Can Time Solve Immigration Issues?

Illegal immigration has become a problem in Japan. As discussed in the article “Before ‘Japan First,’ What Kind of Society Do We Want?”, statistically, illegal immigration is not increasing. This is a perceived sense of unease driven by media and online coverage.

It mirrors the unfounded perception of societal decline fueled by sensationalized media coverage of violent crimes in the 2000s.

Humans have a tendency to overemphasize things they easily recall. This is called recall bias. Humans are not entirely rational creatures.

Japan is a closed island nation. When it comes to getting along well with the outside world, there is a history of contempt towards Asians and Africans dating back to the era of colonial rule before the war, which has damaged Japan’s trustworthiness in the world.

Additionally, within Japan itself, a village mentality fosters a tendency to treat foreigners as outsiders. This too undermines Japan’s credibility.

These are failures where the Japanese people themselves squander the benefits of international cooperation with Japan and foreign countries, as well as the domestic utilization of foreign talent.

Meanwhile, immigration is also becoming a problem in Europe and America. These are refugees from failed states (countries that no longer function as proper nations). Refugees from sub-Saharan African countries to Europe. Refugees from Venezuela, where one-third of the population has fled abroad, to the United States. And refugees from Mexico to the United States, whose farmers lost their jobs due to cheap American corn imports.

For democracy to function, a sense of national unity is crucial. Ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, saw its democracy collapse precisely because this national unity was lost.

In other words, the integration or assimilation of immigrants within the host country is necessary.

In social psychology, integration refers to immigrants blending their home country’s culture with the host country’s culture to build their identity. Assimilation means immigrants abandon their home country’s culture and adopt the host country’s culture as their identity.

In other words, assimilation is when immigrants abandon their home country’s culture and accept the host country’s culture, while integration is when they maintain both.

However, integration or assimilation is not always possible. There can be regression, where individuals revert to immersing themselves in their home country’s culture, or stagnation, where they remain in a state of indecision.

Furthermore, the faster the influx of immigrants, the more difficult integration or assimilation becomes. This is because immigrants can build communities among themselves and live that way.

Historically, the overseas Chinese community exemplifies this pattern. They have established Chinatowns worldwide, forming concentrated settlements.

Two factors contribute to the formation of Chinatowns. First, a continuous flow of immigrants from the homeland. Second, the exclusion of the overseas Chinese community by the local society. Without these conditions, Chinatowns would naturally disappear.

Therefore, if immigrants continuously flow into a country and are simultaneously excluded, they will likely build communities without being integrated or assimilated.

Exclude outsiders, and outsiders will stick together. It’s only natural.

However, research also suggests that the presence of immigrants as a minority can erode a sense of unity among the majority population.

Finally, the question is whether unity can be built among citizens before immigrants arrive. If citizens cannot achieve this unity among themselves, they will likely fail to integrate or assimilate foreign immigrants. Moreover, what culture should they integrate or assimilate into in the first place?

Let’s discuss Japan here. In Japan, about 60% of lost wallets are returned to their owners. Setting aside the “Japan is amazing” narrative, isn’t the reason Japan functions this way because there is a sense of unity among its citizens within a relatively small society? In other words, it’s about mutual trust.

There’s a Japanese proverb: “Kindness is never wasted.” The kindness you show others eventually comes back to you.

Kaizen is also uniquely Japanese, though the term is understood in English. Efforts to improve problems on the factory floor or in the workplace stem from workers’ voluntary initiatives.

Other countries have tried to theorize and introduce kaizen, but ultimately it was seen as “something the entire nation must undertake.”

Kaizen may be a national trait. However, companies that replace workers with non-regular employees and lay them off during economic downturns are unlikely to sustain such improvement efforts.

Living on a disaster-prone archipelago like Japan, where three oceanic plates converge, resulting in a globally high frequency of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and situated along the path of the tropical monsoon, mutual aid is crucial.

In The Lord of the Rings, which became a Hollywood film, the wise wizard Gandalf delivered a crucial foreshadowing line: “Mercy saved Gollum’s life. What that will mean, even a wizard cannot say.”

The English-speaking world also has the concept of “paying it forward.”

Meanwhile, from the 1990s into the 2000s, Japan plunged into a society of anomie. Anomie refers to a society where morality has decayed.

Indeed, the book Why Doesn’t the Pole Salesman Go Out of Business?, which exposed the fraudulent practices of pole salesmen who peddled clotheslines while persuading customers into unnecessary clothesline platform installations, became a bestseller in the 2000s.

At the time, Japanese people read this book and nodded in agreement, thinking, “The bamboo pole seller is clever; this is how you make money.” Of course, crime is not work. Money gained through crime is not profit but criminal proceeds.

In such a society, there is no sense of unity among its citizens. For example, there is no unity between the winners and the losers.

In such a society, immigrants cannot be expected to integrate or assimilate into the host country.

If domestic communities unite and do not exclude outsiders, there is potential for immigrants to integrate or assimilate. Such a society should be livable for Japanese people too.

However, in Japan, where village societies proliferate, achieving immigrant integration or assimilation may be difficult.

Fundamentally, morality sometimes serves to reproduce class divisions. Take Neo-Confucianism in the Edo period, for example. It’s about knowing one’s place.

Even in modern Japan, political commentators sometimes lecture singers or actors who criticize the government on knowing their place.

If the revival of community morality in Japan leads to such class reproduction, it would be unfortunate for the people. They would be required by the village society to conform to class morality, yet find themselves unable to control that situation personally.

Of course, we cannot expect immigrants to willingly submit to such class morality.

While slightly different from immigrant assimilation or integration, there is a relevant concept: the cultivation of trust.

As discussed in Community Capital Theory, there are three types of interpersonal trust: personal relationships, adherence to shared community values, and adherence to universal norms shared by all. These are called particularized trust, common-measure trust, and normative trust, respectively.

In Japanese society, trust relationships are strongly rooted in personal connections. Examples include “having visited many times” or “having eaten from the same pot.”

The term “Southern Blur” is introduced in Human Relations in a Vertical Society. It refers to the phenomenon where people dispatched to Southeast Asia and then returning to Japan find they can no longer relate to their former colleagues. This happens because they lose the ability to read the workplace atmosphere during their overseas assignment.

However, this makes it difficult for foreigners to integrate into Japan.

If shared values and perceptions existed to bridge group boundaries, both Japanese and foreigners could build relationships more smoothly within Japan’s fragmented village-like society.

What if universal norms existed? “Universal” could refer to two things: either universal values like the human rights ideology born of Western modern civilization, or common values broadly found among all ethnic groups worldwide.

This article will not address human rights ideology. Regarding the latter, I will paraphrase from Why the World Becomes Hell (Rei Tachibana).

The moral codes widely observed among peoples on Earth are as follows:

“ Support your family Support your group Repay kindness Be brave Obey your superiors Share resources fairly Respect others’ property “ If upholding universal values becomes a virtue within a nation, it will also make it easier to build relationships with foreigners.

Furthermore, an essential element of trust is foreigners being able to speak the local language.

Even if appearances differ, speaking the same language fosters a sense of camaraderie.

This is a survival strategy explained in Born a Crime!? (Trevor Noah).

South Africa has five major black tribes. During apartheid, whites stoked divisions, leaving black people often distrustful of each other.

As a mixed-race white-black person, the author was easily singled out by different tribes. To protect himself, he devised a strategy: learning the other person’s language. When he addressed them in their own tongue, their perception of him changed visibly.

In Japan too, we increasingly see mixed-race athletes of African descent on TV and online. If they were fluent in Japanese, wouldn’t viewers’ perceptions change?

This isn’t about abandoning one’s native language. Being bilingual is perfectly fine. It would also be useful for immigrants living in Japan. For instance, when fleeing to an evacuation center during a disaster.

Immigration issues are problems time can solve if integration or assimilation is possible. But if the country itself is in turmoil, that’s not something we can hope for.

I’m doing this alone, so I have no backing. I have no ties, so I don’t have to read the room. taiga doesn’t hang out with anyone because taiga’s ideology is unique in the world.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)