Foreigners, if conspicuous hard to fit in
Posted by Matt Dioguardi on January 29th, 2007
Article:
Foreigners, if conspicuous hard to fit in (Jan 24 2007)
Gunma Brazilians Mirror dilemma of closed Japan having to open up
Author:
Joseph Coleman
Source:
Japan Times Online
Comment: Okay, so this is to be a case representative of other and future cases. So let’s read the author’s comments carefully.
Article notes:
1. Coleman describes a Brazilian man, Carlos Watanabe, who along with his bar mates is lonely in Japan. He is: “Isolated, looked down upon, cold-shouldered.” He wants to go back to Brazil but he doesn’t have the money.
Comment: I’m saddened that he wants to return “home”, but why doesn’t he have the money? According to the article he’s been in Japan twelve years. Apparently, since he was sixteen. If I am reading the article correctly, he came to Japan at sixteen years of age to become a factory worker.
2. Coleman lists three complaints the government has about the Brazilians. “The outsiders do not speak enough Japanese. They don’t recycle their trash properly. Their kids don’t get along with their Japanese classmates.”
Comment: These are just examples.
3. The town of Oizumi in Gunma has a population of 42,000 with a 15 percent foreign population.
4. Article sites familiar information about Japan’s population decline.
5. Coleman argues that Oizumi might be Japan’s town of the future and describes how Brazilian features can now be found in the town. Shops and churches and so on.
6. Coleman says, Brazilians do things like slap people on the back, speak in booming voices, and have non-Japanese features. They even take their shirts off. So they stand out among the Japanese.
7. Coleman notes for the second time that Brazilians don’t throw away their trash properly. He also states that they unable or unwilling don’t communicate with the police or file tax returns.
8. Schooling is a problem for Brazilian kids. School is not compulsory for them.
9. Many Brazilians don’t get the same entitlements Japanese workers get because they are hired through labor brokers.
10. Quote: “Above all, the differences are cultural and rife with stereotypes: Latinos playing music late on weekends; teenagers congregating in the streets at night, alarming police.”
Comment: What does it mean to say the differences are rife with stereotypes? Is that a mistake? People view the differences through the lense of stereotypes, but this often produces inaccuracies, right?
11. Coleman again reviews Japan’s perilous population drop.
12. Coleman quotes someone at the immigration bureau who only wants “good” immigrants.
Comment: I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.
13. Quote: “In 1999, the Brazilian education company Pitagoras opened a school in Ota, a town neighboring Oizumi, to improve the foreign children’s Portuguese and prepare them for a possible return to Brazil. Japan now has six Pitagoras outlets.”
Comment: Now that’s news and that’s interesting. Wonder if this might be a new trend … good? bad?
14. Apparently children at the above schools don’t fit in well in Japan or Brazil. They have a rough time of it.
15. One Brazilian notes “We’re noisy and lazy — they don’t like that.”
Comment: An ironic comment, after all it’s the Nikkeijin who are doing the work the Japanese don’t want to do!