Domesticating the Immigrant Other: Japanese Media Images of Nikkeijin Return Migrants

Abstract

The return migration of Latin American nikkeijin to Japan is unprecedented in the country's history. Never has Japan been faced with so many returning Japanese who are so culturally different. Their presence profoundly challenges the country's long-held beliefs about Japanese ethnicity, race, and culture. Although the media are reputed to be the principal agents of social change, their coverage of these nikkeijin immigrants does more to reinforce than challenge traditional Japanese ethnic and cultural assumptions. (Migration, ethnicity, media, Japan) In the early 1990s, a popular weekly Japanese television program called Naruhodo za Warudo (Let's Go! The World) introduced Japanese audiences to the different customs, foods, and peoples of foreign societies. However, in one particular show the exotic person introduced was not an African or Melanesian, but a Latin American nikkeijin (Japanese descendant born and raised outside Japan). A Japanese Peruvian who had been crowned the Miss Nikkei beauty pageant queen was paraded onstage in a traditional Japanese kimono. Although she looked completely Japanese, the audience was greatly amused when she stumbled over the simplest Japanese lines she had been fed and eventually resorted to Spanish. This is an example of how the Japanese media exoticize the nikkeijin as ethnic curiosities who do not fit the Japanese notion that those of Japanese descent should be culturally Japanese as well. The Latin American nikkeijin have become much more than ethnic anomalies in Japan. With a population of well over 300,000, they have become the second largest group of foreigners in Japan after the Korean Japanese, and their numbers continue to grow steadily despite the country's prolonged economic recession. The largest group of nikkeijin immigrants are the Japanese Brazilians, who began migrating to Japan in the late 1980s in response to a severe Brazilian economic crisis and a crippling shortage of unskilled labor in Japan (Tsuda 1999a). Although they are relatively well educated and middle class in Brazil, they earn five to ten times their Brazilian salaries as factory workers in Japan. Almost all of them initially went to Japan with intentions to work for a few years and then return to Brazil with their savings, so they have been called dekasegi (temporary migrant workers). However, many remained, brought their families to Japan, and became long-term settlers (Roth 1999:150-54; Tsuda 1999b; Yamanaka 2000). Most of the Japanese Brazilian return migrants are second and third generation (nisei and sansei and no longer culturally Japanese. Therefore, despite their Japanese descent, they are treated as foreigners in Japan because of the narrow definition of what constitutes being Japanese, and have become the country's newest ethnic minority. The Brazilian nikkeijin have attracted a disproportionate amount of Japanese media attention, which has thrust them prominently into public awareness (Tsuda 2003:xiii-xv). As a result, even though many Japanese have not personally encountered Japanese Brazilians, most know of them. In low-immigration countries like Japan, most information and impressions about immigrants are obtained from the media, since the public has little contact with them. In addition, the media in Japan are powerfully influential. The Japanese watch an average of three hours and 23 minutes of television a day (Pharr 1996a:5), (1) an hour more than the average for Americans. Just as notable as the attention Japanese television receives is the amount of respect it has in Japanese society. According to a Research Institute of Japan survey, 56 per cent of the public expressed strong confidence in the credibility of television programming, compared with less than 20 per cent in the United States, according to Gallup/Harris polls (Pharr 1996a:15). Another study found that executives in a variety of organizations (including business, labor, academics, politics, and government) rank the media as the most influential institution in Japan (cited in Pharr 1996b: 19 and Verba et al. …