Japan is one of the last developed countries in the world to confront an immigration crisis. While we have seen heated dialogue about immigration to the US, UK, France, Germany, and many more as they grapple with policy and the divisions they have caused within their country, Japan has gone relatively unnoted. However far from finding a solution, the country is just now awakening to the future of immigration that it must confront.
Japan has a long history of isolationism dating originally from its status as an archipelago, enforced over the years by their isolationist policy (sakoku鎖国 “locked country”) and animosity towards all neighbouring countries during the Second World War. Even now, Japan’s racial, national, and cultural demographic is very homogenous. The presence of immigrants in Japan’s population is approximately 2.3% in comparison to, for example, the US’s 14.4% or the UK’s 13.9%.
A consequence of this is the country’s widespread unfamiliarity and rejection of foreign culture. While its homogeneity has shielded it from the kinds of bitter racial conflict and subjugation that has rocked the US, South Africa, and many other regions of the world, it has also left it vulnerable to the distrust and prejudice that ignorance breeds. The population’s inability to come to terms with a Japan that no longer ‘looks’ as it has for hundreds of years is causing problems for its labor economy.
The labor shortage that Japan’s aging population poses is a pressing problem. As its population decreases, its workforce has come under serious strain with a longevous population to support. Hit disproportionally hard are manual labour industries such as textiles and farming. Moreover, unlike in the US, there is not a dormant potential workforce. With unemployment at 3%, importing labor seems to be the only option. However a general lack of acceptance of this reality compounded with downright xenophobia, has created sloppy and exploitative conditions for foreigners (often from other Asian countries such as China or Vietnam). While Japan has opened some paths to low income employment for foreigners, it only feels like progress when seen in comparison with the country’s non-existent history of issuing such visas in the past. Called “training”, the current scheme of low income labor is more like a loophole than policy, and is left unregulated. Often subject to stereotypes, at times tricked, and often deported or fired, many would-be immigrants have left Japan in disillusionment. One company’s president has claimed that his workers left of their own accord after firing them over “cultural differences”, saying that in China “they don’t clean”. The recent policy change as a gateway to a sustainable era of foreign labor in Japan seems questionable.
The root of the problem, in many cases, stems from an attitude of cultural superiority common in Japanese society. I believe Japan will soon realise that they are not in a position to pick and choose foreign labor nor to discriminate against them, as the labour shortage becomes more and more pressing. If Japan continues in denial of a culturally diverse, immigrant-supported labor force and the xenophobia that exists at the highest echelons of its society, it will have much more to worry about than cultural differences with their neighbouring countries.
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