Japan That Can Say Yes
By George Wehrfritz and Hideko Takayama
Newsweek
June 5, 2000Japan - insular, homogenous - has never put out the welcome mat to foreign workers. Now, in an act of self-preservation, it may be forced to. It began with a journey to earn a few quick bucks. In 1990 Iranian watchmaker Behrooz Kheyri Idehloo planned to work in Japan temporarily, then stock up on watch parts and head back home. He quickly found a steady, well-paying job installing air conditioners, and a boss who taught him rudimentary Japanese. Things were going so well, Idehloo decided to bring his wife and son into Japan on three-month tourist visas. When the visas expired, the family stayed, settling in a town north of Tokyo. Even though they are illegal immigrants, their life is good dad exports auto parts, and mom works in a textile factory. "I may look different," says their son, Ramin, a lanky 14-year-old who goes to a Japanese school, "but I feel that more than half of me is Japanese."
Foreigners settling in Japan? For centuries, Japan has not only been one of the most closed societies in the world, it has viewed that insularity as a source of economic strength and cultural superiority. Not long ago politicians were celebrating Japan's racial purity and warning that gaijin (foreigners) would threaten the country's stability. In 1986 the then prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, reportedly told colleagues that America's "intellectual level" was beneath Japan's because of "people like blacks, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans."
But that was when Japan dominated the global economy. Now, America's economy rules, thanks in part to immigrant brains and hustle, and Tokyo's is in a decade-long funk. The sluggish economy and a demographic crisis--Japan's birthrate is the lowest in the G7--have at last forced a national immigration debate. Undocumented immigrants like the Idehloos have been tolerated, as long they were willing to forgo legal rights; now a consensus is emerging that the immigration system should be modified to permit outsiders to reside legally in Japan. In the meantime more and more foreigners are arriving--and staying.
These newcomers do so-called 3-K jobs work that's kitsui (hard), kitanai (dirty) and kiken (dangerous). Their sweat now ensures the survival of such key industries as autos, electronics and food processing. No one knows for sure how many immigrants there are. About 1.5 million foreigners reside legally among Japan's 120 million citizens. Labor-rights groups estimate that an additional 500,000 undocumented aliens live and work in the country.
Ethnic enclaves, a mix of legal and illegal immigrants, have sprung up everywhere. There's a Chinatown in Yokohama, a community of Koreans in Osaka and a large Shanghai-Chinese settlement in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward. In nearby Ikebukuro, Tokyo's answer to New York City's Lower East Side, immigrants cluster to work, play, eat and worship. Down one alley near the train station, a five-story walk-up hosts (bottom to top) a Ghanaian-owned sportswear store, an Indian restaurant, an Irish pub, a South Asian video shop, and a mosque. Increasingly, Japanese authorities tolerate these growing pockets of diversity. Several industrial cities even court new blood by offering bilingual education and other migrant-friendly services.
The largest group of legal immigrants is, in fact, Japanese. Known as Nikkeijin, they are second- and third-generation descendants of Japanese who fled overpopulation at home and settled in Latin America. By the end of 1998, according to official statistics, some 222,000 Brazilians and 41,000 Peruvians had established residency in Japan since Tokyo opened the door to Nikkeijin in 1989. Last year an estimated 60,000 newcomers arrived. Envisioned as a labor source that wouldn't threaten Japan's monoculture, Nikkeijin proved to be as foreign as their passports. In Oizumi, a small industrial town 50 miles northwest of Tokyo, Latinos make up nearly 12 percent of the population. The Oizumi version of bento, the traditional Japanese lunch boxes, features braised beef, Brazilian rice, salad and sausage. "Our hardware is Japanese, but our software is Brazilian," says Angelo Ishi, a journalist and university lecturer who moved to Japan from So Paulo in 1990.
Most Japanese concede they need immigrants. A new United Nations study warns that Japan must bring in 600,000 foreign laborers a year to maintain current levels of economic output. The government has quietly used legal loopholes to fill the labor gap, recruiting foreigners for work-study schemes and training programs designed to "perpetuate the myth of temporariness," says Wayne Cornelius, an immigration expert at the University of California, San Diego. In fact, many "graduates" of these programs stay on in Japan and enter an illegal labor pool. Then there are the Nikkeijin and tens of thousands of foreign brides imported to marry Japanese farmers.
Officialdom is finally taking up the issue. Politicians on the left, right and center have started advocating long-term residency rights, and even citizenship, for foreign workers. In January former prime minister Keizo Obuchi's Commission on Japan's Goals in the 21st Century endorsed creating "an explicit immigration and permanent residency system." According to surveys conducted by scholars and Japan's major media, a majority support the idea, despite palpable fears that migrants--especially illegal aliens--bring crime. Under pressure from industry, the immigration bureau recently expanded its technical internship programs from 17 to 59 work categories, adding tasks like roofing, bookbinding and knitting. "It is already a fact that foreign workers are a part of our society," a senior bureaucrat says. "It's natural for them to settle in Japan, and we can't stop it anymore."
Idehloo hopes that's true. Like thousands of undocumented aliens, he and his family still live at the edges of the law. Risking deportation, the family surrendered to authorities last December and requested permission to reside in Japan legally. In a landmark case, Japan's Ministry of Justice, citing "humanitarian concerns," recently granted residency to a handful of undocumented foreign families with children in Japanese schools. Even Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo's populist governor (and the author of the anti-U.S. diatribe The Japan That Can Say No), says Japan should consider granting amnesty to illegal aliens. Mitsuhiro Kimura, president of a large right-wing patriotic association, goes further. "I myself don't mind having Iranian Japanese," he says. "Japan is not a homogeneous country." Not anymore.
© 2000 Newsweek, Inc.
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