Japan closed its borders for a period of 214 years known as Sakoku 鎖国.
The collapse of the Shogunate was because Samurais lived off tax revenue on farmers, while the wealthy merchants ( who were the the lowest in the class system) were not directly taxed because commerce was viewed as an immoral activity.
After World War II, Japan became insular and focused on improving domestically, and almost became the superpower.
I don't think they care about being the financial superpower if it means having to give up the very thing which makes them great ( tradition ). It's a very American ideal / virtue to treat financial wealth as the ultimate goal ( ironically not necessarily the highest standard of living ). Modern China on the hand is more willing to import ideas. That said, during the Meiji restoration where Japan rapidly industrialized, one of the mottos was 'western technology, Japanese spirit'. Covid-19 has barred out foreigners which means less tourist revenue, but my impression is that tourist revenue was a 'nice to have' since they're here anyways. Only a small minority of business owners in Kyoto have indicated to me they actively want tourists back.
Japan's preservation of its tradition and culture is two faceted. Unfortunately, you can't pick and choose the things you think is backwards about Japan while admiring their tradition. It's a bundle.
Christianity and the two colonial powers it was most strongly associated with were seen as genuine threats by the Tokugawa bakuf... Religious challenges to central authority were taken seriously by the bakufu as ecclesiastical challenges by armed Buddhist monks were common during the sengoku period. The Empress Meishō (1624–96) also had grave doubts when she heard about how the Spanish and Portuguese were settling in the New World, and thought that Japan would soon become one of the many countries in their possession.
Protestant English and Dutch traders reinforced this perception by accusing the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries of spreading the religion systematically, as part of a claimed policy of culturally dominating and colonizing Asian countries. The Dutch and English were generally seen by the Japanese to be able to separate religion and trade, while their Iberian counterparts were looked upon with much suspicion. The Dutch, eager to take over trade from the Spanish and Portuguese, had no problems reinforcing this view. The number of Christians in Japan had been steadily rising due to the efforts of missionaries, such as Francis Xavier and daimyō converts. The direct trigger which is said to have spurred the imposition of sakoku was the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–38, an uprising of 40,000 mostly Christian peasants.
This is quite a profound point. Thank you!
Communism?
That's not been my experience over the previous six years I've lived here. Initially I had a company sponsor me for a work visa but I've now got two relatively straightforward paths towards PR if I want it. Locals have been very accommodating and have bent over backwards to help me integrate into this society - that even includes the older generations.
I've personally found the older people to be the most friendly. That was one of the biggest surprises. Not sure how much of that is older people just being happier in general. This could totally be biased as the older people I interact with are either in a service role, or a wealthier traveler, which may be more friendly than the general population.
It's refreshing to see other foreigners not feel bitter about Japan. The subreddit of foreigners in Japan feels like a cesspool of people with this dogmatic view that Japan isn't like their home country
On the other hand, I've met a plethora of young people who've become friends I meet and stay in touch with.
Honestly the funniest experience I had with culture clash was one day at a hotel I stayed at in Takasaki. I got in an elevator occupied by a young family. As soon as I walked in, the little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, just dropped her mouth open, completely gaping at me the whole time we rode the elevator.
Probably not too surprising, assuming they're from Gunma or a similar prefecture that doesn't see as many foreigners.
That's the vibe I've been getting which did come as a surprise. I think the movies I watched (both Hollywood and Japanese) do a disservice to them - especially the ojiisan's.
I never understood why Japan of all places is so demonized online. It's far, FAR from a perfect country, but most people just do their non-outrageous, boring life things. There are no used panties vending machines littering the streets, not everyone is obsessed with cute things, there are no child wives everywhere and there are no game shows where guys fuck their female relatives. With every other country there are at least people calling this stuff out, but when it's Japan everyone just accepts the fabricated or misunderstood article at face value and goes "oh Japan you are so wacky/xenophobic" or even "Two nukes weren't enough" (I swear this comes up more often than it's comfortable, I'm not making this up).
If anything I get the impression that people is very racist against Japan.
Japan also still virtually has no legal protection against this kind of stuff, discrimination of that type is often not being prevented.
That said a lot of the younger Japanese don't share these attitudes. Large cities are more diverse than they were 20 years ago.
It seems to me nobody has any problem with you if you make a minimal attempt at speaking using Japanese (most of them don't understand English at all and that puts them "on the spot", and while you can find some who are adept at Spanish and Italian and other languages you'd never expect, by raw statistics you aren't going to meet one of those in the streets if you are asking for directions or something). They seem to be pretty reasonable about it if you suck or make mistakes, but they seem to really value the effort.
About the bars, I never pried too much, but I was told it was Yakuza hangouts and I probably don't want to go in there anyway. I don't think locals are welcomed either. Not sure if they were messing with me or not, but to be honest they didn't look like a place I would have fun into if I was magically accepted. None of the actually fun places seemed to have an issue having me or my colleagues as patrons.
I have far more people checking me out while shopping like if I was a shoplifter, giving me weird looks, troubling me with paperwork and rent, trying to charge me more in restaurants or shops, and generally making me feel unwelcomed when I am in Spain. And I was born there! (I did lose the accent and I don't look very "typical" so they think I'm British or American).
Michael Fay was an American who was sentenced to caning by the Singaporean court. The United States felt this practice archaic. One of Singapore's senior ministers responded: "If you like it this way, that is your problem. But, that is not the path we choose"
Most importantly, there were plenty of Americans, I'd bet a majority, that agreed with Singapore. Not necessarily that we want caning in the US, but more that this boy didn't deserve any special treatment just because he was American.
To me it felt like the media (and, in fairness, the boy's parents) were really trying to play this up because it had the elements of a good story.
Essentially US cultural standards mark certain behaviors as horrible in the same way Muslim countries think women wearing a bikini is a crime. Very hard to change the way we think and arguably maybe we shouldn't change the way we think.
He works in the US for that reason.
Have you ever actually visited Japan?
If so, how do you usually behave?
I'm white and haven't really had a single negative experience. I've also made several friends who are incredibly friendly, keep in touch, etc.
When I've been lost, random Japanese citizens, not even government officials, have helped me find my way, even taking me over a block away from where they were to make sure I found what I was looking for.
Occasionally there are glances and stares but I'd definitely not classify that as "hostile".
On one hand, as you mention, we experienced lots of acts of politeness, as I would put it, e.g., being helped to find some location as in your example, being helped to understand some menu dishes when I couldn't decipher them (I had at most intermediate level of Japanese), being bowed to upon entering hotels, ryokans, etc.
On the other hand, we also experienced straight up nasty behaviour, e.g., someone standing up and leaving the train wagon when we sat next to him (and then reentering through the next door and sitting far away from us), being forbidden from entering a bar because of being foreigners (despite the fact I can speak Japanese, not great admittedly, but more than sufficient to order, pay, etc.).
When talking with people from my country settled there the common negative theme is "you'll never be accepted/treated as one of them".
Sure, I observed some of these things and didn't always feel comfortable about it. But I wouldn't consider them hostile. The way I was told, some of the things about bars not allowing foreigners is more that they get booked for post-work drinking parties. Maybe that's not always the real explanation, but I realized it wasn't a big deal. If you're in a large city like Tokyo, Sapporo, or Kyoto, there are bars and restaurants everywhere, just move on to the next one.
As far as people coming and going out of trains or not sitting next to you, yeah, I had that happen. But I'd be lying if I said I've never observed or even done the same thing here in the US.
The bar banning foreigners is not just hostile but also illegal in many other countries, if you try that shit in the UK, Germany, or Spain (I can speak from experience having lived there, but I guess it wouldn't fly in the US either?) they'll shut down your venue and possibly fine you.
He felt uncomfortable and moved away. Maybe over-dramatically, but it didn't cause you or anyone else, including himself, any harm. Again, I encountered this behavior too. It made me feel uncomfortable, but it was understandable. Some people just don't feel comfortable. Honestly I'd rather someone do something to feel more comfortable than let me invade their space and bother them.
Not sure on the rules in the US, but bars and restaurants can certainly restrict people from entering for various reasons.
Here there are also situations where they can refuse entry/service, e.g., you're not wearing tshirt and shoes, or you're drunk and belligerent, but certainly not because of your race, sex, gender, etc.
In any case, to avoid going back and forth on the same topic, I reiterate that my personal experience (and my 2 friends from the first trip, and my partner from the second) was that although we had wonderful experiences with Japanese people that made us feel generally welcome as tourists, we were left with the impression that if we already had issues like those I wrote about what other problems someone living there permanently could encounter (maybe problems when renting, dating, etc.)
I loved visiting Japan, it's the most unique/different of all countries I've been to, but the bittersweet taste it left in me took away any desire to look for jobs there when I left Germany (not my country of origin either).
>In December 2018, five German police officers were suspended from their posts after Seda Basay-Yildiz, a Turkish-German lawyer who had defended the family of one of the victims of the NSU, was faxed a death threat against her two-year-old daughter. The fax was signed "NSU 2.0". An investigation concluded that, just before the fax was sent, a Frankfurt police computer had accessed a confidential database to obtain Basay-Yildiz's address. The phones of the police officers who were on duty at the moment were confiscated, and it was found that many were exchanging racist and far-right messages in a group chat, and posting pictures of Hitler and swastikas.
It seems a little crazy to me that you were perfectly willing to live and work in a country where agents of the state fax death threats to two-year olds in the name of a Nazi terrorist group, but a guy standing up when you enter a train is so xenophobic that even living in the country, like millions of foreigners happily do, is just unthinkable. Know what I'm saying?
There are foreigners who have good reason to avoid Japan, namely indentured workers from southeast Asia. Something tells me that a guy who used to work in Germany and posts on Hacker News is not going to suffer the same problems that they do.
But comparing my example with the NSU makes no sense to me, the NSU is comparable with Aum Shinrikyo (the Japanese cult that caused the sarin attack back in the 90s) in the sense that they both have/had negligible memberships compared to the countries population, i.e., a few hundreds or couple thousands members, so I don't think in either case you can generalise the behaviour of German or Japanese citizens from the existence of 100 or 1000 pieces of shit human beings.
Japan's immigration percentage is also massively different (~2%) from that of Germany, Spain, UK, or USA (each ~15%) and I'm sure that has an impact on the attitude towards foreigners too.
I completely agree though that the issues I may run into in Japan are probably going to be different and possibly less severe than those that eastern/southeastern asian people or dark-skinned people may face.
But I'm not even claiming the NSU, or even its allies in the state apparatus, are representative of the attitude of the average German, which are of course very liberal by historical standards—what I'm saying is that despite Germany being a country where the police forces are penetrated by Nazis operating in coordination with murderous terrorists and where right-wing groups were able to mobilize a riot with thousands of participants in Chemnitz alone, none of that stops millions of immigrants from leading peaceful, happy lives in Germany, despite the real, even violent, dangers that some of them face.
In comparison, a stranger not wanting to sit next to you on a train sounds like a very trivial problem—a very first-world problem. And yet, it's enough to cause you to dismiss Japan entirely as some inhospitably xenophobic society, even though there are immigrant communities in the countries that you've lived in who can complain about much worse. I'm sure you've seen the videos of people screaming racist abuse at passengers on the Tube—would it be fair to conclude that Britain is so hostile to immigrants that I shouldn't even consider living or working there?
My contention is simply that the experiences you've described are hardly adequate to demonstrate that Japan is uniquely or exceptionally xenophobic, and it's bizarre to conclude from that alone that it would be difficult to establish a happy life there.
The bar example is way worse than the train example, to the point I already mentioned that said behaviour is illegal in the European countries I've lived in; and I only described two examples as I didn't feel like writing a whole essay on the good and bad, but those certainly weren't the only issues we faced (nothing as severe as death threats or whatever, but enough to make me not want to settle there).
Anyway, I'm pausing this here; hopefully you're not arguing on bad faith, but it's clear this conversation isn't going anywhere productive anymore...
For example, in a dispute with a Japanese person, the police are pretty famous for making foreigners second class citizens. I'm sure they're polite about it though.
Also a lot of casual disparaging remarks at Chinese and Koreans, along the lines of stereotypes in the US about people from Mexico, perhaps because a similar dynamic exists with illegal immigration.
You’ll never beat the pragmatism of Americans.
pretty sure that is not true, unless you are of japanese descent. you can get permanent residency but not citizenship
Many myths around obtaining Japanese citizenship persist online. This site offers some good rebuttals.
The Minister of Justice may permit the naturalization of an alien notwithstanding that the alien does not fulfill the condition set forth in item (1) of paragraph 1 of the last preceding Article, provided that the said alien falls under any one of the following items, and is presently domiciled in Japan: (1) One who has had a domicile or residence in Japan for three consecutive years or more and who is the child of a person who was a Japanese national (excluding a child by adoption); (2) One who was born in Japan and who has had a domicile or residence in Japan for three consecutive years or more, or whose father or mother (excluding father and mother by adoption) was born in Japan; (3) One who has had a residence in Japan for ten consecutive years or more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marutei_Tsurunen
Seriously, where do you people even come up with this bullshit? Where do you summon the confidence to state these easily disproven falsehoods about a country that you don't have the slightest clue about?
my wife and extended family are japanese. she is actually half japanese, so i get a special view of all the weird racism embedded into their society. she even has citzenship as well as my kids, but she still is not treated as japanese because of her appearance.
No, it happens to a bunch of people, I just chose the guy who has a Wikipedia article so you can't claim I'm fabricating an anecdote.
>she does not have citizenship
That tells us nothing. Has she tried applying for citizenship and was rejected or does she just not want it? The approval rate for naturalization requests is upwards of 95%, by the way, above that of the United States even.
You have a Japanese wife? That's nice. I'm actually Japanese and live in Japan. I think I have some authority on this topic as well.
*recent president notwithstanding
Well, unless you're almost anywhere in the New World [1].
> The US is notably the most immigrant-friendly country in the world
I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but countries like Canada and Australia give the US a run for their money.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli#/media/File:Jus_soli_...
Meanwhile I got invited to apply for a provincial process (Canada) while still living in Brazil, and both processes (provincial nomination + permanent residency) were easy, transparent, and I guess quick?
The way a discussion works is you are supporting something like the above sentence with arguments.