This is a paradox, but it would be itself a sort of noxious monoculturalism to say that all societies have to be equally multicultural.
Japan does some great things with its monoculturalism, but it's worth bearing in mind that it's only a racial monopoly, not a cultural one. You'll find more global culture represented in Japan than you will in the UK, for instance; more books in translation, more subtitled films, better stocks of South American or African music, and so on. It's also worth remembering that a nation like the UK is only more multicultural than Japan, racially, because of a long history of colonialism. It's not that we've opened our borders because we're oh-so-liberal.
It's also worth saying that I think Japan could stand to get a bit more ethnically diverse, and that I cover its existing (hidden, but not absent) ethnic diversity positively in my Japanese cultural coverage. But -- to return to the paradox I opened with -- I don't think it's up to nations whose racial diversity originates in things like slavery to make Japan feel inadequate for its stance on immigration. You cannot impose a "multiculti monoculture".
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Date: 2009-10-12 10:56 am (UTC)Japan does some great things with its monoculturalism, but it's worth bearing in mind that it's only a racial monopoly, not a cultural one. You'll find more global culture represented in Japan than you will in the UK, for instance; more books in translation, more subtitled films, better stocks of South American or African music, and so on. It's also worth remembering that a nation like the UK is only more multicultural than Japan, racially, because of a long history of colonialism. It's not that we've opened our borders because we're oh-so-liberal.
It's also worth saying that I think Japan could stand to get a bit more ethnically diverse, and that I cover its existing (hidden, but not absent) ethnic diversity positively in my Japanese cultural coverage. But -- to return to the paradox I opened with -- I don't think it's up to nations whose racial diversity originates in things like slavery to make Japan feel inadequate for its stance on immigration. You cannot impose a "multiculti monoculture".