Reluctance to Divorce

The question arises as to why Filipina wives put up with violent husbands. Maria said one reason for their reluctance to pack up and leave is the women’s upbringing in the Catholic Church, which forbids divorce in general. Another reason, Maria added, is that the women recoil from the prospect of raising children alone in a foreign land.

“Some Filipina wives still can’t speak Japanese after living here for more than 20 years,” Maria observed. “Women like that are especially terrified at the thought of setting out on their own as single mothers. Just thinking of having to fill out the divorce forms on their own is enough to make some of them abandon the idea.”

Maria attributed her decision to file for divorce to a stay in the Philippines. Removed from the violence, she regained the emotional stability to take the decisive step. Maria, who left her family at the age of 20 and came to Japan to work at a bar, had acquired little practical competence in negotiating life in society. Her time back in the Philippines was something of an epiphany. The sight of her family members handling the exigencies of daily life, heedless of their poverty, was inspiring. Maria gained the confidence in the Philippines that she, too, could overcome hardship and manage a household independently of her husband.

Back in Japan, Maria called the police one day after her husband had knocked her down a flight of stairs. She learned from the police of a city-run consultation center for victims of domestic violence, and she sought help there. The help available from the city included financial assistance, which enabled Maria to rent an apartment on her own.

Too many Filipina wives lack the strength that Maria mustered to seek the help that is available from public agencies. Too many are unable to marshal the courage required to escape violence.

Trends in Residency Qualifications by Nation of Origin

Foreign nationals residing in Japan numbered 2,121,831 at the end of 2014, having increased by 2.7% over the previous year. Japanese immigration policy, resistant to immigration in general, has been somewhat flexible in accommodating the nation’s need for labor. We thus find distinct trends in the residency qualifications most common among the different nationalities of foreign residents.

For example, Japan accommodates ethnic Japanese workers from Latin America and their spouses with “long-term residence” visas. Those visas are available to second- and third-generation ethnic Japanese. The visa holders are free to undertake any kind of work in Japan. Factory jobs mediated by employment services are a common line of work for these residents. The number of Brazilians in Japan, principally under the long-term residency program for ethnic Japanese, reached about 317,000 in 2007 but declined sharply after the world economic crisis hit Japan the following year. About 175,000 Brazilians resided in Japan in 2014.

Chinese constitute the largest group of foreign residents in Japan—about 655,000 in 2014. They reside in Japan under diverse qualifications, such as spouse or child of Japanese national, student, and trainee. About 100,000 Vietnamese resided in Japan in 2014. Most were in Japan on trainee or student visas, though some of them were Cold War–era refugees or the children and grandchildren of those refugees. Individuals admitted to Japan as refugees ordinarily reside there under the same long-term residency program that accommodates ethnic Japanese residents from abroad.

Japan’s flagship program for trainees is the Technical Intern Training Program. That program is ostensibly an initiative in the realm of international cooperation—a platform for sharing Japanese manufacturing technology with developing nations through on-the-job training for young workers. In practice, the program is largely just an avenue for importing unskilled labor to supplement Japan’s shrinking labor force. Japan’s mandarins cannot bring themselves to open the nation formally to an influx of unskilled labor, so they resort to the subterfuge of admitting workers as “trainees.”

Observers in Japan and worldwide have noted that sham trainee visas are tickets to abusive employment practices. But far from scaling back the trainee visa programs, the Japanese government is expanding the programs. Japanese contractors will need a greatly increased supply of labor in the building rush up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The government is moving to accommodate them by lengthening the residency periods possible under the trainee programs. And it is increasing the appeal of the trainee visas by allowing visa holders to leave and re-enter the nation during their residency periods.

Japan was home to about 218,000 Philippine nationals in 2014, and women accounted for some 80% of those residents. Holders of entertainer visas, once a favored means of entering Japan for Filipinas, numbered only 436. In contrast, some 116,000 Philippine nationals resided in Japan as permanent residents, 4,000 as spouses of permanent residents, 29,000 as spouses of Japanese citizens, and 44,000 as long-term residents.

Time for a Real Immigration Policy

Japan had essentially no policy for dealing with foreign residents in 2004, when I began investigating the issues confronted by those residents. Local governments were in the vanguard of immigration policy, and support for foreign residents differed greatly by prefecture and by city. Municipal and prefectural assistance for foreign residents has since improved greatly across the nation. Numerous local governments have adopted proactive policies for nurturing multicultural communities. Their initiatives have included ensuring access to public schools for non-Japanese children, upgrading their capabilities for consulting with foreign residents about children’s education, providing Japanese-language tutoring for foreign schoolchildren, and deploying interpreters to accompany foreign residents at medical clinics and hospitals,

We can take heart at the undeniable improvements in the environment for Japan’s foreign residents. At the same time, we need to note the gaping differentials among prefectures and cities. Those differentials are especially conspicuous in the availability—and unavailability—of language tutoring. Japan desperately needs to assemble a unified policy for accommodating foreign residents.

Numerous immigrants have done well in Japan, of course, despite the inadequate support infrastructure. They have built livelihoods and raised families, and second-generation foreign residents have, in numerous instances, carried on in the same successful manner. On close examination, we identify a common thread in the experience of foreign children who have thrived in Japan. Most of those children have enjoyed the benefits of loving parents and understanding schoolteachers. And those benefits have invested the children with confidence in their communities. We need to be equally attentive, however, to the experience of children who have fared less well in Japan.

This comment comes from an individual who has been engaged professionally for years in providing support for foreign residents: “Children are beginning to associate on the basis of social class rather than race or ethnicity. Kids who have been cast off by society naturally bond, but exiting a group can be difficult or even impossible.”

Ryōta, having received little in the way of spiritual support from his parents or from society, drifted into the orbit of the group headed by Child A. The messages he left with friends on the social network Line proved tragically accurate: “When I said I was leaving the group, the violence only got worse. I can’t take it anymore. I might get killed.”

News media have reported that Ryōta had good friends on Nishinoshima and in Kawasaki. Child A presumably couldn’t stand the thought of Ryōta’s leaving his group and returning to another social class. He delivered a severe beating to Ryōta about a month before the murder. At that time, some friends of Ryōta went to the ringleader and urged him to apologize. “I was really pissed off,” Child A told prosecutors, “that so many people cared so much for [Ryōta].” The lethal violence unleashed by Child A seems to have been directed as much against the society that rejected him as against an individual.

Japan is losing some 220,000 citizens a year due to its declining birthrate. A growing influx of foreign residents is inevitable. Accommodating that influx needs to include measures for addressing the needs of non-Japanese children. Treating the people who move to Japan well is more than a matter of displaying hospitality or of observing human rights. It is part of a common-sense approach to reinforcing social stability for the nation. The time has come for Japan to formulate a real immigration policy.

 (Originally written in Japanese and published on May 27, 2015. Banner photo: Flowers and other items left in memory of Uemura Ryōta near the site where his body was found beside the Tamagawa river in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. Photograph taken on February 24, 2015. @ Jiji.)