I thought it might be useful to add a comment mentioning what the changes are in layman's terms.
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.
The absolute fastest way to PR is through Highly Skilled Foreign Professional Type 1 visa. PR after a year. That's incredibly fast. Type 2 visa after 3 years IIRC. The difference between 1 and 2 is the number of points one scores.
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.
You can pass N2 in one year of full time study (if you apply yourself). The multiple years tend to be when people are trying to pass it doing part time study.
It always seems strange to me how much deference is given to masters degrees for immigration purposes when in many industries they aren't worth getting, and can actually correlate negatively with someone's skill. And you get no points for a "mere" undergrad degree, even though in many fields such as CS that's more meaningful as it represents twice as much work. At my alma mater, the undergrad CS holders are much more capable than the graduate CS holders on average, simply because the undergrads know they don't need the grad degree and thus don't get one, whereas the grad students had a different undergrad degree and may have only gotten those two years' worth of exposure to CS. So the undergrads have twice the experience, which is substantial. This phenomenon is widespread in CS.
> 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.
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.
> 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
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.
Since some of the paperwork was the same, I applied for PR alongside my second renewal (the one that got me 5 years) to avoid multiple trips to city hall. The 5 year spouse visa renewal took a week to be approved, the PR took 3 months. So in the end I only had the 5 year visa for 3 months :p
Another interesting part of getting PR by marriage: you only have to live in Japan one year. You could get married in another country, live there 2 years minimum and then move to Japan and get PR after only one year of residency.
So getting married in another country (though notified and registered in Japan the same year), and moving (permanently) to Japan several years later will count? Have I understood this correctly? (yes I've got a personal interest in this)
As a naturalized US citizen, I had to give up my Japanese citizenship. It was a hard decision to make since half my immediate family is still Japanese and I still love Japan. In part I never forgave Japan that they forced me to make this decision.
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.
Serious question: Hasn’t the the Bay Area become the antithesis of diversity and killed the local culture? I don’t just mean black culture, but also the beat culture, the Italian neighborhoods, etc.
Maybe in some bubbles. I lived in Utah and I frequently visit Japan. Comparatively its a no brainer, the Bay Area is way more diverse.
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.
Did you actually had to give up on your Japanese citizenship? I know that when taking the oath you reject all other citizenship you may have but AFAIK this is not enforced, meaning you don't have to go to your embassy and formally require to give up on your citizenship. Really curious to know more about this.
The US does not care if you have any other citizenships but some countries do. E.g. Japan will revoke its citizenship on the citizens who obtained another one [1]
I actually got work in Japan. My passport was expired, and I went to renew it. They always ask how you're staying in the states and to show evidence. At that point my green card was expired and I only had naturalization to show. At that point I had to give up my Japanese citizenship, in order to get a visa. I don't remember if that was the exact reason but I was able to get away with dual for a while. Maybe if I tried renewing it in Japan it wouldn't have been a problem?
Ouch... Hopefully Japan will change this at some point, with the increase in international marriages. I've been living here long enough and paid enough taxes to consider becoming a citizen. But I wouldn't trade it for my US citizenship.
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.
No, it’s highly dependent on the countries involved. When you apply for the second citizenship, that country knows about your first citizenship. They can decide to force you to choose one. And the first country may or may not allow you to give up that citizenship. As an example, you can read about dual citizenship in Europe here: https://m.dw.com/cda/en/dual-citizenship-in-europe-which-rul...
You misunderstand. The USA does not have a list of Japanese Citizens, meaning that if a Japanese citizen decides to become and American one they have no concrete proof that he discarded his proof of Japanese citizenship (in this case a Passport) unless they reach out to Japan.
Unless you are an international criminal the US will not waste time or resources requesting that information.
There’s quite a few territories where you need to get a license/seal/stamp/signature from the administration of your current citizenship. Going deeper, it’s then common for that request to only be authorized given the promise of the administration of the new citizenship to grand you this new citizenship. A two-way commit of sorts.
The Bloomberg article exacerbates the bigotry many Japanese have against their own fellow citizens. In the caption of the first picture: "She’s not all Japanese, but she was Miss Universe Japan 2015."
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."
> 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.
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 rather are the genetic conglomerate of their ancestors (which is hard to argue against) and thus links in a chain
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).
On the contrary - we're not all the same, we are each of us individuals. And that's the point, I think. We're individuals, and all of us different. We're not just a sample of some stereotype of where our ancestors came from.
I should maybe add 'in my opinion'. But in truth, I really believe it's wrong. It does not lead to anything positive, quite the contrary. And I've never seen a community become worse by moving into a more modern, open view on diversity and acceptance. And to focus: I really, truly mean that the idea that what "makes" you (and that's what I was commenting on) is your ancestors, is just wrong. Genetic chain? Well, so what, we're all a part of a genetic chain, and the same one at that, which goes back nearly four billion years. Take one step back to get the overview and it matters nothing (nor should it) who your father was.
"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.
I'm actually taking the point of view from the nationals, as you call it. With people coming from other places on earth the area I'm currently living in became a good place to live. I got the nicest next-door neighbours it's possible to imagine, for example. My wife cried when they moved to another place (to get more space). The city center is also a vastly more dynamic and interesting place to be than it used to be back when everything was monotone. Back when the only non-native language you could hear was a little bit of English, and the occasional tourists from nearby countries. Now there are more than a hundred languages spoken here. It works fantastically well, but it demands that you avoid creating ghettos for immigrants, as has been the unfortunate expericence of some cities elsewhere in Europe.
If mixed ethnicity makes you less Japanese than of course you will be discriminated against. At the very least families who want their descendants to be "more" Japanese will resist allowing their children to marry those who are "less" Japanese. That is discrimination. Even the term "less Japanese" sounds like a perjorative in a country so deeply founded on a specific cultural identity.
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.
"We live in a global world now. Countries that fundamentally tie their culture to ethnicities will someday be a thing of the past. "
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.
I am not describing a utopia. I just do not think, barring some world-wide catastrophe, there is any way you can turn the clock back on globalism at this point. I know people want to go back. People always want to live in the past. Many Trump voters were voting for someone to take them back to the past. Same with Brexit. But go far back enough in the past and you will see everything was once different.
The world is changing and that change is pointing in one direction however much people want to fight it.
Am I confident ethnic nationalists will be proven definitively wrong in my lifetime? No. But my confidence comes from basic math. All capitalist countries have to accept immigration at some point. Even China will have face a population crisis at some point if it does not accept immigration someday.
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.
This is the conflict that arises when the name for the group applies to a nationality and a distinctly identifiable racial group as well. Some will use “Japanese” to talk about those that are legally and culturally from Japan, and others will use the word to reference those that are genetically from Japan.
So do you think it's OK for me as a white Englishman to consider a black person born in England to not truly be English?
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?
I don't know how you meant that, but this is absolutely the case in every European country that I know of.
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.
If you claim that she is all japanese, then aren't you denying her african-american roots?
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.
> heredity and skin color most definitely has something to do with the japanese ethnicity.
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.
I've included a definition of racism here for you: "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior".
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.
American is a nationality, it is not an ethnicity. There is no "ethnic american" due to historic reason.
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.
Yup, there are 4 combinations in total. For example, a white American will see:
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.
The conflation that is happening in this thread is between culture and ethnicity not nationality and ethnicity. When someone of mixed race says they are "all Japanese" they are obviously talking about their culture and not their passport.
Of course. Nation states have not been round that long. Just a few hundred years.
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.
I don't think "bigotry" means what you think it means. It applies to opinions, as in being intolerant to people who have different opinions than yours, not origins/ethnicity/&c.
>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.
That's her culture and nationality (and even the culture part could be dual). They refer to her ethnicity and ancestry.
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.
> In my experience small children never make any distinction either, anywhere in the world.
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.
Yes, I'm aware of it. And I think it backs up what I mentioned - the Clark experiment was made with young children attending schools. That's way past the time when they've had time to soak up the attitudes around them. How does the experiment work with 1-year (or 2, up to maybe three year) old children? That's where my anecdotal experience comes from: they don't care.
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.
Japan is extra special in this regard. My brother who is japanese, married a japanese national, speaks japanese and lives in japan is not "Japanese". That's what the article is referring to.
Yep - and in the town I used to live in Japan there were yearly festivals showcasing various immigrant (or even visitor's) culture. All amateurs, just getting together to create something from their various home countries and doing a performance. And then a nice party afterwards, with everybody (audience and participants). And there are food festivals too.
Actually, Japan doesn't begin anything. Japan has been doing this for years. The major shift in the last couple of years was introduction of new unskilled visas.
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 :)
There's an interesting history of the Japanese diaspora in Brazil and Peru [0, 1]. Essentially Brazil was looking to "whiten" its country at the same time that Japan was facing economic crises, jumpstarting the immigration.
It will be interesting to see how Japan deals with it culturally. From folks I know who lived there they said that while everyone was nice, it was always clear that they were very much outsiders.
>From folks I know who lived there they said that while everyone was nice, it was always clear that they were very much outsiders.
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.
To each their own I guess. I often find that Japanese prefer to speak to me in Japanese and in fact are relieved to know that I can communicate in Japanese. I have never once experienced this attitude that you are describing and I've lived here for many years.
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's awesome that that's been your experience! I genuinely hope that continues.
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.
For people interested in this topic I can recommend "Hafu" (currently on Amazon streaming). From the blurb:
"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."
The crime free nature of Japan will be a thing of a past. The quality of life for natives will decrease vastly. Wages will be pushed further down. Having worked together on many projects with Japanese I know immigrants have nothing of value to offer to the Japanese people.
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.
While instinctively I am a bit repulsed by your comment, rationally I have to grudgingly admit that you are probably right.
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 :)
> Having seen how Japanese work I know that the work ethic, reliability and efficiency can not be matched by anybody else on the globe.
You certainly haven't worked in a Japanese office then. It's also strange that you attribute the efficiency of their service industry to the workers being Japanese (though a good chunk of them actually aren't) and not simply to the techniques the workers are trained to use, the efficient layout of the stores, the equipment used, etc.
If you have a vastly non-tribalistic society (.e.g. western society) and introduce masses of highly tribalistic immigrants then the host society has no choice but to either become tribalistic itself or die. There is no choice. The survivor will always be the strongest, most ruthless, brutal and tribalisitc tribe.
We had a great technology that shielded us from that kind of tribal conflict and allowed people to care about unrelated hobbies like exploring the universe: Borders.
Yes, because the Sicilians who left during the struggles of Italian unification, the Irish who left during the wars of independence against the British, and the Germans and other Europeans who left during the revolutions of 1848 to enter the Americas were not tribal at all.
Ironically there are not only one, but two, Disneylands in Tokyo, and they seem to be popular among locals. There also seem to be more McDonald’s per capita in Japan than Europe. And don’t get me started on faux-European food in Japan (they do taste nice, though.)
So no, Japan, which is very well integrated into the global economy, is not that different from the west in terms of cultural consumption. People who still treat Japan as the mysterious land of samurais (ninjas seem outdated) and kabukis, unadulterated by western influence will, on their visit to Japan, struggle in the same way Japanese tourists struggled in Paris.
Japan has been adopting outside influences for over a century. Not to mention, it has been handily exporting its own culture. So it has contributed to the global pop culture that you are denouncing. It is complicit. And yet, it is hardly the death of high culture as you predict.
I would never want to work in japan. Doing business with japan is hard enough. You could create the most amazing service in the world. And it’s still inferior to a Japanese business on the grounds that it’s not owned by the Japanese. I love the country the culture the people. But working with Japan is the most difficult thing I’ve encounter in my career.
>You could create the most amazing service in the world. And it’s still inferior to a Japanese business on the grounds that it’s not owned by the Japanese.
So like US people were proud for their "Made in America" stamps?
There might be a tiny group of Americans for whom something being "Made in America" would significantly impact their product decisions, but in most cases I think price and quality are the main decision making factors.
I used to work for a german web hosting company and they were able to charge double for the same service in Germany vs Spain, the only reason being germans like to buy german products.
I live in Germany now And this seems to be more true here. That’s probably part of the reason Rocket Internet can be successful. Americans don’t seem to care about it nearly as much in my experience.
Today, perhaps. Back in the 70s/80s it used to be a source of pride (plus sneer at Japanese cars, or complaints about how the Japanese ripped off US products, etc).
Yeah a few people I know who have worked there enjoyed it but the sort of mechanics about how you have to work, traditions.... they love that in the US they can break so many "rules" and it's thought of as innovative, not the end times.
It's not even about the freedoms you get working in other countries. Once had a Japan client change some settings in their account which cause a different workflow to occur. I had to write an incident report for the issue.
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"...
Yeah I've had lots of Ulta detailed report requests from Japan too. Often it is clear they don't understand but keep asking.
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.
All dates stored in UTC, so if any other country raised a ticket, we just told them to update their timezone in their profile, and the client was happy. Japan is the only country that this required incident reports.
Sounds like a pain in the ass. I would just build the incident report form to have the option "Date/times are all wrong", and when you see the user is from Japan and selects this drop down option, check if their timezone is set correctly, and if not, reset it to JST...
Then the form would prompt them "Are you sure, please look again", and most of the time the problem will have disappeared, right?
Some are saying this is a response to needing more people due to decreasing fertility rates. At least in the US, I was shocked to learn that people actually _want_ children at the same rates as before (about 2.5 kids, and 95% of people want children). However, according to these sources, the major reason is that its too expensive (~65%) and the economy seems uncertain (~12%).
I was shocked because people _want_ to have children and the same number of children that they did decades ago, its just economic reasons why they aren't (not cultural shifts or beliefs changing, or wanting to "have a bigger career").
The poster is shocked because people's (self-estimated) ability to afford kids has gone down, leading to a larger number of people who want kids to stay childless. They are not saying that people wanting kids is a bad thing.
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.)
If you only consider only white and black people to be foreigners. I'd say that there are a lot of Chinese and various other Asian ethnicities mixed in there that are hard to tell.
They're only "hard to tell" if you don't spend a lot of time around people of Asian ethnicity. It is very rare I cannot tell a Japanese person from a Chinese person from a Korean person.
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.
Well, I am Chinese and people cannot tell me apart from whatever Asian country I happen to be in. In fact, visiting Taiwan, people frequently mistake me for Japanese or Korean even though I don't say a word. And having stayed in Japan for extended periods of time no one has presumed I was Chinese before I opened my mouth.
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.
It seems you misunderstood a bit, which is my fault, so I'll explain.
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 central Tokyo and I can go on for days and days without seeing a foreigner!
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.
The main thing I notice is that Koreans have slightly rounder faces, and smoother features. Koreans also tend to be slightly taller and more robust physically.
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.
It's both difficult and not. It depends on the persons. There are many Koreans that are easily identifiable as Korean, and many Japanese easily identifiable as Japanese. And there are some that are hard to tell apart.
Even my wife (Japanese) has problems identifying non-Japanese Asians. On the other hand I think I'm better at it (but it may be that I'm not as good as I think).
Maybe many people you see are Asian foreigners (Chinese, Korean, Filipinos, etc) and you just don't realize it. I hear Chinese spoken on the streets all the time.
Chinese and Fiipinos don't look much like Japanese if you're not totally alien to asians and consider them all the same. And even Koreans have some different characteristics, which one can tell for the most part.
Can we please stop with the "I see lots of foreigners", "I don't see any foreigners" anecdotes!? Seriously, I expected better from HN posters. From this article we can see that there are 2.73 million foreigners in Japan:
I've been to places with thousands of Japanese (and the occasional Korean, which can be difficult to notice) and then just me. But on the other hand I've never, not once, been made to feel like an outsider.
really? when i was in tokyo/kyoto/osaka foreigners were everywhere although ill admit in my more recent trips it seemed to be less westerners and more chinese tourists, however when i went further north to sendai and aomori i didnt see a single other foreigner
It’s funny to see the comments lamenting the projected destruction of Japanese culture, while in fact
- 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.
>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.
With Trump, Brexit and the turmoil in Europe we're way past just "opposing" multiculturalism. Multiculturalism seems to be imploding.
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.
And yet Japan has been exchanging cultural and genetic material with the rest of East Asia for thousands of years, and the West for centuries. Even during the Sakoku period, they were trading with the world through the port at Dejima.
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.
Didn't have the impression that it's untouched or uninterested by foreign 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.
Noone thinks it's an island untouched by the world.
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.
Again, just because the current Japanese government has lifted some restrictions does not mean mass migration is inevitable. It is tiresome to find Japanophiles who think they know better than actual Japanese people about their future.
> They have being open to foreign cultural influences since Meiji era, and I don’t see that changing.
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.
The ageing and shrinking population is a temporary, one-off problem. There's no fundamental reason why a replacement or below-replacement birth rate is a problem - in many ways it's advantageous - but it's a really big problem over the next few decades because we didn't plan for it. We have a big cohort of baby boomers with long life expectancies, grossly inadequate pension savings and considerable political power. We built our economy on the back of a Ponzi scheme, with the assumption that we'd keep giving birth to more suckers to fund the social security system.
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.
>The ageing and shrinking population is a temporary, one-off problem. There's no fundamental reason why a replacement or below-replacement birth rate is a problem - in many ways it's advantageous - but it's a really big problem over the next few decades because we didn't plan for it.
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.
UN forecasts suggest that the global population will plateau at between 9 and 11 billion by 2100 to 2150, followed by stasis or a very gradual decline. IMO, those are excellent numbers - more than large enough to launch an interplanetary civilisation, but manageable within the resource constraints of Earth.
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.
The UN forecasts are ridiculous at any long term timescale. They assume that desire for children is not heritable so everywhere will undergo the demographic transition and just somehow magically the world will reach replacement fertility and stay there. In reality the share of births to women who already have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8+ children has been increasing in the US for over a decade and the ultra orthodox have gone from politically marginal in Israel to over 1/4 of the population. They’ll probably be a majority in my lifetime. In the US Mormons, Amish, Hutterites and Hasidim all have high to very high fertility. Absent a deliberate state driven destruction of their culture, Soviet style, that’s likely to continue and the same dynamic of cultural and biological evolution for greater fertility will just keep on working somewhere.
All population data for the last century disagrees, and no magic is needed to explain why: the cost of raising children in modern society is so high and the child mortality rate so low that there is strong societal pressure to have less children. Sure, some fringe groups can resist this in the same way that the Amish resist electricity, but this will not be mainstream. Even the Haredim are having less children than they used to:
But the US has been at or under replacement rate for births overall for a long time now.
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.
The US has been under replacement fertility for less than 100 years, under four generations. On an evolutionary timescale this is nothing. It’s like dropping 100 thoroughbreds on a small island. Come back in 20 years and if there are still horses they’ll be maybe a hand shorter. Give it a hundred years and they’ll be ponies.
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.
> The US has been under replacement fertility for less than 100 years, under four generations. On an evolutionary timescale this is nothing.
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).
The disconnect is a temporary issue. Evolution will quickly replace the desire for sex with a desire for children, or will give us traits that make successful use of birth control unlikely. There is no stronger selection pressure.
Why does that matter to you? I don't know if I'll have children and if I do, it'll certainly be <= replacement rate.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Even assuming that genetics have absolutely no role in success (a bit unlikely I think), culture is a real thing. Plenty of people will admit they had a huge advantage because their family discussed finance at the dinner table when they grew up, or growing up the child of a business owner.
It's hard to imagine there being no negative side effects to the successful portion of the population shrinking at a faster rate.
Impressive unpacking of a low detail, fairly innocuous comment, into a high detail, somewhat sinister assertion. What mechanism do you use to add specific details where none existed before?
The very use of the word "dysgenic" wrt human populations is a form of virtue signaling that is far from unknown to internet circles such as HN. The comment might have been overzealous about rebutting a perceived narrative, but that statement is a basis for that narrative.
I can't speak for the commenter, but it could be a simple yet rigorous heuristic of seeing a particular buzzword used in certain conversations, reading the context statement that the buzzword is employed under, and matching that statement to a particular ideological narrative that is often prevalent in discussion circles such as HN.
I just realized the original person that made the comment wasn't the one that replied, my bad.
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.
Doesn’t seem to be much judgment going on in that comment towards people. Maybe judgment towards a preexisting narrative or meme. People need to take things less personally in arguments, and feel less offended when the ideas they’re repeating are challenged.
> Doesn’t seem to be much judgment going on in that comment towards people.
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."
Just for fun, let's pedantically parse the words and see if that's where we differ (key [words/phrases in brackets] for my parsing).
>>> 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":
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.
"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?
It might be a mistaken assumption born from misclustering, but given that, as you point out, dysgenic is the antonym of eugenics, and as we can see from a not unrelated conversation from the past day [0] repeating that popular narrative, it is not a leap to presume that all of this is related.
That comment is certainly related, but unless I'm misunderstanding the relevance to our conversation that you're seeing, it's an aspect other than the one I'm interested in, which is:
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?
Well, essentially everyone in the world comes from an unbroken line of people who had children, stretching back untold generations.
So it's really the ultimate in traditional family values. More traditional than Shakespeare, the scientific method, religion and apple pie all put together.
Kids cost a lot of money. Kids change your life and not always for the better. Women who have kids also sacrifice time away from their careers and end up with significantly less money in their 401k/ pension equivalent.
Going through my dad's fight with cancer and death recently significantly changed my view on the value of having kids. I shudder to think what it would have been like for him and my mom had my brother and I not been around. Yeah there's care facilities for people who don't have anybody, but there's no replacement for family for when you stop being able to take care of yourself.
I sympathize with the general desire to preserve a sense of cultural identity, but ultimately any attempt to keep a society static through time will slip through your fingers. No exceptions.
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.
Maybe we need to care less about keeping up the pace at which the modern world is changing and more about maintaining a nice culture. I'd be willing to take a reduction in the GDP or a slow down in scientific advancement if it meant that the society I lived in was more coherent.
It's not about keeping the culture static. It's about organic evolution vs drastic changes brought in from outside, resulting in cultural clashes.
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.
Is it really multiculturalism, in either Seattle or Japan?
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 live in San Diego, 20 miles from the Mexican border. If you want to speak Spanish in Chula Vista or other immigrant enclaves, you'll find plenty of people who speak it. However, the number of second generation immigrants who speak Spanish exclusively is as far as I can tell, negligible.
There are just too many benefits to assimilating. This isn't Quebec.
Speaking in support of the gp's point: Dearborn's community of Middle Easterners (more than just Muslims, also heavily Chaldean) speaks an awful lot of Arabic and not so much English. Similarly, the Chinese community in Ann Arbor is very insular and sticks heavily to Chinese over English.
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.)
Do you think that has anything to do with the pols in this case and Mexicans in the GP example - that they are both Christian cultures assimilating into other Christian cultures?
You're kidding, right? The Polish, by and large, are staunch Roman Catholics whereas the United States is primarily various Protestant denominations. There's a long, long history of enmity and violence between those branches of Christianity.
The culture in multiculturalism seems to boil down to restaurant and pop (i.e industrial) culture choices. If it is anything beyond that, it is utilitarianism: the rule of numbers, economics. Capitalism in other words. Any attempt to assimilate the cultural change happening today to that of the past, or to validate it by what happened in the past, is fraud and diversion.
I was in Tokyo a few years ago, went back recently and I noticed the changes described in this article too. Every sign and menu are now in Japanese/Chinese/English. Waiters, salesclerks, metro station assistants now speaks English. And every 7-Eleven, Starbucks, etc… seems to employ foreigners instead of Japanese people (mostly from countries like Vietnam, Philippine, Thailand and India tho), who speak English perfectly.
From my observations the Chinese signs are more a reaction to the hordes flocking into the country to buy hygiene products in bulk and also do a little sightseeing on the side.
Being multilingual makes a lot of sense for the capital, especially public buildings and services like public transit etc. I've had colleagues go to Japan for a while for work and unless they had a guide they would've been very, very lost. Not something you want if you'd like to have international trade and commerce relationships.
Perhaps partially due to the fact that people just aren't procreating?
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%.
The question of the origins of the Japanese peoples is a hotly debated issue. Jared Diamond (of Guns, Germs, and Steel fame) wrote an article on the subject in 1998:
Taking HN threads into nationalistic and racial and ideological flamewar is not allowed on HN, and we ban accounts that do it. If you have something thoughtful and substantive to say, that's a different story, but please keep the cheap battle rhetoric someplace else.
I said absolutely nothing about race. I resent the implication that my opinion is somehow racially-based.
Nor have I done anything related to a "flame war". I insulted no individuals and I attacked no groups.
Nor has a "flame war" arisen from my comment. There have been many responses and there's no "flame war", just reasonable disagreement.
I simply expressed a sense of loss at the potential dissolution of a culture. My concerns are central to the whole topic; they are shared by most Japanese people. This is not some fringe view, it is at the center of the entire issue and is entirely mainstream.
Your accusations don't connect. This rebuke makes it seem like you're using biased enforcement of facially-neutral rules to advantage one side of the discussion, and suppress mainstream views on the other side. What you're doing here is harmful to the health of the HN community, and wider discourse. Please reconsider how you've approached this issue, and be more circumspect before making such accusations. Ask yourself - How would someone with the opposite mainstream view, or a Japanese person, consider the comment? How would I moderate this if I agreed with the underlying worldview and values?
All cultures are blended. Most of the things you think of as uniquely Japanese are in fact imports, or the hybrid cultural offspring of imports. Kanji was stolen wholesale from Chinese Hanzi, sushi evolved from fermented fish dishes from the Mekong, pagodas are a Chinese import, Buddhism is an import from India via China, the kimono came from China, manga is based on ukiyo-e which is based on Chinese woodblock printing techniques, kare raisu came from India via the British Royal Navy. I could go on ad nauseum.
Anyone who espouses cultural purity is simply ignorant of culture. If you perceive your cultural environment as homogenized, it's your own damned fault for being a passive consumer rather than an active participant.
>Anyone who espouses cultural purity is simply ignorant of culture.
There's a difference between gradual assimilation of cultural elements over hundreds of years, and flooding a country with change on the scale of a generation. It's perfectly reasonable to want to preserve what amounts to a cultural identity by limiting cultural influx.
>Anyone who espouses cultural purity is simply ignorant of culture
Nonsense. The fact that a given culture contains elements from others does not mean that it is not itself pure. Culture is simply information - in the form of practices, foods, clothing, ideals - and while there may be a great deal of overlap among the basis vectors that could be combined to represent the world's cultures, purity could be approximately gauged by a principle component analysis, which would most certainly show distinct, tight groupings for more homogenous, isolated cultures like that of Japan, and a more diffuse, homogenized cluster among westernized cultures.
The ancestral post of this thread is bemoaning supposed cultural deracination in Japan because of changes to immigration policy. It is hysterical to presume that the Japanese are about to flood their country "with change on the scale of a generation".
> does not mean that it is not itself pure
By what metric is a culture pure? How can information be pure? How far back in the timeline do you want to gauge purity? And at what point is it relevant to policy?
Japan is an extroardinarily unique place. Even Australia, NZ, the UK and America have not just lot in common when you compare them to Japan, but a surprisingly lot. Japan really does have its own culture and identity.
The Japanese have always wanted to protect their culture, identity, and economy, going back to where n Perry shot off a cannon to get them to open up the West's plans.
As a foreigner who loves Japan, I think there is a stretch between letting particularly interested individuals enjoy to the country--which is already possible--and opening itself up economic migration--which is what Western countries now experience.
Look at Singapore. It's such a god damn hell compared to Japan even though on paper they should be doing better.
There is really no other place like Japan on earth, it will be sad to see it homogenize with the rest of it.
I know you keep wanting to broadcast that opinion, but it is obviously not clear to be true. For reasons you can see in my comment, and also see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19988198
So either Japanese culture is "extraordinarily unique" and has a strong sense of identity, allowing its people to pursue immigration policies with different results from other nations, or its culture is already no better or worse or different than those aforementioned nations- and immigration will lead to the same conclusions. So which is it?
We've seen the same results in every country that has attempted it, so why would one more country be any different? How many repeating occurrences of something occurring do you need before you can look at the data and go "There's a strong correlation there." without being called or implied to be a racist?
Because if cultures are real, then it stands to reason that an immigration policy set by Japanese people would be different from one set by Western Europeans.
There are only so many ways to make cheese and most of the process is going to remain the same. Being a different or unique culture doesn't fundamentally change how cheese is manufactured.
I fail to see your point. There are only so many ways to do set immigration policy and currently Japanese policy is different from ones used by Western countries. Much to the chagrin of the Western countries criticizing it as their own policies are breaking down and giving rise to nationalism and increasing social and racial tensions.
But we're not talking about different cheeses, but perhaps different dairy products. Yogurt is not a cheese.
While not free of problems, Canada's immigration situation seems to not have attracted the same amount of problems as seen in other Western nations. Strange that Japan isn't adopting a similar points-based system. But it seems like the sort of Japanese innovation that could arise. One would presume a Japanese immigration policy and pathway of citizenship would mandate learning the language and other ways to facilitate assimilation, different from the policies of most Western nations.
>One would presume a Japanese immigration policy and pathway of citizenship would mandate learning the language and other ways to facilitate assimilation
It strongly does and is incredibly difficult otherwise. When applying for citizenship if you struggle at all when asked questions in Japanese you will likely, if not certainly, be rejected. There are countless anecdotal stories out there confirming the difficulties in attaining citizenship from people who already have permanent resident status.
So given how historically stringent the Japanese government has been in doling out citizenship, it stands to reason even an "open" policy would be more measured and less laissez-faire than those in, say, Nordic countries, no?
By the degree to which it has uniquely evolved in relative isolation.
>How can information be pure?
By the degree to which the combination of information that defines a particular culture is unique. Again, if we model culture as a linear combination of cultural traits, purity may be measured as, for example, euclidean distance between clusters, reflecting unique developments that occur as a function of isolation. As an extreme case, compare an undiscovered tribe in the Amazon, or the Amish, to a cosmopolitan population like residents of New York City.
Because culture is not an abstract set of ideas separate from its people. You can only adopt a culture you weren't brought up in to a certain degree, and usually very shallowly.
There have been non-ethnically Yamato people in Japan for at least centuries. However Japanese society or law might have treated them, are you saying the Zainichi are culturally less Japanese than ethnic Japanese?
Seems like a lack of faith in societies to properly integrate new arrivals.
Why assume modern day East Asian countries will integrate new arrivals the same way as European and North American nations do?
And are you aware that international migration has been happening for millennia? All nations have people who have assimilated and integrated, to different degrees.
Most unique cultures are likely to have disappeared by force via conquest and colonization, not through voluntary migration. And in most cases, it is the migrants themselves' cultures that get lost in favor of the host nation's culture.
Mass migration seems to be for economic benefits. A handful of people may immigrate out of appreciation of their new host culture, but millions or tens of millions doing so? Seems unlikely to me. They'll go to earn more money.
It sounds like Japan, with its own unique culture and governance distinct from Western nations, is not pursuing a course of mass migration but something more regulated and careful.
They were, for a while. Isn't the point of this article that they're moving to a much more Western-style policy? Japan was a unique culture, but already feels a lot less so than it used to be.
It's not unthinkable their ability to withstand influence is based on monoculturalism. Immigration can dilute that ability. In any way change inherently conflicts with status quo.
All of the “developed” nations need immigration to prevent the social systems from completely falling apart. Our entire financial system is based on increasing population growth and the young paying to support the old. There aren’t enough young people. Without immigration, pensions, healthcare, social safety nets, property values… it all implodes. We go back to 1930 where old people just die in the street.
People can’t afford to have kids. Maybe if young people didn’t have to spend a huge portion of their paycheck supporting old people they could afford kids.
The older generation doesn’t want immigrants. The older generation votes against tax increases. The older generation does everything they can to keep home prices high. Then they demand no one cut their entitlements. All take, no give. It’s not surprising people aren’t having as many kids.
With Japan, it's not solely (or perhaps even primarily) a matter of not being able to afford kids. Even in Tokyo the fantastic public transport means you can live in one of the more inexpensive wards and still commute basically anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.
People aren't even dating in Japan, though. Marriage rates are way down, people aren't having sex, etc. Even the non-sexual aspects of relationships have been commoditized, with host/hostess bars where you pay to have conversations with people like you would while out on a date, cuddle bars where you pay just to cuddle, etc. Dating video games are huge.
Women being able to more readily progress into senior positions in white collar jobs is a relatively recent occurrence, and getting married/having kids is a good way to end your career, so they're less likely to want to date seriously.
Perhaps some of those kids will become rocket scientists and help us get off this Earth and continue our relentless expansion and consumption off-world.
Also, isn’t immigration a negation of 1)? The kids are already born, they’re just not in the same country.
Sarcasm aside, there are two systemic problems at play. 1) is ecological, and 2) is economic. The second may be physically easier to solve- but it still requires us to figure out a way to move beyond our capitalist system that a) prioritizes relentless growth and consumption, and b) has countries with large welfare programs that requires new workers and taxpayers to keep the elderly and the ill off the streets.
The primary reason as I understand it for the lack of kids is simply because it's a trap for women as it is now.
Maternity- and child care leave are too short. There are extreme shortage of daycare for infants and pre-school children, forcing women to stay home and even give up on their career until the child is old enough to go to/from school themselves.
And having 2-3 children pretty much kills any career.
> Maternity- and child care leave are too short. There are extreme shortage of daycare for infants and pre-school children, forcing women to stay home and even give up on their career until the child is old enough to go to/from school themselves.
This is not the case in Sweden and it has not had any great effects on fertility, which is within spitting distance of its neighbours. If you can’t afford childcare in Sweden the state will pay. Childcare is heavily subsidised and available 24/7 if you have shift work. Tiny effects on fertility.
> Cohort Fertility Patterns in the Nordic Countries
> Country differences in fertility outcome are generally rather low. Childlessness is highest in Finland and lowest in Norway, and the educational differentials are largest in Norway. Despite such differences, the cohort analyses in many ways support the notion of a common Nordic fertility regime.
Yet what I see around is men being against having kids. While women do somewhat support the idea.
It's definitely not a one-sided issue.
But yes, infrastructure is definitely a massive issue. I wonder what would happen if resources that Western europe countries pour into migration would be put for fixing birth rate. Push propaganda on all fronts, put shit ton of money into infrastructure, install new cultural norms...
Propaganda usually doesn't work or has the opposite effect.
It may be better to pass a law that would link pension of old people to tax paid by young people who have chosen them. This will make having many successful children profitable again. And will restore the role of a family, which is artificially lowered by social services.
They don't all implode, the paper value might implode, and the expectations probably have to change. That's pretty different. And honestly, imploding property prices would be quite helpful in solving the sub-replacement rate birth rate, as well as a host of other social problems.
And then the immigrants stay and get old and there is increased strain on the strained social systems. Most immigration systems in Europe assumed that the immigrants would go home once they have made some money.
At some point it is going to implode anyway. The UK in the last 25 years has completely changed due to immigration and our health system is basically about to fall over, there are massive cultural tensions between natives and immigrant populations that are on the verge of exploding in poorer areas (North of England) on almost a daily basis. None of this gets covered in the news but there are plenty of videos on Facebook, Youtube etc of clashes.
Healthcare requires young, relatively healthy, people. It’s another system where the young pay for the old. The immigrants aren’t the immediate problem, they are the immediate solution. They may crowd the system, but they are also the ones funding it. Kick all young, relatively healthy, immigrants out and see how quickly healthcare collapses as the older people on fixed income try to find a way to balance the healthcare budget.
Importing a bunch of young people works for one generation. But those young people grow old (and assimilate into a culture with a low birth rate), and what do you do then - import ever more young people to take care of the previous generation of immigrants? That doesn't seem sustainable.
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.