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Yes, survey data. And to be clear, the world value survey has asked questions covering racism. In particular:

"Would you accept someone of a different race as a neighbour?"

and

"How often do you see racist behaviour in your neighbourhood?"

You could also look at mobility of foreign workers of as opposed to native workers of a similar background. Unfortunately the world value survey results don't really support your case. You'd want the racism broken down by ethnicity I guess if you believe that the Japanese are particularly racist against other Asians.

The refugee figures help support the idea that Japan is more racist (Japan accept far fewer refugees than other countries), but as this is a political issue, rather than based on the reaction of individual Japanese people, it's harder to draw conclusions from this.

But yes, I don't really find a comment by an individual, or unquantified data from wikipedia very compelling.




I think xenophobia is a great marker for racism.

Here's a wiki article for racism and xenophobia in South Korea: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_South_Korea


Interesting, by the World Value Survey figures South Korea looks worse than Japan overall. 34.1% of people mentioned that they would not want a person of a different race as a neighbour, as opposed to 22.3% in Japan.

I was still shocked by how high the numbers are for Japan. It's mostly dominated by people over 50 (27.8%) those under 29 only replied positively 10.5% of the time.

The numbers for the US are fascinating too. Overall only 5.6% of people said they wouldn't want a person of a different race as a neighbour. But the trend is the opposite to Japan, 6% of people under 29 said they would not want a person of a different race as a neighbour (4.7% of people over 50).

That young people on average are less likely to want a person of a different race as a neighbour in the US is surprising to me.


> Interesting, by the World Value Survey figures South Korea looks worse than Japan overall. 34.1% of people mentioned that they would not want a person of a different race as a neighbour, as opposed to 22.3% in Japan.

Is that enough? Other countries are more racist - East/South Asia is in general extremely tribal and racist. Thai people hate Vietnamese, Koreans and Chinese HATE Japanese, and Chinese people look down on South East asians, and the Japanese look down at everybody. Pakistanis and Indians mutually hate each other, Taiwanese look down on Mainlanders, and Northern Chinese look down on the Southern Chinese for eating strange things and being sly/tricky, whereas the Southern Chinese look down on the Northern Chinese for drinking too much and getting into fights.

> The numbers for the US are fascinating too. Overall only 5.6% of people said they wouldn't want a person of a different race as a neighbour. But the trend is the opposite to Japan, 6% of people under 29 said they would not want a person of a different race as a neighbour (4.7% of people over 50).

Like I said, I'm not saying other countries aren't racist. I'm saying that the Japanese are incredibly racist towards other Asians.


> Like I said, I'm not saying other countries aren't racist. I'm saying that the Japanese are incredibly racist towards other Asians.

You have supplied no data to support this statement, beyond anecdotes.

The data I've seen doesn't support the notion that the Japanese are "incredibly racist" against anyone at all.


According to the xenophobia study, even people under 29 in Japan are twice as likely as the entire US population to object to the presence of neighbors of a different race. Older people are four times as likely to object. And with a UN observer saying the racism is primarily directed towards other Asian people which is more than an "anecdote" despite your assertion since he was sent there to assess this specifically, I have to say that I'm not quite sure what you're saying. How do you design a study about the targets of racism that people answer? You're asking for data that has an extraordinarily low probably of existing and trumpeting the fact that of course you are right, because you insist on numbers, any numbers.


1 in 10 people being racist wouldn't really qualify as being "incredibly racist" in my view. Perhaps "incredibly racist" isn't a very useful term anyway.

Yes, it's important to look at data rather than anecdotes. We can both pick anecdotes to support different arguments. I could point out for example that the 4th largest company in Japan was founded by someone of Korean decent...

Yes, there is racism in Japan. Yes, racism is more socially acceptable than in the US. Yes, it seems likely that it is more often directed against Asian neighbours. You have not presented any data that suggests that it is "incredibly racist" in Japan.

I would be interest in further data that quantifies the racism in Japan. Rather than a series of anecdotes that seem to support an opinion you've already formed.




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