How is xenophobia, racism, and prejudice in Japan?

Prejudice, xenophobia, and racism are realities in every country in the world. It does not matter your nationality, religion, skin color, culture, traditions, or lifestyle: people will run into frustrating situations everywhere. So how does it play out in Japan?

The topic is delicate, because the Japanese are widely seen as polite, hospitable, and traditional. In this article, I want to look at several aspects of prejudice and racism in Japan, without generalizing and without pretending the problems do not exist.

If you would rather watch than read, here is our video on racism and prejudice in Japan. Subscribe to the channel while you are there:

Xenophobia, racism, and prejudice in Japan – Suki Desu

What is xenophobia, racism, and prejudice?

Before we get into the substance, it helps to pin down the three terms, because they get mixed up in everyday conversation. The differences are subtle but worth keeping straight:

• Prejudice is a hostile feeling that comes from a hasty generalization of a personal experience, or that the surrounding environment pushes onto you. It is intolerance, a critical opinion, a discriminatory attitude toward people, cultures, places, or traditions.
• Racism is a belief built on a hierarchy of races and ethnicities, in which some groups see themselves as superior or purer.
• Xenophobia is the distrust, fear, or antipathy toward anything unusual or anything that comes from outside the country.

Unfortunately, people often mistake a Japanese cultural behavior for prejudice. They also tend to take isolated cases and turn them into sweeping claims that "the Japanese are prejudiced."

The Japanese have picked up that reputation, even though they are themselves targets of prejudice and jokes abroad. Prejudice exists everywhere. Saying an entire people is prejudiced is, in fact, itself a form of prejudice.

Are the Japanese prejudiced?

There are prejudiced Japanese, just as there are prejudiced Brazilians, Americans, or anyone else. Even if you run into a prejudiced or racist person, you will often end up being an attraction simply because you are different.

Anyone who really knows Japan knows the country is famous for its hospitality, its education, and its respect for others. Being a foreigner in Japan can be an overwhelmingly positive experience.

The catch is that many Japanese are shy. A lot of them will end up staring at you, and you may need to take the first step to start a conversation, especially if you speak some Japanese. Once you do, you discover how good the Japanese can be as friends.

Japan is a country obsessed with the new and the unusual, and yet a great many Japanese are also traditional and like the standard. When something falls outside that frame, some people avoid it or even push it out.

That does not mean they dislike foreigners. This form of prejudice runs inside Japanese society too. Some overly traditional and narrow-minded Japanese treat people differently when they lack higher education, are unemployed, are openly otaku, or have visible tattoos, among other things.

You can see it in the ijime (bullying) that happens in Japanese schools. Sometimes a single mistake is enough to shadow someone for the rest of their working life. Some companies and some individuals weigh a person's past and lifestyle very heavily.

On the other hand, most Japanese could not care less, and that is exactly why Japan is a country full of weirdness and oddities. The majority do not care about your lifestyle, do not get involved in other people's lives, and do not let others get involved in theirs.

Confusions about prejudice in Japan

Most of these cases are, at heart, nothing more than envy. Even women with larger bodies hear snide remarks from other women who are slimmer. There is no fixed standard by which society will accept you.

The best move is to ignore people like that. If the Japanese themselves face this kind of prejudice, it is normal to expect that it can happen to you. It is worth remembering that some of what sounds like an insult may not even be intentional.

Just as we crack silly jokes about fellow Brazilians that nobody takes seriously, a Japanese person can take the same kind of joke seriously and feel hurt. The reverse happens too: you can hear something or be treated in a way that hurts, even if the speaker did not mean it that way.

Another reason people read Japan as racist is the simple fact that the country is very strict about letting foreigners live there. Japan has rejected refugee applications for years. There is a deep unease about outsiders, fed by historical experience.

On trains, some people do not sit next to foreigners. Sometimes it is fear of not being able to communicate. In other cases, locals talk among themselves and you end up hearing the word gaijin (外人, "foreigner") in the conversation.

Personally, I think that is normal. When I see a foreigner in my own country, I think "that person is a foreigner," without fear or shame. In Japan it is rarer, but you can run into people who dislike Westerners for reasons that go beyond culture: historical wounds, the memory of the war, the atomic bombs, and more.

At the same time, Japan has also absorbed plenty of Western trends. The country is still working through a long process of Westernization. It is worth noting that foreigners without Japanese ancestry tend to face less prejudice than descendants, a topic that comes up often in discussions of hafu (ハーフ, mixed-heritage) identity.

Crossing the limits of prejudice

Another point that keeps coming up in talks of xenophobia is the fact that some places in Japan separate or ban the entry of foreigners, and some foreigners are blocked from certain services and activities.

Exclusivity exists in every country. The best way through it is to rise above it. Some Brazilians have done exactly that and made it in Japan. Many of them left factory jobs and built their own businesses.

Many more learn the culture and the language, then land jobs and lifestyles that even some Japanese have not reached. Ricardo Cruz is one example. He became the singer of a Japanese band, showing that there are no real limits to success in Japan.

So chase your dreams and go after success. Do not get stuck on the prejudice of a few envious people. Most of the time, the loudest complainers about the Japanese are not exactly perfect themselves.

Brazilians and prejudice against Asians

Brazilians tend to complain about prejudice, sometimes in exaggerated terms. Some Brazilians even say they catch more prejudice from other Brazilians living in Japan than from the Japanese themselves.

Unfortunately, that is understandable. When one Brazilian commits a crime or an offense, it ends up on television and stains the name of all Brazilians.

That has given Brazilians a bad reputation. In some shops, Japanese people are wary when foreigners, especially Brazilians, come in, partly because of thefts that some have committed.

It is understandable that some Japanese feel distrust, fear, or antipathy toward foreigners who do not share the same cultural ideas of education and morality.

Before Brazilians talk about prejudice or xenophobia, they should ask whether they themselves treat Asians living in Brazil any differently. The video below shows the point well. A lot of the time it is not intentional, but it happens.

Prejudice against Asians in Brazil – Suki Desu

Brazil has over 500 years of history, is multicultural, and is home to people of every kind. Even so, it has not managed to solve its own problems of religious, racial, and social prejudice. Why, then, would anyone criticize a country that has only been open to the world for under 200 years and has gone through enormous difficulties of its own?

Do Black people face racism in Japan?

Skin color alone does not, in general, change how hospitable and polite Japanese people treat those around them. Many have said Japan loves Black people, that they have never been treated so well, and that they have never had a problem with discrimination.

Paulo, a Brazilian, said that walking through Japanese streets people looked at him, not with disdain but with admiration. They smiled and greeted him. He went as far as to say that Brazil has a lot to learn and a long way to grow.

Another example of a Black person doing well in Japan is the Brazilian Roberto Casa Nova. In 2010, he was voted the best karaoke singer in all of Japan, out of around 85,000 candidates.

Some Black people living in Japan have said they are afraid to return to their home country because of racism, and that they feel more comfortable and safer in Japan.

There is one well-known case people still bring up about Japan and racism toward Black people. A few years ago, an image circulated of a chocolate pudding supposedly called "Nigga," an English slur. It turned out to be a hoax, and the real product name was giga. If even that case was fabricated, imagine how many other "scandals" have been invented and shared around.

Is Japan more prejudiced than other countries?

Japan is a long way from being the most prejudiced and racist country in the world. The United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Australia, among others, regularly top international surveys on the topic.

Bad people exist in every country. Defining an entire nation as racist and prejudiced is, frankly, foolish. It is just a generalization: a few people act badly, and the rest pay the price.

Take Japan's reputation for a high suicide rate. Because of it, some Brazilians assume that the Japanese are unhappy. Is that really fair, just because around 16 people per 100,000 residents take their own lives? What about the other 99,984?

I have spent my whole life in Brazil dealing with prejudice and being treated differently for my lifestyle, appearance, religion, and tastes. The worst part is that I am also treated differently for not liking, or not doing, things I consider wrong.

Honestly, whenever I hear a Brazilian say that the Japanese are xenophobic, prejudiced, or racist, that person is really talking about themselves. Labeling a whole nation of unique people is itself what racism, prejudice, and xenophobia look like.

Prejudice, racism, and xenophobia in Japanese media: anime and dorama

Prejudice, racism, and xenophobia show up in Japanese media both directly and indirectly. Movies, dorama, and especially anime and manga all take them on. Most of the time the topic is handled through metaphors, with robots or alien races standing in for foreigners, because tackling it head-on is still risky.

Many anime also take it on directly through school bullying. Here are a few titles that deal with prejudice, xenophobia, and racism:

• Aldnoah.Zero – the hatred and divide between humans and "Vers" (aliens in human form).
• Ghost in the Shell – the refugee crisis in Japan.
• Code Geass – the prejudice and racism that the Japanese themselves face.
• Nagi no Asukara – addresses racism in a thoughtful way.
• Yamada Taro Monogatari – a dorama about class differences and social pressure.

The list goes on much further. It is also worth remembering that anime and dorama show that prejudice can be broken, by giving us characters with unusual personalities, more openly feminine men, powerful women, and many other facets.

Foreigners appear in these works too, even when the foreign accent is exaggerated for effect. Anime show a kind of neutrality through the sheer variety of hair colors, skin tones, clothing styles, and body types. Many anime and films also tell stories set outside Japan and pull in cultural elements from other countries.

If you want to dig deeper into related topics, have a look at our article on the prejudice against anime and manga and our piece on the dark side of Japan.