I'm Sri Lankan and I've lived in Japan for around fifteen years. I notice there are a few comments online talking about colourism in Japan, and I just wanted to say that I think colourism is largely something that won't impact your daily life even when you live outside foreigner-dominated communities. A few of my dark skinned friends have said similar things including:
- I have a South Indian friend with dark brown skin who has lived here since the early 2000s and works in IT, and he says a similar thing about the lack of racism based on skin colour.
- I also have a couple of female friends with dark brown skin from from South India and Sri Lanka respectively who have explicitly told me that colourism isn't a problem for them, and usually colourism is worse for women than men.
- On top of that I have met many South East Asians and had discussions about colourism with them, and they've told me that though colourism and racism is much worse in South Korea, it's not really a major problem in Japan.
Conversely I've had numerous conversations with naturally light skinned people who have had far worse experiences with racism than I have. I think part of the problem is that most of the "descriptions" about colourism on the internet are usually written from the pespective of light skinned people. They are people who are trying to:
- mistakenly confulate colourism with other forms of racism such as that against black people or against particular ethnicities
- evoke non-existent colourism in an attempt to empower themselves, though I think this doesn't really mean much in real life
- assume that racism is the same in all countries
What prompted me to write this was an post by a light skinned person talking about a darker skinned people being more likely to be stopped by the police. In my entire time in Japan, I've only been stopped maybe three times by the police despite having dark brown skin tone, and in fact I've been stopped far more times overseas, and have heard worse experiences from ligher skinned people.
by Durian22033