Even more insular

A recommended article from
Doug the world traveler :

　　　 == The Independent ==

　　Is Japan becoming more insular?

Foreign residents waiting at a Hello Work
employment office in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka
Prefecture, in this photo dated Jan. 20, 2009.
With so much talk of globalization, it might seem
counterintuitive to suggest that Japan is turning
inward, but that's what some have concluded.

The Washington Post recently focused on one
example: the dwindling number of
Japanese students studying abroad.

Roughly 80,000 Japanese students now study
outside the country, far fewer than, say,
South Korea with less than half Japan's population.
The fall has been particularly sharp in the
United States, where Japanese undergraduate
enrollment in universities is down
by over a half since 2000.

Glen S. Fukushima, CEO of Airbus Japan, also wrote
about this issue recently in the Mainichi Weekly,
lamenting Japan's turn inward.

I think the picture is more complex than it looks.
For example, more Japanese students now study
in Asia than ever before. And my view is not that
young people are naturally uncurious about the
world and language.
It's that the education system, with its emphasis on
the bookish accumulation of facts, helps suppress
what should be natural curiosity.

But there are other signs that Japan wants to
keep the world at bay.

Take Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, where the
local government last year made what seemed like
a coldhearted offer to Latin American immigrants:
It would pay them to go back home -- as long as
they agreed not to look for work here again.
Some had invested 20 years in this country and
had children who knew nothing about Brazil or Peru.

I've written about immigration a lot because Japan
is still an anomaly in the developed world.
Despite a string of signals from the business and
political worlds that a population crisis will force
immigration policy past its tipping point, the
government shows no sign of taking the padlocks
off "fortress Japan."

Roughly 2 percent of the population here is foreign,
far below most OECD countries. And the Hamamatsu
case, while isolated, seemed to show that the state
might take away the welcome mat when the
economy darkens.

It's not that I don't understand how Japan feels.
In my native Ireland, the foreign population went
from almost zero to about 10 percent in the 15
or so years since I left.
That's a major adjustment for native Irish people.
And there have been tensions: When I was at home
in April, racist thugs murdered a young black boy in
the capital, Dublin.

But immigration is in my view changing Ireland
immeasurably for the better, bringing in new
influences, cultures and food, broadening our
perspectives on the world and contributing to our
economy.
And immigration is payback: the Irish, after all, have
gone all over the world. Why shouldn't we give
something back?

I wonder if Japan will ever feel the same?

*
David McNeill writes for The Independent and
Irish Times newspapers and the weekly
Chronicle of Higher Education.
He has been in Japan since 2000 and previously
spent two years here, from 1993-95 working on
a doctoral thesis.
He was raised in Ireland.