I've been reading Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld recently (fascinating read about the yakuza's history in Japan) and it mentions that a large percentage of Chinese and Korean immigrants turned to gang life because they were considered a lower caste, like the burakumin (Japan's untouchables). Maybe things have changed since the 80s-90s?
There are several foreign workers but they mostly work for established international companies with offices there. Few of these companies are Japanese (people do work for Japanese companies but usually outside Japan). It's not only about xenophobia, Japanese work culture is deeply hierarchical and seniority-based (the person who's been in the company the longest gets to run it, regardless whether they're any good at their job or not). Companies change their policies very slowly. They fear that foreigners would not understand this culture and try to disrupt it, for good or bad.
My two cents here: non white people can certainly be racist, but racism is a structural thing, so it doesn't make sense to talk about racism by people that are not white, in the United States, since the structure isn't there. But I think it makes perfect sense to talk about it in other places.
Racism absolutely is a structural thing. This can include things such as redlining in the US or more on topic, Japanese banks refusing to work with foreigners and the treatment of the Ainu in Japan.
There's a very important distinction to make between those that write the laws and those that don't.
I don't think the discussion was about the origins of racism, was it?
Racism builds systems of governing and laws that can be racist. Ergo, you see structural racism (again, redlining) which can exist long after the racial zeitgeist has passed.
But you have applied a predicate (ie. 'structural') to specify a kind of racism, implying the general form of racism, which is, simply put, any discrimination on the basis of race.
Yes, and? This was specifically in response to the denial that racism is not a structural thing, which we have objective historical examples of structural racism affecting different populations.
Does Japan really want foreign entrepreneurs? It's always been very conservative and while they may be polite to foreigners, that's very different from allowing non-Japanese to expand a business there. I think it's ingrained in the culture, and some of these bridges Tokyo is building might be too little to catch up to SK or Germany.
> Does Japan really want foreign entrepreneurs? It's always been very conservative
My understanding is they're also very financially conservative, I think it was pinboard who was talking about his experience as an independent entrepreneur?
Masayoshi Son (founder & CEO of SoftBank) has been infamous in Japan since the 1990s for rattling the very conservative Japanese business environment. He has been considered a maverick, an outlier there since the beginning. Both in his thinking and his actions; his willingness - almost eagerness - to pursue higher risk endeavors that few business people in Japan would similarly consider.
If you read Phil Knights autobiography about starting Nike, he couldn’t get funding in the US and actually raised a lot of capital from Japanese financiers in the 70s.
I think it's a valid choice for a country to decide that the economic boon from foreign entrepreneurs isn't worth it if those people can't speak your language. I'd certainly be irritated if someone opened a business in my town and couldn't speak English, and the US is a lot less homogeneous than Japan.
So, I don't understand this perspective at all. Help me get it.
It seems to me that speaking a language is a skill. I know from my own experience trying to learn a second language that it isn't an easy skill for many people to acquire. Why should I be more irritated that someone doesn't speak English than that they, say, can't make a cabinet or can't write Java, or any other mildly demanding skill?
I get the argument that someone who doesn't speak your language doesn't participate fully in your culture either, but I guess I'm still not sure why I should be upset about that. Seems like something for them to be worried about.
Sorry if I'm making an argument here, but I hear this quite a bit and it doesn't make sense to me.
Making cabinets and speaking the language of a culture that is necessary to succeed are not the same thing at all. Yes they are both skills but the similarity ends there.
Do you think a Japanese person who doesn’t speak English could build a successful company in the US without the help of someone who speaks English? It would be impossible.
I'm not sure why you believe the similarity ends there. The Japanese person would likely do the same thing I do if I need a cabinet made-- hire someone with that skill to do the job. Eventually that might stop making economic sense and they might decide to cut out the middleman, but again-- I'm not sure why I should be irritated either way.
It's probably not what's going to happen though, instead that person is going to work preferentially with people who speak their language because even if hiring a translator to work full-time was an option (and it generally wouldn't be because hiring a good translator full time would be ridiculously expensive for most companies) it would be a major pain in the ass to have to translate everything all the time.
A few years ago I worked with a Taiwanese company and we had to use translators because some of their engineers didn't speak English (and I don't speak Chinese). The person translating was also an engineer which helped massively as she understood what we were talking about and could sometimes anticipate our questions and "fluidify" the discussion but it was still a huge annoyance, it made every interaction more painful than it needed to be, you often wondered if they really understood what you meant etc... I can't really imagine myself working full time in such an arrangement.
I now live in Portugal and there's a massive American and French community in Lisbon. Many of them don't bother learning Portuguese and just interact with everybody in English. As such Portuguese people looking to work in Lisbon pretty much have to speak English. Actually you can now find restaurants where the waiter speaks English but not Portuguese (or at least not fluently). You can encounter similar situations all around the world where there's a huge foreign community. That can be fairly irritating for locals who end up feeling that they're the ones living in a foreign country...
I mean, let's imagine for a moment that it's reasonable to treat everyone who doesn't speak your language as the vanguard of a situation such as you describe. Is Lisbon a dystopia we should fear becoming?
Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-speaking immigrants over the years and no plausible threat to the primacy of English in the US. Shouldn't that be reason to think "maybe the thing I fear won't happen"?
For Portuguese people, perhaps it is. Who really wants to feel like a foreigner in their own country (esp. when that country is as small as Portugal)?
I know I'd be really irritated if I tried going to local restaurants around me and all the servers there only spoke Spanish. How would you feel about that?
>Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-speaking immigrants over the years and no plausible threat to the primacy of English in the US.
Yes, but that's because most of them either learned the dominant local language (English), or were not present in sufficient numbers to cause a situation like above. Sure, some formed little enclaves here and there, but that's a little different from what the OP described. And their kids grew up speaking English and fit into the new society. Finally, America is a really huge country, much larger than Portugal, and has historically accepted immigrants from many different places, so English (already being in place as the dominant language) was naturally the language everyone would learn so they could survive here. Given how huge English is now as a worldwide "lingua franca", I don't think you can compare America's history with what other non-English-speaking countries are experiencing today.
The first part seems circular to me: you feel like we should fear becoming Lisbon because if you were in their shoes you would fear this outcome. Well, sure. But at a glance Lisbon seems to be doing pretty well for itself-- certainly better than lots of places in the US. Besides your sense that such cultural changes are bad, what makes them bad? Why, objectively, should they be feared?
And the second part feels is framed as disagreeing with my point, but actually seems to support it: we've dealt with this issue before, the fear was the same, and the feared thing didn't happen. Shouldn't that mean we should dial down the fear this time around?
>you feel like we should fear becoming Lisbon because if you were in their shoes you would fear this outcome.
Who's "we", and where did I say "we" should fear this? I just pointed out the people of Portugal might not like this, nor might people in other places that might be having similar issues. If you're talking about the US, then no, that's not a well-founded fear at all.
>But at a glance Lisbon seems to be doing pretty well for itself-- certainly better than lots of places in the US.
Does that matter to the Portuguese? This idea that economic well-being (which frequently doesn't "trickle down" that much) trumps everything is exactly how we got Brexit and Trump.
>Besides your sense that such cultural changes are bad, what makes them bad? Why, objectively, should they be feared?
Well, I'd say electing people like Trump is demonstrably bad, and this is what happens when you simply ignore cultural changes. You end up with people voting for right-wing politicians, so we're seeing this in the US, the UK, and many other European nations.
>we've dealt with this issue before, the fear was the same, and the feared thing didn't happen.
Again, who's "we"? The US is not the world, and other countries are not like the US. You can't apply the US's experience with immigration to countries like Portugal; they have extremely different cultures and histories. Try going to Portugal and telling everyone there "you need to accept mass immigration and you all need to stop speaking Portuguese and switch to English", and see how friendly people are to you.
I think you're inferring a lot of things I didn't say (and an unhealthy number I don't agree with).
"We" in this case is shorthand for you and I. It seems you resent that association, so I apologize for extending it.
Regarding economics, I didn't say economic harm. I was simply asking what the actual harm is. Setting aside the question of whether something that can't be measured exists, let's try for an easier bar: can a harm that can't even be articulated exist?
Regarding Trump and Brexit, my views there are not germane to this conversation-- but since you asked and will undoubtedly try to force the issue, I'll state that I oppose both.
On the topic of telling the Portuguese to start speaking English-- if you think that was where I was heading here you're way off the mark and I don't think that's my fault.
>I was simply asking what the actual harm is. Setting aside the question of whether something that can't be measured exists, let's try for an easier bar: can a harm that can't even be articulated exist?
It seems that for many people, loss of local culture and language is something they perceive as "harm", and they're resisting it. You can't objectively say whether this is harm or not, because most cultural things are purely subjective, so it's all a matter of perspective.
So if people in Portugal are worried their local culture and language are going to be bulldozed by outsiders, when a bunch of non-Portuguese speakers are moving in and restaurants are only operating in English as a result, I can't say they're wrong to feel that way. Personally, I think it's better to have more cosmopolitanism, but then again as an American I do know what it's like to live on a continent where there's a single dominant language and a huge amount of uniformity to everything, and it's really not that great. You can wander around in Florida, Maine, and Arizona, and everyone still speaks the same language, has basically the same culture, and all the stores and restaurants are mostly the same too, even owned by the same companies. Walmart isn't different between Oregon and Tennessee; it's pretty horrible in any state. The same fast-food chains serve the same garbage food wherever you go.
>On the topic of telling the Portuguese to start speaking English-- if you think that was where I was heading here you're way off the mark and I don't think that's my fault.
It's the natural end-state of the trend that you're asking about the harm of. If tons of English speakers move to Portugal, and all the service businesses eventually switch over to using English and not Portuguese, then it's exactly like I said: you're effectively telling the Portuguese to start speaking English, because they're not going to be able to survive in their own country any more if they don't, if things were to go that way.
No, Lisbon is a lovely city (as long as you can afford it, nowadays most Portuguese folks can't). I was merely pointing out the type of social tensions that can arise because of these politics.
>Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-speaking immigrants over the years and no plausible threat to the primacy of English in the US.
I want to start by saying that I'm very much an "open-border" kind of person so I don't really have a huge problem with immigration and cultural "melting pots" but as far as I know there are significant tensions in some southern American states when it comes to immigration from hispanophone countries. According to Wikipedia there are 50 million Spanish speakers in the USA and only about half of them declare speaking English "very well". There also appear to be large regions near the border when Spanish is a majority language. Again, I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, but it's certainly significant.
Beyond that America has a huge advantage in that game: English is the de-facto international language nowadays. When the more educated Syrian refugees are interviewed on the German or French TV they generally speak... English, not French or German. I've never set foot in the USA, I must have spent a grand total of one month in the UK and yet like many Europeans I speak English fluently. Japanese and Portuguese don't quite have that aura...
> I get the argument that someone who doesn't speak your language doesn't participate fully in your culture either, but I guess I'm still not sure why I should be upset about that.
Societal harmony matters. It's why universal healthcare exists. It's why welfare exists. It's why affirmative action exists. Why countries spend money integrating immigrants. Everything that helps out poorer people is done with societal harmony in mind, these programs aren't 'fair' to the middle class that largely pays for them. But they reduce crime and increase social cohesion.
Countries exist that have dozens of languages and tribes. They usually have endless social problems, unrest, civil wars and often break up. Homogenous societies (culturally) almost always work better. It's why the US creation myth exists, ditto for Canada, it's why France and Germany try to teach their language to newcomers, etc...
> Countries exist that have dozens of languages and tribes. They usually have endless social problems, unrest, civil wars and often break up.
Oh yeah, the history of the Swiss in the context of Europe is just non-stop insanity and violence. If only they could aspire to be more monocultural and peaceful, like their neighbors, the Germans...
External wars != internal strife. Also, Switzerland is still fairly homogeneous despite having several official languages. Moreso than say, China, India, even France or Spain.
Language is one thing. Culture overall matters. There are a bunch of things which lead to homogeneity. Religion for example. Look at all the troubles Ireland has faced.
Culture is language + religion + food + social norms + ideology and probably other things. Not everything needs to be the same, but if too many are in conflict, social problems arise.
But evidence of this is all around the world. Hindu mobs attacks butchers who sell beef in India, there's tons of contention over the rise of halal butcher shops and Muslim demands for halal options in the west, or even vegans that protest butcher shops for a non-religious example.
For religion itself, tons of wars have been started over it, that's easy.
As for ideology, look at the US and how fractured it is because of politics today. Or the historic communist revolutions. Or political violence in South and Central America. Both left-wing and right-wing violence against the other side are a thing.
People shouldn't care about these things, but they do, it's a thing.
So, you do have a problem with people speaking other languages, but don't have a problem with people having different religions, despite both causing the same issue you're worried about?
Not getting it. Starting to lean towards the "fig leaf" theory.
I don't have a problem with much really, certainly not language. I've lived all over and can live anywhere. I speak multiple languages and come from an ethnic, religious and linguistic minority (albeit not a visible one).
But it's pretty obvious that tribalism isn't dead. And what makes a tribe? And of course, we're trying to kill tribalism by simply making a more inclusive, bigger tribe. So what are the commonalities we'll have as part of that bigger tribe?
When borders don't exist anymore, racial discrimination doesn't exist, religion is dead, it won't be because we simply killed them. It'll be because we created a new ideology to supercede it.
I think you're arguing something that isn't germane to my question.
The OP on this thread said they would be irritated by (and I'm paraphrasing) someone coming in who spoke a different language. I am aware that such a thing exists, but wanted an answer to why. What you're addressing is the unasked first question, does such hostility exist?
I got confused because it appeared earlier in the thread that you were trying to justify that viewpoint on its own consequence. But now it seems like you were just steelmanning, which honestly isn't that useful to me on questions that are basically "how does your worldview work?".
I don’t know really how to respond besides to say you’re shifting goal posts to fit your narrative.
No historian worth their salt would be foolish enough to compare the circumstances of individual European countries with that of their former colonial subjects, nor things like the shifting borders and variations of thousands of years of Chinese history. Strife in China and India isn’t even independent from the influence of “homogenous“ countries in Europe!
The problem with OP’s claim is that it lacks any philosophical or historical rigor. Nation states, in their framing, people relating to themselves in terms of national identity, is a modern construction. And even within this context, you have widely different forms and articulations.
What is clear from the history of the 20th century is that appeals to nationalism and uniformity of culture, broadly constructed, drive more violence and conflict than they prevent. Organizing around their ideology led to two world wars, bloodshed and destruction at a previously unforeseen scale.
Arguably, the postwar peace was only restored by a return to an older form of sovereignty: that as semi-autonomous subjects of a multicultural empire (in this case that of the US and USSR). These have long standing historical precedents for their durability (e.g. the Roman and Ottoman empires).
If the only way we have peace is through brutal dictatorships or superpowers' hegemony, does it really invalidate what I'm saying?
Also, all those powers also attempted to spread their culture, language and religion. Hence Latin based languages, Arabic being spread as far as it has, Russian being spoke all over the former USSR, English being the new lingua franca.
Yes. Your argument that was “monocultural” societies are somehow more peaceful, and now more so than imperial rule, when the history of the 20th century demonstrates the opposite. Nationalism led to massive internal violence and attempts at creating new empires that ultimately led to subjugation of these states between two outside empires.
So basically you're arguing in favor of imperialism? Imperialism replaces internal violence with violence (or the threat of it) from an outside oppressor. How is this a good solution?
No, I’m stridently anti-imperialist, but simply observing the historical reality that, counter to OP’s claims, “monocultural” nationalism is a modern, unstable construction, that tends toward violence.
>but simply observing the historical reality that, counter to OP’s claims, “monocultural” nationalism is a modern, unstable construction, that tends toward violence.
You state this as if it's a fact, but it simply isn't. There's lots of monocultural nations that don't have any violence problems whatsoever: Scandinavian nations come to mind immediately.
Moreover, the "golden" days of the Cold War were pretty awful for a lot of people. The US and USSR didn't go to war directly, but instead conducted a bunch of proxy wars: Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, etc. The 20th century after WWII was full of violence, it was just kept away from the two imperial powers mostly. Instead they instigated violence in other places to pursue their "interests", such as when the USA overthrew the democratically-elected government in Iran and installed a brutal dictator.
As for stability, I would argue that stability is something we've never had anywhere, not long-term. I don't think you can point to anything that's been continuously stable for a long time, so I would argue that instability is the norm. Trying to keep a society stable is like trying to balance on a beach ball: you can do it for a little while, but eventually you're going to fall.
The problem is that any country, if you wait long enough, has endless social problems, unrest, civil wars, and then they break up. So it's hard to find an exception.
Singapore had to import Nepalese Gurkhas to keep the peace, both because they're extremely militarily effective and also because they were seen as impartial by the different ethnic groups.
>> Countries exist that have dozens of languages and tribes. They usually have endless social problems, unrest, civil wars and often break up.
> Oh yeah, the history of the Swiss in the context of Europe is just non-stop insanity and violence. If only they could aspire to be more monocultural and peaceful, like their neighbors, the Germans...
The Swiss, and their cantons, have almost un-heard-of amount political power and freedom. There is direct democracy where state matters are directly voted by the people. Also the Swiss cantons are sovereign don't have to follow federal law!
There is no need to rebel, if you can do whatever you want.
In some sense, the Swiss works more like a collection of tribes than a country.
> Why should I be more irritated that someone doesn't speak English than that they, say, can't make a cabinet or can't write Java, or any other mildly demanding skill?
Because conversation is how relationships form.
2. I'm still not sure why I should be upset about that.
Because if the foreigner has success, they may draw in other people who don't speak your language to do the same, and now the dominance of your culture is contested.
Not that I agree but that's what people would say.
If someone doesn't speak my language I'd sell them groceries out of politeness, but other than that they're worthless beggars until they prove themselves to be good for my local culture.
This is harsh, but I think the seed of correctness is in there.
Let’s consider: what is the value to a nation of importing immigrants?
First, they offer different perspectives, which is highly valuable in business.
Second, they introduce new customs, food, ideas, etc which help others in the community.
Etc, etc, etc.
All of this is lost if there is a strong language barrier between the existing culture and the immigrant. The immigrant who does not integrate, at least partially, brings little value to the broader community, though the community may bring value to him or her.
Yes I have a hard time understanding that perspective as well. If someone opens a business in my city and doesn't speak enough English (or Spanish) to complete a business transaction, I just wouldn't do business with them, and it'd be their loss not mine. The only way it would irritate me is if an essential business like the grocery store was completely staffed with people who don't speak a language I understand. In that case I don't have much an option to not to business with them.
I think a lot of people in countries like the US get worked up when people speak a language they don't understand because they feel excluded. And somehow it's vaguely threatening to have people talking and you are specifically cut out of the conversation.
Because if you can't communicate with your neighbors you are very unlikely to have a sense of community with them and some people prefer to have a sense of community with their neighbors rather than feeling disconnected and alienated from them.
It's the same reason I would be irritated to find myself in a restaurant in America that only accepts Chinese Yuan and won't let me pay with dollars. Sure, I could just avoid that place, but I dislike the idea that someone from a foreign country has carved out a portion of my homeland in which I am less welcome.
I think GP might mean "Japan" as in "the people of Japan" rather than the Japanese government. The government putting some things in place on their side doesn't necessarily mean that foreign entrepreneurs will actually be welcomed in everyday life, finding customers, suppliers, etc...
While I've never had any first-hand experience with Japan, it is said that there is some degree of discrimination that stems from cultural differences. Stuff like foreigners find it more difficult to rent apartments because the owners are concerned they won't be quiet enough and disturb the neighbors, or won't sort out their trash appropriately, etc. I don't think language is the only issue.
Japanese work culture also seems very particular. It seems likely that a business run by a foreigner would result in cultural clashes with employees, with customers, and with the general public.
If you pardon my interruption - you shouldn't be so hostile and rude to people trying to convey their point. I'd say don't be rigid - be openminded and look what people want to say.
As someone who have a lot of first hand experience in Japan I must say most of "liberation" that government declare are mere declarations. This applies not just to visa or enterpreneurship policies but to most of local matters as well. And then some people are surprised - government did something so why no-one is coming?
> If what you all said was true, why do foreign enterprises profit in Japan then?
If we look at list of companies that left Japan and compare it to list of companies that succeeded, the first one would be much longer. You still need to be a part of keiretsu to operate, to open a bank account, to get rid of all those ridiculous requirements business usually fights with, and so on.
> They've opened up the gates.
That's a very strong definition of what is happening. I'd say they reduced the code from the lock from 48 character password to 24, but still keep the passphrase :)
Despite declaration of "opening", Japan still preserves all possible barriers for emerging business and protecting it's own, largely inefficient, keiretsu companies and businesses.
> But not the infrastructure or trust and safety.
While it's debatable, it's not an exclusive thing. Singapore, Hong Kong, offers better safety with significantly better taxation.
I think this is kind of a 'new world' view. Japan is not Canada/America/New Zealand, or even UK which is easy to adapt into for historical reasons.
The issue is 'culture' - of which 'language' is only the most apparent barrier.
Japan has 1) a very complicated culture and 2) it's ethnocentric. These two things are related, because with such a complicated culture, it can take a very long time to adapt, and probably a lot of effort. Newcomers who don't make a concerted effort over a very long time won't ever make it to that level. One might argue that to be truly integrated, one might have to be 'born and raised' there. To boot, because there are so few who don't fit this mould, this has the additional effect of reinforcing in the minds of Japanese (or any such culture), that even individuals who have conquered the cultural artifacts but who 'look different' aren't really 'Japanese'.
Aside from ethnocentric concerns over 'what makes a Japanese person Japanese' which is surely controversial ... it makes it very difficult for newcomers to participate.
These things are neither 'government mandates' nor can they simply be bound into issues such as 'language and food' (although language is a big one) - it's a pervasive and intrinsic nature of the nation.
It's such a 'big thing' that I'd say whatever they do to attract foreign talent probably has to address this Elephant in the room.
This is a fair point. Carlos seemed like he did some really questionable things as head of Nissan, but it all seemed to be things that should have only been pursued in a civil case, not criminal. Instead, it seems like Nissan has used Japan's criminal justice system to punish him, and in quite a harsh way too. The guy is most likely guilty of some things, but the punishment he's experienced has been really out of proportion, and that's not going to be attractive to others who might look at Japan as a place to start a business or get involved in corporate politics.
Like others have stated, the Japanese are very much xenophobic to outsiders. The idea of bringing a business to Japan seems unique but you aren't going to get any community support like you would in western countries.
Personally I view Japan has a oddity. A first world country that short of some tech and Toyota/Honda produce little to nothing for trade. Everything is imported which could land you into the red if the powers at be stop playing nice in trading with Japan.
> A first world country that short of some tech and Toyota/Honda produce little to nothing for trade. Everything is imported
Japan does not export "some tech and Toyota/Honda". It exports a LOTS of vehicles, vehicle parts, integrated circuits, machines, etc. Japan is the 4th largest exporter in the world.
Also, a country that doesn't export much cannot import much, or else how could the country afford it?
I've been dealing with setting up a corporation over the past few months and have some quick (5am) comments on a few of these points from the article. Hopefully this is helpful to anyone considering doing business in Japan.
> Tokyo One-Stop Business Establishment Center (TOSBEC)
This resource is great and underutilized in Tokyo in the international business scene from my experience. I've been doing my part to recommend it far and wide, as it is very helpful with solid English support.
> Corporate bank account
I finished setting up my corporation in Japan in April, and it is now essentially December and I do not have a corporate bank account yet. Getting denied many times from various banks, always being told that they cannot tell us the reason why due to "policy". also, it can take anywhere from three to five weeks to process your application. My accountant, lawyer, etc cannot quite figure it out for certain. It recently came down to a few potential factors around me not being on the business manager visa (on another work visa), even though we've seen success doing it as that before. Banking has been my biggest holdup thus far.
> Private office
to secure a visa from your own business, you need a private office. You must have a private door, with your company name listed on it. there are multiple businesses which support this around the city, but you will pay at least 600 USD per month for a shoebox office with no windows or AC control, if you want to be in a reasonable neighborhood. There is also a semi-requirement that your bank must be within 5 km of your headquarters, AKA your office. So if you will be going there frequently, which you probably will be since online banking here is practically useless, you will not want to be traveling far.
So, you will be spending 600 USD per month on an office. You will also be spending 2,000 to 3,000 USD per year on an accountant to handle your corporate taxes. the standard rate for setting up a corporation, is around 4,500 USD to 5,500 USD. If you can't read Japanese kanji forms, which is all you are going to find that many banks and most government offices offer, you're going to need to pay a translator. If you are sponsoring your own visa, you need to deposit at least 50,000 USD into your bank account to support your visa. This money can be used elsewhere after it has been deposited, but is still a hurdle for some.
You are looking at a minimum of 15,000 to 20,000 USD for setting up a corporation over your first year, assuming you follow the standard path (excluding the 50k deposit)
I've been doing my best to document everything along the way during this process, and it is not over yet. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you have more questions or a curious about more details.
After 'working' with Canadian immigration for a couple of years to get my status secured I gave up. Any country that doesn't value what its immigrants bring to the table deserves to be ignored.
Given that your route seems to be full of friction why do you persist? Is there some unique element to your business that requires you to be in Japan?
Consider me impressed. Canada was easier than what you describe and yet, I couldn't stomach it after a couple of years of being given the run-around.
Wow. When I did this in the 1980s, it was $250K (minimum), in 1980 dollars. Things have gotten easier! :-)
There was the situation where if you didn't become a citizen (which was hard, but not impossible, at the time), you could visa-work your way throughout 40-or-so years of employment, but if you weren't a citizen, you were booted at 65, even if you had paid in your whole life.
US has been pretty open to immigration at some points, and relatively closed at others. For the most of last 250 years, it has been mostly closed to non-white immigration, for example. With the exception of black Americans, the current racial and ethnic diversity in the US is a rather recent phenomenon.
Tons of people hated the Irish for immigrating to the US. There are plenty of example of the hatred of Italians and Irish in the turn of the last century. Watch Gangs of New York for a taste of the bigotry.
Irish and Italians are lumped into White and now we have comments like yours. Most of the people in the US are from Europe so of course they favored family, friends, and countrymen coming over.
The US had no laws restricting immigration, period, until 1882. The national origin quota system didn't exist at all until the 1920s.
Ethnic diversity has been part of the fabric of the US since before it was a country. Per census figures, the percentage of the population that wasn't born in the US was higher in 1910 that in it today.
And, of course, the very concept of "immigrant from Europe or descended from them => white" is a lot more recent than 250 years ago. The Irish weren't considered "white" when they arrived en masse after 1820. Italians, Greeks, and various Slavs also weren't considered "white" when they arrived in the early 20th century. Suspicion of divided loyalties for a Catholic president was a big issue in the 1960 elections (JFK vs Nixon).
> The US had no laws restricting immigration, period, until 1882.
Yes, but it had Naturalization Act of 1790 that restricted naturalization only to white people. It wasn’t an immigration restriction, to be sure, but very few non-whites immigrated to US anyway (other than the forced immigration of black slaves), rendering the issue moot.
> And, of course, the very concept of "immigrant from Europe or descended from them => white" is a lot more recent than 250 years ago. The Irish weren't considered "white" when they arrived en masse after 1820. Italians, Greeks, and various Slavs also weren't considered "white" when they arrived in the early 20th century.
This is very much false and ahistorical. Many of them weren’t liked by then-locals, and in fact we’re often discriminated against, but at no point they were seriously considered non-white. There have been some activists recently claiming otherwise, but it has been based on very weak historical grounds. Consider, for example, that after the Ozawa case, at no point the question of Irish or Slavs’ whiteness ever came up on a court docket, while it did for Arabs, Syrians, Filipinos, and many others: https://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/White05.htm
> Suspicion of divided loyalties for a Catholic president was a big issue in the 1960 elections (JFK vs Nixon).
There was, but, as it turns out, Catholicism is not a race.
The global superpower fears were wild exaggerations. They didn’t have the pop (workers and also consumers) to support those claims.
Of course contributing to those fears was vast underinvestment in modernization by US firms which were still relying on very old and inefficient technologies, so of course to some stateside companies (and “pundits”) they looked like worldbeaters.
They have the population to compete with European nations as a world superpower. But the world superpower is not a European country, it's the US. Japan has something like 1/3rd of the population of the US, and is also extremely constrained on a bunch of natural resources.
Japanese economy is about 3.5 times bigger than that of Australia. I'm not sure what your point is.
Economical measures are hard to interpret, but they can give an indication: Japan GDP/capita is standing at 48,920 USD, and Australia at 56,919 USD. Germany is at 47,502 USD, France at 43,664 and UK at 42,986 USD. Japan is there, slightly ahead of Europe. Australia is somewhat ahead, but benefits from way more natural resources (minerals and oil). You can only grow fast so far: once your entire country is middle-class growth will be slower.
By comparison, Korea is at 26,762 USD, and China at 7,755 USD. These two countries have way more potential for growth, but also because they are way less developed for large groups of people. I forgot the exact salary difference for the same job between a chaebol and a small company in Korea, but I think we are talking 4x or 5x more at the chaebol.
As someone who lived in both countries I will take Japan any day over Britain. I wish Japan will not get tempted to do the mistakes Britain has done, if anything Britain should be a caution to Japan about the disaster that is looming for them if they open their country to immigration.
The reason Japan didn't become a global power is because of it's size and size of population, they are still doing very well only without all the "enrichment" that Britain has to deal with.
The solution to people not having enough children is to have more children, you could enlist people from abroad to help with the effort, but you could also try to raise the birthrate using the existing population.
The PRC's total population and working age population will peak in the next five years or so and begin a steady decline from there. 33% of the population will be over 65 by 2050 according to projections.
There was a recent study from Peking University which hypothesized that the population actually peaked in 2018 and is already shrinking. (government numbers are unreliable)
It totally is. Someone migrating, say, from Changsha to Guangzhou is going to face a significant language barrier interacting with locals. Yes, they probably both speak passable Mandarin, but possibly with quite different accents affected by Xiang and Cantonese, respectively. An influx of easily recognizable outsiders is going to fuel resentment wherever they compete with locals for scarce resources like jobs and living space. The Chinese household registration system 户口 hùkǒu exists in part to keep that internal migration under control.
Internal migration poses difficulties, but it is not the same thing as immigration. People immigrating to China would probably not speak a language that is mutually comprehensible at all. They would have a much more different culture than internal migrants. But most importantly: immigrants have no claim to being stakeholders in China and how it is governed, whereas each and every citizen does.
Japan has virtually identical GDP/capita to the UK, the numbers are a little out of date as GBP has fallen in last few years. Maybe UK could try to emulate Japan to try to catch up with it.
Looking at these numbers, UK has also been stagnating since ca 2005. Comparing between 1980 and 2015, both had about the same growth in GDP per capita, and about the same absolute numbers. Only Japan did the bulk of it's growing earlier in that time span, and the UK later.
There were no 'lost decades' -- that's just a low IQ meme. Japan's per-capita Gross National Income in constant USD equivalent has tracked the USA's almost 1 to 1 since the 1970s. All the while they have maintained their culture, their social and political stability and their sense of shared destiny. Here's a link to the Google Chart showing the data:
To put it another way, a flat economy in the face of a declining population (specifically working age population) means people are actually getting richer per-capita. You can still prefer America's experiment in mass immigration, but after looking over the facts, you have to at least admit we're still waiting for an answer on which route proves superior.
How is Japan a cautionary tale? They're one of the most (the most?) developed countries on earth, enjoy one of the highest standards of living and economically punch well above their weight (based on population and access to resources).
I don't see where the problem is... The vast majority of countries, even many western countries only wish they had Japan's 'problems'.
Their demographics are horrific. More diapers are sold to adults than babies. People are worked to the bone to support the needs of a massive elderly population.
Japan does a lot of things exceedingly well but demographics are one of those forces of history that are dammed near impossible to mitigate or circumvent without enormous cost, like trying to stop a train with your fist.
EDIT: Just to be clear, my point is about demographics, not immigration. We have yet to see if productivity advancements such as robotics can fill the void, but either way, Japan has a significant struggle ahead of itself.
The Japanese are just the first country to tackle the demographic transition without gambling their entire culture and country on mass immigration. We don't know yet whether it's a bad bet. In favor of their approach: 1) the demographic transition will pass (since fertility is heritable), 2) increasing automation will probably reduce the demand for labor, 3) meanwhile life is still good for Japanese people.
"1) the demographic transition will pass (since fertility is heritable)"
Citation needed. Sure fertility is well correlated with educational attainment which is likely somewhat "heritable" by proxy (social class, intelligence, lack of disabilities) but that doesn't mean the heritable effect will be large enough in aggregate.
I think Japanese approach is a good one specifically because of (2). Automation is something that is happening now as we speak and will only continue to accelerate. In fact the entirety of my career has been about reducing human labour or automating it entirely (within fintech, service industry, and IoT).
This is begging the question a bit though, isn’t it? Low total fertility in Japan does not necessarily mean “make up the difference with immigrants”. There are other policy options to address that issue.
The demographics of Japan, specifically an aging population and declining birth rate, is unfortunately where ALL modern countries are headed. Anyone who studies demographics knows this (in my part of the world we learn this in middle school). This is the natural result of healthcare improvements and first world parents who choose for various social reasons to have fewer and fewer kids.
Subtract their position as the forward operating base for the US military in Asia and try telling this story again.
While Japanese economic progress postwar was astonishing, it was entirely premised on them having favored status in the region. Few people know, for example, that the US forced Korea to purchase massive amounts of goods from Japan to rebuild its economy, essentially reinstating their former colonial relationship and stoking tensions that culminated in the Korean War.
Japan is a cautionary take because it was entirely too dependent on using its favored status in American geopolitics to throw its weight around Asia-Pacific, as opposed to building meaningful, trade and immigration agreements with other countries in the regions. Now that US dominance is in retreat and the Chinese ascendant, they’re in a poor overall economic position to counter them.
Products from Japan are sold in many countries and usually have a good reputation. The country has many trade relations and foreign investments all over the planet. They are solidly in the top 5 of trading countries.
Certainly the geo-strategic position was favorable, but I think this is quite the exaggeration.
I think it's rather an oversimplification to say that five years of reconstruction of a totally shattered Japan caused the Korean War. Or to take any lessons from the immediate postwar period and use them to explain the state of Japan 75 years later.
At least as far as development goes, the United States supercharged the postwar economy in Japan which directly lead to where it is today. If, say Indiana got the same investment, it too would look like Japan today with high speed maglev rail criss crossing like a fisherman's net and be a dominant position in high tech manufacturing.
Also, China has become the 2nd largest nominal economy ( or the largest in terms of purchasing parity ) in the world without being open to immigration. Instead of letting agenda drive your reasoning, why not let the facts?
> Japan was expected to become the next global superpower in the 1980s
By whom? The media?
Nobody in their right mind thought Japan was going to be a global superpower. Japan depends almost entirely on the US for defense and resource acquisition. They neither had the population nor the resources nor the international presence to be a global superpower - economic or military.
Japan doesn't want an influx of foreigners and rightfully so. It is a total failure in any nation state where they tried this experiment. Everybody declare that "diversity is our strange" but there is no proof for it at all, it is almost like a religious mantra that people mumble in order to justify the mess they have created. I used to believe this bullshit until I had the chance to live in Japan and to experience the huge advantages in an homogenous cohesive society.
In their immigration policy there is no path to permanent residency or citizenship. With so many other options around the world, why would immigrants move to non English speaking country with not so friendly immigration policies?
It's easy to get Japanese citizenship if you can qualify for a visa in the first place. I'm not sure why this falsehood is constantly repeated. Citizenship = 5 years, PR = 10 years
It's been a dream of mine to go spend time in Japan since I was quite young. The dream has morphed; I have a serious relationship now, a good career and a place to call home that I don't want to leave permanently. But the dream lives on and we're planning to go there for six months in a couple of years to learn the language intensively.
Japan like 99% of countries refuse to stop simping to women and give men/fathers rights
Yet to find a single nation willing to
* Remove DULUTH MODEL
* Remove Pussy Pass
* Remove double standards for women
* Remove forced child "support"
* Remove No fault divorce
* Hold women to the same standard as White Western men
* Hold jews to the same standard as white western Men
* Hold imports/islamic/blacks to the same standard as white western men
Simping and pandering to women goes past western culture and languages, its the multi national, multi language shared part of the World outside Middle East
I think I remember writing about this before, but it's also unclear what comparative advantages a startup in Japan offers you outside of two things: easy access to the Japanese market if you think their consumers/businesses will be the largest market for your product, and world-leading expertise in robotics (and some other things). I guess you can also live in some huge, nice cities without absurd cost of living too. Not sure if those are worth all the operational and cultural difficulties for most people, relative to other places.
However, the idea of trying to get someone to move to Japan to start a startup is kind of odd. Ideally, you should be near your customers.
Japan is a wonderful place to live, but there is much more they can do to make things attractive to Japanese entrepreneurs, which will, in turn, make it attractive to everyone, including foreign entrepreneurs.
After having done this myself, I figure that even for a Japanese native this must be tedious without having done it at least twice before.
When we closed down our company... a native helped us submit the paperwork to close out our local bank account with an online bank. It took SIX MONTHS of sending the same form back and forth with corrections to finish it, haha.
You need to know Japanese, streamlined beauty standards, you need to work crazy hours and it looks bad if you have switched companies in the past.
Get past these problems and non-japanese start to love it. They are not as racist as many people make them out to be, most are just extremely frustrated that english and being chubby isn't enough to be accepted.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] threadHe just got back from a trip to give a presentation in Japan...first thing I hear when he gets back is how badly racist the Japanese are.
I know it's just an anecdote...but it's been his experience in general over the years.
Everywhere you go on Earth you will find racist people, whatever 'race' they are some will be racist against other 'races'.
Specifically regarding your point: there are people who are black and racist in the US or any other country.
There's a very important distinction to make between those that write the laws and those that don't.
But racism does not start there.
Racism builds systems of governing and laws that can be racist. Ergo, you see structural racism (again, redlining) which can exist long after the racial zeitgeist has passed.
My understanding is they're also very financially conservative, I think it was pinboard who was talking about his experience as an independent entrepreneur?
If you read Phil Knights autobiography about starting Nike, he couldn’t get funding in the US and actually raised a lot of capital from Japanese financiers in the 70s.
It seems to me that speaking a language is a skill. I know from my own experience trying to learn a second language that it isn't an easy skill for many people to acquire. Why should I be more irritated that someone doesn't speak English than that they, say, can't make a cabinet or can't write Java, or any other mildly demanding skill?
I get the argument that someone who doesn't speak your language doesn't participate fully in your culture either, but I guess I'm still not sure why I should be upset about that. Seems like something for them to be worried about.
Sorry if I'm making an argument here, but I hear this quite a bit and it doesn't make sense to me.
Do you think a Japanese person who doesn’t speak English could build a successful company in the US without the help of someone who speaks English? It would be impossible.
A few years ago I worked with a Taiwanese company and we had to use translators because some of their engineers didn't speak English (and I don't speak Chinese). The person translating was also an engineer which helped massively as she understood what we were talking about and could sometimes anticipate our questions and "fluidify" the discussion but it was still a huge annoyance, it made every interaction more painful than it needed to be, you often wondered if they really understood what you meant etc... I can't really imagine myself working full time in such an arrangement.
I now live in Portugal and there's a massive American and French community in Lisbon. Many of them don't bother learning Portuguese and just interact with everybody in English. As such Portuguese people looking to work in Lisbon pretty much have to speak English. Actually you can now find restaurants where the waiter speaks English but not Portuguese (or at least not fluently). You can encounter similar situations all around the world where there's a huge foreign community. That can be fairly irritating for locals who end up feeling that they're the ones living in a foreign country...
Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-speaking immigrants over the years and no plausible threat to the primacy of English in the US. Shouldn't that be reason to think "maybe the thing I fear won't happen"?
For Portuguese people, perhaps it is. Who really wants to feel like a foreigner in their own country (esp. when that country is as small as Portugal)?
I know I'd be really irritated if I tried going to local restaurants around me and all the servers there only spoke Spanish. How would you feel about that?
>Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-speaking immigrants over the years and no plausible threat to the primacy of English in the US.
Yes, but that's because most of them either learned the dominant local language (English), or were not present in sufficient numbers to cause a situation like above. Sure, some formed little enclaves here and there, but that's a little different from what the OP described. And their kids grew up speaking English and fit into the new society. Finally, America is a really huge country, much larger than Portugal, and has historically accepted immigrants from many different places, so English (already being in place as the dominant language) was naturally the language everyone would learn so they could survive here. Given how huge English is now as a worldwide "lingua franca", I don't think you can compare America's history with what other non-English-speaking countries are experiencing today.
And the second part feels is framed as disagreeing with my point, but actually seems to support it: we've dealt with this issue before, the fear was the same, and the feared thing didn't happen. Shouldn't that mean we should dial down the fear this time around?
Who's "we", and where did I say "we" should fear this? I just pointed out the people of Portugal might not like this, nor might people in other places that might be having similar issues. If you're talking about the US, then no, that's not a well-founded fear at all.
>But at a glance Lisbon seems to be doing pretty well for itself-- certainly better than lots of places in the US.
Does that matter to the Portuguese? This idea that economic well-being (which frequently doesn't "trickle down" that much) trumps everything is exactly how we got Brexit and Trump.
>Besides your sense that such cultural changes are bad, what makes them bad? Why, objectively, should they be feared?
Well, I'd say electing people like Trump is demonstrably bad, and this is what happens when you simply ignore cultural changes. You end up with people voting for right-wing politicians, so we're seeing this in the US, the UK, and many other European nations.
>we've dealt with this issue before, the fear was the same, and the feared thing didn't happen.
Again, who's "we"? The US is not the world, and other countries are not like the US. You can't apply the US's experience with immigration to countries like Portugal; they have extremely different cultures and histories. Try going to Portugal and telling everyone there "you need to accept mass immigration and you all need to stop speaking Portuguese and switch to English", and see how friendly people are to you.
"We" in this case is shorthand for you and I. It seems you resent that association, so I apologize for extending it.
Regarding economics, I didn't say economic harm. I was simply asking what the actual harm is. Setting aside the question of whether something that can't be measured exists, let's try for an easier bar: can a harm that can't even be articulated exist?
Regarding Trump and Brexit, my views there are not germane to this conversation-- but since you asked and will undoubtedly try to force the issue, I'll state that I oppose both.
On the topic of telling the Portuguese to start speaking English-- if you think that was where I was heading here you're way off the mark and I don't think that's my fault.
It seems that for many people, loss of local culture and language is something they perceive as "harm", and they're resisting it. You can't objectively say whether this is harm or not, because most cultural things are purely subjective, so it's all a matter of perspective.
So if people in Portugal are worried their local culture and language are going to be bulldozed by outsiders, when a bunch of non-Portuguese speakers are moving in and restaurants are only operating in English as a result, I can't say they're wrong to feel that way. Personally, I think it's better to have more cosmopolitanism, but then again as an American I do know what it's like to live on a continent where there's a single dominant language and a huge amount of uniformity to everything, and it's really not that great. You can wander around in Florida, Maine, and Arizona, and everyone still speaks the same language, has basically the same culture, and all the stores and restaurants are mostly the same too, even owned by the same companies. Walmart isn't different between Oregon and Tennessee; it's pretty horrible in any state. The same fast-food chains serve the same garbage food wherever you go.
>On the topic of telling the Portuguese to start speaking English-- if you think that was where I was heading here you're way off the mark and I don't think that's my fault.
It's the natural end-state of the trend that you're asking about the harm of. If tons of English speakers move to Portugal, and all the service businesses eventually switch over to using English and not Portuguese, then it's exactly like I said: you're effectively telling the Portuguese to start speaking English, because they're not going to be able to survive in their own country any more if they don't, if things were to go that way.
>Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-speaking immigrants over the years and no plausible threat to the primacy of English in the US.
I want to start by saying that I'm very much an "open-border" kind of person so I don't really have a huge problem with immigration and cultural "melting pots" but as far as I know there are significant tensions in some southern American states when it comes to immigration from hispanophone countries. According to Wikipedia there are 50 million Spanish speakers in the USA and only about half of them declare speaking English "very well". There also appear to be large regions near the border when Spanish is a majority language. Again, I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, but it's certainly significant.
Beyond that America has a huge advantage in that game: English is the de-facto international language nowadays. When the more educated Syrian refugees are interviewed on the German or French TV they generally speak... English, not French or German. I've never set foot in the USA, I must have spent a grand total of one month in the UK and yet like many Europeans I speak English fluently. Japanese and Portuguese don't quite have that aura...
Societal harmony matters. It's why universal healthcare exists. It's why welfare exists. It's why affirmative action exists. Why countries spend money integrating immigrants. Everything that helps out poorer people is done with societal harmony in mind, these programs aren't 'fair' to the middle class that largely pays for them. But they reduce crime and increase social cohesion.
Countries exist that have dozens of languages and tribes. They usually have endless social problems, unrest, civil wars and often break up. Homogenous societies (culturally) almost always work better. It's why the US creation myth exists, ditto for Canada, it's why France and Germany try to teach their language to newcomers, etc...
Oh yeah, the history of the Swiss in the context of Europe is just non-stop insanity and violence. If only they could aspire to be more monocultural and peaceful, like their neighbors, the Germans...
If language isn't the thing that matters for national harmony, then this is at best a red herring and at worst a fig leaf.
Culture is language + religion + food + social norms + ideology and probably other things. Not everything needs to be the same, but if too many are in conflict, social problems arise.
I feel like the more this is being explained to me the more unsavory it seems.
But evidence of this is all around the world. Hindu mobs attacks butchers who sell beef in India, there's tons of contention over the rise of halal butcher shops and Muslim demands for halal options in the west, or even vegans that protest butcher shops for a non-religious example.
For religion itself, tons of wars have been started over it, that's easy.
As for ideology, look at the US and how fractured it is because of politics today. Or the historic communist revolutions. Or political violence in South and Central America. Both left-wing and right-wing violence against the other side are a thing.
People shouldn't care about these things, but they do, it's a thing.
Not getting it. Starting to lean towards the "fig leaf" theory.
But it's pretty obvious that tribalism isn't dead. And what makes a tribe? And of course, we're trying to kill tribalism by simply making a more inclusive, bigger tribe. So what are the commonalities we'll have as part of that bigger tribe?
When borders don't exist anymore, racial discrimination doesn't exist, religion is dead, it won't be because we simply killed them. It'll be because we created a new ideology to supercede it.
The OP on this thread said they would be irritated by (and I'm paraphrasing) someone coming in who spoke a different language. I am aware that such a thing exists, but wanted an answer to why. What you're addressing is the unasked first question, does such hostility exist?
I got confused because it appeared earlier in the thread that you were trying to justify that viewpoint on its own consequence. But now it seems like you were just steelmanning, which honestly isn't that useful to me on questions that are basically "how does your worldview work?".
No historian worth their salt would be foolish enough to compare the circumstances of individual European countries with that of their former colonial subjects, nor things like the shifting borders and variations of thousands of years of Chinese history. Strife in China and India isn’t even independent from the influence of “homogenous“ countries in Europe!
What is clear from the history of the 20th century is that appeals to nationalism and uniformity of culture, broadly constructed, drive more violence and conflict than they prevent. Organizing around their ideology led to two world wars, bloodshed and destruction at a previously unforeseen scale.
Arguably, the postwar peace was only restored by a return to an older form of sovereignty: that as semi-autonomous subjects of a multicultural empire (in this case that of the US and USSR). These have long standing historical precedents for their durability (e.g. the Roman and Ottoman empires).
Also, all those powers also attempted to spread their culture, language and religion. Hence Latin based languages, Arabic being spread as far as it has, Russian being spoke all over the former USSR, English being the new lingua franca.
You state this as if it's a fact, but it simply isn't. There's lots of monocultural nations that don't have any violence problems whatsoever: Scandinavian nations come to mind immediately.
Moreover, the "golden" days of the Cold War were pretty awful for a lot of people. The US and USSR didn't go to war directly, but instead conducted a bunch of proxy wars: Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, etc. The 20th century after WWII was full of violence, it was just kept away from the two imperial powers mostly. Instead they instigated violence in other places to pursue their "interests", such as when the USA overthrew the democratically-elected government in Iran and installed a brutal dictator.
As for stability, I would argue that stability is something we've never had anywhere, not long-term. I don't think you can point to anything that's been continuously stable for a long time, so I would argue that instability is the norm. Trying to keep a society stable is like trying to balance on a beach ball: you can do it for a little while, but eventually you're going to fall.
> Oh yeah, the history of the Swiss in the context of Europe is just non-stop insanity and violence. If only they could aspire to be more monocultural and peaceful, like their neighbors, the Germans...
The Swiss, and their cantons, have almost un-heard-of amount political power and freedom. There is direct democracy where state matters are directly voted by the people. Also the Swiss cantons are sovereign don't have to follow federal law!
There is no need to rebel, if you can do whatever you want.
In some sense, the Swiss works more like a collection of tribes than a country.
Because conversation is how relationships form.
2. I'm still not sure why I should be upset about that.
Because if the foreigner has success, they may draw in other people who don't speak your language to do the same, and now the dominance of your culture is contested.
Not that I agree but that's what people would say.
Let’s consider: what is the value to a nation of importing immigrants?
First, they offer different perspectives, which is highly valuable in business.
Second, they introduce new customs, food, ideas, etc which help others in the community.
Etc, etc, etc.
All of this is lost if there is a strong language barrier between the existing culture and the immigrant. The immigrant who does not integrate, at least partially, brings little value to the broader community, though the community may bring value to him or her.
I think a lot of people in countries like the US get worked up when people speak a language they don't understand because they feel excluded. And somehow it's vaguely threatening to have people talking and you are specifically cut out of the conversation.
They've opened up the gates.
Funding minimum is 5 million JPY.
The issue is language barrier and price.
You can go to China, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia to get much cheaper labor.
But not the infrastructure or trust and safety.
Japanese work culture also seems very particular. It seems likely that a business run by a foreigner would result in cultural clashes with employees, with customers, and with the general public.
If what you all said was true, why do foreign enterprises profit in Japan then?
Language is culture.
Culture is people.
You seem to be missing the big picture, and that isn't bad - it just means you should try to improve your ignorance.
Plus, all the issues you said apply anywhere in the world.
As someone who have a lot of first hand experience in Japan I must say most of "liberation" that government declare are mere declarations. This applies not just to visa or enterpreneurship policies but to most of local matters as well. And then some people are surprised - government did something so why no-one is coming?
> If what you all said was true, why do foreign enterprises profit in Japan then?
If we look at list of companies that left Japan and compare it to list of companies that succeeded, the first one would be much longer. You still need to be a part of keiretsu to operate, to open a bank account, to get rid of all those ridiculous requirements business usually fights with, and so on.
> They've opened up the gates.
That's a very strong definition of what is happening. I'd say they reduced the code from the lock from 48 character password to 24, but still keep the passphrase :)
Despite declaration of "opening", Japan still preserves all possible barriers for emerging business and protecting it's own, largely inefficient, keiretsu companies and businesses.
> But not the infrastructure or trust and safety.
While it's debatable, it's not an exclusive thing. Singapore, Hong Kong, offers better safety with significantly better taxation.
I'm just working in a Japanese company that's trying to go global.
But imagine, starting your own business, legal papers that need to be in Japanese. Compliances. Paperworks. It is tough.
Even filing taxes here is tough for a foreigner.
I think this is kind of a 'new world' view. Japan is not Canada/America/New Zealand, or even UK which is easy to adapt into for historical reasons.
The issue is 'culture' - of which 'language' is only the most apparent barrier.
Japan has 1) a very complicated culture and 2) it's ethnocentric. These two things are related, because with such a complicated culture, it can take a very long time to adapt, and probably a lot of effort. Newcomers who don't make a concerted effort over a very long time won't ever make it to that level. One might argue that to be truly integrated, one might have to be 'born and raised' there. To boot, because there are so few who don't fit this mould, this has the additional effect of reinforcing in the minds of Japanese (or any such culture), that even individuals who have conquered the cultural artifacts but who 'look different' aren't really 'Japanese'.
Aside from ethnocentric concerns over 'what makes a Japanese person Japanese' which is surely controversial ... it makes it very difficult for newcomers to participate.
These things are neither 'government mandates' nor can they simply be bound into issues such as 'language and food' (although language is a big one) - it's a pervasive and intrinsic nature of the nation.
It's such a 'big thing' that I'd say whatever they do to attract foreign talent probably has to address this Elephant in the room.
Personally I view Japan has a oddity. A first world country that short of some tech and Toyota/Honda produce little to nothing for trade. Everything is imported which could land you into the red if the powers at be stop playing nice in trading with Japan.
Japan does not export "some tech and Toyota/Honda". It exports a LOTS of vehicles, vehicle parts, integrated circuits, machines, etc. Japan is the 4th largest exporter in the world.
Also, a country that doesn't export much cannot import much, or else how could the country afford it?
edit: typo
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_med...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_vid...
> Tokyo One-Stop Business Establishment Center (TOSBEC)
This resource is great and underutilized in Tokyo in the international business scene from my experience. I've been doing my part to recommend it far and wide, as it is very helpful with solid English support.
> Corporate bank account
I finished setting up my corporation in Japan in April, and it is now essentially December and I do not have a corporate bank account yet. Getting denied many times from various banks, always being told that they cannot tell us the reason why due to "policy". also, it can take anywhere from three to five weeks to process your application. My accountant, lawyer, etc cannot quite figure it out for certain. It recently came down to a few potential factors around me not being on the business manager visa (on another work visa), even though we've seen success doing it as that before. Banking has been my biggest holdup thus far.
> Private office
to secure a visa from your own business, you need a private office. You must have a private door, with your company name listed on it. there are multiple businesses which support this around the city, but you will pay at least 600 USD per month for a shoebox office with no windows or AC control, if you want to be in a reasonable neighborhood. There is also a semi-requirement that your bank must be within 5 km of your headquarters, AKA your office. So if you will be going there frequently, which you probably will be since online banking here is practically useless, you will not want to be traveling far.
So, you will be spending 600 USD per month on an office. You will also be spending 2,000 to 3,000 USD per year on an accountant to handle your corporate taxes. the standard rate for setting up a corporation, is around 4,500 USD to 5,500 USD. If you can't read Japanese kanji forms, which is all you are going to find that many banks and most government offices offer, you're going to need to pay a translator. If you are sponsoring your own visa, you need to deposit at least 50,000 USD into your bank account to support your visa. This money can be used elsewhere after it has been deposited, but is still a hurdle for some.
You are looking at a minimum of 15,000 to 20,000 USD for setting up a corporation over your first year, assuming you follow the standard path (excluding the 50k deposit)
I've been doing my best to document everything along the way during this process, and it is not over yet. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you have more questions or a curious about more details.
Given that your route seems to be full of friction why do you persist? Is there some unique element to your business that requires you to be in Japan?
Consider me impressed. Canada was easier than what you describe and yet, I couldn't stomach it after a couple of years of being given the run-around.
There was the situation where if you didn't become a citizen (which was hard, but not impossible, at the time), you could visa-work your way throughout 40-or-so years of employment, but if you weren't a citizen, you were booted at 65, even if you had paid in your whole life.
Fun times.
Japan was expected to become the next global superpower in the 1980s, and instead has seen closing in on three lost decades.
It’s only now trying to catch up, politically, culturally and economically.
Irish and Italians are lumped into White and now we have comments like yours. Most of the people in the US are from Europe so of course they favored family, friends, and countrymen coming over.
Ethnic diversity has been part of the fabric of the US since before it was a country. Per census figures, the percentage of the population that wasn't born in the US was higher in 1910 that in it today.
And, of course, the very concept of "immigrant from Europe or descended from them => white" is a lot more recent than 250 years ago. The Irish weren't considered "white" when they arrived en masse after 1820. Italians, Greeks, and various Slavs also weren't considered "white" when they arrived in the early 20th century. Suspicion of divided loyalties for a Catholic president was a big issue in the 1960 elections (JFK vs Nixon).
Yes, but it had Naturalization Act of 1790 that restricted naturalization only to white people. It wasn’t an immigration restriction, to be sure, but very few non-whites immigrated to US anyway (other than the forced immigration of black slaves), rendering the issue moot.
> And, of course, the very concept of "immigrant from Europe or descended from them => white" is a lot more recent than 250 years ago. The Irish weren't considered "white" when they arrived en masse after 1820. Italians, Greeks, and various Slavs also weren't considered "white" when they arrived in the early 20th century.
This is very much false and ahistorical. Many of them weren’t liked by then-locals, and in fact we’re often discriminated against, but at no point they were seriously considered non-white. There have been some activists recently claiming otherwise, but it has been based on very weak historical grounds. Consider, for example, that after the Ozawa case, at no point the question of Irish or Slavs’ whiteness ever came up on a court docket, while it did for Arabs, Syrians, Filipinos, and many others: https://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/White05.htm
> Suspicion of divided loyalties for a Catholic president was a big issue in the 1960 elections (JFK vs Nixon).
There was, but, as it turns out, Catholicism is not a race.
Of course contributing to those fears was vast underinvestment in modernization by US firms which were still relying on very old and inefficient technologies, so of course to some stateside companies (and “pundits”) they looked like worldbeaters.
Economical measures are hard to interpret, but they can give an indication: Japan GDP/capita is standing at 48,920 USD, and Australia at 56,919 USD. Germany is at 47,502 USD, France at 43,664 and UK at 42,986 USD. Japan is there, slightly ahead of Europe. Australia is somewhat ahead, but benefits from way more natural resources (minerals and oil). You can only grow fast so far: once your entire country is middle-class growth will be slower.
By comparison, Korea is at 26,762 USD, and China at 7,755 USD. These two countries have way more potential for growth, but also because they are way less developed for large groups of people. I forgot the exact salary difference for the same job between a chaebol and a small company in Korea, but I think we are talking 4x or 5x more at the chaebol.
There was a recent study from Peking University which hypothesized that the population actually peaked in 2018 and is already shrinking. (government numbers are unreliable)
Also we might argue that the Chinese "self-migrate" with a huge amount of students that go for studies outside China but return later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
source: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
To put it another way, a flat economy in the face of a declining population (specifically working age population) means people are actually getting richer per-capita. You can still prefer America's experiment in mass immigration, but after looking over the facts, you have to at least admit we're still waiting for an answer on which route proves superior.
I don't see where the problem is... The vast majority of countries, even many western countries only wish they had Japan's 'problems'.
Japan does a lot of things exceedingly well but demographics are one of those forces of history that are dammed near impossible to mitigate or circumvent without enormous cost, like trying to stop a train with your fist.
EDIT: Just to be clear, my point is about demographics, not immigration. We have yet to see if productivity advancements such as robotics can fill the void, but either way, Japan has a significant struggle ahead of itself.
Citation needed. Sure fertility is well correlated with educational attainment which is likely somewhat "heritable" by proxy (social class, intelligence, lack of disabilities) but that doesn't mean the heritable effect will be large enough in aggregate.
While Japanese economic progress postwar was astonishing, it was entirely premised on them having favored status in the region. Few people know, for example, that the US forced Korea to purchase massive amounts of goods from Japan to rebuild its economy, essentially reinstating their former colonial relationship and stoking tensions that culminated in the Korean War.
Japan is a cautionary take because it was entirely too dependent on using its favored status in American geopolitics to throw its weight around Asia-Pacific, as opposed to building meaningful, trade and immigration agreements with other countries in the regions. Now that US dominance is in retreat and the Chinese ascendant, they’re in a poor overall economic position to counter them.
Certainly the geo-strategic position was favorable, but I think this is quite the exaggeration.
http://www.worldstopexports.com/japans-top-import-partners/
The US has the most immigrants than any other country by almost 5x at 48 million.
The US? You do realize that the US became the largest economy in the world when it was isolationist and pretty much banned immigration right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
Also, China has become the 2nd largest nominal economy ( or the largest in terms of purchasing parity ) in the world without being open to immigration. Instead of letting agenda drive your reasoning, why not let the facts?
> Japan was expected to become the next global superpower in the 1980s
By whom? The media?
Nobody in their right mind thought Japan was going to be a global superpower. Japan depends almost entirely on the US for defense and resource acquisition. They neither had the population nor the resources nor the international presence to be a global superpower - economic or military.
Death of a Dream: Vietnamese Workers in Japan https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/4001336/
http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/english/tetuduki/zairyuu/eizyuu.ht...
> or citizenship
https://www.justlanded.com/english/Japan/Japan-Guide/Visas-P...
I've been studying Japanese for years (taking the JLPT again in December).
I want to start a computational filmmaking startup, and Japan has some of the best writers and media exports the world has to offer.
I really need to stop worrying and pursue this...
It's been a dream of mine to go spend time in Japan since I was quite young. The dream has morphed; I have a serious relationship now, a good career and a place to call home that I don't want to leave permanently. But the dream lives on and we're planning to go there for six months in a couple of years to learn the language intensively.
Don't let your dreams stay dreams.
Yet to find a single nation willing to
* Remove DULUTH MODEL
* Remove Pussy Pass
* Remove double standards for women
* Remove forced child "support"
* Remove No fault divorce
* Hold women to the same standard as White Western men
* Hold jews to the same standard as white western Men
* Hold imports/islamic/blacks to the same standard as white western men
Simping and pandering to women goes past western culture and languages, its the multi national, multi language shared part of the World outside Middle East
BTW, shameless plug for my podcast: https://www.disruptingjapan.com/
However, the idea of trying to get someone to move to Japan to start a startup is kind of odd. Ideally, you should be near your customers.
Japan is a wonderful place to live, but there is much more they can do to make things attractive to Japanese entrepreneurs, which will, in turn, make it attractive to everyone, including foreign entrepreneurs.
When we closed down our company... a native helped us submit the paperwork to close out our local bank account with an online bank. It took SIX MONTHS of sending the same form back and forth with corrections to finish it, haha.
Get past these problems and non-japanese start to love it. They are not as racist as many people make them out to be, most are just extremely frustrated that english and being chubby isn't enough to be accepted.