| ▲ | rayiner 3 hours ago |
| Making this about "black" and "brown" is bullshit, given that this is clearly about economics, not skin color. The Japanese have a remarkable society that is clean and orderly. The only way anybody has figured out how to maintain orderliness despite immigration is to filter heavily by economic status, like Dubai. If the immigrants in Japan were behaving exactly the same as Japanese, just saving money on sunscreen, you wouldn’t be seeing these measures. |
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| ▲ | donbox 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| For Dubai specifically, there is a mix of foreigners, a large percentage being labourers from South Asia. The orderliness we see, I think is largely due to strict* and harsh laws. |
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| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The laborers are heavily segregated from the native population. I think it’s morally bankrupt to have a quasi-slave class of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis that does all the work, but is hidden from view. But that is the only way anybody has found to maintain a clean and orderly environment like Dubai while having low skill immigration from the subcontinent. |
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| ▲ | arichardsmith 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The number of times I (white, living in Japan) have raised concerns about anti-foreigner sentiment, only to be told “they’re not talking about people like you”, would beg to differ. |
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| ▲ | Revanche1367 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Oh please, everyone not in denial can certainly see there is a racial component to this. I also didn't only include "black" and "brown," some kinds of Asians are also being gatekept. Do you deny that Japanese society (like countless others) has a racism/xenophobia problem? Isn't it commonly known information that even people of other races/ethnicities who have successfully immigrated there or are just visiting as tourists are sometimes not allowed in certain venues with explicit messaging? And that this is commonly tolerated there? Isn't Japan the same country that barely 80-odd years ago was on a brutal campaign across several parts of Asia where they targeted non-Japanese with massacres, torture and live human experimentation among other things? Many of those people are still alive (ironically, some are probably among the elderly and isolated who need help right now). Isn't Japan the same country that still regularly denies their well-known and documented atrocities during that period? |
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| ▲ | anon-3988 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | ??? There's literally a white person in the article that is also reconsidering their situation? Why do you keep making this about "black, brown and east Asian" people?? They are xenophobic to literally everyone on Earth. | | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It has nothing to do with race. It’s about keeping our foreign cultural and social norms. If you showed me a community of Bangladeshis who behaved exactly like Japanese people but weren’t accepted, then you’d have a point. But that’s not the case. All of your handwaving is irrelevant to a Japanese person in 2026. What matters is that democratic societies are entitled to use the levers of government to create the kind of society they want to live in. I visit Japan regularly, and the last time I went with my kids it was very apparent that my rowdy Bangladeshi-American kids were inconveniencing people. In a country where I see people walk blocks out of the way to cross at a crosswalk, instead of crossing in the middle of the street, I can understand and accept our permanent presence there would be unwelcome. Japanese people shouldn’t have to welcome American or Bangladeshi or any other foreign social and cultural norms into their community. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | If you showed me a community of Bangladeshis who behaved exactly like Japanese people but weren’t accepted Koreans fit that bill; there's a lot of ethnically Korean people whose families have been in Japan multiple generations (not just assimilated as first-gen immigrants) but there's still significant social prejudice against them; life people of Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai descent who've grown up in Japan as opposed to being recent arrivals. If you haunt Japanese nationalist online communities you can see this on a daily basis. | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | As it turns out, I'm also of a very similar background to your kids, a South Asian American that is, and one who would be accepted in Japan just fine (I already have highly educated and well off relatives living there permanently). Frankly, I have to say, you sound like a typical self-hating (if you're also desi) brown person who is thoroughly convinced of his/her own ethnic/racial inferiority and looking up to the great Japanese people; you probably have a similar perception of America/Canada and western Europe. I would hate to have my parents think of my race/culture that way (if only your kids are desi but not you). Also, what exactly are you asking me to do here? See people rejected by the enactment of a law that just recently passed and in all likelihood is just barely beginning to impact people's lives? Are you actually thinking before writing your comments? You seem fine as long as you're allowed to visit and ogle at their society, but oh no, how can we/those brown people from the same place/background as me or my kids be allowed on this holy land permanently when we/they don't know how to behave!? To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better because the circumstances of my life led me to be richer or more "cultured" than them. I believe this is what some circles consider a "colonized" mindset, but funny thing is your mind is colonized by the western perception of glorious Japan and you're not even remotely Japanese. Funny you call my questions handwaving but attempt no answer to them and just declare "it has nothing to do with race." I expected as much. It's all about 2026 now ("it's CURRENT YEAR don't ya know?!"), not even recent history matters nor future contingents. This is not even an argument, put the keyboard down man, you're drunk. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > you sound like a typical self-hating (if you're also desi) brown person who is thoroughly convinced of his/her own ethnic/racial inferiority ... I would hate to have my parents think of my race/culture that way Why are you saying "race/culture" like it's the same thing? It's like you're trying to use race, which is superficial and irrelevant, to shield culture from criticism. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh, but hated the culture, so he left. That's not a problem, it's smart. There are better ways to think and act and worse ways to think and act. > To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better So you're just in denial! You can see it, but you can't make yourself acknowledge it. |
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| ▲ | pojzon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are you saying that behaviour is strictly determined by one’s race ? Didn’t we abolish that and agreed there is no such a thing as race in case of humans ? | | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Who brought up the question of tying behavior to race? Whether race exists is not the question being discussed here, regardless of the biological existence of race or not, there is a social perception of it existing and that is commonly used in the society in which (and I presume this is true for most of us) I live. I was asked an implied question about bringing up race and thus answered with the social perception in mind. You might need to ask yourself what or whom you are actually arguing with, because it doesn't appear to be me. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You’re the one who brought up race when nobody mentioned it. Race is a red herring when talking about immigration. Japanese people come in a wide variety of skin colors. People in Japan aren’t upset about skin color. People in Japan are upset about having to deal with other people who have a different cultural background, social norms, habits, language, etc. | | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Hey, it's the self-hating brown person again, stalking another one like yourself through the comments for disagreeing with you now, are you? Race is an inherent part of any immigration discussion in the modern world. Do you think US immigration policies have nothing to do with race right now? You'd be a dumbass to think so (not surprising in the least). | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Race only comes up because cultural relativists like yourself try to inject it into the discussion to derail any discussion of culture. It's the same illogical thinking that leads you to accuse me of being "self-hating" because I'm "brown." It's easier for you to imagine that someone must have a completely irrational dislike of their own skin color than to acknowledge that we're actually talking about culture--the social norms, habits, attitudes, and world views that immigrants bring with them to other countries. You can't confront those actual issues, so you try to make it about "race." |
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| ▲ | Revanche1367 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Also really? Japanese people come in different skin colors is part of your argument? The overwhelming majority are very similar, and you know very well perception of race has little to do with color or is at least not exclusively about color. There is no way an adult human being living America today doesn't understand that. And are you aware that even natives to the islands of Japan like the Ainu who are actually of a different race and color also face discrimination there and have long struggled against this? Again, please try to use your head a bit instead of commenting while emotional/drunk. |
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| ▲ | xyzsparetimexyz 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This is 1000% a race thing. Chinese and Korean immigrants who look and sound Japanese won't face problems. Westerners will. And I'm okay with that |
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| ▲ | meredithbloom 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | As a resident of Japan, this is particularly funny to me since those two countries are exactly the ones the authorities are trying to limit immigration from. Japan is _very_ racist when it comes to Korea, and China "buying all the land" this past decade is a frequent trope of the news (also that the Chinese cheat the NTA and pension system and never pay a dime). Then of course you have crime (Vietnamese) and the right-wing idea that the Filipinos, Indonesians and Malaysians come here to steal Japanese (low wage) jobs (that nobody wants to do). Nobody gives two fucks about immigration from north America, Europe or Australia. | | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I believe this is normally the point where a typical HN or reddit user is supposed to come in and mention "whataboutism." Criticism of Japan's immigration policies (which the OP article is about) is in no way an approval (or even comment) on immigration policies of other countries. | | |
| ▲ | meredithbloom 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah I don't see how what were doing here is shocking, considering what everyone else is doing right now. | | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 21 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Nobody claimed it was very different or that others are doing things better, at least I have not claimed such. Think logically for a minute, does (nearly) everyone doing something naturally make it a good thing? Are we not allowed to be critical of things every nation state does? I would wager every nation state has some degree and kind of corruption baked into its political process, if not officially then at least in practice. Should I then hold back on criticizing corruption in Indian or Chinese or Russian or American politics because hey every country has some degree of it? |
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