"Gaijin san da yo ne?!"

The title of this entry is a quote attributable to a Japanese Jehovahs' Witness who had the audacity to ring my doorbell on a sunday and attempt to talk to me about God. Translated roughly, it means "Oh my God, you're Mr Foreigner aren't you?!" (literally, "outside person, honorofic suffix, informal is, particle to indicate emphasis, particle to indicate agreement"). She may have been expecting a Nihonjin.

Generally speaking, the Japanese aren't exactly racist...but they are, albeit the politest racists you'll ever meet. Racial tension doesn't quite have the teeth of somewhere like Oldham, but there's definitely an undercurrent of awkwardness, sometimes spilling over into contempt, which is more emotionally isolating than physically dangerous.

All residents without Japanese citizenship have to carry a Certificate of Alien Registration at all times, variously known as Alien Card, Alienation Card or Gaijin Card (most commonly). That doesn't have quite as much of a sting as it did when I first got here, what with the hoo-ha in my own Green & Pleasant land over ID cards - not racism, rather, what the late great Douglas Adams would have described as perfectly normal paranoia.

Without wanting to blatantly list off grievances...some Japanese will refuse to sit next to you on absurdly crowded buses. I've attempted to ask for directions on a number of occasions, to have been greeted with a pair of retreating heels. A lady at a yakitori stand refused point blank to even acknowledge my prescence, let alone serve me - it took one of her embarassed colleagues to sort me out. Then there's the looks you get walking down the street...

...it's OK when really small children stare, clearly gobsmacked, at you (it's quite sweet actually), but it's a bit disconcerting coming from the elderly. With children, I can grin and gurn to my hearts content, sometimes raising a smile or a giggle (but, more often than not, wide eyed confusion) - oldies on the other hand (not all, mind you) have been known to scowl and turn away sharply. Others are cleary surprised that I can even say "konnichiwa" ("It can speak Japanese?!"). At the very worst, I've been spat at a couple of times, by potential Yakuza in a flash car and a Harridan-like creature respectively, the offending grolley hitting home only once.

With regards to my flat, it was love at first sight (for me at any rate) and I was slightly worried because I had to apply to move in. Turning to Ueno san for advice (as I still do sometimes) I asked if there might be any reasons I wouldn't get it, and he (roughly) replied...

"The only problems would come if you were, say, Chinese. Then the landlord would be worried that you were going to fill the apartment with people, or if you were a Muslim, as they think that everyone else is sub-human."

...with all the nonchalance of one describing a sandwich. Note the distinction between considering everyone else as sub-human and considering everyone else unfortunate not to have been born Japanese.
I had it easy getting that flat - another ALT was faced with a struggle the last time I spoke to him, as he was living, unmarried with his Japanese girlfriend, who didn't have a job. An unmarried Japanese couple might struggle, never mind an unmarried mixed race relationship.

It's the process of application, so beloved of the pathologically bureaucratic Japanese, that betrays their capacity for discrimination. One victimised section of the populace is Japans' indigenous people, the Ainu, now mostly living in Hokkaido, displaced by settlers from the mainland who evolved into todays ethnic Japanese. After numerous conflicts over territory, the Ainu fell under control of the Japanese after the battle of Kunasiri-Menasi (1789) and remained oppressed and exploited until the Meiji Restoration, where they were granted the status of Former Aborigines, but prohibited from observing their daily customs. It wasn't until 1997 that a law was passed, recognising their culture as unique and officially promoting their rights, but according to the Asia Times, as recently as 2000, Ainu were complaining of discrimination when it came to employment and marriage, feeling they had to hide their ethnic identity.

Yes, background checks by families before marriage are commonplace. Ethnic Japanese that suffer through this are the Burakumin; descendants of pre-modern hereditary occupational groups, such as butchers, leather workers, or those in a profession associated with death. This is down to a number of factors - Buddhist prohibitions against killing, Shinto notions of kegare (taint) and the Tokugawa Governments' attempts at social control during the Edo period, when Buddhism was temporarily adopted as the official religion of the state. Burakumin (meaning "community people", refering to the villages they were annexed to) faced discrimination, even down to having separate temples, as they were seen as being contaminated in some way by their habitual killing of animals. Historically, they were sometimes called "eta" (lit. "full of filth") and, instead of the posthumous religious name given to most dead, they would receive derogatory names including the characters for "humble", "beast" or "servant". Burakumin today still suffer discrimination, depite recent laws and lobby groups.

The word for foreigner, "gaikokujin" (lit. "outside country person") refers to all people not of Japanese nationality and is applied to naturalised citizens without ethnic Japanese ancestry. The contracted form, "gaijin" (lit. "outside person") is usually used to describe those not of an Asian background. Although ethnic minority groups are present, Japan is by no means a multi-cultural society. Even in a sprawling urban smear like Kawasaki, right next to the biggest city on the planet, I'm probably the first Westerner most of my students have seen. In many respects my job is that of resident English speaker, and on cynical days, "gaijin pet". This is a double edged sword and an experience unique to living as a Western foreigner in Japan. The Japanese government places a great deal of importance on the ability to speak English, maybe for economic reasons (or because the worlds' only Superpower is an English speaking nation). My native status is pivotal to my being allowed to live and work in Japan. I don't think there is anywhere else in the world where my otherness would be so valued - certainly not if I was an Asian trying to live and work in the UK. Trying to understand or describe the Japanese is a literary genre in of itself, this blog being an echo. It's a peculiar kind of racism - not hateful, rather assumed; the same way we can view the Japanese (courtesy of some of their more outlandish cultural exports) as being a little bit mad, so they can view the rest of the world as being, not sub-human, rather sub-Japanese. Their indigenous religion has them descended from God...but that's another entry