Civic leaders see economic upsides and cultural difficulties in Japan’s accelerating internationalization.
Japanese society has been internationalizing at an accelerated rate in recent years, with not only the numbers of foreign tourists and short-term students in the country reaching record highs but also the number of long-term non-Japanese residents. This is a major change for a nation that’s been largely ethnically homogenous for so much of its history, and a recent survey of mayors of cities across Japan shows that the demographic shifts are a complex issue that’s going to have increasingly large effects on life in Japan.
The survey, conducted by Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun, received response from 1,422 of Japan’s 1,741 mayors and ward heads, with 70 percent of respondents saying that the increases in foreign residents and travelers are having an effect on their communities. The vast majority of the mayors, 76 percent, said that those effects are a mixture of both good and bad elements, but while 23 percent said only good things have come from the increased foreign non-Japanese presence, a mere 1 percent said the effects of increased internationalism have been entirely negative.
Among those seeing positive effects, the most common, cited by 845 respondents, was incoming foreign residents helping to resolve labor shortages, followed by 578 respondents appreciative of the positive effects on tourism and other sectors of the economy and 421 saying they’re happy with foreigners’ contribution to increased diversity in Japan. On the other end of the issue, cultural and behavioral friction was the most common negative aspect (515 responses), followed by difficulties created for the educational system (350), public safety concerns (311 responses), and overtourism (184 responses).
Narrowing the focus specifically to foreign residents of Japan, 54 percent of the responding mayors said that foreign residents are “essential” to the continuation of their communities, with only two percent saying foreign residents are unnecessary and 43 percent saying they couldn’t currently say whether they’re a necessity or not. By far the most common reason for foreign residents being deemed essential was to help secure a sufficiently sized workforce (704 responses), followed by the similar need to keep local industry going (441 responses), with counteracting Japan’s declining birthrate and shrinking population the number-three reason (311 responses).
Looking at the data, it’s hard not to notice that many of the ways in which mayors view the rising number of foreigners in Japan are economic in nature, while concerns appear to be more abundant on the cultural side of things. That’s perhaps not surprising given Japan’s long-standing reputation as a country with high standards for safety and politeness, and also Japanese’s notoriety as being one of the most difficult languages in the world for non-natives to learn.
Thankfully, the attitude of the surveyed mayors doesn’t appear to be a desire for foreign residents to pump money into the Japanese economy while feuding with their neighbors and living frustrating lives in Japan. When asked what sorts of government initiatives need to be developed to help integrate foreigners into Japanese society, 1,214 of the responding mayors said that programs promoting harmonious coexistence between the existing Japanese population and newly arriving foreign residents should be a focus, and 676 said that support needs to be provided to help foreign residents acquire Japanese language communication skills. With the survey results coming in the wake of reports that a record number of foreign children in Japan need help understanding the language, as well as the possibility of lifestyle classes becoming a requirement of permanent residency applications for foreigners in Japan, support for such programs at the municipal level seems like it would be a wise use of the possible huge increases to resident visa renewals that could be on the horizon.
Source: Sankei Shimbun via Yahoo! Japan News via Jin
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