The Study of Racialism

pinpanpun · New User Joined: 27 May 2006 {Posts: 24 }

By Gonzalo Robledo Tokyo, Aug 7 (EFE).- Latin Americans of Japanese descent who returned as immigrants to their ancestral homeland are being pressured to integrate linguistically and culturally into Japanese society, with some suggesting they must leave if they do not.

While Japan's birth rate falls and its society ages, the country is beginning to craft an immigration policy based on a preliminary goal of not allowing the number of foreigners in the Asian nation to exceed 3 percent of the population.
The main promoter of this policy is Deputy Justice Minister Taro Kono, who has taken the position that to have sustainable economic growth, Japan needs labor from many countries.
In an interview with EFE, Kono said he was concerned about the ability of Latin Americans of Japanese descent, known as "nikkei," to adapt to life in Japan, citing the experience of those who came here in the 1980s and ended up isolated because they did not speak Japanese.
Some 300,000 nikkei, most of them from Brazil and Peru, live in Japan, working in various industries.
Kono, who worked as an executive for Japanese multinationals in the United States and Asia, said the inability to speak Japanese created communications problems and alienated the immigrants.
Japan's long stretch of economic malaise has led to a drop in wages, and the Latin American immigrants' incomes have dropped and many have experienced long periods of unemployment, with some turning to crime to survive, Kono said.
Communities of Latin Americans of Japanese descent, such as Hamamatsu, south of Tokyo in Shizuoka province, reflect the difficulties many of the immigrants have experienced in adapting to life in Japan.
Many of the Brazilians of Japanese descent in Hamamatsu lack stable employment and their children refuse to go to school because of the language barrier.
Previous governments talked about these problems and studied them, but they did not take any concrete steps to deal with the situation, Kono said.
Kono said immigration was necessary even though Japan's main objective was to expand the native labor force by bringing more women into the workplace and delaying the retirement age, among other measures.
The 3 percent limit on the percentage of the population made up of foreigners would more than double the figure from the current 1.2 percent, Kono said, adding that there was no timetable for meeting this goal with people from a number of countries.
The deputy justice minister discussed the large number of non-Japanese inmates in the country's prisons, but he refused to say that the figures served as an indicator of which nationalities were more prone to committing crimes.
The number of crimes committed by foreigners of all nationalities in 2004 in Japan surged by 16 percent to 47,124 cases, according to Japanese police.
Kono said he understood why the father of a 7-year-old girl sexually abused and killed by a Peruvian demanded the death penalty for the murderer, noting that life sentences in Japan usually turn into time served of slightly more than two decades due to good behavior.
The families of murder victims "want more severe punishment" and demand the death penalty, Kono said, adding that nationality was not a factor in imposing more severe penalties.
Kono's legal proposals have been included in a report that calls for reducing the number of Latin American immigrants of Japanese descent and increasing the number of qualified workers entering the country.
The deputy justice minister has proposed equal pay for immigrants and compulsory educations for their children, as well as Japanese exams to test foreign workers' language abilities. Those who fail such proficiency exams might see their visas revoked, he suggested.
EFE gr/hv

oevega · Posted: Thu 10 Aug 2006 16:30 Post subject: Samba in Japan

Hi,

Although South American Japaneses have suffered a lot of discrimination in Japan, they have manage to influence it as well. This is the Tokyo Samba Carnival, for instance.

Omar