Do you think Japan's declining birth rate will cause it to increase immigration?

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by Umihito

Well last time I checked it was at about 98% pure Japanese, so although it's not 100% homogeneous, I'd say that's close enough to call it that.

98% pure Japanese?

First of all there isn't such a thing as pure Japanese so I doubt your statistic off the bat.

If you mean that 98% identify themselves as "being Japanese", well that doesn't say anything about Japanese homogenity.

While most Japanese are descendents of what is often referred to as Yamato, many people in Hokkaido have Ainu heritage to varying degree and the same can be said of the people of Okinawa which if not for the fact that it is part of Japan I would say has a completely different culture altogether.

That's not to mention all the mixed race people as well as the Koreans, Chinese and South Americans that live in Japan.

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by Sangetsu

Japan's declining birth rate is an immense problem. Japan has a lot of social programs to fund, and these were over-optimistically planned with a growing population in mind. Apparently no one in the Japanese government figured out that the high taxation required to subsidize the government and these programs would 1, make it more difficult for families to afford children, and 2, lead to the wholesale outsourcing of labor to foreign countries. As a result, people are having fewer and fewer children, and there are less and less jobs for those whom remain.

Another problem is that Japan is quite a xenophobic country, and has far fewer foreigners in it's workforce than any other developed country. Even when Japan was allowing Brazilians to come to work in the auto factories, special preference was given to Brazilians with Japanese ancestry. The Japanese are a polite people, but this politeness masks a long-standing fear/dislike of foreigners. As the labor market continues to shrink, Japan will absolutely not import any foreign laborers into the country. In fact, those Brazilan auto workers who came during he boom times are being encouraged to leave. Since they were not Japanese, or fully Japanese, they were the first ones to lose their jobs when production slowed down. Rather than pay long-term unrpemployment benefits, the government prefers simply to send them back to Brazil.

Japan is no more a xenophobic country than the US or any other Western country for that matter.

If you ask me Japan are doing the right thing regarding immigration. For a start you avoid all the problems that come with more open immigration that occurs in Western countries.

Also while you're diagnosis of the problem is accurate, I would say that you have a narrow outlook regarding the treatment.

Japan's declining population requires Japan to rethink its strategy that's true. But that doesn't mean that they can't deal with it. In fact being the world's 3rd biggest economy I'm sure they can.

[steel]

Originally Posted by Umihito

Similar to what the UK is doing with it's declining population. The UK is bringing in many Polish immigrants to fill gaps by a declining population.
Do you think something similar will happen to Japan in which it'll bring in more immigrants? Where do you think they'll come from if they do?

Or do you think that Japan will tough it out with the population they have?
I personally hope they do not increase immigration, I think Japan is best staying as a homogeneous nation.

I think it's helpful to understand that Japan currently does have measures in place to facilitate immigration. And, for qualified foreign workers and foreign students at Japanese colleges and universities, in many cases it is far easier to secure a valid work visa for Japan than it would be for the United States. Moreover, unlike other countries where they use the law to tie foreign workers to their employers/visa sponsors - foreigners in Japan are entitled to the same provisions under the Labor Standards Act as Japanese. In other words, once a foreign worker gets his/her visa, if they can find another willing employer & sponsor, they can switch as any Japanese worker could. Also, the ability to later transition to a more permanent status like Permanent Residency or even full-blown Naturalization is totally possible.

So, if Japan were to suddenly decide that they wanted to significantly cut down on immigration, they'd have to pull many of the existing visa categories and allowances.

As for the equivalent of "Polish workers", Japan has run some immigration experiments in the past. Their first and foremost concern however was not to repeat the "mistakes" of the British and Europeans who many decades ago allowed for "guest workers" from former African colonies, Turkey to fill blue-collar labor shortages and also from a sense of post-colonial "guilt". What they did not expect initially was that the "guest workers" ended up staying with many assimilating but a significant percentage remaining in relative poverty, unemployment and ultimately feeling disenfranchised culminating in race riots in France, Italy etc. It's this last bit that the Japanese really don't want to recreate.

Ironically, when they created a special visa class for South Americans of Japanese descent around 1990, the Japanese government assumed that being of Japanese-descent these workers would better assimilate into Japanese society. They discovered that for the most part they were wrong. Many did not pick up the language and when the demand for semi-skilled labor in automotive and manufacturing dried up, they lacked the skills to transition to other areas (plus they were seen as disposable by most employers).

Meanwhile, back in the 1980's, another segment of Japanese immigrants was being developed -- totally unintentionally. They were foreign students - mostly from China - sent over to study at Japanese universities at all levels. The original intent was for them to study and return to China but things like Tiananmen Square in 1989 as well as a realization that living in Japan might be better than China resulted in many of them staying here for good. Many now work in professional occupations and some are CEOs of companies including one on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Sometime they use their Chinese names but often they are known by the Japanese-version of their names (eg. Hayashi instead of Lim) so they do not necessarily stand out. There are probably about 650,000 of them right now in Japan. However, there is generally little mention about them in the press except for occasional articles like these: Chasing the Japanese Dream -- Printout -- TIME For one, they were not the product of any specific government policy -- so nothing for them to "take credit". Also, it seems more popular to slag the stereotype around of them being mostly illegal aliens working in dirty hard labor jobs in Chinatown and committing crimes. Too bad. Check the numbers if you do not believe me.

Immigration in Japan is happening. However the process and results might not be that visible due to the factors previously described.

[Umihito]

Originally Posted by Ronin4hire

98% pure Japanese?

First of all there isn't such a thing as pure Japanese so I doubt your statistic off the bat.

If you mean that 98% identify themselves as "being Japanese", well that doesn't say anything about Japanese homogenity.

While most Japanese are descendents of what is often referred to as Yamato, many people in Hokkaido have Ainu heritage to varying degree and the same can be said of the people of Okinawa which if not for the fact that it is part of Japan I would say has a completely different culture altogether.

That's not to mention all the mixed race people as well as the Koreans, Chinese and South Americans that live in Japan.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...k/geos/ja.html
There's your source, the CIA factbook. Can't get much more accurate than that. It's actually 98.5% Japanese Ethnic Group, so I'd count that as pure Japanese and not any group that claims to be Japanese.

Which brings me on to: no such thing as pure Japanese? Huh? What about the every Japanese person who has Japanese great great great etc etc Grandparents? I'm not sure what you mean by no such thing as pure Japanese
You could say that about any country that has expanded it's borders to other places. I'm Welsh but my passport and everything else about me says British, so I count myself as a British citizen by all means. Me being Welsh doesn't make Britain any more diverse. If anyone at immigration or on the international stage asks me what nationality I am, I'm British not Welsh.

I know that ethnic origin in terms of people like the Ainu is all very subjective, and what I said isn't solid proof that people like the Ainu are definitely pure Japanese, but I think that they've been part of Japanese culture and influence long enough to be called pure Japanese.

I agree on mixed race people however, but still I don't think that'd detract too much from the final percentage, especially if they are recent generations as they'd probably be considered Korean, Chinese etc ethnic origin.

[Umihito]

And thank you Steel for that great post, you brought up a lot of good points and info in it.

[SSJup81]

Originally Posted by godwine

Yeah thats what I thought, marriage is the only way to becoem a citizen, which of course grant you the benefit of being Japanese citizen (Which is not much anyways)... i think i saw somewhere that you can also become a citizen if your parents are japanese, and to proof it, all you need is an old enough couple singing to say that "Yes this is my kid", it has to be reasonable of course, i mean, i don't think a Japanese couple declairing a Caucasian kid as their child will cut i

Well, if you live/work in the country for an extended amount of time or for a certain amount of years (consecutively), you can apply for a citizenship, but I'm sure that's the case for most countries in a general sense.

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by Umihito

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...k/geos/ja.html
There's your source, the CIA factbook. Can't get much more accurate than that. It's actually 98.5% Japanese Ethnic Group, so I'd count that as pure Japanese and not any group that claims to be Japanese.

Which brings me on to: no such thing as pure Japanese? Huh? What about the every Japanese person who has Japanese great great great etc etc Grandparents? I'm not sure what you mean by no such thing as pure Japanese
You could say that about any country that has expanded it's borders to other places. I'm Welsh but my passport and everything else about me says British, so I count myself as a British citizen by all means. Me being Welsh doesn't make Britain any more diverse. If anyone at immigration or on the international stage asks me what nationality I am, I'm British not Welsh.

I know that ethnic origin in terms of people like the Ainu is all very subjective, and what I said isn't solid proof that people like the Ainu are definitely pure Japanese, but I think that they've been part of Japanese culture and influence long enough to be called pure Japanese.

I agree on mixed race people however, but still I don't think that'd detract too much from the final percentage, especially if they are recent generations as they'd probably be considered Korean, Chinese etc ethnic origin.

I would question how the cia defines ethnicity but you're right I can't argue with it.

But even then 98.5% Japanese ethnicity does not make Japan homogenous if we're talking physical appearance or culture. I've already made the point about the Okinawans and people in Hokkaido but there are regional cultural differences also.

It sounds like the issue we're having is a language one but considering the opposite of the word pure is impure which implies a racial definition. I would strongly suggest that you stop using the word pure to describe someone who has 100% Japanese geneology.

The fact is there is as much diversity in physical appearance amongst Japanese people as there is throughout East Asia. Some Japanese are as dark as Thai or Vietnamese people and some are as light skinned as Han Chinese or Koreans. (The same can be said for Vietnamese Thais Koreans and Han Chinese respectively)

[RealJames]

Xenophobia is fear or dislike of foreigners or others. Japanese people certainly don't have this. Japanese people are largely ignorant about the world outside Japan but not afraid of it, nor do they dislike it.

Japan's population is almost entirely ethnically Japanese, there are a few Brazilians which were originally from Japan here but they look as Japanese as Japanese people do, and their numbers are so minute in comparison to overall population we're talking like less than 0.2%, and that was in the 80's or something. The other foreigners are largely Korean and Chinese who are by and large born and raised in Japan. Leaving the non-asian population at an incredibly small number. Ergo, homogeneous population is a fair statement.

Resident visas are granted to people who stay in Japan for extended periods of time, they need a certain level of Japanese and any Japanese national to vouch for them. Naturalized I believe is the term.

For births, nationality of parents determines nationality of child, not place of birth. If a British or American couple have a kid in Japan it has no nationality, the parents need to declare it as an American with the embassy.

The concept of immigration to help the economy has been floating around a lot here. It's not well received by everyone for good reasons, language barrier being the biggest. The Brazilians set an example of why that fails.

[Umihito]

Originally Posted by Ronin4hire

I would question how the cia defines ethnicity but you're right I can't argue with it.

But even then 98.5% Japanese ethnicity does not make Japan homogenous if we're talking physical appearance or culture. I've already made the point about the Okinawans and people in Hokkaido but there are regional cultural differences also.

It sounds like the issue we're having is a language one but considering the opposite of the word pure is impure which implies a racial definition. I would strongly suggest that you stop using the word pure to describe someone who has 100% Japanese geneology.

The fact is there is as much diversity in physical appearance amongst Japanese people as there is throughout East Asia. Some Japanese are as dark as Thai or Vietnamese people and some are as light skinned as Han Chinese or Koreans. (The same can be said for Vietnamese Thais Koreans and Han Chinese respectively)

Yes I guess you're right with the regional differences in culture so I can see where you're coming from when you talk about Japan being a non-homogeneous society. It's something that could probably never be fully agreed on, but seems as all these different sub-groups are basically from the same country and are similar in appearance, I would personally group them as being ethnic Japanese in terms of the homogeneality issue.
I guess my idea of a multi-ethnic society in Japan is anyone from anywhere other than the present day Japanese islands and her people/sub-cultures. But I definitely see why you see it your way.

And I just realised what you meant about me using 'pure Japanese.' I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you or anyone.

[hadron]

Originally Posted by Umihito

Similar to what the UK is doing with it's declining population. The UK is bringing in many Polish immigrants to fill gaps by a declining population.
Do you think something similar will happen to Japan in which it'll bring in more immigrants? Where do you think they'll come from if they do?

Or do you think that Japan will tough it out with the population they have?
I personally hope they do not increase immigration, I think Japan is best staying as a homogeneous nation.

I would like to justify few things

1. The UK wasn't bringing in anyone. They only thing they did was that they allowed free entry and work permit for anyone from some of the new countries which have joined the EEU (European economic union). This condition applies still in this very moment. And basically there was nothing like UK government running programmes for immigrating someone to somewhere.

Just to add ... there were 10 countries joining EEU in 2004 which means, breaking the limits on some economic activities across the countries, like free trade, but that not involved free movement of workforce.

2. It came quite close after (I think same year later) that UK decided they need to cover demand for low-spec workforce or simply cover labour intensive positions like cleaning, manufacturing, or simple admin etc. The problem was because UK natives generally lived high standard and there was not much interest in this kind of work by domestic population.

It of course took its effect, but economic crisis helped it as well... for comparison, if you come to UK in 2005 you would be able to get agency job paid 5-12 pounds per hour, or even more. Today all such jobs would be paid by minimum salary no matter what or when you do it, and that is just about 5 pounds per hour.

3. And there is one massive difference between comparing japan immigration and EEU cross-country movement. EEU is heavily slowly, but possibly coming to state similar of United States of America.

Some of the facts:
- Once you are EEU citizen you can move freely across all its countries as long as you can identify yourself. Especially you don't need anything like visa.
- There are various levels of country combinations of who can work where and where one cannot.
- In most cases you can use your national ID card to cross borders, so you don't need to setup a passport.
- UK doesn't have national ID cards in use, mostly these are used in post-communistic countries of the Europe.
- There are no physical borders between most of the countries and there are no border controls when you cross the borders by land, meaning if you go from Poland to e.g. Spain by car you will get there without any single piece of paper although I would never recommend you to go without ID or passport. You would be fine even if you had a bucket of cocaine in the trunk
- UK is an island country so of course there is a border control in ports, and you got to have some sort of ID to enter the country.
- Although UK still uses pound sterling, and Poland uses zloty as their currency, many other countries of EEU use the same currency which is Euro(€).
- The major difference between EEU and US is, that nearly each country of EEU uses different language and has its own cultural roots. There is nothing like uncle Sam in Europe.

So based on these facts I dont think that Japan is anyway near to this kind of state of immigration and population flow. Whether Japan should let some immigrants to enter... I don't know, but if they do, it will be much different process to Europe's situation, cause going from Poland to UK is more like going from Washington to Alaska, definitely not like going from World to Japan .