Becoming Japanese is one of the biggest circle-jerk conversations out there about Japan.
You have people saying they wish they were Japanese, or they want to become Japanese citizens,
and then you have people saying "YOU WILL NEVER BE JAPANESE."
The problem with this discussion is no one is talking about the same thing.
So today I have like six points or something I want to make on all of these arguments.
The first point, very important distinction!
Japanese is both a nationality and an ethnicity/race.
You can become a Japanese citizen. But you cannot become a Japanese person.
To give an example that’s easier to understand, I could move to Nigeria and I could gain Nigerian
citizenship, and I could call myself a Nigerian citizen. But I could not then start calling
myself black, or by extension of that, ethnically Nigerian.
One reason this issue can be so confusing to Americans is that we base “being American”
off of nationality, or even just a mindset sometimes, whereas Japanese people base “being
Japanese” off of ethnicity. There are so many non-white people in America that we can't
say “To be American you have to be ethnically more than 85% Western European heritage,"
or something like that. But almost the entire Japanese population is ethnically Japanese.
So that's the defining factor. A good example of this is Yoichiro Nambu.
He’s ethnically Japanese, was born in Japan, and lived in Japan for the first half of his life.
However, at 49 years old he was living in America and gained American citizenship.
38 years after that, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Both Japan and America claimed that success as their own.
Japan was basing their claim off of him being ethnically Japanese, whereas
America was basing their claim off of him having American citizenship.
So you can see that from the beginning, how we define ourselves has a huge cultural basis to it.
Back to the main topic! On becoming a Japanese citizen, that is something you can do if that's
something you want. I don’t recommend it for most people, because Japan does not offer
dual citizenship, which means that you would have to give up citizenship of your home country
to become a Japanese citizen. What that means is you would no longer be allowed to freely
travel back to your home country. You would have to get the permission of your home country
(in the form of a visa in some cases) just to go back to your home country!
For me, personally, I would rather be able to vote for the President of America than politicians in Japan,
but that's your preference. If you wanted to become a Japanese citizen, you could.
Now, if you find yourself in the middle of this conversation and you ask them whether
they're talking about becoming a Japanese citizen or becoming a Japanese person, chances
are they're going to respond with: “Well, not really either. I'm just talking about
being accepted and fitting into Japan."
Well, unfortunately for you, Japan is almost entirely ethnically Japanese.
Japan doesn't really take statistics on ethnicity--only on nationality--
so it's not exact, but nationality-wise,
98.5% of the people in Japan are Japanese, whereas an additional 1% are other East Asian
foreigners, and then only 0.5% are white or black or any other non-East Asian foreigner.
So no matter what you do, you are going to stand out in Japan as a minority, and you
are going to face some of the same problems that minorities in any country face.
Fortunately for you, Japan is a pretty good country to be a minority in (for some ethnicities), because
despite the perhaps occasional discrimination, you get awarded ☆foreign celebrity status☆,
which means you get to benefit from positive discrimination, which would be things like
people wanting to talk to you or date you just because you're a cool foreigner.
That said, that doesn’t mean that the other end of the argument,
“YOU WILL NEVER FIT IN”
is correct, either.
There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners living here, many with families,
who are getting along just fine.
I live here with my Japanese husband
and he obviously doesn’t reject my presence as a foreigner in his country.
So, like with most arguments between two extremes, the reality lies somewhere in the middle.
Now, to talk a bit about the people making these arguments.
Obviously these are generalizations, but I think you'll find that in a lot of cases they
actually do apply.
When you see people online saying "Japan is the most xenophobic country on earth and hate
everyone and they hate you," those people generally fit into one of three categories:
#1: Bitter expat or previous expat. Something happened in their lives to make them miserable,
maybe Japan even played a role in it, but for whatever reason, they blame Japan for
all of their problems and they take out their anger by saying really horrible things about
Japan to everyone they meet.
#2: Unfortunately Japan does not have great
relations with some of its neighboring countries, and there’s a lot of badmouthing that goes
on online because of this. I've personally seen this on our channel, and especially I've
seen this on reddit. If you spend a lot of time on reddit, you may be aware of the weekly
“Japan is literally worse than Hitler" thread where they like to bring up every horrible
thing about Japan's past, some of which may or may not be true. And you will find a lot
of these comments there.
#3: The Japanese culture enthusiast, who likes
Japan but they've never actually been there so all they can do is repeat what they've
heard other people say about Japan, which again may or may not be true.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the people who say they want to be Japanese.
I can understand thinking that another country seems so much better. We have a really common
phrase for this called “The grass is greener on the other side.”
But you probably know the moral of the story is, the grass isn’t actually greener.
It just looks greener because
you’ve been exposed to that grass’s soft power while you were emotionally vulnerable
and you’re idealizing the grass.
Wait.
Japan may seem perfect, but it’s not a fantasy land. It’s a real place with its own list
of pros and cons, just like anywhere else. You may very well find life for you in Japan
more suitable for you than life in your home country. However, if you are miserable in
your home country, chances are you're going to end up unhappy here, too.
You’ll have a honeymoon phase where everything seems perfect,
but eventually that's going to wear off, and you’re going to find things here
that bother you just like you have things in your home country that bothered you.
Being happy with where you live has a lot to do with your mindset.
I’ve found that the happiest people I know here in Japan are people who
would be happy living pretty much anywhere.
So yes, look forward to going to Japan because it’s awesome and you’re probably going
to love it, but it’s not going to solve your problems.
Now I’ve mentioned before that the vast majority of people who wish they were Japanese
or idealize Japan are adolescents who will grow out of it
at some point during high school or college.
But some people have asked me, "What about the people who don't grow out of it?"
And they almost always seem to imply that their method of dealing with this is
anger and ridicule.
What part of that seems effective to you? You want to try make someone
who spends their life escaping from reality, return to reality, by making reality for them
even crappier.
Nice plan.
This isn't a Japan thing where Japan is the only place that people ever want to try to
escape to. This can happen with anything. You have people who wish they were vampires.
You have people who wish they were elves. Or you have people who wish they were those
people from that Avatar movie. This is a really common thing that some people go through.
And it's not because it's "haha stupid weeaboo" or whatever. They probably have something
going on in their life or some sort of issue that they really need to talk to a professional
about. That is not something to ridicule.
If you genuinely want someone like that to change, you need to compassionately encourage
them to talk to someone. If you’re calling them a weeaboo fag and telling them to kill
themselves, congratulations: you’re just a bully.
You should probably talk to someone yourself.
So those are all my varied thoughts on the subject of becoming Japanese. I hope it made
you think a little bit! Please let me know your thoughts down in the comments and I will
see you guys later! Thanks for watching! Bye!