JAPAN: Becoming International, But Not Quite

• by Suvendrini Kakuchi (tokyo)
• Tuesday, December 21, 2010
• Inter Press Service

'I usually telephone a week ahead to reserve a table,' says Eiko Yorozu, who has developed a taste for ‘vadda’ and ‘dosa’ — Indian fare similar to doughnuts and pancakes (but made with lentil flour) — that are among the offerings at the seven-year-old Dhaba.

But Dhaba is not the only non-Japanese restaurant that has been a hit among locals, a development that many are pointing to as proof of Tokyo’s cosmopolitan character.

Indeed, this bustling city of 13 million now boasts of a reputation of being able to offer the best not only in international cuisine, but also in fashion, the arts, and, yes, technology. And yet some observers caution against reading too much into Japan’s supposed openness to the rest of the world.

Insists Meiji University professor Yasuaki Onuma, an expert in international law and immigration: 'Japan falls miserably short when it comes to acquiring a truly respected reputation for being an international country.'

Cultural expert Yoshitomi Hibino apparently agrees. She notes that while Japanese flock to eat foreign delicacies prepared by foreign chefs, there is very little attempt among locals, including the media, to try to appreciate and understand the culture that developed such cuisines.

'There is nothing wrong with enjoying good Indian food,' says Hibino, referring to Dhaba’s popularity. 'Tokyo’s internationalisation, however, is restricted to images or numbers of foreigners. There is no attempt to integrate foreign culture by accepting and respecting their differences.'

Onuma himself says that in the late 1970s, he began researching towards developing policies that would call for opening up the country to foreigners. But he says that his study never quite got off the ground as he had hoped.

'The establishment at that time was reluctant to create a platform that appeared to challenge the carefully nurtured notion that Japan should be proud of its homogeneity,' he explains. 'I see no change even today, three decades later.'

Such thinking, in fact, has helped keep Japan’s non- ethnic Japanese community small, making up only 1.7 percent out of the national population of 120 million. A third of this share is made up of ethnic Koreans, most of whose families settled in this country during the Japanese colonisation of the Korean peninsula.

Coming in second and third in terms of number are the Chinese and Brazilians respectively, most of them employed as chefs or factory or farm workers — sectors that permit working visas to foreigners.

But Kim Bung Ang, whose family has been in Japan for three generations, says non-ethnic Japanese like him often find themselves up against the much-touted national homogeneity that he says is deeply ingrained in the Japanese psyche.

'I was born and brought up here after my grandparents decided to settle (in this country) just after Japan lost World War II,' says Kim, who heads the Korea NGO Centre in Osaka. 'But the way the ethnic Koreans have been treated shows the lack of respect for foreigners’ rights. They continue to be treated as outsiders.'

Postwar Japan, in fact, followed a strict assimilation policy with its major foreign minority populations, the Koreans and Chinese. But Kim and other diversity advocates are now pushing for the local population to respect ethnic cultures instead of forcing foreigners to conform to Japanese ways.

Sometimes, the latter could lead to fatal consequences. Hibono recalls that when the powerful Hanshin earthquake shook up Kobe in the country’s west in 1995, the city had no safety or evacuation instructions in any foreign language to help its then almost 50,000 foreign residents.

But Japan’s insistence to remain 'completely Japanese' has now become a disadvantage in the face of globalisation.

For example, Japanese companies conducting business abroad need to have staff fluent in English or other foreign languages. But since few Japanese have such skills, Japanese companies have been forced to hire foreigners who then have to contend with a corporate system that is not really that accommodating towards non-Japanese.

Onuma, however, says that Japan’s low birth rates have it seriously debating whether to let in more foreigners to boost university student populations or to take in Asian nurses and caregivers. This has led to a slogan of sorts called ‘kokusai ka’ or ‘becoming international’ being bandied about.

Observes Onuma: 'The concept of ‘kokusai ka’ is unique in Japan. The term connotes a kind of fear. People are afraid to become international because they do not have the confidence to accept others who are different.'

'Foreign representation must not be restricted to the best of international restaurants,' he adds. 'Rather, the Japanese (should) grow more confident of themselves by allowing foreigners to live as persons who can practise and follow their own cultures and languages.'

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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