitanism, but then again as an American I do know what it's like to live on a continent where there's a single dominant language and a huge amount of uniformity to everything, and it's really not that great. You can wander around in Florida, Maine, and Arizona, and everyone still speaks the same language, has basically the same culture, and all the stores and restaurants are mostly the same too, even owned by the same companies. Walmart isn't different between Oregon and Tennessee; it's pretty horrible in any state. The same fast-food chains serve the same garbage food wherever you go.
>On the topic of telling the Portuguese to start speaking English-- if you think that was where I was heading here you're way off the mark and I don't think that's my fault.
It's the natural end-state of the trend that you're asking about the harm of. If tons of English speakers move to Portugal, and all the service businesses eventually switch over to using English and not Portuguese, then it's exactly like I said: you're effectively telling the Portuguese to start speaking English, because they're not going to be able to survive in their own country any more if they don't, if things were to go that way.
>Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-speaking immigrants over the years and no plausible threat to the primacy of English in the US.
I want to start by saying that I'm very much an "open-border" kind of person so I don't really have a huge problem with immigration and cultural "melting pots" but as far as I know there are significant tensions in some southern American states when it comes to immigration from hispanophone countries. According to Wikipedia there are 50 million Spanish speakers in the USA and only about half of them declare speaking English "very well". There also appear to be large regions near the border when Spanish is a majority language. Again, I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, but it's certainly significant.
Beyond that America has a huge advantage in that game: English is the de-facto international language nowadays. When the more educated Syrian refugees are interviewed on the German or French TV they generally speak... English, not French or German. I've never set foot in the USA, I must have spent a grand total of one month in the UK and yet like many Europeans I speak English fluently. Japanese and Portuguese don't quite have that aura...
I think a lot of people in countries like the US get worked up when people speak a language they don't understand because they feel excluded. And somehow it's vaguely threatening to have people talking and you are specifically cut out of the conversation.
Because conversation is how relationships form.
2. I'm still not sure why I should be upset about that.
Because if the foreigner has success, they may draw in other people who don't speak your language to do the same, and now the dominance of your culture is contested.
Not that I agree but that's what people would say.
Japan was expected to become the next global superpower in the 1980s, and instead has seen closing in on three lost decades.
It’s only now trying to catch up, politically, culturally and economically.
I don't see where the problem is... The vast majority of countries, even many western countries only wish they had Japan's 'problems'.
Japan does a lot of things exceedingly well but demographics are one of those forces of history that are dammed near impossible to mitigate or circumvent without enormous cost, like trying to stop a train with your fist.
EDIT: Just to be clear, my point is about demographics, not immigration. We have yet to see if productivity advancements such as robotics can fill the void, but either way, Japan has a significant struggle ahead of itself.
Citation needed. Sure fertility is well correlated with educational attainment which is likely somewhat "heritable" by proxy (social class, intelligence, lack of disabilities) but that doesn't mean the heritable effect will be large enough in aggregate.
While Japanese economic progress postwar was astonishing, it was entirely premised on them having favored status in the region. Few people know, for example, that the US forced Korea to purchase massive amounts of goods from Japan to rebuild its economy, essentially reinstating their former colonial relationship and stoking tensions that culminated in the Korean War.
Japan is a cautionary take because it was entirely too dependent on using its favored status in American geopolitics to throw its weight around Asia-Pacific, as opposed to building meaningful, trade and immigration agreements with other countries in the regions. Now that US dominance is in retreat and the Chinese ascendant, they’re in a poor overall economic position to counter them.
Certainly the geo-strategic position was favorable, but I think this is quite the exaggeration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
source: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
Of course contributing to those fears was vast underinvestment in modernization by US firms which were still relying on very old and inefficient technologies, so of course to some stateside companies (and “pundits”) they looked like worldbeaters.
Economical measures are hard to interpret, but they can give an indication: Japan GDP/capita is standing at 48,920 USD, and Australia at 56,919 USD. Germany is at 47,502 USD, France at 43,664 and UK at 42,986 USD. Japan is there, slightly ahead of Europe. Australia is somewhat ahead, but benefits from way more natural resources (minerals and oil). You can only grow fast so far: once your entire country is middle-class growth will be slower.
By comparison, Korea is at 26,762 USD, and China at 7,755 USD. These two countries have way more potential for growth, but also because they are way less developed for large groups of people. I forgot the exact salary difference for the same job between a chaebol and a small company in Korea, but I think we are talking 4x or 5x more at the chaebol.
Ethnic diversity has been part of the fabric of the US since before it was a country. Per census figures, the percentage of the population that wasn't born in the US was higher in 1910 that in it today.
And, of course, the very concept of "immigrant from Europe or descended from them => white" is a lot more recent than 250 years ago. The Irish weren't considered "white" when they arrived en masse after 1820. Italians, Greeks, and various Slavs also weren't considered "white" when they arrived in the early 20th century. Suspicion of divided loyalties for a Catholic president was a big issue in the 1960 elections (JFK vs Nixon).
Yes, but it had Naturalization Act of 1790 that restricted naturalization only to white people. It wasn’t an immigration restriction, to be sure, but very few non-whites immigrated to US anyway (other than the forced immigration of black slaves), rendering the issue moot.
> And, of course, the very concept of "immigrant from Europe or descended from them => white" is a lot more recent than 250 years ago. The Irish weren't considered "white" when they arrived en masse after 1820. Italians, Greeks, and various Slavs also weren't considered "white" when they arrived in the early 20th century.
This is very much false and ahistorical. Many of them weren’t liked by then-locals, and in fact we’re often discriminated against, but at no point they were seriously considered non-white. There have been some activists recently claiming otherwise, but it has been based on very weak historical grounds. Consider, for example, that after the Ozawa case, at no point the question of Irish or Slavs’ whiteness ever came up on a court docket, while it did for Arabs, Syrians, Filipinos, and many others: https://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/White05.htm
> Suspicion of divided loyalties for a Catholic president was a big issue in the 1960 elections (JFK vs Nixon).
There was, but, as it turns out, Catholicism is not a race.
Irish and Italians are lumped into White and now we have comments like yours. Most of the people in the US are from Europe so of course they favored family, friends, and countrymen coming over.
The US has the most immigrants than any other country by almost 5x at 48 million.
There was a recent study from Peking University which hypothesized that the population actually peaked in 2018 and is already shrinking. (government numbers are unreliable)
Also we might argue that the Chinese "self-migrate" with a huge amount of students that go for studies outside China but return later.
http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/english/tetuduki/zairyuu/eizyuu.ht...
> or citizenship
https://www.justlanded.com/english/Japan/Japan-Guide/Visas-P...
Everywhere you go on Earth you will find racist people, whatever 'race' they are some will be racist against other 'races'.
Specifically regarding your point: there are people who are black and racist in the US or any other country.
There's a very important distinction to make between those that write the laws and those that don't.
But racism does not start there.
Racism builds systems of governing and laws that can be racist. Ergo, you see structural racism (again, redlining) which can exist long after the racial zeitgeist has passed.
He just got back from a trip to give a presentation in Japan...first thing I hear when he gets back is how badly racist the Japanese are.
I know it's just an anecdote...but it's been his experience in general over the years.
Death of a Dream: Vietnamese Workers in Japan https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/4001336/
Get past these problems and non-japanese start to love it. They are not as racist as many people make them out to be, most are just extremely frustrated that english and being chubby isn't enough to be accepted.
I've been studying Japanese for years (taking the JLPT again in December).
I want to start a computational filmmaking startup, and Japan has some of the best writers and media exports the world has to offer.
I really need to stop worrying and pursue this...
It's been a dream of mine to go spend time in Japan since I was quite young. The dream has morphed; I have a serious relationship now, a good career and a place to call home that I don't want to leave permanently. But the dream lives on and we're planning to go there for six months in a couple of years to learn the language intensively.
Don't let your dreams stay dreams.
BTW, shameless plug for my podcast: https://www.disruptingjapan.com/
However, the idea of trying to get someone to move to Japan to start a startup is kind of odd. Ideally, you should be near your customers.
Japan is a wonderful place to live, but there is much more they can do to make things attractive to Japanese entrepreneurs, which will, in turn, make it attractive to everyone, including foreign entrepreneurs.
> Tokyo One-Stop Business Establishment Center (TOSBEC)
This resource is great and underutilized in Tokyo in the international business scene from my experience. I've been doing my part to recommend it far and wide, as it is very helpful with solid English support.
> Corporate bank account
I finished setting up my corporation in Japan in April, and it is now essentially December and I do not have a corporate bank account yet. Getting denied many times from various banks, always being told that they cannot tell us the reason why due to "policy". also, it can take anywhere from three to five weeks to process your application. My accountant, lawyer, etc cannot quite figure it out for certain. It recently came down to a few potential factors around me not being on the business manager visa (on another work visa), even though we've seen success doing it as that before. Banking has been my biggest holdup thus far.
> Private office
to secure a visa from your own business, you need a private office. You must have a private door, with your company name listed on it. there are multiple businesses which support this around the city, but you will pay at least 600 USD per month for a shoebox office with no windows or AC control, if you want to be in a reasonable neighborhood. There is also a semi-requirement that your bank must be within 5 km of your headquarters, AKA your office. So if you will be going there frequently, which you probably will be since online banking here is practically useless, you will not want to be traveling far.
So, you will be spending 600 USD per month on an office. You will also be spending 2,000 to 3,000 USD per year on an accountant to handle your corporate taxes. the standard rate for setting up a corporation, is around 4,500 USD to 5,500 USD. If you can't read Japanese kanji forms, which is all you are going to find that many banks and most government offices offer, you're going to need to pay a translator. If you are sponsoring your own visa, you need to deposit at least 50,000 USD into your bank account to support your visa. This money can be used elsewhere after it has been deposited, but is still a hurdle for some.
You are looking at a minimum of 15,000 to 20,000 USD for setting up a corporation over your first year, assuming you follow the standard path (excluding the 50k deposit)
I've been doing my best to document everything along the way during this process, and it is not over yet. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you have more questions or a curious about more details.
Given that your route seems to be full of friction why do you persist? Is there some unique element to your business that requires you to be in Japan?
Consider me impressed. Canada was easier than what you describe and yet, I couldn't stomach it after a couple of years of being given the run-around.
There was the situation where if you didn't become a citizen (which was hard, but not impossible, at the time), you could visa-work your way throughout 40-or-so years of employment, but if you weren't a citizen, you were booted at 65, even if you had paid in your whole life.
Fun times.
When we closed down our company... a native helped us submit the paperwork to close out our local bank account with an online bank. It took SIX MONTHS of sending the same form back and forth with corrections to finish it, haha.
Personally I view Japan has a oddity. A first world country that short of some tech and Toyota/Honda produce little to nothing for trade. Everything is imported which could land you into the red if the powers at be stop playing nice in trading with Japan.
Japan does not export "some tech and Toyota/Honda". It exports a LOTS of vehicles, vehicle parts, integrated circuits, machines, etc. Japan is the 4th largest exporter in the world.
Also, a country that doesn't export much cannot import much, or else how could the country afford it?
edit: typo
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_med...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_vid...