Japan is a totalitarian state, with the enforcement run by individuals. If you violate social norms, including not looking or sounding Japanese enough, you will be excluded.
You could become naturalized there, but you will never be Japanese, and you will never be treated as an equal.
>I happen to prefer dynamic, multicultural societies over static, xenophobic ones.
Can people in other societies have a say about what they want in the matter in their own society, or your also prefer the norms of you and your society imposed upon everybody?
("I like multiculturalism, as long as every country has the same cultural mindset as mine").
>From that I’m sure you can guess my own nationality.
Is it one where foreigners massacred and replaced the native population, took their land, relegated them to specific areas, and even took their children and closed them in camps? I guess those natives were xenophobic too.
>("I like multiculturalism, as long as every country has the same cultural mindset as mine").
To some degree, this isn't a bad idea. For example, I abhor female genital mulitaliton (FGM) and I don't think it's particularly wrong to say that regardless of it being the "culture" of some people, it shouldn't be done.
If I weren't a moral nihilist, I certainly wouldn't be a moral relativist.
People who generally oppose multiculturalism often assume their ideological opponent is an ardent adherent to cultural relativism, with their definition of cultural relativism being a very uncharitable one: i.e., “no culture is better than another, and it’s not okay to say something another culture does is bad.”
Cultural relativism is more useful in understanding why some people from different cultures behave the way they do, and examining if wither rejection of that behavior is based on a logical, beneficial value, or whether it’s based on the natural impulse to reject something foreign. Mistaken beliefs prevent cultural progress. Beliefs should be open to challenge.
>Can people in other societies have a say about what they want in the matter in their own society, or your also prefer the norms of you and your society imposed upon everybody?
Of course people in other societies should have a say in what they want in the matter of their own society. I just prefer they come to the same conclusion mine has, since it’s the superior one in many respects. (Not all aspects, of course — there is no “perfect culture” or “perfect system”; all of them have downsides in some aspect)
>From that I’m sure you can guess my own nationality.
Is it one where foreigners massacred and replaced the native population, took their land, relegated them to specific areas, and even took their children and closed them in camps? I guess those natives were xenophobic too.
The genocide of the peoples indigenous to North America is a black mark in the history of the United States, as is slavery. Neither has been adequately remedied, and I’m unsure it ever will be. The US has a lot of work to do on both of these fronts.
If I compare the US (assuming it's your country) and Japan, in anything from crime and safety, to cleanliness, community cohesion, politiness, cuisine, nature, and art, I found it deeply inferior, when contrasting results.
Doesn’t Japan have rampant sexual assault to the point where their public transport needs women-only trains due to the prevalence of non-police-investigated public molestation of young girls? Additionally doesn’t japans criminal system notoriously doesn’t investigate heinous sex crimes and rapes, leading to artificially low crime rates (I.e. the police don’t take on cases unless they know they can solve them, so crime is underreported).
Superior is very relative. I'm sure the Japanese are quite happy with their extremely low crime rates and overall safe society. But yes, there are tradeoffs.
Absolutely. Superior is a term that only makes sense in the context of an individual’s or group’s values, and how strongly those values are held in relation to the downsides of the individual culture in that culture’s context. Added to that, some of the “downsides” from the perspective of one group’s values might be “upsides” to another! I happen to value “safety” in absolute terms (as demonstrated by Japan) less than individual freedom. That is, I prefer to live in a society with more “rough edges” because I see the trade-off (more room for new ideas and more latitude for people who don’t fit in) as being worth it.
Now, you could totally question the link between these two. And you’d be right to! There’s no absolute link between “restrictive personal expression” and “low crime and high safety.” Japan, for one, has pretty punitive laws, including the death penalty. That probably plays a role. It’s all super complex, which is what makes it interesting… and why sharing ideas is critical to improving conditions for individuals, especially marginalized ones.
It's their country. You don't get to feel "bullied" for them not wanting foreigners there.
Would you feel "bullied" if an Amazon native population wants to keep their ways, and doesn't welcome you or anybody else coming over and wanting to join them?
Are people you don't know demanding to stay at your house "bullied" and "excluded" when you don't just let them in?
What if they're "good people"? Should they just get a room then? What if you have a couple of extra rooms you don't use?
You don’t need to accept the premise. It’s not (generally) the case that Japanese people don’t want foreigners there. A more correct statement would be that some Japanese people don’t want some foreigners there. Which is true of any country. If one person has felt bullied and excluded when trying to integrate in Japan that sucks, but I also know of plenty of people who have felt bullied and excluded trying to integrate in America, too.
>It's their country. You don't get to feel "bullied" for them not wanting foreigners there.
Why shouldn't I? You don't get to dictate how I "get" to feel. The very idea of racism and xenophobia is fundamentally offensive to me. As with the Amazon native population, I would not approve if they didn't let me in by virtue of some immutable attribute of mine such as my appearance.
So long as you make an effort to learn someone's culture, I don't think there's any justifictaion to exclude someone on the basis of the brute facts of their body or upbringing. Actions ought to matter far more.
I'm not aware of any moral theory that has been justified in academia or elsewhere which prescribes that such discrimination is permissible. This also is evidenced by the fact that many Japanese people claim to abhor racism while simultaneously practicing it against sections of their own population and other populations.
>Why shouldn't I? You don't get to dictate how I "get" to feel.
No, but logic and society and experiences gets to dictate (even if in a slightly fuzzy what) what makes sense to feel.
Otherwise, feelings are like a*holes. Everybody has one.
>So long as you make an effort to learn someone's culture, I don't think there's any justifictaion to exclude someone on the basis of the brute facts of their body or upbringing. Actions ought to matter far more.
They don't want people merely having "made an effort to learn their culture" to immigrate in their country in any great numbers. They prefer people having grown into their culture - that is, their own people.
It's through this organic process (as opposed to some bro watching anime and watching documentaries about sushi and samurai swords who feels they've "made an effort to learn the culture") that they preserve their culture, their social cohesion, their customs, their safety, and other such aspects.
>as opposed to some bro watching anime and watching documentaries about sushi and samurai swords who feels they've "made an effort to learn the culture"
You've used this strawman previously in this thread; perhaps it would be better if you elucidated what elements of culture you're actually referring to.
>They don't want people merely having "made an effort to learn their culture" to immigrate in their country in any great numbers.
Who is "they"? I feel like you're ascribing very specific opinions to people who I suspect would be perfectly happy with law-abiding immigrants who don't hold parties at 3 a.m.
>They prefer people having grown into their culture - that is, their own people.
Is this even true? And to what degree? For example, there are cases of non-ethnically Japanese people who were born and raised in Japan, but still face challenges with discrimination, whereas immigrants of Japanese ancestry from America only seem to face issues with language. There's even a politician who immigrated to Japan and was elected by Japanese people: https://www.japan-zone.com/modern/tsurunen_marutei.shtml - in what way was someone who grew up in Japan preferred?
You may argue that these are minor examples and exceptions, but even one example is enough to show that these feelings are not based on logic or probability, but on mere gut feeling when one encounters someone different.
Cultural assimilation can happen to varying degrees and varying time frames with mixed results; the degree to which it is successful is also dependent on how accomodating or welcoming that particular culture is.
Maybe you should ask the Native American tribes who died of smallpox what “scientific” basis there is for being afraid of foreigners?
I know you are going to say that’s not the case in the modern world, but you need to at least understand there are very concrete reasons why xenophobia evolved, and why it’s a natural reaction. Some might not be relevant in the modern world, but I’d argue there’s a lot of complexity that we might not understand.
For example, there are some extremely intolerant immigrants to Europe right now, 100% of whom in London polled as wanting homosexuality criminalised.
Should everyone be 100% accepting of this because they are foreigners? Is xenophobia justified in this case in your opinion?
Xenophobia is a fear or distrust of foreigners. You can accept, and work to integrate, foreigners into your society while rejecting bad ideas. That’s the basis of modern multicultural democracies.
Xenophobia is a content-less word, made to be sounding like a medical condition, to justify bossing people around based on what they want or do not want in their country.
It is, of course, a white invention, as we feel morally superior enough to do all the bossing around. Let's call it the "white man's burden" to show those people how it should be done.
This seems like a very disconnected way to view things. There are unpleasant aspects of Japanese society, but it's not obvious you can just remove those while keeping the positive aspects.
The US is indeed more dynamic, but as has often been pointed out, that's partly due to coming into existence with a continent's worth of very lightly defended resources only a few hundred years ago. If you win a huge lottery jackpot you will probably enjoy a very comfortable life afterwards, but it doesn't mean you became brilliant at economics.
When I say bullying and exclusion, I’m speaking specifically about the practice as it exists in Japanese society.
This practice has produced an entire lost generation called “Hikkikomori,” Japanese people who were excluded from Japanese society so completely that they don’t even leave their homes. Some of them are entirely dependent on their aging parents for their subsistence, including shelter and food.
That says nothing of gay people, whose presence is tolerated at best.
When it comes to foreigners, they are welcomed as tourists and guest workers, but there will always be places and aspects of society that they will never be welcome in.
This is exclusion for no other reason than xenophobia. Even a person who learns the language, practices the customs, pays taxes and follows the laws will not be accepted in Japan.
What you’re hitting at in your response is “The paradox of tolerance.” To arrive at the paradox of tolerance, a society has to have a sufficient level of tolerance. Japan simply doesn’t.
When I say this is “bad,” I mean this is in two ways. First, it violates my principles of tolerance for good faith actors — a set of values shared broadly in the west, to varying degrees and with a lot of asterisks. Secondly, it’s bad for Japan. In a situation where your demographics are decades into terminal decline, the ability to integrate foreigners is the only option to continue to being a going concern. The breakdown of their society without foreign integration will be catastrophic.
UNICEF has initiatives in Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Sudan and Tanzania to end open defecation. High levels of open defecation are linked to high child mortality, poor nutrition, poverty, and large disparities between rich and poor.
Is this colonialism? It’s certainly a cultural change.
The mixing of people and ideas through trade and migration has resulted in the fastest decline in mortality and poverty in human history. Cultures open to new ideas have benefitted the most.
Foreign/multinational organizations coming to dictate to the "natives" even how to deficate, for "their own good"? Sounds like it.
Colonialism is not just about "bad intentions". There were colonialists with "good intentions" too. They also thought they were doing "god's work", building railroads, teaching the brute natives how to live, and so on. The "white man's burden" they called it.
In the case of Japan, Americans threatened and even bombed them (in the 19th century) to teach them how they should live: to force them open their borders to western trade. The same entitlement apparently never stopped.
I think it's only while there are few foreigners there. They will have to open up and because country is good, just lacking young population, Japanese will quickly become the minority and those issues will be solved.
Yes, it's not like a country is it's people and their culture and achievements stemming from those, and that if the "country is good" it's because of that.
No, a country is just a landmass, and when "Japanese become the minority" that would be a problem solved (the problem being entitled people from outside the country wanting in).
Also i believe that the country is first and foremost, a landmass - with geological, hydrological etc features defining their resource base and transportation abilities and thus what they can do and what they can't, and what's optimal for them, plus a political system that is built to make the optimal use for the former. Gradual replacement of people with another can still keep all of it in place and maintain qualities of a nation from the standpoint of average consumer as more or less the same.
Plus, if you invite immigrants, you get to pick the best of them, so probably you won't harm your overall population quality.
Well, in any case, there are only 3 ways out of it:
- Japan becomes an almost empty and stateless or only having a nominal state, landmass with very little population and no functioning economy (no transport network, no electricity grid etc). Unlikely - it's climate is too good.
- It gets militarily taken over as soon it's too weak to defend itself. Likely but undesirable because you don't get to pick who takes you over and that will be by definition someone hostile.
- Immigration and replacement. This is the most beneficial of the realistic options. Because you get to pick the people who replaces you.
It’s not defeatist, it’s demography. The replacement rate for a country is 2.1. Japan’s birth rate is 1.3. Japan fell below replacement rate in 1975. Their economy faltered in the 90s and has never recovered. Add in massive urbanization and a work culture that literally has a word for “death from overwork”… yeah, a country doesn’t bounce back from that.
Oh, but buckle up my friend, because Japan isn’t an outlier. It’s ahead of the curve for a majority of the world’s societies.
You could become naturalized there, but you will never be Japanese, and you will never be treated as an equal.