Since the 60’s Japan has had a process known as ‘alien registration’. Under the system all foreigners (the aliens of course) have had to register as aliens (or gaijin in the local lingo). All gaijin are then required to carry their government registration card with them at all time. This is technically your Alien Registration Certificate, but is generally just known as your gaijin card. As a certified alien your details were kept on a separate system to the locals and you had the privilege of special rules – like if you don’t have your gaijin card on you when stopped by police you can be shipped off to prison for 1 year or fined Y200,000. That’s a hell of a slap on the wrist!
After 50-odd years of operation, the system is being disbanded as of 6 July 2012. Those pesky aliens are going to be integrated into the national ‘registration card’ system. Now my gaijin card will be replaced by a ‘resident card’, which all other Buda fearing Japanese must carry (though without the sort of wrist snapping penalty imposed on forgetful gaijin.
This change in policy has been greeting by foreigners in Japan with much fan fair, having felt entirely victimized by having had to hold a ARC. To be honest I can’t understand why I should have felt so offended and victimized!! Reading the articles I have found online written by foreigners living in Japan, by being apathetic to whether the government of japan has seen fit to label me alien, I am a second-rate foreigner of lower intellect who relishes being walked all over and treated second class.
Leaving aside my personal problems with taking a writer seriously when he or she preempts disagreement with an implied ‘if you think I’m wrong you’re an idiot’, I honestly don’t see the issue here.
Perhaps this is because, quite honestly, I look pretty alien here! Here is the biggest give away of my alien nature: I’m white, with pretty fair skin and blue eyes.
In in a country with 100 million + people in it, I’m one of only 2.07 million registered foreigners. I can’t tell you where all those foreigners are from – but they aren’t all white. What I’m saying is, I stand out like someone who looks like only 1% of the population around here. (at work on an office building floor of 400 I am only 1 of 2 of the Caucasian persuasion leaving me as even more alien – a fact not lost on those in the lift or queuing for lunch at the cafeteria) That makes me more alien here then a foreigner not of the Caucasian persuasion in Australia, the US, England and many other countries where there is a very diverse population by appearance. Japan just doesn’t have that level of diversity. It has happily lived an isolated existence (and when it hasn’t been living an isolated existence in their past, it has not been a successful time or enterprise for them). As a result I just look like I’m kinda just look….alien. I also don’t speech the language in any meaningful way, which when interacting with other people makes me look and act very alien, speaking either language in a slow, disjointed and confusing manner. My biggest survival tactic when interacting is relying on just how alien I look and act, such that people will instantly engage in what little English they know to assist me – or just do everything they think I want and take my money (and when I get something I didn’t want I just chalk it up to a tax on people who live somewhere without knowing the local language). I value the extraordinary amount of English language signage and usage around the place for what is a small number of tourists and residents. It doesn’t make learning the language redundant, but it certainly limits your motivation to put your back into learning it. Particularly when you don’t often use it
In this regard I think being on a separate registration system really is the least of your worries when it comes to being different. And frankly, is life that boring that you need to complain that your called an ‘alien’?! I’ve been called a lot worse things in day-to-day life that ‘alien’!
Some of the writers talk about they have made the effort to learn Japanese and feel integrated into society and so they shouldn’t be treated like an alien. I can’t see how changing the name of the identification card you have is really going to change that. People don’t deduce that you have a gaijin card in your pocket and then try to talk English to you, they look at you and think ‘well you’re not Japanese’ and then working on their own national ‘neurosis’ about giving face, they try not to put you in a situation where you have to admit you can’t do something, like speech Japanese. I can see perhaps someone from Europe who doesn’t speech English as a first language feeling annoyed that just because they are Caucasian people think they speak English. Two things to that – travel to Japan as a continent more often and then they may not make an assumption which, based on the statistics, is an entirely reasonable one to make; and two, get over yourself! On a side note my wordpress reader statistics show an alarming lack of European readership (ironically probably because English isn’t their first language!) so I feel confident enough to get away with such a sweepingly general statement.
An Aussie In Japan 