For most of the Japanese people living in Japan, it has sunk in their mind that there are so many opportunities to see foreigners around where they live, such as convenience stores, restaurants, supermarkets. However, they don’t accept this situation 100 percent but have a lot of worries towards this rapid social changes.
Recently, it has not been a really strange scene that foreigners and Japanese people work together in one office. It is an extraordinary social change that most Japanese people have never imagined long ago.
Even though foreign labors acceptance measure has been coming into force based on the agreement with the affiliated countries before people have felt that so many foreigners had immigrated in Japan, the government’s, that is urgently required to find a solution for social problems of “declining birthrate” and manpower shortage of certain domestic industries, have positive immigrant acceptance attitude and focuses on creating new policies and easing a part of present immigration law.
Japanese people knowing failure part of examples of immigration policies implemented in European countries, that couldn’t perfectly protect nations from threats of criminal, and rising unemployment rate, are really sensitive against accepting the policy bringing manpower from overseas.
In this article, I want to talk about what Japanese people really think about immigrants in Japan with credible data.
Contents
- 1 Multi-internationalization in a company’s office will accelerate in Japan more than ever
- 2 How do Japanese people feel working together with foreign labors?
- 3 How do people feel like receiving services from foreign labors?
- 4 Advantages that people get by working with foreign labors
- 5 Things to overcome
Multi-internationalization in a company’s office will accelerate in Japan more than ever
The background that foreign labors have increased
First of all, let’s make sure if the phenomenon that people feel instinctive that foreign immigrants have increased recently happens in reality.
In fact, the government has been positively accepting high skillful foreign labors and students these days. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, as of October 2018, the number of foreign labors were 1,460,463 and updated the past highest record.
New residence qualification system has started from April 2019 by the immigration act amendment. The number of foreign labors is expected to keep increasing more rapidly than ever.
How Japanese can be familiar with a foreigner with another cultural background and the social standard is one of the most difficult to the problem for Japanese citizen to tackle with.
How do Japanese people feel working together with foreign labors?
According to Japanese internet media “suit women”, 60 percent of people, who answered the questionnaire about how they feel working with a lot of foreign labors together, had an intention to accept increasing foreign labors. 50 percent of people were willing to work together with them. The questionnaire gave us comparably positive feedback in contrast to emphasized critical public opinions direction against the updated immigration act that the Japanese government implements.
| Unaccept | 3.4 % |
|---|---|
| Rather unaccept | 6.5% |
| Neither accept unaccept | 29.8 % |
| Rather accept | 31.4 % |
| Accept | 28.9% |
| Unaccept | 4.1 % |
|---|---|
| Rather unaccept | 8.8% |
| Neither accept unaccept | 36.2 % |
| Rather accept | 26.4% |
| Accept | 24.5% |
Some of them seem to be purely willing to support foreign labors who came all the way from a faraway country to support their families and have quite sympathetic heartwarming treatment to keep foreigners from slavery forced by a sweatshop company.
How do people feel like receiving services from foreign labors?
For people from western countries, this question gives an impression of racism. However, this is really important to question for Japanese people, who don’t get used to coexisting with other races domestically, to find an issue and catch a hint to get along well with each other.
In this questionnaire, 70% of people are willing to accept foreigners qualified for visa status “specified skills” which is subject to the industries such as “restaurant”, “manufacture”, “hotel”, “nursing”.
| Nursing | 80% |
|---|---|
| Manufacture (foods, drinks) | 85% |
| Hotel | 87% |
| >Manufacture (car, electricity) | 90 % |
| Restaurant | 91% |
| Building cleaning 92 % |
Most of the industires listed in here are defined as “specific industry field” in “the basic policy of the system operation related to resident qualification of specific skill” by the Japanese government.
Advantages that people get by working with foreign labors
The advantage of working with foreign labors really depends on the employment status of foreign labors. If foreigners do a part-time job, the advantage that people feel the most by working with foreign labors is being able to eliminate the manpower shortage from the workplace.
In contrast, If foreigners do a full-time job, the advantage that people feel the most by working with foreign labors is being able to take in a different sense of value from the different culture.
And what I want you to pay attention to is that there are so many people who answered the foreign labors will make workplace atmosphere better and come active. Multi-International communication is what actually Japanese people may have desired in their deep mind to get out of this closed oppressive homogeneous environment.
Things to overcome
General Japanese nations feel the benefit to working with foreign people in Japan. On the other hand, there are so many things to overcome by making an effort with each other and “make a concession with each other.
The problems of “language barrier”, “lack of preparation to accept foreign labors”, “lack of understanding and repeating mutual cultural standard”, “difficult to follow up Japanese people’s work style”, are still dangling after the concerns of immigrants in Japan.
It is a really abstract talk but respecting and understanding each other is the last stronghold to make working and living environment much better than ever.