Japan and Immigrants: The case of Brazilians

When facing labor shortages in the 1990s, Japan turned to Brazil for help. Now integration of Brazilians in Japan is proving to be a challenge and will continue to be a challenge as Japan's population ages. The New York Times reports:

As the demographic squeeze grows tighter, Japan may have to open itself further to immigration., experts say, if it is to have the workers it needs to remain a major industrial power. A homogeneous and insular nation, however, Japan is notoriously unwelcoming to immigrants; Koreans who came here during World War II are still treated as second-class citizens. Japan will have to undergo a difficult cultural transformation for which the Japanese-Brazilians pose an elementary test case.

The number of Japanese-Brazilian workers in Japan has continued to grow despite economic downturn. They are clustered in industrial regions dotted with factories supplying familiar companies like Honda, Sanyo and Toyota, whose headquarters gave this city in central Japan its name. The country’s 317,000 Japanese-Brazilians — whose children are growing up in Japan and, in many cases, coming of age here — effectively make up Japan’s largest immigrant population. Of the total, nearly 94,400 have acquired permanent residence, while the others can stay in Japan indefinitely. Children born in Japan of foreign parents do not automatically get citizenship.

Uncertain about how long they will stay in Japan, many Japanese-Brazilians send their children to private Portuguese-language schools or keep them out of school altogether. Going to school is not compulsory for foreigners.

Of the nearly 33,500 Japanese-Brazilian children in Japan between 5 and 14 years old, the ages of compulsory education, about 10,000 are in Japanese schools receiving remedial Japanese lessons, according to government figures. Most of the rest are likely in Portuguese-language schools or not attending school.