A Japanese Immigration Story

I touched on Japanese-Brazilians in a previous post entitled "Some Japanese are Insufferable Ethnobigots". I'm fascinated with their situation, and that of other Latin-American descendants of the Japanese diaspora. Their history is noble but tragic. In fact, they can be considered among immigration history's worst losers. Their ancestors rolled the dice and, economically speaking, came up with snake eyes. If they had stuck it out in Japan, their descendants would probably be enjoying one of the highest standards of living in the world. Instead, they're now Brazilians and Peruvians.

I've never been to Brazil, but I once visited Peru in the waning days of the Alberto Fujimori presidency. It has terrible problems of poverty, much worse than Mexico. The Japanese-Peruvians were better off than most Peruvians. This is because they have the right to get work visas in Japan. On the streets of Peru there are tons of right-hand drive microvans, some still with Japanese lettering on the side. Japanese-Peruvians buy them used in Japan and bring them over, or Japanese charities donate them to Peru.

I have certain Japanese citizenry rights through my father. My husband asked me recently what I could do in Japan (not that we have the slightest intention of emigrating there). I could get a work visa and with my teaching experience, probably find decent employment as an English tutor or teacher. But other returning ethnic Japanese, the nikkeijin, wouldn't be so qualified. If all they spoke was Portuguese or Spanish, they'd more likely get the jobs cleaning squid in a fishery. They'd save up their money and send it home to their family. The "regular" Japanese would look askance at them.

Japan is in a difficult position due to their aging population. They need a labor base to support their senior citizens. Recently, they've begun letting more Nikkeijin back in. But they refuse to abandon their ideal of a homogenous nation. It has got to change. I'm sure it will change. I tend to criticize Japan pretty harshly in this blog, but I also believe they have the power to change. I get totally disgusted with English commentators who wax poetic about the undying traditions of an immortal and unchanging Japan. Stereotypical garbage! That type of commentary is better suited to describing wax fruit. In fact, there are very few countries that have changed more than Japan has in the last 200 years.

You may also notice in this blog that I consider myself a patriotic American. This country offers me a home in a way that Japan never will... at least probably not in my lifetime. To be quite honest, when I think about the way my life could have gone, and being raised as a hapa in Japan instead of America, I feel like getting down on my knees and kissing the red Georgia clay.

This partly explains my strong sense of empathy for the Latin-American nikkeijin. My feelings about them are not all wrapped up in pity, though. I also feel a sense of envy. They know more about many things than I ever will. I have spent a lot of my life learning Latin-American Spanish, and for several years, I thought I would spend the rest of my life studying Mexican literature. One of the things that fascinated me about Latin-American culture was the parallel approach to immigration and race, the sense that "Latin" histories and "Anglo" histories were like a braid, sometimes converging and sometimes diverging in both suffering and achievements. In studying the history of Latin America, I was able to better understand U.S. history and my own place within it.

As a kind of example, many Mexicans I've talked to share a similar approach to thinking about the history of their colonization. It's a view rooted in cynicism, empathy and pragmatism... much like my feelings towards the returning nikkeijin. It goes something like this. "If the Anglos had colonized Mexico instead of the Spanish, today we'd be just as rich as the United States. The Anglos had the Protestant work ethic down cold. But then again, I might not have been born. Because the Anglos killed all the indigenous people or put them into reservations. The conquistadors were too lazy. They need the indigenous people to do all the heavy lifting for them, to pretend like they were real nobles as if they were back in Spain, so they didn't separate them away or kill all of them. So due to their laziness, I'm poor, I have to work harder than the Anglos do today, but at least I'm alive."

Economically speaking, Mexicans are losers in the global game. As the famous saying goes, "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!"

I had one professor in a class in Mexico City who was a dedicated neoliberal. He actually spent much of the class talking about how Mexico should be more like Japan. He said that in the 1950s, their situations weren't too far apart, but Japan surged ahead and left Mexico treading water. I thought his approach was boneheaded and stopped going to his class; I was only paying a nominal fee to audit these courses during the summer, so my grade didn't matter.

The hypothetical question "what if I had been raised in Japan?" has had a huge effect on my development as a human being. I don't know why it's so important. I'm still trying to figure out why it's so important to me. Sometimes I feel like a winner, but I also feel more in tune with the losers, and I get pretty angry with the whole game.

Japan Mulls Importing Foreign Workers - Saturday January 20, 2007 6:31 PM - By JOSEPH COLEMAN - Associated Press Writer

OIZUMI, Japan (AP) - At the Brazil Plaza shopping center, Carlos Watanabe thinks back on 12 lonely years as a factory worker in Japan - and can't find a single thing to praise except the cold mug of Kirin lager in his hand.

He and his bar mates, all Japanese-Brazilian, have plenty of work and steady incomes, but they also have many complaints about their adopted home: that they're isolated, looked down upon, cold-shouldered by City Hall.

"I want to go back to Brazil every day, but I don't go because I don't have the money," says Watanabe, 28. "Sometimes I think I should go home, sometimes stay here, sometimes just go to another country."

[...]

The prospect of a shrinking, rapidly aging population is spurring a debate about whether Japan - so insular that it once barred foreigners from its shores for two centuries - should open up to more foreign workers.

Japan's 2 million registered foreigners, 1.57 percent of the population, are at a record high but minuscule compared with the United States' 12 percent.

For the government to increase those numbers would be groundbreaking in a nation conditioned to see itself as racially homogeneous and culturally unique, and to equate "foreign" with crime and social disorder.

"I think we are entering an age of revolutionary change," said Hidenori Sakanaka, director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute and a vocal proponent of accepting more outsiders. "Our views on how the nation should be and our views on foreigners need to change in order to maintain our society."

[...]

At the bar at Brazil Plaza on a Saturday afternoon, Watanabe and friends were in a heated debate about whether they could live on Brazil's minimum wage.

Opinion was divided between those like Naruishi who feel they're making it in Japan, and those like Watanabe who long for their homeland.

Naruishi started out in Japan 13 years ago making tofu and now works in car sales. "Live in Brazil? No," he said. "The salaries there are too low."

But all agreed on one point: Japan is a tough society to break into.

"The Japanese don't like foreigners," said Cleber Parra, 30, who concedes he shares the blame because he doesn't speak much Japanese. "We're noisy and lazy - they don't like that."

The group moved onto another bar in the afternoon and evening, then gathered at around 11 p.m. at a club where a live band played "forra," a type of Brazilian country music.

After hours of shimmying on the packed dance floor, they spilled into the dark, quiet streets of Oizumi, laughing and chatting. A police car on the watch silently circled the block, red lights flashing.