-Abstract-

Multiethnic Societies:
Dutch Troubles and Japanese Perspectives

Speaker: Wim Lunsing, Free Scholar


As a European in Japan I have experienced being made into an object for the public gaze and being treated as an alien just because of my un-Asian looks, i.e. on purely racist grounds. Though usually this was a manifestation of positive interest and curiosity, it did mean that I was not so much seen as a person in my own right rather as an object for amusement. Lately I have experienced movement in this with people wondering whether I was ehalff and even very correctly asking whether I was Japanese or not, this when I went to register at the Shinjuku ward office. Japanese society appears to have made some progress in its attitude towards foreign people.

I used to be proud of being Dutch because the Netherlands were a very welcoming country to foreign people historically as well in recent years up to 2001. In the 1990s there had been a huge influx of mostly refugees and most of them came from Arab and African countries, though also from China and other Asian countries as well as from Eastern Europe. In particular anti-Muslim feelings have grown in recent years and this has led to a very negative attitude towards foreigners in general, which is matched by policies of deportation and all sorts of ways of making it difficult for people to enter the country other than as tourists, causing my pride to make place for shame. Even if people want to marry a foreigner, more and more barriers are raised before admission is given. The one positive point remaining is that, compared to almost any other country, including Japan, things are easy for those who want to marry a foreign same-sex partner.