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	<< Back "DAWN" Newsletter of The DAWN CENTER The Situation Surrounding International Families in Japan - Immigration, Asia, Women and Foreigners- Kazumi Moriki The international flow of people The number of people coming in or going out of Japan and the number of non-Japanese citizens who are residents can be seen as a yardstick for the globalization of Japan(1). In 2001, 5,286,310 foreigners arrived in Japan, including those who came more than once. In the same year, 16,215,657 Japanese people went abroad. There were 837,744 Japanese people living abroad, and women accounted for 51.2% of them. The reason why women make up more than half of the Japanese living abroad may be that more women decided to go abroad in order to pursue their study and career. Foreign residents in Japan(2), on the other hand, amounted to 1,778,462, at the end of fiscal 2001, accounting for 1.4 % of the total population. Here again, women made up of 53.2% of the foreign residents. In 1975, registered foreign residents numbered about 750,000, accounting for only 0.67% of the total population. The percentage doubled in 25 years, even though Japan is not a country that is willing to receive foreign immigrants, nor does it accept unskilled workers even today. Japan used to send a lot of emigrants to Brazil or Peru, and the descendants of these emigrants are now coming to Japan with their families as guest workers. The changes of Japanese society One way for a foreigner to be qualified for resident status in Japan is to get married to a Japanese citizen(3). This is also on the increase. In Japan, marriage to a foreigner was considered an "international marriage" and looked upon as peculiar. In 1970, international marriages accounted for only 0.5% of the total marriages, while in 2000, it increased to 4.5%. (See Chart 1.) In most cases, Asian women are married to Japanese men. For example, in order to get resident status, Filipino residents in Japan, 80 percent of whom are women, claim they are spouses or children of Japanese. They tend to go on to get permanent residency. (See Table 1.) Japanese people living abroad for extended periods, non-Japanese living permanently in Japan, and international marriages are all on the increase. While the number of children whose parents are both Japanese is decreasing, the number with Japanese nationality, who have a non-Japanese parent, is increasing in number. (See Chart 2.) This has caused globalization in the Japanese population. These factors are forcing the Japanese society itself to change. Globalization opened up the door for people with different cultures, from different races, and with different nationalities to meet each other and create relationships or families. During the process, different cultures and different senses of values have been introduced into Japan and brought with them problems that could not be coped with by Japanese standards. They were the problems that compelled us to review the rights of women and foreigners in Japanese society. International marriage and women   Globalization and Asian women In the 1970s, Japanese men went to nearby Asian countries on prostitute-buying tours, against which Asian women, including Japanese women, stood up to protest. The anti-sex-tour movement decreased the number of Japanese men going on sex-tours. Instead, young Filipina women were brought to Japan as "entertainers." They scattered all over Japan, and often ended up in the sex industry where Filipina women entertain Japanese men. Relationships between these women and men tend to end with pregnancy. As the resident permission for these women is limited to a short period, they are obliged to overstay their visas illegally after childbirth or return to their homeland. It is often the case that though the fathers are Japanese, these children are treated as illegitimate and cannot obtain Japanese nationality. It is estimated that there are about 10,000 to 20,000 such children in the Philippines, looking forward to meeting their Japanese fathers again. There are a few NGOs trying to detect their fathers. Even when a father is found, it is often hard to get financial aid from him(5). The Asian Women Independence Project, an NGO in Kobe, gives counseling services to foreign women living in Japan. Recently, a number of visits or calls have been received from Asian women trying to become independent of their Japanese husbands and raise their children by themselves. They left their violent husbands, or have divorced and are struggling to work and raise their children. Though they may not be engaged in stable work, they say they can afford to send some money to their native countries if they do their best. Japanese society, with the influence of globalization, is slowly becoming aware that women's rights and foreigners' rights are human rights, and build up a community where a variety of international families and cultures will be able to coexist with each other. Notes (1) Data used in the discussion are from statistics of the Immigration Bureau in the Justice Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry. (2) Foreigners immigrating into Japan are obliged to register at a city or ward office if they plan to stay in Japan for more than 90 days. (3) This status is given to a foreigner whose spouse is Japanese, or to a child with a Japanese parent. (4) A Filipina woman visited an NGO, taking refuge from her abusive husband. At home, she was forced to stay indoors doing housework or taking care of her parents-in-law. She evensuffered sexual harassment from her father-in-law.Her husband had paid 3 million yen to the go-between to make her his wife. (5) JFC (Japanese Filipino Children) Network is an NGO whose work is to detect Japanese fathers at the request of Filipino women and children. It received 575 requests in 18 years, 380 cases of which were untraceable and dropped. (From its 2001 report.) Source:Ministry of Health,Labor and Welfare;Annual Report on Vital Statistics,Population Ceusus,2001 Source:Ministry of Justice,Immigration Bureau;Statistics of foreign residents in japan Page Top Copyright (C) 2007 DawnCenter. All Rights Reserved.