Question about: how xenophobic is japan actually?

30 comments

1. It’s unashamedly xenophobic. It leans towards exceptionalism in more confident times, but it’s basically like small-town america on a national scale

2. I tend to think that there is a hierarchy towards immigrants depending on where you are from. And yeah, there is a culture around mockery of immigrants based on that hierarchy and stereotyping.

   At the same time, I live in Shinjuku and there are many immigrants there from South East Asia, India, Korea and China, so I’m exposed to their culture everyday. I really love the ethnic vibes there with great and cheap restaurants and just getting to know people working really hard.

   I can talk more, and all the negative stuff especially at systemic level, but that’s my experience anyway.

3. I think this xenophobia is like Bigfoot. Everyone has heard of it, and everyone knows someone who knows someone who saw it, but nobody can point to a specific example.

   I have never been made to feel anything other than welcome in Japan.

4. Managing to misspell BOTH foreigner and immigrant in the same message is quite an achievement.

   I think that your post will be deleted if you do not live here. r/movingtojapan

5. Where I am people just go about their business without any real issues.

   I can’t speak for the rest of the country but Iwate seems generally fine with immigrants, not that there is a huge number of them.

6. Japan is home to 125 million people. The idea that a country is xenophobic or something is no more than a stereotype.

   Some foreigners in Japan sometimes inaccurately understand what the locals do to them as a result of their xenophobia, because they hold that stereotype of Japanese people

7. I’ve been living in Osaka for eight years and have never felt excluded or discriminated against by the people here. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I do think that the internet has exaggerated it to a crazy degree

8. It is not a big deal. 6 years in Japan.

9. I’ve been here a long time and I’ve never had any specific problems because of my foreignness. The bank was a little concerned about it when I was applying for my mortgage, but once I showed I had permanent residence and could communicate with them they were happy to approve me.

   When I was in the hospital the doctors and nurses were extremely worried about me because white people (especially fat white people) are apparently more prone to developing blood clots and deep vein thrombosis. So they pulled out some weird air cushion thing to simulate walking and made sure I was hooked up to it whenever I was going to be laying down for more than a few minutes. Gave me some really weird dreams about walking around. My physiotherapist thought it was the coolest thing he had ever seen, apparently I was the first person they had ever used it on in the entire hospital (and several staff members had no idea what it was or what it was for).

   I’ve had helpful people cause me problems due to their helpfulness. Like the guy at the bank who, when I asked if I could use only the roman characters for my name and he said yes…. What he didn’t tell me was that he just made up a katakana transliteration of my name for me, which only appears on their systems, and of course doesn’t match the katakana I use anywhere else. Years later when I discovered it (because I was trying and failing to transfer money into that account) they told me they couldn’t change the name, only close the account and open up a new one.

   The only really fucked up thing from recent memory is when they closed the borders during covid. Citizens could return no problem. Foreign residents however were barred from returning if they were caught out. But at the same time immigration was handing out ‘designated activities’ status like candy to any foreigner with a sob story about having trouble getting a flight home. So its hard to say it was xenophobia so much as run of the mill bad planning.

10. I think most people are too busy with their own lives to care about you, unless you cause them problems. Some are curious, some are friendly.

11. 30+ years here. It runs deep, but it’s polite and the animosity manifests differently than in the west. So it’s unnoticeable for many years, especially those honeymoon ones, which makes it easy for lots of people to say it doesn’t exist. But once you know the vibe it’s difficult to ignore.

    I will also say that it depends on where you are. For some reason Tokyo suburbs seem to be some of the worst, while countryside and smaller cities seem to be kinder. I never felt any otherness vibes in Kyushu for example.

    Also I’d say it’s less institutionalized (except for when looking for housing) than in the US, where I’m from. It’s more from regular people and less so from government officials.

    Finally, I’d say it’s probably worse depending on your race and country of origin (especially China).

12. 7 years in. Extremely. With a smile on their face you’ll face discrimination as they tell you “Hmm well of course you can’t, you’re not Japanese.” There are some days that it breaks my spirit so bad I wanna go home. A lot of it is institutionalized so you can’t get away from it.

    Try renting and apartment and see what I mean.

    There are though plenty of people who are not xenophobic. So… you take the good with the bad.

13. 99% of the time I am welcomed with open arms, people are kind and loving. Once in a blue moon I’ll get something rude. The other day the dermatologist asked if I could just go to 🏥 instead of him because they speak English. He’s old, my Japanese isn’t great and I usually use a translator. The way he said it was a bit rude, but I’ll probably follow his suggestion. If that’s the worst I get, it’s not so bad.

14. In a large sense, it is and isn’t. On a small scale it is and isn’t. There’s a lot of varying nuance and it largely depends on a lot of factors. I know that is vague but it’s hard to describe to people who have never lived there.

15. I’ve been racially abused, and I’m a white European. I was accosted in a department by a drunk salaryman who was telling me to go home to America (I’ve been there a few times on holiday). He then proceeded to tell my gf at the time she was a traitor for dating a non-Japanese. Shop staff called security who immediately came over and asked why I was causing trouble. The shop staff explain what had happened and that I was in fact the innocent party (was non confrontational as I know once you put your hands on someone it’s over for you here).

    So not only the drunk guy, but the security showed their bias in assuming I was doing something bad.

    So yes it does exist, to what extent I have no idea.

16. Individuals are xenophobic, and some of the laws are xenophobic, but not towards investors or wealthy immigrants.

    But often, it’s hard to know if someone is being xenophobic. For example, I’ve been called a pig by an old man on a train. While pregnant. Now, was he being sexist? Fatphobic? Xenophobic? Or just an asshole who hates pregnancy? Impossible to know.

    If you convince yourself Japan is xenophobic, you see it everywhere. If you convince yourself that xenophobia doesn’t exist, you’ll never see it.

17. It’s a complicated subject really. As a westerner, there’s a lot of assumptions that come with the idea of xenophobia. We imagine what xenophobic people are like in our home countries and assume that’s what it’s like everywhere else.

    Obviously, if you think about it, that can’t be the case, because every culture develops with its own historical and material conditions, which will drastically change people’s attitudes very specifically to that culture.

    On Japanese xenophobia, there are a few things to take into consideration:

    – Japan is extremely ethnically homogenous, it’s no individual’s fault that they’re just used to only hanging around other Japanese people, and get a bit scared/uncomfortable by foreigners, purely because it’s weird and different to them.
    – Because of the ethnic homogeneity, the idea of national identity, race, culture, etc. are all bundled up together. For many people it’s difficult to understand how someone who ‘looks’ foreign, could possibly not be *culturally foreign* as well. So even if you speak perfect Japanese and you feel like you belong in Japan, everyone will assume that you’re a silly foreigner on first-sight, and THAT gets frustrating very quickly.
    – Japan has a lot of implicit, unspoken rules for how you should behave in public, nobody will tell you because for most people it’s just second nature and they don’t even know what the ‘rules’ are. So, knowing this, imagine working in the centre of Tokyo, and every day on your commute you have to deal with thousands of foreign tourists who not only are ignorant of all of your implicit social norms, but are completely contradicting them… Imagine how irritating that just be! Eventually it’s not surprising that they would just assume that ALL foreigners are generally rude/loud/inconsiderate/etc. Because they see thousands of examples every day.

    That’s just a few examples, but this comment is already too long! I hope this helps to explain why it’s easy to see *why* we see xenophobia in Japan.

    THIS IS NOT APOLOGIA FOR JAPANESE XENOPHOBIA. A good, materialistic analysis of why we see the kind of behaviour in Japan is the first step to healing the problems we currently see, and will continue to see as Japan receives more and more migrants and foreign residents into the future.

    Edit: grammar mistake

18. My experience is that once you demonstrate that you speak Japanese to the point it is not an issue and they can talk to you like a Japanese person, and you show you understand the culture, they will treat you like a Japanese person with a little more interest in how things are in your country.

    The slight niggle is that some people will assume life is better in Japan, or that Japan is superior in some way. If you point out a bad point you will often have the excuse “we are an island country”, which seeming as I’m from the UK makes me laugh.

    They usually don’t have any malicious intent, though.

    Language is important. On multiple occasions I’ve had Japanese people openly complain and “hate” on foreign people, and when I point out that I’m foreign, they say “oh but you’re fine, you speak Japanese”. It’s part excuse, but it’s definitely a real advantage and a fast track to being accepted.

19. Japanese xenophobia is systemic and less personal. It is explicitly more about preventing competition and protecting domestic monopolists, with a veneer of “tradition” and “culture” spread across it to make it more palpable since it is actually Japanese citizens who suffer for it.

    The Philippine nurse who trains for three years in Japan and passes the Japanese nursing exam and then does not qualify for a visa to stay and practice nursing so she leaves.

    The explicit government policy to accept only a handful of asylum seekers a year.

    The unconstitutionality-yet-legality of explicit foreigner discrimination from business owners.

    ~~The lack of a work-holiday program.~~

    The governmental and industrial policy decisions to not accept/adopt international standards across a number of industries otherwise internationalized; banking and telecommunications probably the two most obvious.

    The arbitrarily high import tariffs and bureaucratic barriers to entry protecting domestic players across various industries; agriculture, banking and telecom/tech, various industrial productions.

    The utter inability to educate the population to a level of useful fluency in any foreign language despite extensively well-funded national mandatory education and a (Japanese) literacy rate the envy of many first-world nations.

20. It will also vary depending on your language ability and commitment to Japan. If you speak broken Japanese, work transient jobs, go to bars catering to foreign crowds, are single/have a poor relationship with your Japanese spouse, and aren’t involved in the community, yeah, you’ll be seen as outsider. Learn to speak to people in their language and get involved in local groups, and I find people will treat you well.

21. Before I type my comment, I just wanna say….I CANNOT WAIT TO READ THIS COMMENT SECTION WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

    In my personal experience, here is it how it goes

    Xenophobia in big touristy areas – There is a lot of it. Everywhere I go people stare at me like there is a 12 inch cock growing out of my forehead. Everytime I walk into a restaurant there is a look of fear on the staff’s face. Every word of Japanese I speak is immediately met with, SORRY WE DONT SPEAK ENGLISH.

    While this annoys me, I also understand it. The vast majority of tourists can’t speak a word of Japanese, and don’t care at all about Japanese customs, so they can make some trouble.

    Xenophobia in suburban areas – I live in a suburban area, and there is very little. I can say in the 10 years I have lived in the town I live in, I have had xenophobic shit said to me a few times a year on average, and it comes purely from a place of ignorance. But the best thing about living in a suburban area is, there is enough people to have some anonymity (I have no fuckin idea how to spell that word, I hope that was right) but also few enough people that everyone just assumes that you couldn’t possible be a tourist, therefore you must understand Japanese language/culture at least a little. I find life here to be very easy, and I have a circle of Japanese friends I am very close with who couldn’t give 2 fucks that I am a foreign person.

    Xenophobia in bum fuck nowhere areas –

    I have had very very little experience in these areas, but generally speaking, on the rare occasionas I have traveled to a tiny ass town in the middle of nowhere for a trip or something. People are just so excited that ANYONE came to their town, they are insanely friendly, and welcoming and willing to talk to you in whatever language you want, or at least try to. I have no experience living in a town like that though, so who knows.

22. I’ve only lived there for 2 years but I noticed some kind of “positive racism” towards me (white girl). So while this is definitely a luxury position I was in it definitely made making friends very difficult. Regardless of where you’re from you’ll be “not one of them”. I’ve had some Chinese colleagues who spoke Japanese and they felt much more integrated than me. I lived there but I’ve always been and been treated as a tourist. I’ve received more positive attention than japanese people I think. People being especially helpful to me and especially nice. Cleaning duties and other duties were usually done quietly without my knowledge and when i turned around everything was already done. When I asked what is my job to help I was always told to just sit down, they’ll already do it don’t worry.

    It’s interesting to see what people here say that have lived there for many years!

23. Been only here for a bit over ten years, and I’m a middle-aged guy from Germany.

    The biggest factor has to be language ability hands down. If people can just chat with you normally, without having to slow down or simplify their speech, they’re more likely to see you as just another guy. Yes, you’ll always have an air of otherness about you, but that’s not always a negative thing, and if you partake in social activities like everyone else, or join sports clubs and whatnot, they’ll even at some point forget you’re not a Japanese person.

    Another point is outward appearance and conduct. If you don’t run around with an angry face, but are polite, and if you don’t dress sloppily or sport a shaggy beard, people will perceive you as a nonthreatening adult.

    It’s mostly when people have to jump through hoops to accommodate you, communicate with you, and your behaviour stands out on top of your already foreign appearance, that people will see you as “the outsider”.

    Much has been said about the integration of immigrants into society in Europe, and the same holds true for us here in Japan. Nobody likes to deal with someone who settles down long-term in a community while making no attempts whatsoever to blend in and get along with people.

24. Japan is hyper-xenophobic (and by extension hyper-racist and hyper-ethnocentric etc You can’t have xenophobia without the other two following, all three go together)…But Japan is an ethnostate, and rampant xenophobia comes with the territory. You cannot maintain an ethnostate without it. So it’s no exaggeration to say that Japan is by far, is by some significant distance the most xenophobic country in the developed world(alongside South Korea) and one of the most xenophobic countries on Earth/there’s ever been in history.

    I mean the Japanese genuinely and sincerely believe they are unique/different/superior and separate from the rest of humanity. That they descend from a totally different ancestor than the rest of non-Japanese humanity. This ultimately is where the xenophobia comes from, this racial supremacist idea and notions of racial purity. Its widespread and so normalized in Japan they don’t even think about it.

25. It wasn’t until I could communicate effectively in Japanese and started following the cultural norms that I could fit in here in Japan. I live in an area of Kyushu where there aren’t many foreigners, so I spend almost all of my time with Japanese people. I get along well with my neighbors and the members of my temple. I think that being a foreigner is less of a problem than acting like a foreigner. I’ve encountered some jaded, bitter foreigners over the time that I’ve lived here who seem to be good at creating problems for themselves.

26. It’s impossible to answer your question because Japan is not an undifferentiated monolith. Some Japanese people are very xenophobic. Some aren’t. Which you’ll encounter is pretty much a roll of the dice. Although what sort of xeno you are may be a factor in how much phobic you experience.

    There are xenophobes here and from my well more than a decade in Japan, I know a chance encounter with one can ruin your day. And they aren’t just an inconvenience – xenophobes in police, immigration, education, and the real estate industry can act as real drags on people’s lives here. But not to diminish their impact, but I don’t run into them too often.

    What I’m more frustrated with are the people who smile while holding a knife behind their backs, the people who welcome foreign people with open arms only in so far as the foreigner is in an inferior position and can be exploited for the benefit of the Japanese person. The kind of folks who loudly greet you at a bar but don’t actually give a damn about you, they just want their Japanese friends to see them talking to a foreigner. The kind of people who hire you, and then exploit you, keeping you in a position where you lack the power to advocate for yourself. The kind of people who insist your kid is welcome at their school, and then treat your kid’s every cultural difference as “being troublesome” and treat every disagreement like it’s rooted in their identity.

    This group isn’t super common either, in my experience. By far the vast majority of Japanese people I reckon fall in neither group. But most aren’t too likely to confront people from either group or have your back in a disagreement, which can easily make it feel like the whole country is against you. Which, in some philosophies of dealing with racism, it kind of is. Being unwilling to actively resist racism when you see it can be interpreted as being a passive supporter of racism.

27. If you come to Japan, you will find that the world is not what you expected.
    I don’t think the Japanese people will talk to you aggressively.
    This is out of respect for your time, but some people call it racism.

    I think your conclusion will depend on whether you think positively or negatively about the language and cultural differences (especially if you come from a Christian culture).

28. >foreignors will never be welcomed

    Absolutely ***not*** true. This is a terrible stereotype that needs to die.

    In my experience, Japan has been far, far less xenophobic than America or the UK. Xenophobia exists here, of course; like it does in any country. But your experience will depend largely on where you are and what you are doing. In some areas you might feel it a lot. In others, not at all.

    And also, keep in mind the people complaining loudest and strongest about Japan’s xenophobia tend to be white people from multicultural countries who in Japan experience life without as much privilege for the very first time in their lives, and the shock is often too much for them to handle. They read in a BBC or CNN article that Japan is xenophobic, or they visit some online forums and see others like them whining about it, and they come to the conclusion that Japan is a racist hellhole. It’s simply not true, and more often than not the people who say those things have made no effort whatsoever to learn the language or fit in with the culture, and they feel indignant that people aren’t conforming to their demands.

29. It’s more systematic since the society is designed and run by old men. And you know how old men are.

    First and foremost, Japan is thought of a “homogenous society”. This is pretty much what every thinks without much thought. They’re pretty much indoctrinated to think this way. If you’re not “Japanese” or “Asian” then you’re pretty thought of as “not part of Japan or the Japanese race”. If you’re not “Japanese”, or don’t even “look” it, then you’re expected to be a temporary visitor and expected to “go back to their country” some day.

    And the “Japanese race” is believed to have some sort of mysterious, mythical, almost cult-like qualities to it. During WW1 and WW2, the “Japanese race” was created from a myth that there was a Japanese God and all the Japanese are the descendants of that God. The concept of “Japaneseness” is a kind of a religion.

    There’s no concept of “racial equality”. There’s no concept that it’s the individual that makes a person and not the race. If you’re white, black, Japanese, Asian, etc., then you’re expected to be so and so kind of a person. Yes racial stereotypes exist everywhere, but people are also constantly against racial stereotypes. In Japan stereotypes are often accepted without question.

    Older generations are more likely to be xenophobic. Obviously younger generations are less so but, but they often have ridiculous stereotypes about foreigners and most don’t really don’t know much about any foreign countries or cultures.

    That being all said, does this mean that you will receive downright HATE from most people, well probably not. There are definitely going to be some outright racists and xenophobes. But what’s more harmful is the stereotypes that they’ll have about you, how differently they’ll treat you from everyone else and the wrong ideas that they have pertaining “Japanese” and “foreigners”. The idea that the humans are fundamentally the same inside, and it has more to do with things like their upbringing and culture than their racial makeup. That is what is mostly missing in Japan.

30. They are okay with visiting and the money. But some make it clear they don’t want you to stay.