Immigrant Japan

Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society

Gracia Liu-Farrer

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501748639
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia japonesa

Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex?

Gracia Liu-Farrer illuminates the lives of these immigrants by bringing in sociological, geographical, and psychological theories—guiding the reader through life trajectories of migrants of diverse backgrounds while also going so far as to suggest that Japan is already an immigrant country.

1

IMMIGRATING TO JAPAN

[Japan] was not built on the same principles as a country like the US. There’s no, what is it, quote, give us your poor, your hungry, on the Statue of Liberty. It’s written on the base of the statue. Bring them on! Right? In Japan, it’s not like that at all.… So, I don’t think the reason people come here … there’s no sort of American, err, Japanese Dream like there is an American Dream, right? If you believe the American Dream still exists. You cannot come to Japan … actually you can, but the idea is not that you come to Japan and suddenly you become the CEO of some major corporation because it’s the land of opportunity, right. It doesn’t work like that.

—Oliver, male, thirty-one, United States, game industry, freelance translator

Japan cannot be called immigrant country. Outside Shin-Okubo I hardly see foreigners. In the end, isn’t it because they need labor that Japan accept foreigners. It is not like they really like foreigners and want you to come.

—An, male, twenty-seven, Korean, singer and student

Japan is not an immigrant country, or so they say. Japan, unlike the United States, does not offer a Japanese Dream, points out Oliver. Japan chooses whom it wants and lets in only those considered desirable, says An. Yet, Oliver, an American freelance game translator in his early thirties, came to Japan after graduating from an Ivy League college and had been living and working in Japan for over ten years. An, a twenty-seven-year-old man from Korea, enrolled himself in a Japanese language school after graduating from the university in 2012. While pursuing a singing career he made ends meet by working part-time jobs. Ever since I started researching immigrants in Japan in the early 2000s, I have run into numerous Olivers and Ans who do not think Japan is an immigrant country yet come searching for opportunities and the chance to realize their dreams. In 2018, over three million immigrants, including nearly half a million naturalized citizens, were living in Japan. The majority, over 80 percent, came in the postwar era with most arriving after 1980.¹ These foreign residents and naturalized citizens originated from every corner of the world and have come to Japan for a wide range of engagements. Why do people migrate to Japan, a society that they do not perceive to be an immigrant country?

Needless to say, people move to pursue a better life. In the highly globalized and digitally connected contemporary world, mobility has become not only a generally desirable good but a freedom to be celebrated and positively valued.² People are willing to move if moving promises a better life and fulfills a dream. Migration has become a normative practice and sometimes a necessary strategy for economic betterment, career advancement, change of scenery, or adventure. The number of people who are on the move has increased dramatically since the 1980s. Between 1985 and 2015, the cross-border migrating population more than doubled from 105 million to over 230 million (IOM 2016). All types of people are moving. Skilled professionals move for better employment prospects; family members move to reunite with their loved ones; businesspeople move according to the dictates of global capitalism in search of better markets, more abundant labor, and cheaper supplies; students move to pursue more educational options; researchers move to accomplish their projects or advance their careers; and refugees and laborers move to survive and attain a better standard of living.

In the global migratory traffic, Japan is just one of the possible destinations to move to or a hub for staying over. Indeed, for many immigrants, it is a replaceable destination, one choice out of several, or even a second choice or a backup plan. For others, however, Japan exudes special cultural allures and presents unique opportunities for immigration. In the migration into Japan, economic incentives, career considerations, and cultural fascinations are meshed together. At the same time, mobility is made possible by the established and continuously expanding institutional and social ties. This chapter, through the relaying of narratives exploring varied motivations for coming to Japan, explains how the nation is represented in different people’s “migration imaginaries” (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013). To put it simply, what attracts people to Japan?

A Land of Many Opportunities

Having a reputation for being an ethnically homogeneous nation and a culturally unique society, Japan might not have been seen as a typical destination several decades ago; but for people who are looking for opportunities, it has been as good a destination as any. With an advanced economy and an aging population, it demonstrates a dire need for human resources while offering a desirable and safe social environment. It is a land of many opportunities. In the words of Charlie, a Filipino migrant, “To be a country of immigration or not … is not their choice anymore as long as they allow people to come in. If people are allowed to stay … It’s not about place. I would rather be here than Saudi Arabia.”

The Economic Promise

Conventional migration theories take for granted that migrants move for economic interests, whether out of a desire to improve one’s personal wealth or as a family strategy to ameliorate household finance (Massey et al. 1993). People move abroad in order to move up the social and economic ladder back home. Economic promise is undoubtedly the biggest motivating factor for immigrating to Japan, especially for people from countries that are economically less developed than Japan. Until 2010, Japan had the second-largest economy in the world and was considered the most developed country in Asia. As such, not surprisingly, it remains an attractive destination for many people.

Chinese make up the largest foreign resident population in Japan. Among earlier cohorts of Chinese immigrants who arrived in the 1980s and 1990s, economic incentives were so powerful that many midcareer professionals and bureaucrats were willing to forsake established careers in China to migrate as language students and start an entirely new chapter in Japan. Some succeeded and others did not. When I asked why they came to Japan, they invariably spoke of the economic gaps between China and Japan. Qiu Ye was a lecturer teaching computer science at a Chinese university before coming to Japan. In the early 1990s, Japan initiated training programs to recruit Chinese workers with university degrees. He was first assigned to a Japanese company as a software developer, and stayed on working in Japan. When asked why he came to Japan, he answered bluntly, “It was because we were poor, to put it simply. Now the college teachers in China might have been [financially] better off. Twenty years ago, incomes and other aspects of life were really not good. Japan’s bubble started bursting in 1991, 92. But it was not yet bad.”

Obviously, as a college lecturer, Qiu Ye was better off than the majority of the Chinese. But China in the 1980s and early 1990s was in the early stage of economic reform. For the first time after several decades of a planned economy, people could strive for prosperity on all types of markets. Emigration was seen as a ticket to a better life. Decades of restrictions preventing movement, including passport control and household registration, intensified the desire for outward mobility. Once the opportunity to go abroad was presented to them, a massive number of people left the country, giving rise to the “fever to go abroad” (chuguore) and causing the feeling of “displacement” at home among those unable to leave (J. Chu 2010).

Chinese nationals were by no means the only ones desiring to emigrate. Calvin, a Filipino engineer, quickly embraced an opportunity to come to Japan even though he had a stable job as a technician in the Philippines and did not speak Japanese. When asked how he made the decision to migrate, he explained: “Ah, yeah, when I said stable, what I meant is, not really high income, right? So we … It’s like … When you say Japan, it’s a progressive country, right? So … normally, when you get a chance to go to Japan, you just go. That’s my point. Then, another thing I realized when I was there at my company, there were a lot … there were a lot of people there who went to Canada, Singapore … Normally, engineers don’t really stay back there [in the Philippines]. That was my turning point. ‘Oh, Japan, Canada, why not venture there?’ Maybe you can find [a] good living there—something like that.” Rapid aging of the population has made Japan the world’s “oldest” country that is in acute need of manpower. The labor market demand has established the nation as an attractive destination for people who want to make quick cash as well. According to interviewees, it is relatively easy to find odd jobs in Japan that pay reasonably well. In the past three decades, a large number of immigrants—students, entertainers, and spouses of Japanese nationals—came primarily to make cash (Ballescas 1992; Liu-Farrer 2011a). Many developing countries in Asia lack an effective system that provides business loans and insures losses. People obtain initial capital by pooling family resources, borrowing through high-interest loans, and joining rotating credit associations. International migration, however, provides an alternative means for accumulating capital.

In my field research among Chinese immigrants in the early 2000s, I found the prevalent debt-driven migration phenomenon among the Fujian Chinese in Japan. More than one interviewee specifically pointed out that Japan was not the ideal destination for international migration because it was not an immigrant country and did not provide amnesty or opportunities to attain legal status. The United States, Canada, and Australia were more attractive places for long-term settlement. They came to Japan, however, because of their debts from failed entrepreneurial ventures. Japan was closer and thought to have more temporary jobs. Older male migrants were especially likely to come to Japan because of debts. They sometimes risked clandestine border entry due to desperation. Nian’s case was typical. A forty-six-year-old man from Changle County, Nian landed in Japan with over RMB 500,000 (6.5 million yen) in debts. He had operated a pearl farm in the early and mid 1990s. In 1995, that coastal region of China experienced the biggest hurricane in over a century. In just hours, he lost everything. “A wave swept everything away. I owed people 200,000 yuan [RMB, about US$25,000 at that time].” Without any disaster insurance, he could not possibly stay and pay off the debt. He fled. After borrowing an additional RMB 200,000, he chose to migrate to Japan by boat in 1996. The journey was not an easy one. In Zhejiang Province, their boat was detained, and they were fined RMB 30,000. Fearing debt collectors and not wanting to go home, he waited there for several months. Eventually he boarded a boat again but had to abort his plan several times over a two-month stretch. When the voyage finally happened, it took ten days to reach the coast of Japan. He worked at construction sites after arriving, and by the time I interviewed him in 2004, he had successfully paid off all his debts.

Economic incentives have also driven hundreds of thousands of Brazilians with Japanese ancestry to Japan. Commonly called Nikkei Brazilians, these migrants and their families did not perceive Japan as the “land of [their] ancestors” but as the “land of yen.” They wanted to “make the maximum in the minimum [amount] of time” (Ishi 2003, 76). Most Nikkei Brazilians were placed in manufacturing jobs through labor brokers as soon as they arrived. For them, earning a monthly salary in Japan was a thrilling experience. Roberto, a young Nikkei man who did not manage to enter a university in Brazil, worked at a computer shop installing equipment after high school. His income was the equivalent of about US$250 a month. His parents ran a small grocery store, but it did not go well and they became insolvent. Because of debt, his mother and Roberto applied for the Nikkei recruitment program. He arrived in Japan when he was nineteen and worked on an assembly line at a factory that made parts for an electronics manufacturing company. Although he had no clue what he was making exactly, he was enthralled by the wages. “I made close to 30 man [about US$2,500] a month. That was ten times as much as I made at home! I was, ‘wow.’ ”

Japan’s economic promise has attracted not only people from developing countries but those from relatively developed countries as well. During the 1980s, the Japanese “economic miracle” and demand for language teachers drew many native English speakers to Japan to teach English. Tom, an Australian man in his early fifties, reminisced about the good old days as a language teacher in Osaka. “I didn’t have to do anything. I just sat in the lobby at this reception desk and talked to whomever that approached me. I was making 500 thousand yen [around US$4,000] a month doing that!”

In the twenty-first century, Japan has also seen an increasing number of educated European youth. Along with the normalized practice of cross-border mobility, the stagnating economy and Europe’s difficult labor market factored in driving young professionals to seek out opportunities in Asia. Japan, together with Singapore and China, attracted many of these individuals (Farrer 2010, 2015, 2019; Hof 2018).

Career and Education Alternatives

To better one’s life involves much more than just money. Migration might not, necessarily, promise a greener pasture. It could, however, present attractive alternatives to many stuck in an unsatisfying education system, career track, or lifestyle in their home countries. Though many arrived seeking life changes, they did not all have a clear notion of what exactly they wanted to achieve in Japan. Lee Soojin, a Korean woman, migrated because she was unhappy with her job in Korea. She had studied Chinese in China for several years. Upon returning to Korea she found a job as a tour guide. She did not think it was a suitable job for her personality. Besides, after spending four years in China, she felt a bit out of touch with Korean society. She decided to come to Japan and enrolled in a language school. “When I decided to come to Japan, I just wanted to learn some more, experience some more, [so that] I might put one more item into my resume. My motivation was as simple as that,” said Soojin.

Mirroring Lee Soojin, Chen Gang was a Korean-speaking Chinese tour guide back in China. He had worked for a travel agency for seven years before leaving for Japan. He left because his business was affected by the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and 1998.

Our main market was Korea. The first country that was hit was Korea. The financial crisis caused the entire country to have an economic meltdown.… [The] Korean government was controlling the outflow of foreign currency. We expected that there wouldn’t be any Korean tourists for some time. I didn’t really think of coming to Japan to study. It was just that in those couple of years [it seemed the] Korean economy might not turn around quickly. A friend of mine wanted to go to Japan.… I didn’t think much [about it], and wasn’t particularly keen on going. We then sent in the documents … and [the visa] came down. I probably thought since [the] Korean economy wasn’t good, I could learn a bit more Japanese.

Yao Ning’s job in China was secure, but she was bored with it; and her boredom served as a motivating factor for her to come to Japan. She worked in a hospital upon graduating from a medical technician school. Her job was testing blood. She had just turned twenty, and most of her coworkers were older women. The work did not keep her busy. The blood tests were all done in the morning, so she often had nothing to do for the rest of the day. People just hung around to chat and gossip. She felt she had too much idle time and was merely wasting her life away in the hospital. She looked for an opportunity to leave the country for more exciting experiences. When the opportunity of studying in Japan presented itself, she seized it without any hesitation.

In 2011 and 2012, several research assistants and I conducted in-depth interviews with two dozen Chinese students who were studying at the same second-tier private university in Tokyo. If they were not graduates, most had at least attended college for a while before they arrived. Due to a lack of interest in their occupation or major or an insufficient level of education to attain a desirable job, they decided to look for alternative career opportunities in Japan. For example, Bai Yun, a woman from northeastern China, was studying fashion design. After being in the program for some time, she started doubting her career choice. The fashion industry was competitive, and she was not sure she would have good job prospects. She was considering Italy because some of her kin were doing business there. Her parents had the resources and were willing to send her abroad. She quit the school in China to prepare to relocate overseas. In the end, she failed to get a visa to study in Italy. Because she was already using an agent that brokered overseas education, she was recommended to try Japan instead (Liu-Farrer 2014).

Studying abroad has become an alternative to domestic higher education for many Asian students, especially those from ...