Immigrant Japan: mobility and belonging in an ethno-nationalist society

Under the somewhat provocative title of Immigrant Japan, Gracia Liu-Farrer has penned an extraordinarily insightful study that draws on some 200 in-depth interviews with immigrants in Japan. The sample covers immigrants of different ages, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, different professions, and migration paths. What they have in common is that they all have spent several years living and studying or working in Japan. In this book, Liu-Farrer puts their life stories center-stage, and neatly contextualizes them with theories from the fields of sociology, geography, and psychology. Liu-Farrer argues that Japan has in fact become an immigration country. This is a remarkable hypothesis to put forward since policymakers in Japan continue to deny that the government pursues an immigration policy, and the number of Japan’s foreign population is low compared to that of other OECD countries (p. 3). The various labor migration schemes that are in place are predominantly designed for a short- to medium-term residence, but not for settlement, and they are being promoted to the concerned public as labor market measures. Those who settle nevertheless will drop out of the statistics of foreign residents once they naturalize. Children of multicultural marriages will not show up in the statistics either if they (also) hold Japanese citizenship. So, while the official numbers speak of 2.9 million registered foreign residents in pre-pandemic 2019, which amounts to a mere 2.25% of the overall population (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication [MIAC], 2020), this significantly underestimates Japan’s immigrant population and its relevance to the nation’s social dynamics.

Not only does Liu-Farrer call Japan an immigrant country, but also an ethno-nationalist society. She points to the idea of “[r]acial purity and cultural homogeneity” (p. 4) as centerpieces to Japan’s ethno-nationalist discourse. This discourse saw its peak during the heydays of the Nihonjinron debates (i.e. so-called theories of Japaneseness) that coincided with the country’s remarkable economic growth period of the 1960s onward. What has prevailed among some policymakers and citizens since then is the myth that no matter what level of language proficiency or understanding of Japanese culture and social structure one reaches, there will always be some almost secretive element to Japan that will never be fully accessible to anybody else, but a person of Japanese blood, born and raised in Japan. Obviously, it is hard to imagine how an ethno-nationalist society can be an immigrant society at the same time, or at least how this could play out without major social conflicts. Liu-Farrer detangles this seeming contradiction and makes a compelling argument for contemporary Japan to be in fact both at the same time. It is probably this book’s most outstanding contribution to address this contradiction heads-on and to give readers a clear picture of the strategies and emotions involved in building a life in Japan as a non-Japanese person.

In eight chapters plus an introduction and conclusion, Liu-Farrer takes her readers on this journey of immigrating to and settling in Japan. She follows a chronological order, starting with the migration decision and the channels open to potential migrants, both the officially available channels and the ones in disguise (Chapters 1, 2). Next are the topics of working in Japan and building social networks (Chapters 3, 4), and for some the decision to leave – for good or temporarily (Chapter 5) – while those who do stay on might experience a notion of belonging or even home in Japan (Chapter 6). When they eventually settle and raise a family, they experience yet again some new facets of Japanese society in interaction with their children’s schooling institutions (Chapter 7). Liu-Farrer dedicates an extra chapter to viewing Japan through the eyes of multicultural children who are growing up in Japan and for whom Japan with all its contradictions ultimately is home (Chapter 8).

Chapters 6 and 8 are my personal highlights of this book. They both address the question of making a home and experiencing belonging in Japan, based on the life courses of first-generation migrants (Chapter 6) and their children (Chapter 8). In Chapter 6, Liu-Farrer points out that the concept of home has been deeply politicized in several eras of nation-building in Japan, and today, too, it is used “to instigate patriotic sentiments” (p. 127). Belonging, on the other hand, addresses the emotional experience of membership: “belonging is closely related to the process of acculturation and includes individual tales of growth and the establishment of one’s life” (p. 130). We hear of Sven from Sweden, who feels Japan is his home because: “This is where I have my life” (p. 129). Li from China says, “I will feel ‘this [China] is my home’ when I get off the plane in China” (p. 132), quoting – along with several other Chinese interviewees – the proverb of falling leaves that return to the roots. And Calvin from the Philippines, who lives in Japan while his family remains back in the Philippines, says, “as a family [we] stay together, and eat together, and sleep together … so that’s the home. That’s the ideal of the home. There.” (p. 135). Whether or not immigrants develop a sense of belonging is largely dependent on several factors such as their experiences of social inclusion and intimacy and their degree of acculturation, in particular their language proficiency. It also depends on their status, ethnicity, and the power of cultural narratives in their countries of origin. Liu-Farrer is cautious not to generalize from her empirical data, but much more to highlight the individual voices of her interviewees. One of the rare occasions where she clusters her research results along the lines of immigrant groups, is when she claims that the power of cultural narratives relatively strongly determines the experiences and emotions of Chinese immigrants, whereas for Americans and Europeans their sense of belonging is more closely connected to their individual biographies (p. 151). Immigrants in Japan express a complex sense of belonging. It changes over time, and it oscillates between Japan and other places. While for some Japan eventually becomes their home, for others, like Calvin, belonging and home have become “deplaced” (p. 134) concepts altogether.

In Chapter 8, Liu-Farrer gives us a glimpse of what the future of immigrant Japan might look like. Members of Japan’s young multicultural generation report on their strategies of finding belonging and home in Japan. These strategies often include “racial passing tactics not to be identified as a foreigner” (p. 182), thus avoiding exclusion and discrimination by minimizing what sets them apart from the stereotypical Japanese person. Others see themselves as a bridge between cultures, and, like a pendulum on some occasions feel more drawn to Japan and some other time more to other cultural contexts. As a new trend, Liu-Farrer observes that many of them “are increasingly aware that their multicultural, multiethnic background is an asset instead of a burden” (p. 195). The social expectations to identify as Japanese and behave accordingly are prevailing as an oppressive scenario in the ethno-nationalist society. Liu-Farrer claims that Japan’s multicultural youth is no longer willing to play by the rules of this “limited repertoire of identity choice” (p. 199); rules that many obviously perceive to be dull since they fail to adequately capture the composition of contemporary Japanese society. Rather many members of the multicultural youth “choose to become citizens of the world” (p. 199) and will eventually pressure Japan to acknowledge that it has long become an immigrant society.

Immigrant Japan represents a close-up look at an increasingly diversified Japanese society. We learn how immigrants negotiate their belonging in Japan day by day. Insights into their strategies tell us about what is important and helpful to them and what factors may very well constitute the tipping point that triggers their decision to settle in Japan. For example, Tina who came to rural Japan as an English teacher was charmed by the friendly local community that supported her overcoming the many practical difficulties that she faced, particularly in the early years when her command of the Japanese language was still insufficient (p. 93). Tina eventually decided to stay on in Japan much longer than she had initially planned for. On the other end of the spectrum, Liu-Farrer also points to the many hurdles to settlement that immigrants in Japan face, many of which are structural ones and are related to the workplace and to what Liu-Farrer calls “corporate Japan’s global talent dilemma” (p. 112). This means that too many in the highly educated young workforce, some of them even graduating from Japanese educational institutions, decide against working in Japan, due to reasons such as the slow career progression, the workstyle, and interpersonal relationships at the workplace. Women in particular feel stonewalled by Japan’s working culture. Yu Lin, a graduate of a Japanese university, decided against job-hunting in Japan while doing an internship at a city office. She came to think that women were blocked from “pursu[ing] a meaningful career in Japan. So she left” (p. 115).

With its seemingly endless supply of first-hand data that is written up in colorful stories and embedded skillfully in various social science theories, Immigrant Japan allows the readers to immerse themselves in the middle of a dynamic process happening in contemporary Japanese society. Liu-Farrer ends her book on a positive note when she ascribes Japan’s multicultural youth the power to bring about diversification, dynamism, and fluidity to the somewhat fossilized structures of Japanese society. Within the larger debate of from where social change starts, the actors or the institutions, through this book Liu-Farrer positions herself on the actors’ side. It is important to note, however, that migration policymaking in Japan in recent years, while having opened new pathways for migration that focus on the economic dimension, has continued to largely neglect the necessary reforms, for example, at workplaces or in schooling institutions, that would lower the practical hurdles for immigrants to settle. So, while the social dynamic is undoubtedly given, as Immigrant Japan illustrates, I wonder whether this is met by a political will and a political window of opportunity to manifest this change. The pandemic and Japan’s closed-door approach to non-Japanese citizens would in fact suggest otherwise, but its long-term impact can obviously only be studied some years down the road, and I would be happy to be proven wrong in my call for caution about the degree of openness to change in Japanese political and institutional structures.