Co-constituting migrant strangers and foreigners: The case of Japan

Abstract

Spanish

French

This study examines the experiences of diverse groups of migrants in a highly developed non-Western society: Japan. Using critical analysis of literature and semi-structural interview data with 50 Japanese nationals and 109 foreign migrants, it explores how Japan, which sees itself as a relatively racially homogeneous society, operates in response to increasing demands for migrants, and how the structures of the state and interactions of dominant and migrant groups affect migrants’ security. It shows the salience of glocal racial ideologies creating an uneven terrain of migration for migrants from different parts of the world. Specifically, the Japanese state grants work visas for highly-skilled and specialized labor migrants as it maintains that it only accepts highly-skilled labor migrants, while opening a side-door to recruit Japanese descendants and trainees from the Global South as low-skilled laborers. This bifurcated visa structure reinforces racial hierarchies, where those who are perceived to be from Western societies are deemed as superior foreigners, while those who are from non-Western societies are seen as strangers who are a potential threat to the country’s moral standards. This hierarchy shapes their level of human security.

Keywords

Immigration Japan race

Introduction

One of the primary questions of the sociology of immigration is how do non-natives make rights claims in countries to which they immigrate. While many scholars in Europe and North America continue to investigate migrants’ assimilation, others continue to ask how race and racism are related to projects of immigration and assimilation (e.g. Espiritu, 2003; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001). Since racial and ethnic diversity has existed through colonization and the institution of slavery in Western societies, the anchor points of discussions are often based on a black and white dichotomy or white/non-white dichotomy (e.g. Alba and Nee, 1997). We know less about the salience of race and racism in societies outside the Western hemisphere. Do racial projects remain a salient force in migrants’ human security outside the West, and if, so, what are the mechanisms?

We use the case of contemporary Japan, a highly developed non-Western society, to examine the experiences of diverse groups of migrants to explicate the structures of racial hierarchies and the effects on migrants’ human security. Using existing studies of Japanese immigration and racial relations, along with interview data from 50 Japanese nationals and 109 foreign migrants from diverse backgrounds, we show how the state in a relatively racially homogeneous society responds, much like Western societies, to increasing demands for labor by creating racial hierarchies. However, we argue that the intersection of the West-dominated global racial structures with locally entrenched racial structures acts to sort and sift different migrant groups in Japan based on their nations-of-origin and phenotype. In Japan, despite the official welcoming of Japanese descendant migrants like the Japanese-Brazilians, their nationality becomes the marker to consider them as culturally inferior and as the ‘racial other.’ In contrast, those who are phenotypically distinguishable from the Japanese, but are perceived to be from Western societies, are regarded as culturally superior and idealized by Japanese residents. These forces co-constitute the processes of migrant incorporation and reception, which ultimately shape human security among different migrant groups.

We draw upon the idea of human security especially relating to the ability to lead lives of dignity (see Purkayastha, this monograph issue). Unlike the national security scholarship that prioritizes security of states, the human security framework aims to promote principles of human rights and protect the vulnerable (King and Murray, 2001; Suhrke, 1999). Noble (2005) argues that in assessing human rights and security, we need to assess not only formal rights and protections of individuals, but also community security, which helps us to understand the tensions that may arise between different groups differentiated on the basis of their ethnic, religious, and other statuses. Thus we examine the experiences of different migrant groups in relation to their human security in Japan within the specificity of its historical and political context.

Assimilation, integration, and migrants’ security

The research on migrant assimilation and integration – with the unstated assumption of integration as the road to human security – has traditionally focused on Western countries as migrant receiving nations. The US-focused models claimed that over generations, migrants, through their own efforts, eventually assimilate, sometimes via different paths, into the dominant white Anglo-Saxon middle class group or other segments of US society (e.g. Alba and Nee, 1997; Portes et al., 2005; Zhou, 1997). A variant of this is presented by Portes and Rumbaut (2014), who point out that a state’s openness to specific migrant groups, the reception by the dominant groups in that nation-state, and the social capital within migrant communities together shape assimilation. These assimilationist models are based on the linear conceptualization of modernity where individuals move from less developed societies (i.e. non-white migrants) to the ‘developed’ ones in pursuit of better economic, political, and social opportunities. These models focus on states, yet state practices and the actions of other stakeholders are important for understanding migrants’ security.

Race, the state, and immigration

Many scholars have discussed the active roles states play in controlling migration and granting different levels of access to rights and resources; they analyze how states position migrants within gender, race, and class structures, which affect their reception and ability to exercise their rights (Espiritu, 1999, 2003; Glenn, 2002; Iredale, 2004; Ong, 1996; Purkayastha, 2004). Further critical race theory has elucidated the processes and mechanisms through which states operate to create and manage their racial landscapes (Goldberg, 2002). The meaning and salience of race is perpetually being constituted ideologically, socially, and politically (Lopez, 1996; Omi and Winant, 2014). However, Jessop (1990) emphasizes the contingent nature of the state and its operation within the context of capitalist political economy and the specificity of its history. Within this context, state projects, which are a set of state policies or agencies unified around a particular issue or goal, balance the interests of stakeholders, such as state officials, economic leaders, and social activists through the management of the racial landscape.

A key facet of migrants’ security is how states ascribe boundaries on migrant groups; states play active roles in sifting and sorting people hierarchically based on phenotypic differences in Western societies (e.g. Omi and Winant, 2014). As the modern state developed in Europe, the presence of non-Europeans within national boundaries was perceived as a threat to the state’s stability; the state imposed phenotypic hierarchies to uphold the ideology of a homogeneous national identity. Subsequently, racial hierarchies have been strategically deployed by many states and other stakeholders in state projects by utilizing economic, legal, and cultural forces to maintain and promote the white European’s (or other white dominant states’) power, privilege, and property while excluding racial others from accessing the same resources (Goldberg, 2002). Thus, the racial state projects have always been integral to the operation and maintenance of the legitimacy of nation-states that shape aspects of their members’ human security.

The mechanisms of racialization that create insecurities for migrants are not based on phenotypes alone. Migrants’ cultures are differently marked, as state agencies classify migrants’ cultural backgrounds as either desirable or undesirable. This appraisal and categorization affect immigrants’ access to institutional resources, which significantly affects their access to other resources and thus human security (Ong, 1996). Moreover, as Glenn (2002) shows, local actors, formally and informally, act to uphold the dominant group’s interests within particular local contexts.

Other scholars have underscored the salience of both global and local processes in affecting the racial state projects and their actual effects on individuals as racial meanings and behaviors are enacted and enforced (Batur-VanderLippe and Feagin, 1999; Bonilla-Silva, 2000; Glenn, 2002; Goldberg, 2002). They have emphasized that these racial ideologies travel and interact with embedded hierarchies in other societies. As Kim (2006) has shown, the presentation of white superiority through global media shapes the perceptions of people in other countries.

While these global racial ideologies are important, we argue it is also important to explore how they intersect with locally existing ideologies. Thus, using Japan as the case, this study elucidates how Japan’s racial state projects operate within the global political-economic environment and Western racial hegemony, so that the racial projects intersect to shape hierarchies of migrants. Further, how are these racial ideologies enacted in the day-to-day interactions between Japanese nationals and foreign residents? How do the global ideologies, which are based on the white and non-white binaries, play out in places where the dominant group is not white? More importantly, how do the specificities of the racial structures and ideologies substantively influence the level of migrants’ human security?

Methods

We employed semi-structured interviews with both foreign residents in Japan and Japanese individuals to capture nuanced dynamics of social forces. In addition, we analyzed existing literature on policies, the state, dominant cultural representations, and governmental documents, in order to situate the participant responses within a broader social context.

Interview data presented in this study mainly come from a larger study with in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a total of 159 participants; Table 1 summarizes their demographics. We use the term foreign residents in this article to indicate a variety of people who are short-term and long-term migrants in Japan. Interviews were conducted in the Chubu region, by the first author, mainly in and around Nagoya, a city with the third largest economy and the fourth largest population size in Japan. Nagoya is the capital of Aichi Prefecture, where the population density of foreign residents was the second highest in Japan in the year 2011, following Tokyo, although Aichi Prefecture ranked third in the number of foreign residents (9.67%) among all the prefectures (Ministry of Justice, 2012). Interview data with Japanese-Brazilians were initially collected from mid-June to mid-August of 2007 and in the summers of 2008 and 2009 to trace their experiences as people with Japanese roots but who lived in Japan as foreigners. (The concentration of Japanese-Brazilians in the Chubu region guided this focus on Nagoya and its surroundings.) As the scope of our research was extended, we conducted interviews with other foreign residents and Japanese nationals between November 2010 and early May 2011, and again in June 2012.

Table 1.

Number of participants.

Description
Japanese-Brazilian	63	Japanese-Brazilians, their spouses and adult children
Other foreign residents	46	From 17 countries, 5 continents (excludes Antarctica)
Japanese nationals	50

The participant population was diversified by strategically incorporating individuals from different backgrounds. We recruited Japanese-Brazilian participants through snowball sampling. We started with four different strands of contacts which were obtained through personal ties, followed by snowball sampling. Other foreign resident participants were first recruited from existing personal ties, social websites, religious institutions, and ‘ethnic’ stores. We diversified participants in terms of their nation-states-of-origin, socio-economic status, visa (legal) status, length of stay in Japan, phenotypic appearances, and religious affiliations by limiting the number of references from one informant to no more than three. Japanese participants were also recruited from existing personal ties, and through personal references from those participants. In addition, participants were recruited in public spaces (downtown areas, university campuses, large parks, etc.) in order to diversify the participant population.¹

Japan provides an excellent case to examine how theories developed in Western societies might apply to non-Western societies; Japan is economically developed and is a migrant attracting country, but is not ‘Western.’ We ask, how does the Japanese state, where the ideology of racial homogeneity has been so salient (Lie, 2004), operate and manage the demands for foreign labor while attempting to uphold the myth of racial homogeneity? This question helps us untangle the issues of human security.

Findings

The racial state: Creating and managing foreigners and strangers in Japan

A key aspect of migrant security is the relative degree of welcome or rejection a migrant group experiences; this, in turn, depends on the boundaries groups encounter. Historically, as Japan became a modern state, being Japanese was a distinct racial category and the dominant racial ideology positioned the Japanese as racially superior to other Asians (Hirowatari, 1994). This racial ideology helped the state to distinguish Japanese nationals from those in and from other Asian countries during Japan’s imperial aggression as the Japanese empire became more multi-ethnic (Oguma, 2002). Consequently, the salient racial boundary was drawn based not on phenotypic distinctions, but on the ideologies about individuals’ nation-states-of-origin (and cultures attributed to these nations). After the end of the Second World War, Japan began to integrate into the global political-economic system dominated by Western powers, especially the US. The intensifying political and economic alignment with the US, together with an immersion into the globalized racial ideology wherein whiteness signifies racial dominance, became integrated into the original Japanese racial structure (Kozakai, 1996). It is also after the war when the myth of homogeneous Japan began to dominate, as the number of foreign imperial subjects plummeted (Oguma, 2002). Furthermore the increasing number of mixed race children born to Japanese mothers and US soldiers was discussed as a threat to the racial homogeneity of Japan in both popular and scholarly debates (Roebuck, 2016).

The postwar Japanese immigration laws and regulations reflect the state’s political agendas and its negotiations with the global forces. The number of foreign migrants residing in Japan remains very small, but the Japanese state continues to invest in managing migrant populations. The immigration regime effectively safeguards the ideology of homogeneous Japan by limiting the available paths of entry for foreign migrants. Unlike many other post-industrial societies, demands from the business sector to allow mid- to low-skilled migrants have been formally denied by policy makers for fear of the potential social costs and losing votes, as foreigners from ‘poor countries’ are often viewed as dangerous and criminals by Japanese (Hirowatari, 1994; Suzuki, 2007). However, Japan has strategically incorporated some migrant workers by opening a ‘side-door’ for mid- to low-skilled labor migrants under visa categories not formally designated for full-time workers; examples include the category of Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) and trainee visas for manufacturing sectors. Foreigners who qualify and thus are formally accepted to work in Japan are further bifurcated by the job sectors in which they are admitted to participate, such as English education, corporate transfers, and entertainment sectors. Often, the different levels of human capital they possess directly translate into the level of prestige associated with their occupations. Hence, the state’s immigration regime, by sifting and sorting who can enter, from which parts of the world, and for what purposes, acts as a primary mechanism for maintaining and reinforcing racial ideologies and hierarchies. This, in turn, translates into the level of human security that migrants experience.

Immigration policies and presence of racial others in contemporary Japan

After the end of the Second World War, from 1945 to 1979, Japan’s position towards immigration and immigrants was characterized by exclusion, discrimination, and assimilation, reflecting the legacy of wartime management of imperial subjects which severely limited foreign residents’ human security. Greatly influenced by the immigration policies in the US, Japan implemented the Immigration Control Order in 1951. The Order introduced a ‘permanent resident’ category for foreign residents who emigrated from former colonies and remained in the country after the war. This category served as a way of denying the social and political rights of non-Japanese residing in Japan (Kondo, 2002).

Between 1980 and 1989, Japan’s immigration policies focused on equality and ‘internationalization.’ In response to the ratification of the international human rights treaties, and international pressure, the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Acts replaced the previous Order in 1982. Further, a series of policy changes took place regarding permanent residents such as the elimination of citizenship requirements for welfare and social service programs (Kondo, 2002). However, these changes in legal codes did not yield substantive changes in determining who could enter Japan, for what purpose, and the rate of immigration.

One of the most recent shifts in Japan’s immigration policy came about through the passage of reform at the end of 1989. The reform permitted the entry and residence of Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants of foreign citizens) up to third generations and their immediate family members without any restrictions on their labor participation. This reform was introduced to tackle issues of increased numbers of illegal foreign workers and address shortages of labor in the 3D (Demanding, Dirty, Dangerous) jobs that Japanese nationals avoid. It also increased the penalty to the employers of illegal immigrants while supplying much needed labor by not prohibiting Nikkeijin from obtaining employment in Japan (Komai, 2000). The largest migrant population under this visa category has been Brazilians of Japanese origin.

Due to the absence of visa categories that formally allow low-skilled labor migrants to enter Japan and rigid administration of immigration control, foreign populations residing in Japan remain significantly lower than other high-income countries. According to the Ministry of Justice Immigration Bureau, there were 2,476,103 legal foreign residents in Japan at the end of 2014, which was 1.95% of the total population. Except for a slight decrease between 2009 and 2011, the number of foreign legal residents has been steadily increasing since 1955. Of these, Chinese individuals comprised the largest group (734,506; 29.7%), followed by Koreans (542,635; 21.9%, roughly 70% of them living in Japan for most of their lives/born and raised in Japan), Filipino (235,695; 9.52%), and Brazilians (177,704; 7.18%). Thus, among those who reside in Japan as foreign residents, the overwhelming majority are from China and Korea, most of whom possess a similar phenotypic appearance to Japanese individuals. Further, many of the Japanese-Brazilians and Japanese-Peruvians are hereditarily Japanese. The largest group from the Western nations are Americans, ranked the eighth largest group, yet their population size is only 3.2% of all foreign residents (79,726).

The immigration regime has strategically controlled the entrance of foreign residents in Japan; it also served as a conduit of the racial state project to maintain the ideology of homogeneous Japan by designating status labels to foreign migrants based on their human capital, and the socio-economic status of their home countries. Thus, the bifurcated visa structure for accepting immigrants, whereby those from the ‘developed’ societies tend to enter to Japan as highly-skilled workers and others do so via the side-door to fulfill Japan’s labor needs, serves to uphold Japanese understanding of racial hierarchy. Global racial hegemony depicts those who are white and/or from the West as racially superior, while others are deemed inferior to Japanese due to the level of development and hierarchy of their nation-states. Hence the mechanism of marking phenotypes, so prevalent in the Western hemisphere, to mark racial hierarchies works somewhat differently in Japan. What emerges as a striking feature – as we discuss later – is the positioning of Japan under the US in the global political-economic hierarchy (McCormack, 2007).

In sum, the Japanese state actively maintains its ideology of racial homogeneity through immigration control while meeting the different interests of its stakeholders. The state’s racial ideology and practices in contemporary times intersect with the globalized racial ideology promulgated by the US. In the following sections, we show how these racial ideologies are understood by Japanese nationals who enforce racial boundaries at the local level.

Local reception of others, strangers, and foreigners

Japanese perspectives

Japan’s racially-configured, stratified immigration regulations create particular kinds of social reality for both Japanese nationals and foreign residents. As in other countries, many Japanese nationals enforce racial codes and behaviors at the local level, affecting the level of human security experienced by different migrant groups. As a remark by the former governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, suggests (Sims, 2000), foreigners from the Global South are largely perceived as threats to Japan’s security while those who are perceived to be from the Western nations tend to be understood as superior to Japanese (Kozakai, 1996). This is also reflected in the discourse of Japanese nationals.

For example, Hiroko-san’s account represents the way the majority of Japanese respondents classified foreign racial others. She is a 34-year-old Japanese female who had studied and worked in the US and had been married to a Japanese-American. Her account shows the understanding of two different groups of migrants:

Interviewer:

Who do you think are foreigners who currently live in Japan?

Hiroko-san:

Well, I wonder. I think there are many categories, like based on race. There are like the category of people who came from developed countries, like expats and corporate workers, and others who came from developing nations, like from Brazil or Southeast Asia. These are the two large categories, and among the former, there are [a] category of people who teach English conversation, and those who work for corporations.

Here, her understanding of foreign residents in Japan reflects the general patterns of foreign migrants in Japan filtered by the state’s immigration regime and reflective of the racial hierarchy prevalent in Japan: those who come from ‘developed’ and thus Western countries with white collar occupations, and those who are from developing countries such as Brazil. She did not specifically state the purpose of their residence in Japan, but as she juxtaposed those from developed and developing countries, and from other parts of her narratives, her understanding of those from developing nations was that they were workers in non-white collar sectors. This binary, of Western and non-Western foreigners, where the former were viewed with more positive attributes than the latter, surfaced repeatedly during the interviews with the majority of Japanese nationals.

Hiroko-san’s views also show the pattern of using abstract images in describing white/Western groups while she used her actual observations about non-white/non-Western foreigners. In addition, the following narrative also highlights the bifurcating tendency of positively viewing white/Western foreigners and negative perceptions about non-white/non-Western foreigners:

Interviewer:

What do you think is the definition and descriptions of Westerners?

Hiroko-san:

It’s very ambiguous, but what come[s] to my mind first is white people, like in white society.

Interviewer:

Where are they from?

Hiroko-san:

Westerners are like, in Europe, very ambiguous image, but big white people in Europe, Australia, and North America. I know it’s not true and there are racial diversities, but …

Interviewer:

What about non-Western foreigners?

Hiroko-san:

I wonder if it is discriminatory, but, well, non-Western foreigners are like, illegal workers, like from Pakistan, who were around in the area when I used to live in Nagano. And factories nearby had, I wonder where they were from, like South American, Portuguese, Brazilians. Those were the people from foreign countries who lived in the neighborhood when I was a child, in that area. So that’s the image. A little negative image. Working in factories, and Filipinas working at Filipina bars.

Her accounts show that she understands racial hierarchy based on the foreigners’ nation-state-of-origin, linked to its perceived level of economic development. This is consistent with findings of past studies (Kozakai, 1996; Tanabe, 2004) that Japanese people tend to use levels of economic development of nation-states to understand the location of foreigners on the racial hierarchy. Given Hiroko-san’s experiences of living and working in Chicago, it is likely that she had witnessed the racial diversity that exists in the US and people in a persistent poverty cycle. Yet, the racial reality within the contemporary Japanese societal context appears to further reinforce the racial stereotypes associated with foreigners from different nation-states-of-origin. Indeed, many Japanese participants commented that since many migrants from the Global South came to Japan desperate to work in low-paying jobs and due to their ‘backward’ cultures, they were worried about increasing crime rates and breakdown of community moral order. However, almost none of them mentioned any concerns about migrants from the Global North.

Japanese-Brazilian experiences

Since the early 1990s, as Japan experienced labor shortages and heightened political concerns about undocumented migrants, the state instituted laws to encourage foreign nationals of Japanese origin (Nikkeijin) to migrate to Japan. In doing so, the state anticipated its ability to maintain racial homogeneity even with the new influx of low-skilled migrant workers. One such group that ‘came back’ was Brazilians of Japanese origin (Tsuda, 1999). However, even as immigration laws appeared to welcome Japanese origin migrants, the reception on the ground was less enthusiastic, largely due to their status as Brazilians. Further, phenotypic variances among Brazilian residents provide an interesting insight into the way Japanese conceptualizations of race are being applied to them as an intersection of nationality and phenotype. Yamanaka (2003) contends that the media, as an institution, facilitate the state to disseminate the ideology of the ‘monoethnic Japan,’ and thus perpetuate Japanese people’s internalized understanding of non-Japanese nationals as ‘others’ who are inherently different from Japanese and do not belong to the country. Many participants in our study felt that the media overly exaggerate ‘Brazilian’ or ‘Nikkeijin’ as identities of perpetrators when reporting criminal incidents, while ignoring the contributions that they make to the Japanese economy. Consequently, Japanese people over-generalize the negative image of Brazilians as dangerous criminals. As Brazilians, they were also often perceived to be racially and culturally inferior irrespective of their Japanese lineage, which often affected the way they were treated when interacting with Japanese nationals.

Many participants shared their feelings of puzzlement at being mistreated by Japanese people, especially in comparison to the favorable treatment bestowed on other foreigners from the ‘First World’ countries and/or who appear to be of European descent. They felt that they experienced greater discrimination than other foreign nationals. Felipe, who was a hereditarily full-Japanese third-generation Brazilian journalist, in his mid-thirties and had lived in Japan for two years at the time of interview, stated:

There’s one thing that I never understand. Most of Japanese people treat Americans like gods. Maybe not like gods. But [to] everything from America [Japanese people react like] ‘oh, it’s wonderful!’ I don’t think we have to create hate feelings because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But I don’t see the reason for all these ‘America is wonderful.’ Japanese people, they don’t see, or know me, [that] I’m Brazilian. But my parents are Japanese. I have more relations with Japan than America-jin (Americans). I don’t see the reason why Brazilians have worse treatment than other people. Maybe this is partly from propaganda, information from media transmitted to Japanese people.

As this quote illustrates, many Brazilians felt that Japanese people ‘love and worship’ Americans and Europeans as superior to themselves. They witnessed Japanese people interacting with Euro-descent foreigners with respect and patience, which they did not feel they received to the same degree. Many Japanese-Brazilian respondents, who were deemed as low-level migrants by Japanese nationals, experienced subtle acts of racism that limited their ability to access security. They stated how these racial ideologies translated into understated yet negative experiences as they interacted with Japanese individuals. This is consistent with Noble’s (2005) argument that marginalized migrants often endure subtle acts of racism in their day-to-day lives, which saliently affect the level of comfort and ultimately their sense of stability and security in the host society.

Many of the participants have either experienced or witnessed the denial of services based on their foreign nationality as the most overt expression of mistreatment. It remains legal in Japan to post signs such as ‘Japanese Only’ and thus to overtly discriminate against foreigners by denying services (Aridou, 2003). Some participants have seen ‘Japanese Only’ signs in Portuguese in areas with a high concentration of Brazilian residents, which implies that those signs are directly targeted toward Brazilians. When asked how Japanese people would know that he was not Japanese, Rafael, who was hereditary Japanese with the ability to communicate in Japanese with a slight accent, stated:

It gives out when I talk, you know, that I’m not Japanese. And when [Japanese people] learn about that after I speak, I feel that they avoid me. I have already known that it happens, but it still makes me sad when things like that happen. And it happens often. For example, when I go to a bar, they tell me ‘no foreigners allowed,’ and so on. Such things, like denial of services, are bad aspects of life in Japan.

As Shikama (2005) argues, having a command of the Japanese language is perceived as the most important element in assessing ‘true Japaneseness’ among Japanese people. Yet, for those Japanese-Brazilians who phenotypically appear Japanese, the inability to speak Japanese without an accent becomes the key indication for Japanese people in distinguishing them as foreigners. This assessment of foreignness sometimes leads the Japanese to legitimate other types of harsh treatment toward Japanese-Brazilians. Many of the participants had experienced situations where they felt that they were treated as ‘less of a person.’ Thus, in addition to their limited access to institutional resources as ‘non-labor migrants,’ they face limited political human security as being ‘racially inferior’ to Japanese.

Brazilians who phenotypically appear as white are often mistaken for Americans or Europeans and treated with respect and patience by Japanese. For Japanese nationals, their phenotypic features as Caucasian are linked with a higher class status than Japanese since Caucasians are (mis)understood to be a homogeneous group from the Western nations which are ‘superior to Japan.’ Further, their obvious ‘foreign’ looks legitimize their unfamiliarity with the Japanese language and routines. Consequently, many Japanese-Brazilians observed both their fellow Brazilians and other white-looking foreigners being treated favorably by Japanese, based on their phenotypic appearance. Louis, a Brazilian of European descent, replied as follows when asked whether his experience had been different from his Japanese-descent wife’s experience:

Yes. Sometimes in subways people ask me ‘where in America are you from?’ ‘No I’m from Brazil.’ And they’re like ‘oh really?’ Sometimes when I wear suit with a tie, people ask me ‘what do you do’ and I tell them ‘I’m a journalist.’ ‘Oh you are from another class.’ Why? Just because I have different work or wearing different clothes? I’m just saying everybody [Brazilians] here come to work as Dekasegi [migrant workers]. I think Japanese people have sometimes preoccupation. If you have a nice car or nice house, or if you come to work in suits, they look at you differently. Sometimes you wear T-shirt then [you are] Abunai [dangerous], Kowai [scary]. Like classism. If [foreigners] look like [they are from] lower class, they treat you differently. Sometimes they don’t know where you’re from. If you look like a ‘foreigner,’ you’re American.

As this quote illustrates, Japanese people link the perceived class position to phenotypic appearance and a stereotypic understanding of individuals’ nation-states of origin. Since Japanese people ‘love and worship’ Americans and Europeans, they treat those who appear American or European as superior to themselves and thus with respect, while regarding other foreigners as poor and dangerous. Thus, local actors become enforcers of racial boundaries and behaviors, which affect migrants’ ability to access human security.

Japanese people in general are unaware of the true population make-up of other countries and thus unfamiliar with the racial/ethnic diversity that exists within a nation-state, due to their world view through ‘homogeneous Japan’ as a foundation. Their understandings of foreigners and foreign countries are also limited. Thus, many Japanese automatically perceive people of Euro-descent as a homogeneous group from America or Europe who are culturally superior to themselves. Other foreigners are largely understood as from ‘Third World’ countries, with the stereotypic assumptions that they are poor, uneducated, culturally backward, and/or dangerous. Consequently, those from ‘Third World’ countries are understood to be in Japan illegally to make money, possibly through illicit practices. Further, media representations of Brazilians and/or foreigners from the ‘Third World’ reinforce Japanese people’s negative views of foreigners, which can be expressed through their individual acts toward foreigners and discrimination sanctioned by the state, which limits migrants’ human security.

Salience of nationality: Japanese-American experiences

Two Japanese-American participants in this study, Gary and Joyce, had similar stories of being assumed to be Japanese, just like many Japanese-Brazilians did. However, the way they were able to negotiate those encounters and perceived those exchanges were quite different from those experienced by many Japanese-Brazilians. Joyce, a fourth-generation Japanese-American female English teacher in her late twenties, described typical encounters with Japanese:

If I try to order something, sometimes my pronunciation is a little strange, or I don’t understand the questions they’re asking me, I’ll just look confused. … Sometimes, it’s easier for me to not speak Japanese at all and speak all in English. So I just tell people that I’m from Hawai’i. It’s easier. Most times, they say, ‘iina!’ [I’m jealous!]

Here, her ability to use English in the conversation as well as her explanation that she was from Hawai’i seemed to shape her interactions with Japanese individuals. Hence, although she shared her experiences of being treated like she was a little child when she could not express herself fully in Japanese, she had the option of switching to present herself as an American. Once she began speaking in English, the overall treatment she received from Japanese strangers was positive. Further, in response to a question regarding discrimination based on her nationality or not being able to speak the language, Joyce stated:

Joyce:

I don’t think so. I mean … umm, no I don’t think I’m treated unfairly. I think maybe I’m treated differently like because they think I’m Japanese …

Interviewer:

So people would assume you’re able to speak Japanese?

Joyce:

Yea, but I don’t blame them!

Interviewer:

Does it get frustrating? Or discouraging? In comparison to peers who are white, different expectations or different approach or reactions?

Joyce:

Yea sometimes I feel like if [her white friend] says something, then the person listening will try to listen better, and maybe she doesn’t say it perfectly, but then they’d try to think about what she was trying to say. But if I said the same thing the same way, they would just be like, what are you saying?! Yea.

Here, she does acknowledge the differences in Japanese people’s expectations between her and her colleagues who were phenotypically white. However, unlike many Japanese-Brazilian participants, she was often in the company of her friends and colleagues, who were also English teachers in Japan. Hence, she often displayed her ‘Americanness’ by having the company of other foreigners from Western countries and by talking with them in English when she was in public. Later in the interview, she stated that she could not recall any negative experiences in Japan, and that ‘Japan is a really easy country to live in as a foreigner.’ This perception of her life in Japan was quite different from the ones widely shared among Japanese-Brazilians since her American status signaled her racial status to be different from the ones assigned to Japanese-Brazilians based on their nationality.

Salience of nationality and phenotype: Experiences of phenotypically non-Asian residents in Japan

Japanese media and education further promote the positive racial ideologies associated with whiteness and Westernness (Krauss, 1996; Kubota, 1998; McCormack, 2007), which are often linked to their perceived economic and cultural supremacy to non-white Japanese individuals. In this section, narratives of participants show how the Japanese understanding of immigrants and racial hierarchy influence and shape the social realities of phenotypically non-Asian foreign residents.

To begin, hegemonic whiteness, often perceived as Americanness, generally contributes to positive experiences for white individuals. For instance, in Nicole’s case, it was whiteness that led this blond-haired, blue-eyed American English teacher to be treated favorably.

Everywhere I go, if I use chopsticks, it’s like ‘oh jouzu [you’re good]’ or like if I say one word in Japanese, ‘oh you’re so good at Japanese’ but that’s not real. … Sometimes I feel special because everyone’s like ‘oh jouzu [you’re good]!’ and I’m like, oh yea! So I’m really, actually I’m worried about moving back [to the US] and not being special any more. Because I do think that, like, my husband looks Japanese so he opens his mouth and he can’t speak fluently, he’s really good but he can’t speak fluently, people look at him like he’s stupid or suddenly treat him differently. Whereas I say one word and they’re like ‘Woooow’ so no one has high expectations, but I am their, I feel like I’m Japan’s definition of [an American] English teacher … . I fit that profile, so I just follow that profile. Because it’s been really great. I get lots of free things. I get like treated nicely. Rarely have I been treated badly because of my looks or being a foreigner.

This quote shows the advantages she experienced as a white American in social settings. Nicole’s description of her experience is slightly different from Joyce’s, because her whiteness, which signifies her Americanness, mitigates her limited cultural competence.

Together with Japanese-American experiences, Nicole’s narrative shows positive attitudes toward Westerners/Americans among Japanese nationals. Moreover, unlike the racial marginalization of blacks in Western societies, phenotypically black individuals also supported the claim that being perceived as American invites positive social interactions with Japanese nationals that affect their level of access to human security. Salience of foreignness to be linked to being American or Westerner, together with favorable views toward Americans and Westerners, also affects other foreigners who can pass as coming from Western countries. Adusa, a black male from Ghana, stated:

Long time ago, if you see a black man, they think only American. … When you meet Japanese, you tell him or her that you are from Africa, he doesn’t want to talk to you anymore. Girls don’t want to talk to you anymore. But if you tell her I’m from America, she’s very happy with you. That is very common. Because of that, before, not so much now, many black guys lied. I’m from America, I’m from England. People are like, ‘Jamaica, sugoi!’ [cool!]

Here, his account shows that the status not only of being from Western countries and/or America but also from culturally ‘cool’ places such as Jamaica helped him solicit favorable treatment from Japanese individuals. Japanese people’s general lack of exposure to foreigners and knowledge about those who are not Japanese allowed him to pass as a person from a Western country. Likewise, this lack of understanding and knowledge about foreign others allows dominant racial ideologies to be disseminated and internalized among Japanese individuals without much critical reflection. Thus, the dominant racial ideologies in Japan reflect the global hierarchy of nation-states, the Japanese state’s racial project, which subsequently is internalized by Japanese individuals who enforce racial behaviors at the local level. This, in turn, directly affects the level of human security, based on the perceived desirableness of different foreigner groups.

Discussion and conclusion

Consistent with the findings of critical race theorists in the US (e.g. Goldberg, 2002; Omi and Winant, 2014), this article documents that the Japanese state is indeed a racial state which actively seeks to maintain the ideology of homogeneous Japan while also responding to other stakeholders’ demands such as supply of foreign labor and the necessary political alignment with the US. In doing so, the Japanese racial state deploys immigration control as a mechanism through which it balances the need for labor while maintaining its formal stance as only accepting highly-skilled labor migrants. Indeed, the creation of a visa category for Japanese descendants of foreign nationals keenly reflect the state’s intention of having them as laborers while attempting to maintain the ideology of racial homogeneity (Komai, 2000; Tsuda, 1999). Further, since immigrants who reside in Japan are bifurcated by the available visa categories and the different levels of human capital they require, they mostly appear to represent the racial reality that parallels Japanese understanding of racial hierarchy which is linked to their home countries’ level of economic development (Kozakai, 1996; Tanabe, 2004). Thus, whiteness and Western-ness are deemed as racially superior, while those from Global South are understood to be culturally backward and potentially harmful to the preservation of moral standards in the community. This positive depiction of whiteness and Western-ness in turn supports the state’s need to maintain positive political economic alignment with the US (Kubota, 1998; McCormack, 2007). At the same time, it is important to note how people deemed phenotypically black or Japanese can gain status if they are assumed to be American.

Further, this study highlights the important implications of the state’s racial projects on immigrants’ human security as the bifurcated immigration structure not only keeps many immigrants from the Global South marginalized, with limited access to institutional resources, but also their perceived racial status and meanings shape the way they are treated in their everyday lives. The narratives of Japanese-Brazilians show how even those who are Japanese in lineage are treated as inferior as they interact with Japanese residents, despite the official ‘welcome’ by the state. Their racial status positions them as culturally backward and potentially a threat to the national well-being. Their experiences and human security are in stark contrast to those of Japanese-Americans and others who are perceived to be Westerners. Since human security is conceptualized in terms of absence of threats to survival, the ability to live lives of dignity, the structural positioning of these different migrants, via state racial projects, sets them up for unequally secure lives in terms of jobs, housing, and everyday treatment. These differences in human security do not exactly mirror the racial stratifications in the West. The nation-of-origin factor becomes an important facilitator in shaping their human security.

Many scholars and activists (McCormack, 2007; Penney and Wakefield, 2008; Takayama, 2008) have expressed concerns about the Japanese state’s neonationalist turn in recent years, which has important implications for racial justice. Japan’s stagnant economic growth while the economy of China and South Korea grew strong, the old territorial disputes with China and South Korea, and the threat of attacks from North Korea all contributed to popularize nationalist state projects in recent years. These political climates have also affected recent elections for important political positions, where many candidates actively proclaim their racist views and policy agendas, with some actually winning those important positions. As the number of foreign residents from China, South Korea, and other Asian countries increases, there must be practical institutional interventions to enhance human security for all migrants.

Footnotes

Funding

This research has been partially funded by the Dissertation Fellowship from the Humanities Institute and Graduate School, University of Connecticut.

Notes

Author biographies

Miho Iwata is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Towson University, USA. Her research seeks to explain social inequalities in the US and Japan using an intersectional approach. Her current project examines the Japanese concepts of ‘race’ and racial hierarchy, and how they affect foreign migrant residents in Japan. She has co-authored As the Leaves Turn Gold: Asian Americans and Experiences of Aging, which documents the challenges and opportunities of aging for Asian Americans.

Kumiko Nemoto is Professor, Department of Global Affairs, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. Her research largely focuses on gender, labor, organizations, and management. She has recently examined organizational and institutional mechanisms and consequences of gender in Japanese businesses and labor relations in comparison with those in the United States. Her most recent book, Too Few Women at the Top: The Persistence of Inequality in Japan, was published by Cornell University Press in 2016.

References

Alba

Victor

(1997) Rethinking assimilation theory for a new era of immigration. International Migration Review 31(4): 826–874.

Aridou

(2003) Japanese Only: The Otaru Hot Spring Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten.

Batur-VanderLippe

Feagin

(1999) Racial and ethnic inequality and struggle from the colonial era to the present: Drawing the global color line. Research in Politics and Society 6: 3–21.

Bonilla-Silva

(2000) ‘This is a white country’: The racial ideology of the western nations of the world system. Sociological Inquiry 70(2): 188–214.

Espiritu

(1999) Gender and labor in Asian immigrant families. American Behavioral Scientist 42(4): 628–647.

Espiritu

(2003) Asian American Women and Men: Love, Labor, Laws. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Glenn

(2002) Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goldberg

(2002) The Racial State. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hirowatari

(1994) Foreigners and the ‘Foreigner Question’ under Japanese Law. Tokyo: The Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo.

10.

Hondagneu-Sotelo

(2001) Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

11.

Iredale

(2004) Gender, immigration policies and accreditation: Valuing the skills of professional women migrants. Geoforum 36: 155–166.

12.

Jessop

(1990) State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

13.

Kim

(2006) ‘Seoul-America’ on America’s ‘Soul’: South Koreans and Korean immigrants negative global white racial ideology. Critical Sociology 32(2–3): 381–402.

14.

King

Murray

CJL

(2001) Rethinking human security. Political Science Quarterly 116(4): 585–610.

15.

Komai

(2000) Immigrants in Japan. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 9(3): 311–326.

16.

Kondo

(2002) The development of immigration policy in Japan. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 11(4): 415–435.

17.

Kozakai

(1996) Ibunka Juyou no Paradox [Paradox of Acceptance of Foreign Culture]. Tokyo: Asahi Sensho.

18.

Krauss

(1996) Media coverage of U.S.–Japanese relations. In: Pharr

Krauss

(eds) Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 243–274.

19.

Kubota

(1998) Ideologies of English in Japan. World Englishes 17(3): 295–306.

20.

Lie

(2004) Multiethnic Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

21.

Lopez

IFH

(1996) White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press.

22.

McCormack

(2007) Client State: Japan in the American Embrace. London: Verso.

23.

Ministry of Justice Immigration Bureau (2012) Statistics of foreign residents. Available at: www.moj.go.jp/housei/toukei/toukei_ichiran_touroku.html (accessed 11 March 2016).

24.

Noble

(2005) The discomfort of strangers: Racism, incivility and ontological security in a relaxed and comfortable nation. Journal of Intercultural Studies 26(1/2): 107–120.

25.

Oguma

(2002) A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images, trans. Askew

. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.

26.

Omi

Winant

(2014) Racial Formation in the United States. New York: Routledge.

27.

Ong

(1996) Cultural citizenship as subject-making. Current Anthropology 37(5): 737–762.

28.

Penney

Wakefield

(2008) Right angles: Examining accounts of Japanese neo-nationalism. Pacific Affairs 4: 537–555.

29.

Portes

Rumbaut

(2014) Immigrant America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

30.

Portes

Fernandez-Kelly

William

(2005) Segmented assimilation on the ground: The new second generation in early adulthood. Ethnic and Racial Studies 28(6): 1000–1040.

31.

Purkayastha

(2004) Skilled migration and cumulative disadvantage: The case of highly qualified Asian Indian immigrant women in the US. Geoforum 36(2): 181–196.

32.

Roebuck

(2016) Orphans by design: ‘Mixed-blood’ children, child welfare, and racial nationalism in postwar Japan. Japanese Studies 36(2): 191–212.

33.

Shikama

(2005) Japan as a host country: Attitude toward migrants. International Journal of Language 175/176: 179–191.

34.

Sims

(2000) Tokyo chief starts new furor, on immigrants. The New York Times, 11 April.

35.

Suhrke

(1999) Human security and the interests of states. Security Dialogue 30(3): 265–276.

36.

Suzuki

(2007) Carework and migration: Japanese perspectives on the Japan–Philippines economic partnership agreement. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 16(3): 357–381.

37.

Takayama

(2008) Japan’s Ministry of Education ‘becoming the Right’: Neo-liberal restructuring and the Ministry’s struggles for political legitimacy. Globalisation, Societies and Education 6(2): 131–146.

38.

Tanabe

(2004) Kunibetsu-koukando kara miru ‘Nihonjin’ no Sekaininchi: JGSS dai-ichi yobichousa wo mochiite. Nihonban General Social Surveys Kenkyuronbun Shu 3: 199–213.

39.

Tsuda

(1999) The motivation to migrate: The ethnic and sociocultural constitution of the Japanese-Brazilian return-migration system. Economic Development and Cultural Change 48(1): 1–31.

40.

Yamanaka

(2003) Feminization of Japanese Brazilian labor migration to Japan. In: Lesser

(ed.) Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese Brazilians and Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 163–200.

41.

Zhou

(1997) Segmented assimilation: Issues, controversies, and recent research on the new second generation. International Migration Review 31(4): 975–1008.