At my job, I get to meet a lot of people whom I would have never been able to meet otherwise. Guests who regularly go to high-end hostess clubs are often CEOs, VIPs, and other important people. Some of them are friendly to foreigners and others are not. I was surprised when I entered the hostess world of how many Japanese people are xenophobic, in other words, scared of foreign people or downright openly racist. I’ve found these racist feelings are toward both Westerners and people from other Asian countries. In fact, the UN even stated that Japan was one of the most racist countries in the world.
So, in order to find out where xenophobia started in Japan, I did some research and found that it began to appear in media during the first part of the Showa Era. Racial discrimination was already existent in Imperial Japan and had been from the start of the colonization of Japan. However, during the Showa Period, racial superiority was preached in the media. The first major anti-foreigner campaign was called Bocho and was launched in 1940, alongside the Shitsujo (New Order in East Asia). After this public campaign, Westerners in Japan (including your average English teacher) were detained and tortured for no reason and on other occasions, were objects of violent assaults.
During the same period, the same kind of attacks against Chinese and other non-Japanese people were made.
It seems that something we can blame for xenophobic attitudes in Japan, even today, is the media. Crimes committed by foreigners residing in Japan are very few but you wouldn’t think that, due to the sensationalism in the media over crimes committed by foreigners. The media everywhere has a great ability in the fact that it can bring people together but we have to remember that media companies are businesses. Shocking stories tend to draw the most attention and the bigger the shock value, the bigger the pay check. Some of the blame has to rest on us as well, for choosing to take in whatever the media feeds us and not be objective about it.
In writing this, I am not saying that racial discrimination and xenophobia has only ever existed in Japan. This would be laughably untrue. The unfortunate thing is that it still exists today, everywhere. I would appreciate any comments on xenophobia in Japan, or anyone’s thoughts or experiences with xenophobic people.
