Sat, Jan 22, 2000 page9

• Is Japan racist toward foreigners? No, says a Westerner

  A recent incident involving a Japanese-Brazilian woman who was discriminated against by a Japanese shopkeeper -- she won her case in court -- has provoked much handwringing and discussion, in private and on the Internet. A longtime resident of Japan gives his take on the issue

  • By Gregory Clark
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  There is something very one-sided about the way so many outsiders want to see Japan as a den of racist iniquity.

  The recent case of a small Hamamatsu jeweler fined for refusing entry to foreigners made headlines worldwide.

  In Internet chat rooms for resident "gaijin" (foreigners) here in Japan, the joy was unconfined.

  Yet almost every Westerner living in the Land of the Rising Sun must at some time or other have felt the extraordinary courtesy and honesty the Japanese can show to outsiders.

  Is that supposed to be part of some racist plot? Few other nations go to the same trouble to provide materials and services in English for a foreign minority not very interested in learning the local language.

  Where else in the world would mediocre foreign TV personalities and commentators receive such attention, simply because they are seen as different and "kakko-ii" (superficially attractive).

  In areas where many Western nations still discriminate against foreigners -- licenses, company registrations or land purchases for example -- Japan can often be remarkably open and fair.

  Foreigners are even invited to join government policymaking bodies ("shingikai").

  But no doubt the critics will find a way around it all.

  If sumo star Konishiki is not promoted to yokozuna, that proves more anti-foreigner racism.

  But when American-born sumo wrestler Akebono is made yokozuna and Konishiki, also from the US, is promoted to TV stardom, we get deep silence.

  If Japan for fairly valid reasons fingerprints foreigners, that too is racism.

  When US fingerprinting of aliens is pointed out, we get more silence.

  Nor is there much interest in the reasons why a Hamamatsu jeweler might want to keep out foreigners -- when even the Hamamatsu police are concerned over the problem of petty pilfering by local Brazilian workers.

  Some foreigners here are now focusing on a Hokkaido bathhouse keeper who sought to keep out visiting Russian seamen.

  Many of these Russians are delightful people.

  Even so, the fact remains that people who have just arrived from Sakhalin Island on unsanitary, Russian rust-bucket boats are bound to cause problems ("meiwaku") in Japanese bathhouses.

  In Japan's person-oriented value system, causing problems is a major sin.

  Landlords who bar foreigners because the fret over the problems that untidy tenants might create are also hit by foreign critics.

  But we hear little about the landlords who prefer foreigners over Japanese tenants because they believe the former are more likely to obey contracts.

  One of the reasons why Japan works so well as a society, and is therefore attractive to foreigners seeking a comfortably ordered life, is precisely because of the particularistic, anti-meiwaku fussiness with which shopkeepers, bathhouse owners, landlords, etc, go about their business.

  To ignore these and the many other details that can make life for foreigners here so easy, while focusing relentlessly on the occasional downside, is devious. It is also immature.

  Needless to say, the critics also have nothing to say about the good citizens in Hamamatsu and elsewhere who go out of their way to organize friendship societies in a fairly vain effort to help poorer foreign workers (South Americans especially) and students integrate into Japan.

  But the decibels rise if some hypersensitive foreigner feels Japanese commuters avoid sitting next to him or her on trains, although the chances are that said Japanese are simply afraid that said critic will cause them large meiwaku by asking directions in loud and incomprehensible English.

  True, there are times when anti-foreign sentiment in Japan can turn ugly. But that is usually just the flip side of the instinctive sensitivities that lead so many other Japanese to be unduly pro-gaijin.

  Even at its militaristic worst, the Japanese approach to foreigners was ambiguous.

  Japanese nationalists would vent cruel hatred on other Asians seen as unfriendly.

  But they would then turn round and embrace those whom they thought were pro-Japan.

  They never developed across-the-board racial hatreds seen in our Western societies -- not because of any superior virtue, but simply because they lacked our Western ability to turn particular feelings into universal rationales binding for all times and places.

  Even at the height of the Japan-German alliance, Japan, unlike Vichy France and other allegedly civilized nations, never saw any need to cooperate with Nazi anti-Jewish hatreds.

  Some blacks in Japan complain about discrimination. But many more say they find Japan more open and friendly than some Western societies, where black people are still stereotyped as undesirable, without regard for individual personalities.

  Today Western progressives try to fight these across-the-board prejudices by religiously trying to deny any hint of differences between races.

  Even legitimate mention of such differences, for example that black people make superior athletes, is banned for fear of reviving the rationales that fueled past racism.

  But for the Japanese, it is quite natural to note that there are differences between the races -- that some foreign people are kakko-ii or likely to observe contracts, while others are more likely to be untidy, pilfer, leave mud on the floor, etc.

  These attitudes may trample on the principled sensitivities of progressives, but that's their problem, not Japan's.

  Japan's uglier discriminations have usually been closer to home -- towards the formerly outcast people ("burakumin") in Japan and other domestic minorities, such as Koreans, Okinawans and the Ainu people of Hokkaido.

  Since the discrimination is so instinctive, with no attempt at rationale (another aspect of Japanese values), they are hard to deal with, and progressive Japanese often try to avoid even discussing them for fear of reviving the ugly instincts.

  Foreign critics see that reticence as another ugly, racist, Japanese coverup. To demand that Japanese observe a Western value system, while pouring scorn on theirs, is the worst kind of racism.

  Gregory Clark is the president of Tama University in Tokyo. He contributed this article to The Japan Times.
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