Couldn't this possibly be unconstitutional? In Article 14 (I don't have my Japanese copy at hand):
>All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.
That said, this only applies to citizens only, and you did mention the renting agent noticed you are an American.
Horrible behaviour nevertheless.
I mean family registries are fascinating. In some places people are obliged to register people coming in and out of a household etc, like a living census. And for some jobs people have to provide family histories and professions, etc., but nevertheless the people I've spoken to aren't much bothered by as much as I seem to. For many, if not most or all, it just is. And, anthropologically it's fascinating.
I once met a young lady for coffee. (It wasn't quite a date, but a situation which could eventually lead to being retconned as a date.) She asked me, in a fashion which struck me as out-of-the-blue, "Do I strike you as a typical Japanese girl?"
I figured that she was fishing for a compliment (thought process: "Who would want to be as-sent-by-central-casting?") , so I said "Oh no, you strike me as different."
She immediately burst out crying, and asked "How did you know?"
"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to be taken that way. I thought you wanted me to say that you were a unique person."
"No no I want nothing other than to be a typical Japanese girl."
"What does that... OH GOD. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry no it is absolutely not possible that anybody could guess that you're ethnically Korean." (The word in Japanese is "zainichi", for 在日韓国人, the literal translation of which is "A Korean who lives in Japan.")
"... Wait you know about us?"
"I studied a variety of esoteric things in college."
"So you don't think less of me for being... you know..."
"NO NO NO NO."
Cue about an hour of talking about it. She said that none of her friends knew. I said that 2007 was a very different time than e.g. 1970 and they'd probably be understanding. "Maybe, but I can't unring that bell. What if one of them hates Koreans? What if all of them hate Koreans? What if I told? I'd never get my life back."
Tangent over.
Do you believe a piece of paper which says "My grandfather is named Kim" fails to have a consequential effect on this young lady?
(Controversial opinion for Japan incoming: She's Japanese, not Korean, under all the laws of earth and heaven. She was born in Japan, she speaks no language but Japanese, she carries a Japanese passport, she carries no other passport nor desires one, she is entirely culturally Japanese, she feels no feelings of belonging to Korea, actual Koreans would not treat her as being Korean, etc etc ad nauseum, but there exists a not-tiny contingent of her fellow countrymen who would immediately fire-in-the-eyes hate her if they somehow came to believe she was Korean.)
Some similar anecdotes, while working in a Japanese office there is one co-worker whose great-grandfather was Italian. I haven't seen any actual discrimination against him, but some people are definitely happy to let you know that he is not full Japanese, so I'm certain he's ran across some for his ancestry.
Now that Korea is mentioned... until 2008 Korea used to have that "koseki" thing (called "hojeok" in Korea, with the same Chinese characters, I believe). At least it wasn't used to discriminate against ethnic minorities (largely because Korea didn't have any ethnic minorities who had lived for generations, other than a handful of Chinese immigrants, who were discriminated anyway, but I digress).
What it was used for was to bind people in patriarchal Confucian ideology and make life miserable for some people. E.g., if a woman has a child, divorces but keeps custody of the child, and marries again, she couldn't change the child's family name to that of her new husband, because paternal ancestry is fucking important. So now her child must grow up being asked by everybody "Wait, why is your surname different from your dad?" That kind of thing.
And there were people who would defend this kind of idiocy.
So glad we finally got rid of that.
Not sure if this is one of those things that'll disappear as the newer generations displace the older. Or if the black car squad will somehow keep the attitude alive.
Quite interesting is that there are degrees of zainichi, those who adopt Japanese names and who have assimilated and on the other end those want to retain more of their Korean identity and nationality.
There's also the intersection where some people of Korean ancestry in Japan express sympathies for North Korea, a country which is typically Japan's current arch-enemy,
Take a look yourself. They did several scientific studies. They found Japan is less racist than France, and equal to most European countries:
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...
The question just forces the person being asked to think, "Would I mind if this researcher saw me as someone who would mind if a foreigner lived next door to me?" And the degree to which this second-order question matters depends heavily on social mores.
Japan is a country where people are expected from a young age to compartmentalize their tatemae (external appearance) from honne (true thoughts), and consider it perfectly normal to do so. So I wouldn't be surprised if they were simply better at hiding perceived-as-negative sentiments from naive researchers.
Koreans, on the other hand, admire Americans and Western Europeans but look down upon Africans and South/Southeast Asians, and often express outright contempt for the Japanese and Chinese. Depending on their political views, they may even feel socially compelled to express a hatred of one or another nationality. Meanwhile, Korean culture doesn't acknowledge the tatemae/honne distinction, which makes it a lot more difficult for people to compartmentalize.
tl;dr: We're all racists, but some forms of racism are easier to measure.
I was born in Brazil, and I am mixed race (about 2/3 mediterranean european and 1/3 black, with a tiny bit of native american somewhere in my black ancestry)
No group of people consider me one of them.
And I don't think of myself as truly brazillian either, I don't like things most brazillians like, and I don't do things that most brazillians do, and I don't feel physical attraction for the average brazillian either.
It kinda suck, to have no nation, despite having a legal citizenship.
> I don't feel physical attraction for the average brazillian either.
Well, maybe you are not one of us after all ;-) Then again, who feels attracted to average people? Don't we most often feel attracted to those that in some way stand out?
Example: My parents live in a neighbourhood where most people are mixed race, but heavily black (ie: people have a obvious brown skin, and have facial features and bone structure of black people).
More than once when walking on the street, I had people follow me with weapons or dogs, and one time when I was buying coca-cola in a bar on the neighbourhood, some people playing snooker stopped playing, made a circle around me, and said in a threatening tone that I was "not from here", I then pointed them my house (it was distant, but visible), then they left me alone.
Similarly, when I am visiting white-heavy areas, specially if people are slavs/nordic (russian, swedish, etc...) they also treat me as an outsider, for example they prefer to talk to other white people.
Or when I am with my uncle (that is more dark skinned) in my grandpa car (he has a expensive car for brazillian standards, a Toyota Corolla), police stop us, thinking we are thieves or thugs.
Well, while in this case there was a very specific reason for her question/doubt -- I don't think it's entirely far-fetched to claim that that'd be the "wrong" answer with a lot of Japanese that didn't have any such "secret".
It's not clear how you phrased "different" - but as you probably know, "different" has a very negative connotation in Japanese in general. I'm suppose there are more positive ways to frame a similar sentiment ("No, I think you're special" - in this case that'd probably be taken as just as bad, though).
Either way, interesting anecdote. (FTR, of course there are lots of Japanese that would be more happy to be considered different, rather than conformist -- but I'd say that even today, that is much more rare in Japan than in eg. most of Europe, America (north and south) etc)
Other groups make it easier to belong. Say being an American is easy. Not to sing praises to America in general, but that part is easier. I was born in another country, but I can say I am American and most American could agree with that, even if I have a funny accent going on. They would say nothing to my kid, won't dig into their history either. That is a nice thing to have. So "belonging" is easier.
It is harder not to belong to any group. I think that is part of your acquaintance problem. If somehow she felt she was Korean, that would be more comforting perhaps.
Old societies and cultures seem cute, quaint or reverent to many, but there is that stuff about being prejudiced and bigoted.
In a some kind of a Darwinian way one can argue "ok, good, that society and culture will eventually lose out and be at a disadvantage", let them be exclusive and patriarchal and bigoted, they will wither way eventually. Of course that doesn't make it easier to for those born in those cultures.
Why would they hate her for having Korean ancestry?
Typically, Japanese people are kind and generous, and they will closely look at the person's attitudes. The people who are not liked are the people who hate Japan and the Japanese people.
As an example, people who graduated from the Korean School (Chousengakkou) will be given an Anti-Japanese education. I heard from a Korean background person that at a Korean School, if you speak Japanese at the school, you will be beaten by your mates.
Few years ago, there were K-POP trend in Japan, and people were very interested in Korean culture and the Korean people. But when they start knowing that the majority of Korean people have huge hatred towards Japan and also the Japanese people, now many Japanese people are becoming suspicious when they hear the word Korea. It is not because they are racist or not. It is just a rule of thumb or statistics.
Koreans do remember the times when Japanese teachers would beat up Korean boys at school for using Korean, force Koreans to adopt Japanese-style names, and send young Koreans to the Pacific to be slaughtered, for the glory of Emperor Hirohito.
Personally, all the Japanese I met were nice people, and I normally don't talk history with them (I mean, what's the point?), because there are more pleasant stuff to talk about. Hopefully many others in Japan would also meet some Koreans some day and realize we are all the same people, with different historical baggages, trying to make sense in a world that doesn't make sense.
But then there are always some jerks who would say "Koreans are so mean, why do they hate Japan so much?"
Well, duh.
It takes different forms in different countries, but it is alive and well.
Does it help in anything?
Many argue that an arbitrary division among the disenfranchised and poor is an effective barrier for them to rise up against the minority that hoard the resources for themselves. So one could argue that it does help someone.
If there are 10 people at a table about to starve to death, and only 5 of them are related, it helps their genetic lineage to prefer to feed relatives.
Racism, as an outgrowth of us-versus-them, most likely helped with keeping a lineage alive.
Considering that racism is quite impractical.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_Japan
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Korean_sentiment#Japan
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_Japan#Korean_...
I don't think it would be very hard to find places that are a lot more racist that Japan. (Not that you'd want to go there…)
We can only hope that these chains loosen over time as people reject the prejudicial treatment of others.
To quote the article:
> Though generally considered offensive, the term Eta is still in use today. One of the letters received at the abattoir expresses sympathy for the animals being killed "as they're being killed by Eta."
> "Nowadays it's still a well-known fact that people are buying this information, but rather than corporations, it's individuals buying it to check on future in-laws ahead of marriage. That's one of the biggest examples of discrimination that we frequently face."
> "I remember once when my wife and I were visiting with some of her father's relatives. When I told them what I did, they stopped pouring me beer."
In Parliamentary Debate, this is commonly known as squirreling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrel_(debate)).
(His post and my post are intelligible to people who spent a few years of their lives on a very specialized academic sport. I'm going to elide explaining all the jargon here.)
But does it have good predictive value? Statistics don't care about individuals, and neither does the reality they describe. Are one's family's behaviours good predictors of one's own behaviours? I strongly suspect that the answer is a resounding YES. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, after all—at least not usually.
And shouldn't it be the responsibility of the outliers to demonstrate that they are, in fact, outliers, rather then the responsibility of the rest fo society to extend the benefit of the doubt to every last person who turns up to claim it?
A sidenote:
I debated during college (in the US, prior to ever living in Japan, where I've been for about 10 years now).
I was mildly notorious in debate circles for running a particular "case" (proposed instantiation of a government policy supporting the resolution which one would, as the government side of a debate, have to win was beneficial) on any resolution which would support it. For example, the resolution might be "The government shall limit the information it records about it's citizens." One team of the debate has to convince the judge that they have a concrete idea for how to do that. The other team opposes either that concrete idea and/or says "That case doesn't actually support the proposition our opponents are forced to support."
The case was "abolish the koseki", a family register in Japan which was once considered semi-public information (this has been tightened up rather severely, but it still exists and companies often still ask to see yours) and which has a variety of ways to leak extraordinarily sensitive facts about one's family, in addition to being an odious institution for a host of other reasons. I say "notorious" for this case because, by American collegiate standards, the koseki is straight-out evil, and the reason we chose to run this case is because there are few ways to debate in favor of retaining it and all of them require you to be better versed at Japanese politics/policy than my debate partner and I were, which is unlikely to be true of any US debate team picked at random.
I like to believe that my one lasting contribution to debate is convincing a lot of tournament directors to change the traditional wording in resolutions "The government shall $DO_SOMETHING" to "The United States federal government shall $DO_SOMETHING", because when we interpreted the government to mean "Japanese government" the other team invariably said something along the lines of "That's not what the resolution writer intended", to which I would say "You being ignorant of a major first world nation whose internal political issues are well-reflected in the academic literature may make this debate inconvenient for you to win but that does not mean I'm not allowed to pick something which fits within the clear definition of the word 'government.'"
This drove people nuts.
Ten years later I just had to get a copy of my family's koseki to apply for an apartment lease, upon which the renting agent said "Oh, you're American. Do you even know what this is?" Yep -- funny how life works out. (Why does my apartment renting agent need my koseki? To determine whether I'm the right sort of people to live in the really nice apartment we're moving to. Does "right sort of people" sound ominous to you? YEP, exactly as bad as you think it is.)