> 56.3 percent of Japanese people said they opposed accepting more foreigners, up from 35.6 percent in 2024
that's a huge jump in 1 year. What happened?
that's a huge jump in 1 year. What happened?
Most of the issue they have would be reduced if the yen got stronger or they introduced some expensive tourist fee, but that's very unlikely
Johnny Somali.
When you visit someone's country you are not just a guest, you are the model for everyone else who comes from where you do and who looks like you do. The assumption is that how you behave is how others from where you came from will behave. In an age where social media exposes everyone all the time, bad behavior gets seen and shown to others and conclusions drawn based on that behavior.
But rather than admit that this is a thing which exists, others just want to press tired arguments about race and racism. Which even if true, who cares? It's their country. They're allowed to welcome or decline anyone they wish. How arrogant are we really to think that we can dictate who and what others allow in their homes?
Amazing.
If you have a functioning society and a petty criminal, you can just... arrest them. No needs for all those xenophobic drama.
Or not, I guess. After all, what am I to tell Japanese people what to expect from their own police?
Japan has a stricter legal system than many Western countries.
Saying that it's the issue of a country is wrong and to simple minded.
It seems like your preceding paragraph argues that this racism exists, without using that specific word.
> How arrogant are we really to think that we can dictate who and what others allow in their homes?
How often do you see that, as opposed to people simply stating how they feel about who/what others allow in their homes? I’ve rarely seen the former and almost always see the latter.
My black friends tell me that it is very hard to be taken seriously when your kin thinks that attitude is a matter of noise. One of them told me his relationship ended with his fiance because her father was "racist" and didn't believe he was one of the most well paid engineers in the state.
Early in Takaichi's premiership, she answered a parliamentary question about the possibility of a Chinese attack on taiwan by sying that this would present an 'existential' problem for Japan. This alarmed the Chinese who saw it as an intrusion on their private business and a reminder of Japanese war atrocities; but before they could make a restrained diplomatic complaint, a Chinese consul in (iirc) Osaka went nuts on social media telling Takaichi to pull her filthy neck in before it was chopped off. After that neither side could back down without losing face so they're stuck in a diplomatic deep freeze.
There are a lot of other structural factors I could go into but those are the major differences since 2024. Actual incidence of crime or large population shifts seem to be absent.
In my experience, having lived in Japan for a bit, I would estimate the opposition rate to be much, much higher.
*While there are some reports of rich people just creating something that meets the bare-minimum requirements of a "business" to get a visa, these people are independently wealthy and not collecting welfare payments.
It is one thing when it is one person, it is another when it is every tenth person.
I came away with more empathy for Japanese xenophobic sentiment. I was getting frustrated by rude gaijin and I was one (well I was trying really hard not to be rude).
What more does supporting it entail than being sympathetic to the sentiment? You’re not Japanese, it sounds like, so being xenophobic towards non-Japanese doesn’t work in this context. Only a Japanese person could experience it.
Would it also be xenophobia, or more xenoannoyance? Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior?
It is a bad, counterproductive impulse that will hurt their society long term, just as I think xenophobia in the US has been counterproductive.
You should also recognize that there’s a difference between the people who visit, and the people who completely restructure their lives to immigrate. And there’s a difference between immigrants who do their best to learn and integrate into the culture, and immigrants who try to impose their culture on the host nation.
Xenophobia doesn’t really jive with recognizing people as individuals and recognizing that a foreigner can learn Japanese well and follow the cultural norms (aside from the norm of having been born in Japan to Japanese parents, but only because it is impossible for a gaijin to do that).
In other words, I don’t think it’s right to broadly group immigrants into the same bucket as disrespectful tourists, but I also see on a human level how that impulse arises. The greater majority of well-behaved tourists don’t stand out like the problem-causers do.
> Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior
The “phobia” part of the word is probably confusing you, in actual usage, xenophobia encompasses dislike, “fear” is not necessary. Similar to homophobia or Islamophobia, the term includes fear _or_ dislike/hatred.
Oh definitely. When it comes to rules and laws there is always some cutoff or some threshold. It's like the driving age. The laws to generalize by necessity. There is only so much of a chance there to encode "level at which a visitor learned cultural norms", a "culture quiz" etc. Those are things for a citizenship but not visitors usually. In some cases it's easy to point to a legal proceeding or complaint and say "look this person is banned, he did X,Y,Z". But then there is stuff that not documented. Like maybe someone not taking their shoes off, or speaking too loudly, or reclining their seat without asking.
> > Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior
> The “phobia” part of the word is probably confusing you, in actual usage, xenophobia encompasses dislike, “fear” is not necessary. Similar to homophobia or Islamophobia, the term includes fear _or_ dislike/hatred.
I know, I was being pedantic on purpose to show that the words used matter. The way it's presented is as a moral transgression, Japanese not wanting foreigners to visit sort of sound the same as homophobes or islamophobes. I think it's unfair. Any country, especially one with a democratically elected government should be able to say who can come and who can't to their country.
I personally don't have a problem with xenophobia. I see it as the other side of the coin from openness to 'foreign' cultures and peoples. Both always exist in a society (opening up and shutting out) and you need both.
A people that don't have any xenophobia will have their country taken over and their culture erased. While also, a people that don't have any openness to foreign people and foreign cultures will stultify. You need both, in balance (and often that balance is shifting, in one direction or the other).