{"id":11305,"date":"2013-04-18T14:23:07","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T00:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=11305"},"modified":"2013-04-20T10:21:27","modified_gmt":"2013-04-20T20:21:27","slug":"harbingers-of-further-insularity-j-international-marriages-way-down-as-are-j-students-studying-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=11305","title":{"rendered":"Harbingers of further insularity: J international marriages way down, as are J students studying abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hi Blog. We have some more harbingers of Japan’s retreat into itself<\/a>. International marriages are way down, and so are Japanese students studying abroad.<\/p>\n

First, check out this significant stat about international marriage: \u00a0At last measurement, international marriage figures (in blue) have dropped by about 25% since their peak in 2006! (International divorce figures, in yellow, have crept up too.)<\/p>\n

\"mofaintlmarriage19792010\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Courtesy the Foreign Affairs Ministry http:\/\/www.mofa.go.jp\/mofaj\/press\/pr\/wakaru\/topics\/vol82\/index.html<\/a>. (I’ll talk a little more about the contents of this page shortly, as the focus is on international divorce and the probable consequences of Japan’s signing the Hague Convention on Child Abductions.)<\/em><\/p>\n

I call it significant because it removes one of the fundamental means to Japan’s increased diversity<\/a>. \u00a0If Japan’s perennially low birthrate means fewer children, having fewer international marriages means probably fewer international Japanese children. \u00a0And this will quite possibly lead to further marginalization of the “half” population as a temporary “blip” in international coupling (last seen as a “social problem” with the Postwar konketsuji<\/em> mixed-blood children, publicly stigmatized for being “bastard children of prostitutes”; see\u00a0Fish, Robert A.\u00a0 2009.\u00a0 \u201c\u2018Mixed-blood\u2019 Japanese:\u00a0 A Reconsideration of Race and Purity in Japan.\u201d\u00a0 Pp. 40-58 in Weiner, ed., Japan\u2019s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity<\/i>.\u00a0 2nd ed.\u00a0 Sheffield:\u00a0 Routledge.)<\/p>\n

As a tangent, note the normalized racialization of the GOJ’s illustration above, where the “foreigner” is male and blue-eyed. \u00a0Even though the majority of Japanese-foreign marriages are not “Western male” either in terms of marriages in general or even foreign husbands in specific, perpetually! \u00a0So says MHLW:<\/p>\n

\"mhlwmarriagestatt19502009\"<\/a>Courtesy\u00a0http:\/\/www.mhlw.go.jp\/toukei\/saikin\/hw\/jinkou\/suii09\/marr2.html<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

=============================<\/p>\n

Next up, consider how Japanese students are not going overseas much (according to the Japan Times<\/a>, they are being significantly outdistanced by, for example, the South Koreans and Chinese):<\/p>\n

\"Jstudentsstudyabroad8310\"<\/a>Courtesy of\u00a0http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2013\/04\/19\/national\/high-schoolers-dream-of-ivy-league\/<\/a> and JJS.<\/p>\n

That said, I’m a bit skeptical about whether this trend means a great deal, as I don’t think people who study abroad necessarily become more broad-minded or open to outside ideas<\/a> (and Japanese society has structural mechanisms for marginalizing students who leave the system anyway<\/a>). \u00a0Moreover, the domestic discourse nowadays is finding ways to rationalize away the need, for example, to study a foreign language at all<\/a>. \u00a0Nevertheless, I would argue that these trends are not particularly good for Japan, as they are not only harbingers of insularity, but also encouraging even further insularity in addition to recent trends I have written about before<\/a>. \u00a0Arudou Debito<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have some more harbingers of Japan’s retreat into itself. International marriages are way down, and so are Japanese students studying abroad. First, check out this significant stat about international marriage: At last measurement, international marriage figures (in blue) have dropped by about 25% since their peak in 2006! (International divorce figures, in yellow, have crept up too.) I call it significant because it removes one of the fundamental means to Japan’s increased diversity. If Japan’s perennially low birthrate means fewer children, having fewer international marriages means probably fewer international Japanese children. And this will quite possibly lead to further marginalization of the “half” population as a temporary “blip” in international coupling (last seen as a “social problem” with the Postwar konketsuji mixed-blood children, publicly stigmatized for being “bastard children of prostitutes”; see Fish, Robert A. 2009. \u201c\u2018Mixed-blood\u2019 Japanese: A Reconsideration of Race and Purity in Japan.\u201d Pp. 40-58 in Weiner, ed., Japan\u2019s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. 2nd ed. Sheffield: Routledge.)<\/p>\n

Next up, consider how Japanese students are not going overseas much (according to the Japan Times, they are being significantly outdistanced by, for example, the South Koreans and Chinese): That said, I’m a bit skeptical about whether this trend means a great deal, as I don’t think people who study abroad necessarily become more broad-minded or open to outside ideas (and Japanese society has structural mechanisms for marginalizing students who leave the system anyway). Moreover, the domestic discourse nowadays is finding ways to rationalize away the need, for example, to study a foreign language at all. Nevertheless, I would argue that these trends are not particularly good for Japan, as they are not only harbingers of insularity, but also encouraging even further insularity in addition to recent trends I have written about before<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4,56,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-japanese-government","category-nj-legacies","category-unsustainable-japanese-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}