http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekasegi

also:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0...69,00.html

It's fascinating to me as someone with a Japanese-born parent, the gradations and "rankings" that are constantly struggled with in the highly homogenous nation of Japan.

Beyond discussion of such a new legal measure of compensated re-ex-patriation (aka GTFO money), I wonder if forum-goers here have experiences with the ongoing debates related to these issues.

Specifically, is there a foreigner/nissei friendly element in the political spectrum? Say, from the LDP? Do the terms "Yamato" people or ethnicity get used frequently in such a discussion? Do left-wing politicians also drive around in vans at 8 am with speaker-phones blazing, begging people to vote for them?

お願いいたします

The mother of my three year old boy in Japan is full Japanese but born in Brazil, has a Brazilian passport and lived in Brazil until she was 16. She is 26 now and working at a Toyota factory in Mie prefecture. She was full time until her hours were cut back last year and struggles now. Everyone in her family except she and her sister has returned to Brazil after being layed off and unable to find new work. She is considering returning as well. I am saving to return to Japan in December and teach English again so I can help her until things get better. Here in Kauai, unemployment is 11.1% (not counting those who have just given up) so I have had to stick with my low paying job as well and been little help to her. It will take me a while to find work in Japan and a few months more to get my first paycheck due to the fact a teacher's first pay can take up to 7 weeks after the first day of work to be deposited. So I am not sure if she can wait it out until then. She might return to Brazil anyways before I arrive. She says it is month to month in her decision making.

bodhisamaya Wrote:The mother of my three year old boy in Japan is full Japanese but born in Brazil, has a Brazilian passport and lived in Brazil until she was 16. She is 26 now and working at a Toyota factory in Mie prefecture. She was full time until her hours were cut back last year and struggles now. Everyone in her family except she and her sister has returned to Brazil after being layed off and unable to find new work. She is considering returning as well. I am saving to return to Japan in December and teach English again so I can help her until things get better. Here in Kauai, unemployment is 11.1% (not counting those who have just given up) so I have had to stick with my low paying job as well and been little help to her. It will take me a while to find work in Japan and a few months more to get my first paycheck due to the fact a teacher's first pay can take up to 7 weeks after the first day of work to be deposited. So I am not sure if she can wait it out until then. She might return to Brazil anyways before I arrive. She says it is month to month in her decision making.

Hmm, so the gov't is (according to this new bill) offering her a monetary incentive to return to Brazil, but will they also bar her from returning to Japan in the future without re-application?

Yea. She says the Brazilian community is pissed about that since most every Brazilian she knows in Japan has parents who are full Japanese. My boy, who was born in Japan and has never been to America, has duel citizenship for Brazil and America.

Why the **** does the word homogeneous keep coming up when people talk about Japan?

What does that even mean? Seriously?

ropsta Wrote:Why the **** does the word homogeneous keep coming up when people talk about Japan?

What does that even mean? Seriously?

It means that in comparision with other industrialized nations, a higher percentage of residents of Japan were born in the main islands proper, or born in 日本列島. Whereas other nations have more foreign-born persons in their population.

ropsta Wrote:Why the **** does the word homogeneous keep coming up when people talk about Japan?

What does that even mean? Seriously?

There are dictionaries you know.

strugglebunny Wrote:

ropsta Wrote:Why the **** does the word homogeneous keep coming up when people talk about Japan?

What does that even mean? Seriously?

There are dictionaries you know.

まあまあ。。。

I think the question might be more probing into the restrictions such a blanket term places over ethnicity debates in Japan.　As well as the generalizations about Japan and the Japanese that this loaded term may unfortunately encourage.

bodhisamaya Wrote:Yea. She says the Brazilian community is pissed about that since most every Brazilian she knows in Japan has parents who are full Japanese. My boy, who was born in Japan and has never been to America, has duel citizenship for Brazil and America.

Whoa, missed your post there, sorry.

So if she wants to return to Japan, she has to apply as a FOREIGN ALIEN and not as a NISSEI? Wow... "here's some money, forget your heritage or your connections to this land and its people, and GTFO and don't come back while you're at it. k thanks."

Or is it that she can never return at all? I'm guessing the former but...

She didn't tell me all the details but she did say she is thinking of going back to Brazil and getting a degree, then returning in four years. Even though both her parents were born in Japan, she can't read kanji at all. I worked at a factory in Shiga prefecture for three months with mostly Brazilian Nisei and very few of them could even speak Japanese at a low level. It is very strange that when Japanese people immigrate to another country they tend not to raise their children bi-lingual.

She also said she might not accept the money to avoid restrictions on her return (what ever those restrictions are).

haha, You see I am brazillian/japanese...But I am only an Ａmerican citizen, Don't think they'd kick me out, since I am the "wealthy" westener.

Not every society looks at North America and its melting pot of cultures and thinks, "that's a great idea!" Hell, this Japanese program sounds almost like a direct rip off of a French program aimed at paying people of Algerian decent to "go home."

See also the U.S. and Liberia in the 19th century.

The Japanese situation is very peculiar though. Many of those they are giving this option to are of 100% Japanese ancestry, just born elsewhere. It's not like the pure Japanese blood is going to be diluted in any way.

strugglebunny Wrote:

ropsta Wrote:Why the **** does the word homogeneous keep coming up when people talk about Japan?

What does that even mean? Seriously?

There are dictionaries you know.

Critical thinking...

Homogeneous - all of the same or similar kind or nature; "a close-knit homogeneous group."

How the **** is this different from any other country?

TB Wrote:It means that in comparision with other industrialized nations, a higher percentage of residents of Japan were born in the main islands proper, or born in 日本列島. Whereas other nations have more foreign-born persons in their population.

Certainly China has them beat, then? I've yet to hear of the homogeneity of the People's Republic of China or Hong Kong. What about North Korea or Somalia? Wait those aren't industrialized are they? Why the *** do only industrialized countries count? I want to be homogeneous too!

Quote:Not every society looks at North America and its melting pot of cultures and thinks, "that's a great idea!"

Not even America thinks that. We be not as progressive as we seems. Me thinks.

It's kinda sad, but not without a slight air of humor these individuals being paid to leave the country. Think about if you had a roommate at your apartment and you wanted them to leave so bad you paid them. "Uh, dude I can't afford you so, here take this, get out and don't come back." At first it seems like you're saying "it's just business," but the never come back part.... that's past WTF

It's as if they believe the solution to the problem is to get rid of the immigrants. Say they do finally get rid of them all. Then what? The companies aren't going to start hiring the leftover real Japanese. The jobs were lost because the companies couldn't afford the manpower.

Wouldn't it make sense to use the money for something better. Like fostering new government run businesses. Or something...

Bodhi Wrote:The Japanese situation is very peculiar though. Many of those they are giving this option to are of 100% Japanese ancestry, just born elsewhere. It's not like the pure Japanese blood is going to be diluted in any way.

That's even weirder. WOW!

The government doesn't "want them gone" out of xenophobia. They invited the nisei there in the first-place with special visas created specifically for the purpose of unskilled labor. The problem is that many of the factories have gone bankrupt and are either closing or downsizing. The government is giving them assistance to return to their home countries instead of creating a homeless problem.

Other than the factory work they came over to do, the nisei have zero job prospects in Japan, so the majority of laid off workers who do not return will become homeless once their savings run out. They are (in general) unskilled laborers who cannot speak/read/write Japanese to a sufficient level despite their Japanese blood.

They are not "banned from Japan" when they accept the money for a return ticket, they just lose the special visa that they received. It seems a given to me that their visa should be revoked when the conditions for it no longer hold true (employment). I think it's actually pretty generous that the government is willing to pay. I don't think that the govt similarly assisted Nova teachers who lost their jobs. The only difference between a nisei visa and a normal work visa is that normal work visas are only given to people who will perform skilled work, not manual labor.

If anything the creation of the nisei-visa is much more xenophobic than paying them to go home when the work is gone. The thinking was that foreigners of Japanese descent would be less trouble than using other foreigners. It's obvious in retrospect that this thinking was flawed since culture comes from one's surroundings, not from blood.

Basically, why should citizens of a foreign country get special treatment just because they have Japanese ancestors? The cause of this problem was xenophobic, but the solution most certainly is not.

roptsa Wrote:

TB Wrote:It means that in comparision with other industrialized nations, a higher percentage of residents of Japan were born in the main islands proper, or born in 日本列島. Whereas other nations have more foreign-born persons in their population.

Certainly China has them beat, then? I've yet to hear of the homogeneity of the People's Republic of China or Hong Kong. What about North Korea or Somalia? Wait those aren't industrialized are they? Why the *** do only industrialized countries count? I want to be homogeneous too!

I don't think so, the ratio of Han ethnicity to others in China is not nearly as pronounced as that of the native-born Yamato people to non-天孫民族. Hong Kong is really small... North Korea is the personal manor of Kim Jong Il, Somalia is Hell on earth...

I'm not sure why you wrote you want to be homogenous too... As to why you haven't heard of those other places it's probably because those other places (other than Hong Kong, which isn't and never was an independent nation) aren't as industrialized as Japan or the rest of the First World (Capitalist World of the Cold War Era).

And why do only industrialized nations receive such scrutiny? Because the Anglophone world, England, Canada, America, Austrialia, etc. is mostly industrialized nations and they like to study themselves and compare themselves to others like themselves. Unless you can read ethnological publications in Chinese or something, Japan as homogenous will be a major theme in East Asian-related ethnological, sociological (or related) publications/discussions.

Quote:

Quote:Not every society looks at North America and its melting pot of cultures and thinks, "that's a great idea!"

Not even America thinks that. We be not as progressive as we seems. Me thinks.

America is pathetic when it comes to race issues. Progressive + America (of the present) don't typically belong in the same book, much less the same discussion.

@Jarvik

I'm not sure about this...

Jarvik7 Wrote:They are not "banned from Japan" when they accept the money for a return ticket, they just lose the special visa that they received.

According to the bill, it appears as if they lose to ability to not only return unless the Diet legislates that the economy has improved, but that they also lose their ability to apply as Nisei, and instead have to apply as Foreign Aliens under Japanese nationality laws. If this is correct, then the "blood money" will remove any "blood connection" these "Nisei" have with the "Yamato people."

Jarvik7 Wrote:I think it's actually pretty generous that the government is willing to pay.

For them to GTFO regardless of whether they have work waiting for them in Brazil? I think the gesture may appear to have the effect of taking them from a jobless environment, but I'm sure the many right-wingers in the Japanese Diet wouldn't give a rip if these Brazilians were being shipped to the bottom of the Ocean.

Jarvik7 Wrote:If anything the creation of the nisei-visa is much more xenophobic than paying them to go home when the work is gone. The thinking was that foreigners of Japanese descent would be less trouble than using other foreigners. It's obvious in retrospect that this thinking was flawed since culture comes from one's surroundings, not from blood.

The Nisei visa is definately xenophobic and eugenics-tastic. The idea that citizenship or nationality has or should have anything to do with "blood" is simply laughable and empirically false on every level. These laws will hopefully be reformed soon by popular referendum, but I doubt it...

If Japanese people of 100% Japanese "blood" are treated like this (providing the bill does strip them of Nisei status in future visa applications), imagine how hateful some of these politicians must be (and are willing to legislate on) with regards to "real" or "worse" gaijin.

My point was that it's a good thing that they have to re-apply as foreign aliens if they want to gain a new visa. They are after all citizens of a foreign country. Their "blood connection" to Japan is nonsense and shouldn't have been given special status to begin with.

Yes, they should GTFO even if they don't have a job lined up for them in Brazil. They are Brazillians and it is the Brazillian government's responsibility to provide social welfare for them. These nisei didn't become Japanese citizens by accepting an unskilled labor visa. If they paid into the Japanese unemployment program then they should get a payout from that though. Visas are by definition temporary permission to reside in a country while the conditions for the visa hold. These nisei are no longer employed and are not employable, so the visas should be nullified.

While there are undoubtably some right-wingers taking a racial perspective on this, I think the government is being pretty generous (for a government) in offering to pay for their trip home and not nullifying the visas if they don't take the money. If the whole thing was a right wing plot to purify the homeland then the government could just nullify all the visas, round them all up, and ship them home in a cargo plane.

Accepting the return-ticket money is optional and they aren't being forced out of Japan. They at least have a chance of finding a job in a country where their native language is used. If anything the nisei are benefitting from racism (again). Non-nisei foreigners affected by the recession (or Nova's collapse) didn't get similar assistance.

Quote:Japan as homogenous will be a major theme in East Asian-related ethnological, sociological (or related) publications/discussions.

Not if you read anything legitimate published within the last 10-20 years. Don't confuse layman books with serious academic work. There is a lot of attention paid to zainichi, burakumin, Ainu, Okinawans, etc in more recent work.

Jarvik7 Wrote:My point was that it's a good thing that they have to re-apply as foreign aliens if they want to gain a new visa. They are after all citizens of a foreign country. Their "blood connection" to Japan is nonsense and shouldn't have been given special status to begin with.

Hmm, I believe your stance is correct in this sense.

Although part of me feels that the Japanese government should have some kind of supportive bond with the children of parents who were native-born or naturalized Japanese citizens, such as subsidized study-abroad programs to learn about where they and their parents are from.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Yes, they should GTFO even if they don't have a job lined up for them in Brazil. They are Brazillians and it is the Brazillian government's responsibility to provide social welfare for them. These nisei didn't become Japanese citizens by accepting an unskilled labor visa. If they paid into the Japanese unemployment program then they should get a payout from that though. Visas are by definition temporary permission to reside in a country while the conditions for the visa hold.

Yes this is a very important point. They aren't Japanese by citizenship laws, but by these "blood" laws or ideas. One would presume that those who subscribe by those laws would view these folks as having "Japanese blood." Although of course the misanthropic expediency of the values of any politician is off the charts...

Jarvik7 Wrote:While there are undoubtably some right-wingers taking a racial perspective on this, I think the government is being pretty generous (for a government) in offering to pay for their trip home and not nullifying the visas if they don't take the money. If the whole thing was a right wing plot to purify the homeland then the government could just nullify all the visas, round them all up, and ship them home in a cargo plane.

But I don't think the second scenario, mass deportation is really feasible. It would be violent, repressive, much looked down upon by the international community, and more costly in the long run. I think this can still be seen as ethnic cleansing given the motivations of certain politicians.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Accepting the return-ticket money is optional and they aren't being forced out of Japan. They at least have a chance of finding a job in a country where their native language is used.

Yeah, I was amazed when bodhisamaya wrote that many of these workers can barely speak Japanese. But if they're starving or nearing destitution, is there really a choice?

The idea that these folks ought to have Nisei status is indeed based on the untrue principles of "blood." With that in mind, stripping them, and everyone of Nisei status would be good. But to individually target these people because they weren't native born reeks of ethnic cleansing (Again, the language barrier would be a far more valid angle of approach). Even if a post-modern and economical version of ethnic cleansing.

I'm taking the word of a friend here. He says that Japan accepts nisei for the help that Japan received from nicei during the post war.

TheTrueBlue Wrote:Although part of me feels that the Japanese government should have some kind of supportive bond with the children of parents who were native-born or naturalized Japanese citizens, such as subsidized study-abroad programs to learn about where they and their parents are from.

Many countries take blood into account when someone applies for citizenship, including Japan.

However, I can't think of any country which offers what you describe. I certainly have never gone on free excursions to the Ukraine, France, Ireland, or England to learn about my blood heritage. When the nisei's parents abandoned their Japanese citizenship for Brazillian citizenship, they abandoned all rights that came with it. If their parents retained Japanese citizenship while in Brazil, the children automatically get Japanese citizenship as well as Brazillian citizenship, although they have to choose one when they become of age since Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship for adults.

Japan's govt does offer a large number of scholarships, but I don't recall seeing any that required Japanese heritage.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

TheTrueBlue Wrote:Although part of me feels that the Japanese government should have some kind of supportive bond with the children of parents who were native-born or naturalized Japanese citizens, such as subsidized study-abroad programs to learn about where they and their parents are from.

Many countries take blood into account when someone applies for citizenship, including Japan.

However, I can't think of any country which offers what you describe. I certainly have never gone on free excursions to the Ukraine, France, Ireland, or England to learn about my blood heritage. When the nisei's parents abandoned their Japanese citizenship for Brazillian citizenship, they abandoned all rights that came with it. If their parents retained Japanese citizenship while in Brazil, the children automatically get Japanese citizenship as well as Brazillian citizenship, although they have to choose one when they become of age since Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship for adults.

Israel?

TheTrueBlue Wrote:Israel?

Ireland is one example of blood citizenship. I can get automatic Irish citizenship if I desired it, because I am 1/4 Irish.

Another example is "citizenship" of a native reserve in Canada, which are essentially autonomous countries within a country. I again qualify since I'm like 1/8 Metis (apparently). The only reason I haven't is that it is too 面倒くさい to make a family tree /w proof.

As for cultural programs, I think Israel is a special case due to the religious overtones of their racial identity and its history. In many ways it's like Nazi Germany's "back to the fatherland" program, except even more extreme since Israel basically is a country constructed out of nothing post-ww2. EVERYONE is an immigrant there. Cultural programs are in place since they had to populate a country that started out with a population of 0 after the territory was gifted to them.

But there are. Maybe it is only here in Brasil, but when I searched for scholarships for me, a German descendant, I found many more offers for nisei.

mentat_kgs Wrote:But there are. Maybe it is only here in Brasil, but when I searched for scholarships for me, a German descendant, I found many more offers for nisei.

Perhaps those are private scholarships. Do you see anything on the monbusho site for nisei?

This blood paradigm causes so much misery.

When I go to Japan I'm just going to say I'm American and use my katakana name instead of beating myself up with the bureaucratic and societal apparatuses that "deal" with such "issues."

I imagine with a Chinese father and a Japanese mother the right wingers I meet will only think I'm half an illegal alien/criminal, while of course never giving me the "privilege" of being a full member of the 天孫民族, I might get an "honorary" status like Hitler made Mussolini an "Honorary Aryan" for a time.

These national labels of "Chinese", "Japanese", "American" are (when it comes to individual identity) essentially bullshit though. Beyond legal matters that unforunately presently necessitate such labels, I or anyone else is of course not determined to have or not have any characteristic at all based on the geography where one was physically detached from the mother's womb. Ditto for blood, those pop culture blood-type horoscopes in Japan always did have a eugenics kind of 気がする。