In Japan, Bias Is an Obstacle Even for the Ethnic Japanese
By Steven R. Weisman
When Japan opened its shores last year to a flood of immigrants from Brazil and Peru, few adjustment problems were expected. After all, the newcomers were Japanese, or at least descendants of Japanese who had sought opportunities in South America earlier this century. Now Japanese have discovered that while the immigrants may look familiar, they act like foreigners. They talk more noisily than native-born Japanese do, and greet each other with laughter and embraces. They have trouble with the language. And they complain about their problems. The Samba in Tokyo "The people of Japan do not respect us," said Roberto Ishizuka, a 26-year-old former automobile worker in Sao Paulo who works six long days a week making car seats at a factory here in the region west of Tokyo. "The Japanese treat us like some kind of an inferior race." In Japan these days, Portuguese-language radio programs and newspapers have multiplied, offering news and music from Brazil and advice on problems in Japan. There was even a recent Brazilian street festival flavored with samba and salsa in Tokyo. At the Tia Maria restaurant here, a couple of dozen Brazilians of Japanese descent were enjoying steaming bowls of feijoada, drinking Brazilian beer and reading newspapers in Portuguese. A sign on the wall warned people to disperse in the late evenings, as requested by the police. Despite sometimes back-breaking work in foundries, factories and construction sites, life on the whole has been good for the newcomers, who can make $2,000 a month and send half of it home. Often they live in company-owned dormitories and are bused to their 14-hour-a-day jobs. But the immigrants say they suffer discrimination in stores and restaurants, citing a story of one department store near here that once had a loudspeaker announcement that a group of them had entered and the clerks should be on guard. Another major problem, workers and Government officials say, is that employers usually pay no health or welfare benefits, leaving workers helpless when injured by molten metal or a sharp blade on the job. Unscrupulous recruiting agents siphon off their wages, they say, and make sweeping promises about jobs that prove false. "The people over here think Brazilians are living in Brazil like wild Indians," said Miyako Clemente, who works at an auto-parts company. "Sometimes I can feel my roots here, and I want to learn and write Japanese. But sometimes it makes me desperate, and I feel like I want to get out." Immigrants Total 150,000 In a turbulent world where millions flee oppression and starvation and migrate to other countries, the 150,000 people of Japanese descent looking for work in their ancestral land may seem like a trickle. But it marks a break with decades of Japanese refusal to let in unskilled foreigners. Not that the need has not been great. Employers universally complain that younger Japanese in a newly affluent society no longer want to do dirty, difficult or dangerous work, and factories, restaurants and shops often seem desperate to fill jobs. In recent years, many of those jobs have gone to Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Thais and other Asians who come to Japan on tourist visas and remain illegally while the immigration authorities look the other way. Estimates are that more than 100,000 illegal Asian immigrants work in Japan. But Parliament, worried that the country might become like France or Germany, flooded by foreigners with customs looked on as strange by the native-born majority, enacted tough new curbs on immigration of unskilled people two years ago, and the police began expelling the Asians. Law Changed for Descendants Then Japan seemed to discover another pool of workers, descendants of its own people. Last year laws were changed to allow in any foreigner with parents or grandparents in Japan, and the number of workers fleeing the troubled economies of Brazil and Peru rose sharply. Critics say those policies reflect the latent racism of Japan, which they accuse of turning its back on millions of people desperate for work on their own continent. "Japan feels it has to do something about its labor shortage," said Kyoko Yotsuya, a volunteer with the Seirei Social Welfare Community, a Christian group here. "But they're afraid that if they open the doors to anyone, there'll be chaos. So they only want certain kinds of people." The reactions of native-born Japanese to the Brazilians seem to involve class considerations as much as racial ones. Americans of Japanese descent, for instance, say they are not looked down on, perhaps because most of them are not here to do factory work. Dress and Act Differently The Brazilians, when they arrive and often long afterward, usually speak no Japanese. And they say the native Japanese can often tell they are Brazilians just from the way they dress or act, even before they open their mouths. Indeed, anyone living in Japan is so aware of the polite and aloof way that Japanese deal with each other in public that it was often startling to see people in Hamamatsu embracing each other noisily in public, until one realized that they were Brazilian and not Japanese. The first Japanese emigrated to Latin America in the first decade of this century, finding work at coffee and cotton plantations. Later waves worked in factories and raised children who achieved success and prominence, like President Alberto Fujimori of Peru. But the last couple of years have been troubled ones for the economies of Latin America, and now a large percentage of Japanese descendants, the overwhelming majority from Brazil, have come here for work. When they get into trouble, it is the Brazilian Embassy, not the Japanese authorities, that they turn to. 'Expected to Be Japanese' "Somehow, Japan expected them to be Japanese," a Brazilian Embassy official in Tokyo said. "It's been a kind of shock, not only for Japan but for our people. It's harder on them than it is on the rest of us foreigners because there are different expectations for them." Japanese officials maintain that the immigrants were not brought in to fill jobs, per se, but only to visit their families. "There is a demand for foreign workers, but we did not change the law for that," said Kei Ogiso, an official at the immigration bureau of the Justice Ministry. The Government, meanwhile, has tried to accommodate the new immigrants, establishing a dozen centers in central Japan to assist foreign laborers and tell them of their rights. Brazil plans to open two consulates in areas populated by the immigrants. "We are developing necessary protections for them," said Kouhei Nagashima, assistant director of the consular and migration policy division at the Foreign Ministry. "Of course, it is not yet sufficient. But the problem has grown so quickly, we cannot be expected to solve it right away."
