[muglug]

If I wrote a long memo about how there are too many immigrants in America, and afterwards accepted an interview request from VDare, people would be right to wonder whether my private views were a little more racist than the memo let on.

[sjwright]

It's racist to assume that someone is an immigrant because of their appearance. It's not racist to say that you think rates of immigration are too high. You can oppose immigration but have nothing but delight for the diversity of culture across the planet. A xenophilic restrictionist, as Eric Weinstein describes it.

In fact extreme xenophilic restrictionism is the norm in Japan. There's almost universal support by the Japanese people for their extremely restrictive immigration policy—probably the most restrictive first world country. But no sane person could call the Japanese people racist. They love other cultures—no, they adore them. They are incredibly welcoming to tourists from across the planet and delight in the sharing of culture.

[filleduchaos]

> But no sane person could call the Japanese people racist.

Is this a joke? Japan has well-known issues with race relations and its historical and current treatment of its minority indigenous populations.

[sjwright]

Pretty much every major culture has racism in its past. Pretty much every culture still has some percentage of racist people.

[filleduchaos]

I don't know what strange romantic picture of Japan you've managed to paint in your head, but the real-world country has well-documented and very current issues with pervasive racism and xenophobia.

[sjwright]

All mature cultures have a noisy minority population of xenophobes. Japan isn't special in that regard and I never said it was.

[claudiawerner]

>There's almost universal support by the Japanese people for their extremely restrictive immigration policy

Can you point to some statistics on that, please?

>probably the most restrictive first world country

If you can get hired by a Japanese company (and some do accept applications from overseas), they will sponsor your work visa. There's none of this H1-B style nonsense. After you're in Japan, if you've been there continuously for five years (which, mind you, is a smaller period of time than any country I can name OTOH), you can apply for citizenship, and again as far as I know, it's not a ridiculous waiting list/lottery style process. In what way is this nearly as restrictve as you're saying?

It's also not difficult at all to get into Japan by applying to an English teaching company (eikaiwa or ALT jobs) from overseas (where they recruit from), and all you need is any Bachelor's degree. You'll have a valid work visa and you can be shipped out within months. Try doing the same as a Japanese teacher applying to teach in the US (or many other countries, for that matter). Browse tech job listings for Japanese companies on major job boards in the West. Almost all of them note that they'll be happy to sponsor your work visa.

This game of prettying up the language to make it seem nice and friendly, while maintaining the otherness that daily affects people (groups which the other reply to you here has pointed out) with language like "xenophilic restrictionist" does nobody favours.

And if there is support for such policies, and in particular bent on nihonjinron notions and race perceptions, I must be insane, but I'm going to go ahead and call "the Japanese people" racist. Being "incredibly welcoming to tourists" doesn't mean anything if you want to work and live there. It misses the whole point of the discussion, and waves away systemic issues with a gloss of "they're good to tourists". We're not talking about tourists. I don't care how much they are able to enjoy Western comedians. I care how receptive they are to people integrating and living in their society like everyone else, as the Japanese constitution guarantees should be possible.

At the risk of stirring the pot a little (and only because I couldn't think of a better analogy), you may as well say no country has race problems, because after all, members of the majority race might frequently listen to music by, and watch films featuring, the minority race. That doesn't mean anything in terms of how the minority race is treated, and it's a farcically ignorant point to make. So sorry if I see the same sort of logic in nebulous feelgood terms like "xenophilic restrictionism".

[dependenttypes]

> But no sane person could call the Japanese people racist

I would disagree with that. You will see many sane people pointing out the racism against koreans, chinese, tourists, western residents, etc in Japan.