Multicultural Japan

« Furthermore, as far as minority representation in society is concerned, the situation couldn’t be further from being good.

Chong Hyang Gyun, the first foreigner to be employed as a health care worker in the metropolitan government, has been denied the opportunity to take a promotion exam because of the fact that she is not Japanese. Finally, despite the fact that some “Western-style” international schools have been recognized by the educational institutions since 2003, most ethnic schools have not been as lucky.

The inevitable consequence is that students graduating from such schools cannot take entrance examinations for Japanese universities before taking a separate “qualifying test”. Regarding the third question, we shall focus on statistics.

In July 2003, the percentage of noncitizens in Japan was at 1,0% only.

This means Japan is probably the sole industrialized country not to have experienced heavy migrations which other industrialized countries have. The figures back up the statement “Japan is a homogenous country”.

Polls also reported that more than 40% of the population hardly ever had the chance even to see foreigners, let alone interact with them.

Furthermore, some foreign residents, such as second- or third-generation Chinese and Koreans are indistinguishable from Japanese.

Unfortunately, this assimilation couldn’t be farther from what we have defined as “multiculturalism”. We shall now analyze the strange case of Murakami Haruki, whose novel “Norwegian Wood” is the embodiment of how deep Western culture has sunk into Japanese culture in general, and into Japanese youth in particular. Murakami Haruki was already a well-established novelist by 1987, the year in which “Norwegian Wood” came out in Japan.

What “Norwegian Wood” accomplished, however, was on a whole other level from his previous works.

It achieved a tremendous success in Japan and, since its English translation in 2000, in Europe and the States.

Just by glimpsing at the title we can understand where Murakami drew inspiration: Beatles’ incredibly famous song.

He supposedly wrote the entire novel listening to “Sgt.

Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band” over and over again in hotel rooms, bars and pubs around Europe. This can already give an idea of how “westernized” this novel is.

Furthermore, the main character reads Fitzgerald and the atmosphere of social restlessness is clearly a repercussion of what had happened in the West some years earlier. Also in his later novels does Murakami quote and writes about European and American novels, bands, personalities, often implementing them into the Japanese culture and making us understand, if only a bit, what is going on in the mind of Japanese youth.

It is not uncommon to hear Japanese people talking with ease about Western culture, and the fact that Murakami has had such a vast success in Japan despite his relying heavily on foreign influence should not come as a surprise. However, it is strikingly surprising if we are to think that only a few lines earlier in this essay we analyzed how difficult it is for multiculturalism in Japan to be established.. »