Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Becoming Japanese is one of the biggest circle-jerk conversations out there about Japan.

  • You have people saying they wish they were Japanese, or they want to become Japanese citizens,

  • and then you have people saying "YOU WILL NEVER BE JAPANESE."

  • The problem with this discussion is no one is talking about the same thing.

  • So today I have like six points or something I want to make on all of these arguments.

  • The first point, very important distinction!

  • Japanese is both a nationality and an ethnicity/race.

  • You can become a Japanese citizen. But you cannot become a Japanese person.

  • To give an example that’s easier to understand, I could move to Nigeria and I could gain Nigerian

  • citizenship, and I could call myself a Nigerian citizen. But I could not then start calling

  • myself black, or by extension of that, ethnically Nigerian.

  • One reason this issue can be so confusing to Americans is that we basebeing American

  • off of nationality, or even just a mindset sometimes, whereas Japanese people basebeing

  • Japaneseoff of ethnicity. There are so many non-white people in America that we can't

  • sayTo be American you have to be ethnically more than 85% Western European heritage,"

  • or something like that. But almost the entire Japanese population is ethnically Japanese.

  • So that's the defining factor. A good example of this is Yoichiro Nambu.

  • He’s ethnically Japanese, was born in Japan, and lived in Japan for the first half of his life.

  • However, at 49 years old he was living in America and gained American citizenship.

  • 38 years after that, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

  • Both Japan and America claimed that success as their own.

  • Japan was basing their claim off of him being ethnically Japanese, whereas

  • America was basing their claim off of him having American citizenship.

  • So you can see that from the beginning, how we define ourselves has a huge cultural basis to it.

  • Back to the main topic! On becoming a Japanese citizen, that is something you can do if that's

  • something you want. I don’t recommend it for most people, because Japan does not offer

  • dual citizenship, which means that you would have to give up citizenship of your home country

  • to become a Japanese citizen. What that means is you would no longer be allowed to freely

  • travel back to your home country. You would have to get the permission of your home country

  • (in the form of a visa in some cases) just to go back to your home country!

  • For me, personally, I would rather be able to vote for the President of America than politicians in Japan,

  • but that's your preference. If you wanted to become a Japanese citizen, you could.

  • Now, if you find yourself in the middle of this conversation and you ask them whether

  • they're talking about becoming a Japanese citizen or becoming a Japanese person, chances

  • are they're going to respond with: “Well, not really either. I'm just talking about

  • being accepted and fitting into Japan."

  • Well, unfortunately for you, Japan is almost entirely ethnically Japanese.

  • Japan doesn't really take statistics on ethnicity--only on nationality--

  • so it's not exact, but nationality-wise,

  • 98.5% of the people in Japan are Japanese, whereas an additional 1% are other East Asian

  • foreigners, and then only 0.5% are white or black or any other non-East Asian foreigner.

  • So no matter what you do, you are going to stand out in Japan as a minority, and you

  • are going to face some of the same problems that minorities in any country face.

  • Fortunately for you, Japan is a pretty good country to be a minority in (for some ethnicities), because

  • despite the perhaps occasional discrimination, you get awardedforeign celebrity status☆,

  • which means you get to benefit from positive discrimination, which would be things like

  • people wanting to talk to you or date you just because you're a cool foreigner.

  • That said, that doesn’t mean that the other end of the argument,

  • YOU WILL NEVER FIT IN

  • is correct, either.

  • There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners living here, many with families,

  • who are getting along just fine.

  • I live here with my Japanese husband

  • and he obviously doesn’t reject my presence as a foreigner in his country.

  • So, like with most arguments between two extremes, the reality lies somewhere in the middle.

  • Now, to talk a bit about the people making these arguments.

  • Obviously these are generalizations, but I think you'll find that in a lot of cases they

  • actually do apply.

  • When you see people online saying "Japan is the most xenophobic country on earth and hate

  • everyone and they hate you," those people generally fit into one of three categories:

  • #1: Bitter expat or previous expat. Something happened in their lives to make them miserable,

  • maybe Japan even played a role in it, but for whatever reason, they blame Japan for

  • all of their problems and they take out their anger by saying really horrible things about

  • Japan to everyone they meet.

  • #2: Unfortunately Japan does not have great

  • relations with some of its neighboring countries, and there’s a lot of badmouthing that goes

  • on online because of this. I've personally seen this on our channel, and especially I've

  • seen this on reddit. If you spend a lot of time on reddit, you may be aware of the weekly

  • Japan is literally worse than Hitler" thread where they like to bring up every horrible

  • thing about Japan's past, some of which may or may not be true. And you will find a lot

  • of these comments there.

  • #3: The Japanese culture enthusiast, who likes

  • Japan but they've never actually been there so all they can do is repeat what they've

  • heard other people say about Japan, which again may or may not be true.

  • On the other end of the spectrum, you have the people who say they want to be Japanese.

  • I can understand thinking that another country seems so much better. We have a really common

  • phrase for this calledThe grass is greener on the other side.”

  • But you probably know the moral of the story is, the grass isn’t actually greener.

  • It just looks greener because

  • youve been exposed to that grass’s soft power while you were emotionally vulnerable

  • and youre idealizing the grass.

  • Wait.

  • Japan may seem perfect, but it’s not a fantasy land. It’s a real place with its own list

  • of pros and cons, just like anywhere else. You may very well find life for you in Japan

  • more suitable for you than life in your home country. However, if you are miserable in

  • your home country, chances are you're going to end up unhappy here, too.

  • Youll have a honeymoon phase where everything seems perfect,

  • but eventually that's going to wear off, and youre going to find things here

  • that bother you just like you have things in your home country that bothered you.

  • Being happy with where you live has a lot to do with your mindset.

  • I’ve found that the happiest people I know here in Japan are people who

  • would be happy living pretty much anywhere.

  • So yes, look forward to going to Japan because it’s awesome and youre probably going

  • to love it, but it’s not going to solve your problems.

  • Now I’ve mentioned before that the vast majority of people who wish they were Japanese

  • or idealize Japan are adolescents who will grow out of it

  • at some point during high school or college.

  • But some people have asked me, "What about the people who don't grow out of it?"

  • And they almost always seem to imply that their method of dealing with this is

  • anger and ridicule.

  • What part of that seems effective to you? You want to try make someone

  • who spends their life escaping from reality, return to reality, by making reality for them

  • even crappier.

  • Nice plan.

  • This isn't a Japan thing where Japan is the only place that people ever want to try to

  • escape to. This can happen with anything. You have people who wish they were vampires.

  • You have people who wish they were elves. Or you have people who wish they were those

  • people from that Avatar movie. This is a really common thing that some people go through.

  • And it's not because it's "haha stupid weeaboo" or whatever. They probably have something

  • going on in their life or some sort of issue that they really need to talk to a professional

  • about. That is not something to ridicule.

  • If you genuinely want someone like that to change, you need to compassionately encourage

  • them to talk to someone. If youre calling them a weeaboo fag and telling them to kill

  • themselves, congratulations: youre just a bully.

  • You should probably talk to someone yourself.

  • So those are all my varied thoughts on the subject of becoming Japanese. I hope it made

  • you think a little bit! Please let me know your thoughts down in the comments and I will

  • see you guys later! Thanks for watching! Bye!

Becoming Japanese is one of the biggest circle-jerk conversations out there about Japan.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it