• Home
• About/Contact
• Economic Reports
• Research
• Advertising

• Business
• Economics
• Reports
• Finance
• Marketing
• Politics
• Real Estate
• Services
• Retail
• Tech

Washington Post Remains Unable to be Trusted on Japan Coverage

The Washington Post has an article on the children of Nikkei (not the newspaper) workers from Peru and Brazil who have returned to Japan to find work, often in the nation’s manufacturing industries. Their children often find Japan difficult to assimilate into, and drop out of school at much higher rates than native-born Japanese students. The article contains this quote on why immigrants from South America were brought to Japan to help stem off the hollowing out of its factories, and the problems they have faced:

Government officials thought they would blend into the country’s notoriously insular society more easily than people from other ethnic backgrounds…But many found they didn’t quite fit. Their names and faces were Japanese, but they didn’t speak the language. They didn’t understand local customs, such as the country’s stringent system for sorting garbage into multicolored containers.

This is what happens when media outlets have reporters who don’t know anything about the country in question write a piece on it. First of all, not only is it absurd to claim that the color of rubbish containers is somehow a ‘custom,’ anyone who’s lived in Japan knows that it takes about one full minute to learn which items go into which color bin; there are only a few of them and there are big, clearly printed signs with pictures on them next to the bins. Children grasp these things easily.

What this reporter fails to realize is that understanding a social process and actually caring about it are two totally different things.

The problem is that this example - foreigners might have trouble sorting garbage! - is one of the ridiculous excuses often given by landlords who don’t want to rent to foreigners for other reasons. It’s pure tatemae, but don’t ask this reporter about that, because she doesn’t know what it is.

Or sempai/kohai, which is a Japanese social concept that these children may not fully get - or rather they most likely do get, but might not want to participate in it. Growing up with Brazilian or Peruvian parents, these children most likely have different body language patterns than Japanese children at the same age, and they aren’t likely to change them - or want to. They are given the option of opting out of such elements of Japanese culture, and they often do, especially at this age.

One thing’s for sure: They can figure out where to put the garbage. Caring about where to put the garbage is something different. They might not respect the formality of sorting into multicolored bins if they think it will all end up in the same incinerator anyway.

By the way: The problem with the children of immigrants in Japan is a huge one. It is also something that the government is ignoring, at its own peril and due to its own short-sightedness. It is also an issue that the foreign media proves unable to grasp, time and time and time again.

Comments

Copyright © 2006-2008 Japan Economy News

Disclaimer