While exploring China Town in Kobe with a friend a while ago, a curious thing happened. Along a street lined with tightly packed restaurants and street cart vendors, heavily congested with foot traffic of local and foreign tourists alike, a stereotype caught my attention. It was one projected at my companion by a young Japanese man hawking for customers from his employer’s storefront. The Japanese man called out his offer first in Japanese, and when this failed to rouse my companion’s interest he leaned closer and spoke loudly in English directly at my friend – “Come eat here!” Although Caucasian, my companion’s native language is not English and he told me later he wasn’t even aware of the man calling to him, in Japanese or English.
Kobe is an interesting place owing to its history as being a port city, and former home to many embassies, foreign residences and foreign style buildings. It is something of a matter of acclaim for the city, with tourist brochures dedicated solely to the “international” flavor of the city. The incident with my friend, however, is a little more tell-tale of common conceptions about Caucasian foreigners, and a broader discourse on Japanese views of foreigners in general. Japan has had a bumpy history with the topic of prejudice and racism, perhaps best documented by Japanese human rights activist and university professor Debito Arudou.
Unfortunate as it is, one reason for the stereotypical association of English with Caucasian likely comes from the overwhelming majority of Caucasian visitors to Japan being from the United States[1], not to mention the US military bases across the country. There is also the possibility that some Japanese people are simply not giving enough conscious attention to these matters. That was certainly the impression I got from this display of international flags (above), and the lack of scrutiny to ensure they were faced properly. Then again, growing up in a country where you don't have to worry how you hang your flag (because it's always correct) has an impact on this as well.
1: Based on 2008 statistics from Keizai Koho Center, p.60.
3 Responses to “Politics: Foreigners in Japan”
interesting, in my sociology class we've been talking about racism, stereotypes, stigma and the like. One of the sociological theories that may explain the inaction by Caucasian Japanese could be attributed to personal-group discrimination theory (Taylor 1990) - basically that people, such as your friend, fail to acknowledge discrimination in their lives because it challenges the belief that they are in control of their lives, or because failing to acknowledge it allows the individual to mentally distance themselves from the negative stereotypes of their own group. This inaction usually leads to Jost's "system justification theory" (2007), in which minority or discriminated group members internalize the status hierarchy as fair and legitimate.
Could explain why no one has remarked about the mis-hung flags assuming they've even noticed!
Interesting that you made a link of Caucasian + Japanese for my friend, though that's not the case. He's a foreign student from Europe. When I asked him about the incident he said he wasn't paying attention to anything going on at the moment, and I imagine that with both English and Japanese being foreign languages to him, it is fairly easy to block them out regardless of the situation. With English as my native language I'm not afforded such a luxury all the time, as my ears ring clearly every word when I hear English used amongst a cacophony of Japanese, Korean and Chinese as I did that day.
I'm not entirely certain how often flags are hung incorrectly in Japan (at least in a display such as this), but with two foreign dignitaries present at the event I was a bit surprised by that lapse. I imagine it was handled by students who were left to figure it out themselves, as often happens. There is something to be said about their education, and perhaps views of foreign matters, through this though.
I sometimes tire of the assumption made by many Japanese that I as a foreigner must speak English. But then again here at Gaidai, no matter where one if from, they must have competence in English to participate in the program. English is the global language as well in business and academia. And if we travel back to America, Americans expect foreigners to speak English as well.
Personally I have never seen any personal-group theory or system justification theory played out in Japan by long term minority residents or even short term foreign visitors. Arudou Debito is certainly a good example of this...
I would hope students of the countries with the improper flag hanging would educate the CIE about their mistake.
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