Sunday, Jan. 20, 2002
Japan's homogeneous diversity
By TONY LASZLO
Special to The Japan Times
More than one in 100 people residing in Japan is a foreign national -- but not all immigrants or expatriates from overseas. Koreans are the largest foreign ethnic group in Japan, numbering some 635,269 persons (or 37.7 per cent) of a foreign population put at around 1.7 million. Many are the Japanese-born second-, third- or fourth-generation descendants of those brought here as forced labourers during the 1910-45 Japanese annexation of the Korean Peninsula.
In many cases native speakers of Japanese, these zainichi (living in Japan) Koreans comprise 80 per cent of those holding permanent-residence status in this country. The presence of these Koreans as foreign nationals is a product of Japan's policy of conferring citizenship on the grounds of bloodline (jus sanguinis), and not simply to those born on the state's soil (jus solis).
The second-largest foreign population in Japan is of Chinese -- at 19.9 per cent, or 335,575 individuals -- and Chinatowns have been long established in Yokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki. Although some prominent officials may proclaim the threat posed by Chinese organized crime, it is a study that brings many Chinese here: There are roughly 77,000 Chinese students and 2,000 professors and scholars at universities in this country.
The third-largest group of foreigners is composed not of those whose ancestors were forcibly brought to Japan, but those who left it searching for a better life: Brazilians (15.1 per cent, 254,394 persons). Japanese emigration to Brazil was in three waves: 1908-24, 1925-41 and then from 1953 to the mid-1960s. In all, around 200,000 people relocated to the southern hemisphere to work on coffee plantations or carve out lives as independent farmers.
As Japan's prosperity was peaking in the mid-1980s, the flow of labour reversed. Today, Brazilian nissei and sansei (those of second-and third-generation Japanese descent) principally work in areas such as Aichi, Gunma and Shizuoka prefectures as manual labourers in manufacturing industries.
Japanese immigration policy debars entry for workers engaged in this area of employment. Still, an exception was made for Brazilians and other South Americans of Japanese descent (such as Peruvians: 2.7 per cent, 46,171 persons), because they would be familiar with Japanese customs and the language.
In the event, however, most arrive with little or no knowledge of Japanese. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in March last year warned the Japanese government of its concern that children of Brazilian and other migrant workers were not receiving adequate education in this country.
In Japan, elementary and lower secondary-level schooling is not compulsory for children of foreign descent. In its March 2001 recommendations, CERD voiced its concern that "different standards of treatment in this respect may lead to racial segregation and the unequal enjoyment of the right to education, training and employment."
Another group of concern to international NGOs are "entertainment" workers, of whom some 53,847 are granted visas each year. Some women in this category from countries such as the Philippines (Filipinos number 144,871, some 8.6 per cent of the foreign population) being trapped into hostessing or sex-business work may be a risk.
However, those most vulnerable are smuggled in, or who come on tourist visas and then overstay.
Meanwhile, as the country's population ages and sends workers' ratio to nonworkers into sharp imbalance, the number of foreigners here looks sure to skyrocket.
One U.N. projection suggests that imported labour will swell the foreign population to between a quarter and a third of the total by 2050. Although other estimates put this figure at around a tenth, it seems certain that improved legal provisions and greater tolerance will be called for.
One significant step forward came with the Emperor's statement, on his 68th birthday last December, that he felt "a personal kinship with Korea." The remark was seen as an acknowledgement of Korean ancestry in the imperial line. It is considered likely that the mother of the eighth-century Emperor Kanmu was a Korean princess.
However, the Emperor would not be the only Japanese with "foreign" blood.
This was made apparent through "An Interdisciplinary Study of the Origins of the Japanese Peoples and Cultures," a 65 million yen research project carried out with government cooperation, culminating in 2001 with an NHK documentary and book series entitled, "The Japanese: The Long Journey."
Researchers appearing on the program conducted a morphological study of the facial features of 1,047 randomly selected Japanese. Of them, 35.1 per cent were found to fit the northern Asian type, commonly found in northern China; 22 per cent were categorized as Korean Peninsula; 28.3 per cent, southern China; 13.3 per cent Indochina; and 5.1 per cent fitted the facial features typical of the southern Pacific region.
Akira Tagaya, a researcher quoted in the NHK book series, observed that "Japan, which stretches a great distance from north to south, probably has the largest variety of faces in Asia."
Genetic and archaeological analysis indicates that Japan has been a grand melting pot of peoples from Siberia via the Ice Age landbridge through Sakhalin; from northern and southern Asia via the Korean Peninsula; and by boat from Indochina and Polynesia via the Ryukyu archipelago.
The high percentage of "northern Asian" faces is mostly a legacy of the large-scale immigration from the mainland through Korea and the subsequent population explosion that began some 2,300 years ago in the early Yayoi period.
Of late, though, Japan has begun to accept the existence of foreigners within. The Ainu, indigenous peoples of the northern islands whose numbers are estimated at between 50,000 and 240,000, gained domestic legal recognition as a distinct ethnic minority in 1997. It has been suggested that the million or so Okinawans should likewise be acknowledged as ethnically distinct.
Hopefully, further recognition of the complexity of the past human interrelationships in the region will make it easier for Japanese society to accept new arrivals and increase diversity.