Is Japan really racist?
TOKYO —By Jessica Kozuka
Much ink has been spilled about the supposed homogeneity of Japan and the dangerous idea of racial purity that goes along with it. Some expats have made entire careers writing — or ranting — about the problems of discrimination in Japan. And yet, the number of foreign residents has more than doubled in the last 20 years and international marriages in the country have been steadily rising, so it can’t be all that hostile either.
So how racist is Japan, really? Here’s my take — admittedly only one perspective — on where things stand.
So, let’s start with where I’m coming from. I grew up in a white, middle-class neighborhood. There were a handful of minorities at my schools, mostly Latino, but I lived my entire life as part of the majority ethnic group. Moving to Japan 10 years ago was the first time in my life that I experienced what it’s like to be in the minority.
Let me be clear. I’m not conflating my experience, which has been largely unproblematic, with the experiences of oppressed minorities. They don’t even compare. However, for the first time in my life, I was visibly “other.” For the first time, I wondered what assumptions people were making about me based on the color of my skin and the shape of my face. For the first time in my life, racial differences stopped being something I thought about abstractly and started being something I confronted daily. It got me thinking about the different forms racism takes and how they work in society.
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