Globalizing Japan

Ethnography of the Japanese presence in Asia, Europe, and America

Harumi Befu, Sylvie Guichard-Anguis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134542956
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: International Economics
• Index: Economics

Globalizing Japan explores the social and cultural dimensions of Japan's global presence. Japan's expansion and presence as an economic giant is witnessed on an everyday basis. Both consciously and unconsciously, we regularly come into contact with Japan's industrial and cultural globalization, from cameras and automobiles to judo, cuisine or animation. Japan's presence in the popular imagination is heavily influenced both by the country's historical past and its global present. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese Studies, Anthropology and Cultural Studies.

Part I
Introduction

1 The global context of Japan outside Japan

Harumi Befu

Since the late 1980s “globalization” has been a buzzword in the Japanese media.¹ Japan is said to be “globalizing” in all respects, but, above all, in its economic sphere. The greatest proponent of this idea is no doubt Kenichi Ohmae (1987, 1995), who has written numerous books on the subject. While Japan’s globalization in the economic sense has been widely discussed, Japan’s social and cultural globalization has not been a topic of much discussion so far. This volume addresses these much neglected aspects of globalization of Japan.

“Globalization” has displaced “internationalization,” which was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. This displacement signals an important shift in the perception of the positioning of Japan’s worldwide economic expansion and related overseas developments. Internationalization implies a relationship between two or more nations: a minimum of two nations can engage in “international” relations. Indeed, when the term internationalization became popular in the 1970s and the 1980s, the reference was usually to Japan relating to one or another country. For example, when Osaka established a sister-city relation with San Francisco or when Nepal and Japan engaged in a cultural exchange program, it was a case of internationalization.

“Globalization,” on the other hand, implies simultaneous extension and expansion in all directions. At least in intent, the term implies that Japan is extending its interests all over the world in a network (Katzenstein and Shiraishi 1997). If Japan was simply having an association with one or two countries, it would not warrant the term. “Globalization” as a concept, indeed, designates the empirical reality of Japan’s common presence throughout most parts of the world. The appellation is an ex post facto affirmation of a reality that has existed since at least the 1970s.

What is the theoretical relevance of the endeavor undertaken in this volume? Why do we need to examine Japan’s globalization? Let me offer two major reasons. One is the ethnocentrism of the received globalization theories of such well-known scholars as Arjun Appadurai (1996), Peter Beyer (1994), Roland Robertson (1992), Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), and Malcom Waters (1995). Analyzing the theories offered by these scholars, one is left with a strong impression that there is only one center of globalization and that this center is the West. While detailed documentation of this observation will be left to another occasion (Befu 1998a), it is safe to say that these and many other authors of globalization see globalization either as a transformed end product (or consequence) of modernization or simply a continuation thereof. Whatever the position, inasmuch as modernization is and has been a project of Western civilization, globalization as its outcome must emanate from the West. The West’s ethnocentrism is made clear when we examine the contents of what it claims to globalize. These theorists argue that globalization involves such palpably Western values and ideologies as humanism, human rights, equality, democracy, and progress.

If only one center of globalization can be recognized, we can hardly speak of a theory of globalization. What we have is merely a series of generalizations. We cannot have a theory of globalization based on a single case any more than we can have a theory of the family based on one family.

The set of essays in this volume shows that in addition to the West there is at least one other center of globalization in this world, namely Japan. If we show that Japan can be, in fact is, a center for globalization, then it is an easy additional step to demonstrate that there are many other centers as well. We thus need to speak of multiple globalizations. Only after analyzing plural cases of globalization can we begin to formulate a theory of globalization through comparison. The task has not even begun. This volume is a modest but important step in this direction.

The second major import of the present volume is that all of the studies in it are ethnographically based. They are grounded on intensive fieldwork of the traditional anthropological kind. A perusal of the existing globalization literature will at once convince the reader that we have virtually no “theory” firmly based on solid ethnographic fieldwork. Without data deriving from such a basis, generalizations tend to be speculative and intuitive. In the absence of solid data, conclusions seem to drive the argument instead of being derived from it.

What we offer in this volume are solid data that no one can dispute. I believe that any theory of globalization has to be based on a solid empirical foundation, just as any other theory. We offer such a foundation in this volume. This is not to say that data presented in this volume are sufficient to start constructing an adequate theory of globalization. We must have a great deal more solid data. We need to postpone theorizing about globalization until we have sufficient data. This volume is an important first step in the right direction.

As a way of analyzing Japan’s globalization, not so much its economic aspects as its cultural and social consequences, I offer a fourfold framework consisting of human dispersal, organizational transplantation, cultural diffusion, and imagining of Japan. It is hoped that this framework will help readers to comprehend the data presented in the subsequent chapters as globalization phenomena.

Human dispersal

The dispersal of Japanese resulting from Japan’s economic globalization may be classified into long-term (or permanent) and short-term (or nonpermanent) categories. The former designates those who leave Japan permanently, or who have no definite plans to return to Japan. The latter includes those who intend to return to Japan or at least leave the foreign country within a definite period, most of them within 5 or 6 years.

Nonpermanent sojourners

The most prominent in the category of nonpermanent sojourners no doubt are business expatriates and their families. Japan’s economic expansion abroad has necessarily been accompanied by movement of people. As multinational corporations are established all over the world, corporate soldiers are sent abroad to set up beachheads as the front line of Japan’s economic imperial expansions, as illustrated in Sedgwick’s and Wong’s chapters in this volume. These business expatriates may go alone, as most of them did in the early days of Japan’s globalization in the 1960s, but nowadays, with Japan’s increasing affluence, they are more likely to be accompanied by their families. In areas with a large concentration of Japanese multinationals, such as Seoul, Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Singapore, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, London, Paris, and Düsseldorf, resident Japanese business expatriates and their families number in thousands. In Hong Kong, these Japanese multinationals are aided by hundreds of “office ladies” who serve as clerical staff, as reported by Wong in this volume. These women are either sent by the companies that they work for, as in the case of Yaohan described by Wong, or go on their own to a foreign country, where they are hired locally by Japanese multinationals. In these cities of high Japanese concentration, a variety of businesses that in one way or another serve expatriate families (and also each other) are established by Japanese, who may have come to these cities to establish such businesses or who may have arrived for some other purpose and entered the businesses later. Their numbers significantly increase the local Japanese population.

Other nonpermanent sojourners include scholars and students who go abroad for research and study. They are not as likely to be accompanied by their families. Of course, scholars and students have been going abroad since long before Japan’s globalization became a well-known phenomenon. But it is unquestionably Japan’s economic affluence and the consequent availability of financial resources among the Japanese that have increased the numbers of students and scholars manifold in the last few decades. Many parents send their children to foreign – mostly American – colleges for undergraduate work because it costs nearly as much to send a child to, say, Tokyo for schooling, including room and board, as to send the child abroad.

Scholars, of course, go to the location where the desired research institution or university is situated, and not necessarily where business expatriates concentrate. The same can be said of graduate students with a specialized field of research. Undergraduates, on the other hand, often go to areas of high concentration of Japanese for the familiar living conditions that they find there.

Permanent sojourners

Permanent sojourners include those who are definite about residing in a foreign country permanently as well as those whose plans are quite indefinite. This group includes several subcategories.

Conventional emigrants

The Japanese have been dispersing throughout the world since the sixteenth century, although the early expansion into Southeast Asia was abruptly interrupted by the policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate.² Although we do not have a clear picture of the Japanese who were stranded in foreign lands as a result of the Tokugawa seclusion policy, we do know they lived in, and they eventually became absorbed into, the local society.

From the first year of Meiji, Japanese began to move abroad, as the term gannen-mono, referring to the migrant laborers who went to Hawaii in year 1 of the Meiji era, demonstrates. This early Japanese “diaspora” began with dispersal to the New World, but it also saw Japanese people migrating to East and Southeast Asia.³ Early emigrants were usually those of relatively poor economic background who were trying to find opportunities not available in Japan. Emigration, of course, stopped during the Second World War, but resumed after the war and continued into the 1960s, with emigrants going almost exclusively to South America.

The discontented

No modern, industrialized society is able to satisfy all of its members. Japan is no exception. Structurally or culturally, many Japanese feel dissatisfied with the particular situation that they find themselves in. For instance, in my interview sample, a faculty member at a national university (where the “chair system” is in operation) found the senior professor under whom he must work unbearable, and opted to leave for a position in the United States. In another case, a Tokyo University graduate employed by a major national bank found employment conditions – 15 hours per day of work – intolerable. He resigned, and went to the United States for graduate study. In a third case, a woman did not wish to marry the man her parents had betrothed her to. Not finding any way out, she enrolled in an undergraduate program in the United States to escape from parental pressure. A divorcee, who could not stand the social stigma attached to the divorced status, went to England. A woman graduate student, anticipating employment discrimination in Japan, opted to go to the United States for further graduate work.

Such losses of human resources as these are a serious issue with national policy implications: with an effective social policy, Japan could be made a more comfortable place for these Japanese to live and contribute to the society. Conservatism of the Japanese society and Japan’s policymakers, however, seems to prevent execution of such social reform.

International marriage

A large number of women in Japan marry foreigners and leave Japan when their husbands return to their country. These women may be included in the category of “the discontented.” But their numbers are large enough and their motivation specific enough to warrant a special category. Given the statistical improbability of a Japanese woman finding a foreign, eligible man, compared with the high probability of finding a Japanese male partner, the choice of a foreign man over a Japanese man is clearly a psychological declaration of rejection of Japanese men as marriage candidates.

As women gain higher status and become more educated, many of them are more and more likely to find Japanese men unacceptable as marriage partners. For such women, foreign men offer an attractive alternative. Most of the partners are Caucasian, but Asians – Koreans, Taiwanese, Hong Kongese, Thais, and Singaporeans – are also chosen. Another psychological factor not to be forgotten is the century-old Japanese inferiority complex toward the West and Caucasians. The Japanese look up to Caucasians as superior and more desirable, an attitude that induces many Japanese women to prefer Caucasian men as marital partners.

Opportunities abroad

Besides the obvious fact that multinationals are spreading out globally, independent businessmen and businesswomen, seeing business opportunities abroad or finding business practices too restrictive to their liking in Japan because of government regulations, move abroad to carry on or start business, often in a totally different line. These individuals usually go to a familiar foreign country. They may have lived there as a student, traveled as a tourist, or visited a friend, and the personal experience gave them enough confidence of likely business success there.

In addition to business opportunities, some Japanese seek cultural opportunities unavailable in Japan. Yatabe reports in this volume of an overwhelming number of intellectuals living in the area of Paris – some 90 percent – who went in search of artistic, musical, and other cultural opportunities.

Volunteer spirit

Younger Japanese – in their twenties and thirties – are found in the Third World carrying out volunteer work in a variety of fields, from education to social welfare to medical services. Most of these individuals, like the businessmen and women mentioned earlier, had been to the country they now serve and decided to return to continue the service. They may have gone there as a member of the Japanese “Peace Corps”; or they may have simply traveled as a student and had an experience that moved them enough to send them abroad.

“Un-returnees”

Another category of Japanese living abroad that is increasing in number is the children of business expatriates who grow up abroad and opt for college education outside Japan, usually in North America or in Europe. Although the difficulty of their employment in Japan has been easing in recent years, especially if they opt for a foreign multinational, they still face disadvantages for a variety of reasons compared with those who graduate from Japanese colleges. Some of them, for example, do not have native competence in Japanese; others do not have adequate enculturation as Japanese.

Also, they are at an extreme disadvantage in the practical business of job seeking compared with those in Japanese colleges, who are already in the job market early in their senior year and who usually have their job contract all but signed months before graduation. Those in colleges abroad do not have this luxury. For this reason, most expatriate children are sent back at high school age to receive adequate preparation for the college entrance examination, and most manage to graduate from a college in Japan. Those who miss this opportunity are likely to be excluded from the Japanese job market and eventually work outside Japan (Mori 1992).

It is important to keep in mind that the distinction made above between a “permanent” and a “nonpermanent” sojourn is not clear-cut. Some people first leave Japan intending to live abroad permanently but change their plans later, and some others who leave Japan with the full intention of returning after several years end up abandoning the original intention. This is illustrated in Wong’s chapter by Numaguchi, an office lady who left the company that brought her to Hong Kong to avoid being eventually sent back to Japan and instead secured a more or less permanent situation in the local job market. Even some multinational expatriate executives decide that life in the foreign country is more suitable and more comfortable and they resign from their company and establish permanent residence abroad.

The indeterminate

In recent years more and more young Japanese of both sexes are leaving Japan without definite plans either to stay abroad or to return to Japan. Many of the Japanese who go to the United States or Canada and enroll in community colleges and English-for-foreigners classes (where academic requirements are minimal) belong in this category. The women of “yellow cab” fame, made well known through the book of the same title by Shoko Ieda (1991), are also in this category, although much of this account of Japanese women seeking boyfriends, especially Afro-Americans, in New York has been discredited by Toyoda (1994). People in this group have fluid plans, if any, and change them as their situations change. They either are supported by remittances from home or support themselves with odd jobs. In the United States, many work at Japanese restaurants, since little skill is required except to look Japanese and have a Japanese cultural background to help make the establishment look authentically Japanese. Many of these people leave Japan with a tourist visa, overstay the limit, and work without a proper visa.

Exploiting the cultural capital

The Japanese who go abroad more or less permanently for whatever reasons must somehow make a living wherever they settle. In most cases they end up exploiting their cultural capital, their language being one of the most useful resources. If they enroll in a university as graduate students in humanities or social science, they are likely to choose Japan for specialization and, if in a doctoral program, write their dissertations on a topic related to Japan. ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Series Editor’s preface
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Human dispersal
• Part III Organizational transplant
• Part IV Cultural diffusion
• Part V Images