Why are foreign pundits so resistant to fact checking and so wedded to stereotypes?

Japan accepts it needs immigrants for its economy to survive – so why is it still so resistant to change?

The real issue here is why foreign pundits are so resistant to fact checking and so wedded to ethnic, even racist, generalizations.

Selections from the original article by Hamish McRae are in italics in the commentary below.

But throughout Japanese history there has been a sense of exceptionalism: that Japanese people, and their society, are different from the rest of the world. Not only different, but better.

That may be the case for some Japanese now, but there is a general tendency in Japan to cite other countries, especially the Nordic countries, as doing many things much better than they are done in Japan. Further, there have been at least two periods in which a collective inferiority complex prevailed in Japan: in the second half of the 19th century when there was a concerted effort to modernize Japan on mostly European models; in the wake of defeat and surrender in 1945.

Fewer Japanese study abroad, fewer learn foreign languages, fewer are posted abroad for work.

Because the college-age cohort has declined in size by more than 40% since it peaked in 1992, the decline in the number of Japanese studying abroad has more to do with demographic change than any turning inward. Further, the number studying abroad has actually been increasing in recent years. Foreign language study remains popular and the teaching of English in the schools has in fact been expanded.

A seldom noted factor in the shrinkage of the Japanese population in recent years is an increase in the number of Japanese nationals living and working outside of Japan. Specialists in Japanese demography are aware of this pattern but journalists who write about Japan have ignored it.

When an immigrant fails to fit in – and the obvious current example is Carlos Ghosn, former head of Nissan and engineer of the Nissan/Renault partnership – then Japanese society rebels.

Carlos Ghosn is by no stretch of the imagination an immigrant. He has never styled himself and immigrant; he has never been styled as an immigrant.

Nissan management may have been unhappy with Ghosn, but in Japanese society at large, he has been treated as a folk hero. There was even a Japanese manga celebrating him as a hero. Japanese society at large was extremely surprised by his arrest.

"The nail that sticks up must be hammered down,” as the Japanese aphorism maintains. 

This is an aphorism used by foreigners, not Japanese. In 25 years residency in Japan and 45 years as someone using Japanese in my daily life, I have never heard Japanese use this expression. There are other aphorisms with a similar meaning that are used by Japanese but this one is primarily something foreigners cite, not Japanese.

This will not change Japan. The country has deemed it more important to preserve its culture and identity than to ease economic strains, and it will continue to do so.

As one of those skilled migrants, a Japanese citizen, and an historian specializing in modern Japanese history, I would beg to differ. Japan has been very adaptive in the past and will almost certainly continue to be adaptive