Comment by cedws
19 hours ago
I live in Tokyo at the moment. I get the overtourism thing, because after you've been here even just a little while (months) you start to have a disdain for tourists that do tourist things. Like breaking the rules, being a nuisance, swarming parts of the city.
I don't know what can be done about it though. Japan's economy is in trouble, and the tourist money helps and hurts at the same time. It creates tax revenue, yet inflates prices for locals. Japan's stumbling economy is a factor in itself of the tourism influx due to the weak yen.
In the next few decades I fear Japan is going to go through a difficult period of cultural erosion. It needs foreign workers and at the rate they'll be entering, they won't integrate to the level that the Japanese people want.
I'd like to think I'm one of the "15%" that the article describes - I go to great lengths to integrate despite not speaking a lot of Japanese. But deep down I know that I don't belong here, and that Japan would prefer to be a homogenous society without expats like me. And I hold no hard feelings toward them for that.
> But deep down I know that I don't belong here, and that Japan would prefer to be a homogenous society without expats like me. And I hold no hard feelings toward them for that.
I think this is an important point that I am struggling to articulate. I actually like the fact that they "prefer to do things their way". When I was traveling there, it is clear that I stand out from my behavior. We might share the same skin color but I don't speak the language nor have the mannerism.
I don't fit, they don't know how to deal with me and that is fine. In fact, I would prefer it to be that way. I prefer Japan to be Japan. Of course there are societal issues that needs to be fixed but those are orthogonal to what I am talking about.
My home country, the UK, has already been through this cultural erosion which is why I respect Japan's right to defend its own. London in particular has become a place for everybody and at the same time for nobody. It's a city of people of different values and wavelengths with very little shared strata compared with Tokyo.
Funny to see this sentiment here but in the USA if a conservative-leaning politician talks about "preserving our culture" or saying that immigrants should "assimilate" they are accused of being a code-word (or even an overt) racist.
6 replies →
London isn’t an example of cultural erosion—the pie has simply grown. The same applies to New York. Diverse cultures enrich London; they add to it rather than diminish it.
6 replies →
Yup, this happens to any melting pot city (Paris, New York, LA, San Francisco, etc). The downside of multiculturalism is these places become low-trust societies.
Do you dare leave your bike outside unlocked in these cities?
2 replies →
This is such a weird notion. Waves of immigrants have created some of the biggest most economically productive cities the world has ever seen. If Tokyo goes this route, only greatness lays in its future.
The rest is just nostalgia, and that's fine. But realistically, a big piece of Japanese culture will be well preserved in the new culture that will emerge. As it is, we've stopped lamenting the arrival of Buddhist influence on the island, so too will other immigration influences.
3 replies →
I am from a country in South East Asia, and its sad here as well. We have absolutely 0 connection to our ancestors from just 100 years ago. We (and me) have truly forgotten and don't have any identity beyond the surface level. We suffered from Arabification of every part of our culture.
I honestly think the original culture is pretty much extinct. Very, very few of the incoming generation even desire to uphold and rekindle that culture. In fact, it is despised.
2 replies →
Tangential to this but I lived in Taiwan for years and every time I saw a new Starbucks or McDonald's go up, I'd have to restrain my gag reflex.
To hell with these multinational corporations that erect their sterile altars to unbridled capitalism, resulting in the mass homogenization of culture. A culture that caters to "everyone" caters to no one.
I find it amusing when Japan wants to be a homogenous society everybody respects their right to have that opinion. But when a european country voices the same wish, everybody loses their mind.
> And I hold no hard feelings toward them for that.
But isn't that why Japan ended up like this? Every country needs either immigration or babies, and Japan chose option C: neither. And now the decision has been made for them, a very high dose of immigration is required.
It's like ignoring a cavity and eventually needing a root canal.
Xenophobia is simply an unworkable idea, like eugenics and other discredited beliefs. Or at least it needs to be paired with a religion that encourages having kids.
> Xenophobia is simply an unworkable idea
Xenophobia was the default for nearly all of human history and core to nearly all successful societies. How is it unworkable?
At its core it’s the same idea as “trust is earned, not given”.
Yes, but for most of human history we didn't have contraception either. People had children because it was either that or abstinence, and abstinence sucks. Not to mention the need to create heirs who could look after you when you became too old to work.
In an advanced society where the threat is depopulation rather than invasion, xenophobia is harmful unless you can find a way to convince people to have more children than is rational for them to have.
I get it too. I visited japan recently and in the main touristy spots (tokyo and kyoto), it felt like there were more westerners then japanese. I felt bad.
If you experience this in Tokyo, you're dealing with the fact that it's a truly global city and you're not venturing off the tourist path enough. It's definitely still a thing in some parts of Tokyo to have few-to-no westerners.
Kyoto was never going to be able to deal with the level of tourism that it's currently struggling with, though. My friends and I refuse to even stop there now - and I tried to get some friends who visited recently to avoid it in favor of some other culturally significant spots, but the TikTok trend seems to be incredibly powerful. I don't know if I have the words to express how that interaction made me feel, but it's definitely weird.
> I tried to get some friends who visited recently to avoid it in favor of some other culturally significant spots
Any tips for somebody looking to visit Japan in the next year or so?
2 replies →
Seems like a golden opportunity to be smart about it and use advertising to make less visited parts of cities tourist attractions. People want to experience Japan, but naturally focii will appear over time via positive feedback, you have to overcome that with advertising and promotions on the web via influencers and advertising. That seems like a government focus if they are really interested in doing something about it.
> going to go through a difficult period of cultural erosion
I am not sure what cultural erosion you speak of. I am sure Japanese culture won't be replaced by a cultural vacuum. Japanese culture has evolved for centuries, both under external influences and because of its internal dynamics.
Many modern beloved Japanese cultural assets were formed in such manner, as noted in this article: https://archive.md/2c1WI
> Japan's economy is in trouble, and the tourist money helps and hurts at the same time. It creates tax revenue, yet inflates prices for locals
I lived in a successful major tourist region from its inception to maturity. You are incorrect in saying that it creates tax revenue: The Tourism sector generally gets tax breaks and subsidies, so it ends up eating up tax revenue to enrich whatever oligarchic structure or family dominates the landscape. Moreover, in any mild temporary crisi,s it risks collapsing and forces the government to bail it out by spending enormous amounts of money.
Tourism is like a tick that sucks away the productive forces and resources of a country - it diverts both budget (tax breaks, subsidies) and educated manpower away from actual goods and services production, provides sh*t jobs to those employed in tourism, causes inflation and CoL rise across regions and even the entire country. If you want to cripple a country's industrial and technological power, the best thing to do is to push tourism on it.
> But deep down I know that I don't belong here, and that Japan would prefer to be a homogenous society without expats like me. And I hold no hard feelings toward them for that.
I get what you're saying, but I also marvel at how completely contrary this is to the "freedom of movement" ethics of the West. I mean, someone who holds this same opinion in Europe or America would be considered a Neo-Nazi.
I think you are laboring from behind a few very common blind spots.
First, Japan is an island nation, and historically a somewhat isolated one (due to weather patterns rather than distance). Islands are fundamentally different from continents, anthropologically, lexically, strategically.
Second, 'the West' has historically been very expansionist; because of its continental configuration, there have been many, many waves of migration and military conquest, and the development of global navigation and seafaring vessels during the Renaissance made for a centuries-long outward expansion.
Third, this sort of expansionism has being going on in the Asia-Pacific region over even longer timescales and there are very different discourses with many contentious points of view if you include Japanese, Korean, Chinese and other perspectives.
On general anthropology, maybe try JAred Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel or for a more academic take, Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization. For the history of Japan, Mason & Caiger's History of Japan is comprehensive without being a huge study commitment.
Immigrants like you. Not “expats”.
There is an actual difference between those two words. GP said he lives in Tokyo "at the moment." Immigrants intend to settle permanently; expats move places temporarily and will eventually either move on to somewhere else or go back home.
Expats can turn into immigrants, but one who "knows deep down they don't belong" is less likely to.