> I don’t support xenophobia […] I came away with more empathy for Japanese xenophobic sentiment
What more does supporting it entail than being sympathetic to the sentiment? You’re not Japanese, it sounds like, so being xenophobic towards non-Japanese doesn’t work in this context. Only a Japanese person could experience it.
Would it also be xenophobia, or more xenoannoyance? Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior?
> What more does supporting it entail than being sympathetic to the sentiment?
It is a bad, counterproductive impulse that will hurt their society long term, just as I think xenophobia in the US has been counterproductive.
You should also recognize that there’s a difference between the people who visit, and the people who completely restructure their lives to immigrate. And there’s a difference between immigrants who do their best to learn and integrate into the culture, and immigrants who try to impose their culture on the host nation.
Xenophobia doesn’t really jive with recognizing people as individuals and recognizing that a foreigner can learn Japanese well and follow the cultural norms (aside from the norm of having been born in Japan to Japanese parents, but only because it is impossible for a gaijin to do that).
In other words, I don’t think it’s right to broadly group immigrants into the same bucket as disrespectful tourists, but I also see on a human level how that impulse arises. The greater majority of well-behaved tourists don’t stand out like the problem-causers do.
> Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior
The “phobia” part of the word is probably confusing you, in actual usage, xenophobia encompasses dislike, “fear” is not necessary. Similar to homophobia or Islamophobia, the term includes fear _or_ dislike/hatred.
> You should also recognize that there’s a difference between the people who visit, and the people who completely restructure their lives to immigrate. And there’s a difference between immigrants who do their best to learn and integrate into the culture, and immigrants who try to impose their culture on the host nation.
Oh definitely. When it comes to rules and laws there is always some cutoff or some threshold. It's like the driving age. The laws to generalize by necessity. There is only so much of a chance there to encode "level at which a visitor learned cultural norms", a "culture quiz" etc. Those are things for a citizenship but not visitors usually. In some cases it's easy to point to a legal proceeding or complaint and say "look this person is banned, he did X,Y,Z". But then there is stuff that not documented. Like maybe someone not taking their shoes off, or speaking too loudly, or reclining their seat without asking.
> > Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior
> The “phobia” part of the word is probably confusing you, in actual usage, xenophobia encompasses dislike, “fear” is not necessary. Similar to homophobia or Islamophobia, the term includes fear _or_ dislike/hatred.
I know, I was being pedantic on purpose to show that the words used matter. The way it's presented is as a moral transgression, Japanese not wanting foreigners to visit sort of sound the same as homophobes or islamophobes. I think it's unfair. Any country, especially one with a democratically elected government should be able to say who can come and who can't to their country.
What more does supporting it entail than being sympathetic to the sentiment? You’re not Japanese, it sounds like, so being xenophobic towards non-Japanese doesn’t work in this context. Only a Japanese person could experience it.
Would it also be xenophobia, or more xenoannoyance? Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior?