Against Xenophobia

The September 29^th issue of Jinja Shinpō includes an article by me. It was written in response to the Japanese Upper House elections in July, in which Sanseitō (“Democratic Participation Party”, literally) took fourteen seats, adding to one that they already held. (The Upper House elections are for half of the seats every three years.) This is a problem because their slogan was “Japanese People First” — and I really don’t think they mean me.

On the one hand, fourteen seats is only about 10%, so they are not going to be forming the government any time soon. On the other hand, it is about 10%, and they have driven a noticeable change in political rhetoric here — it has become much more hostile to immigrants than it was a couple of years ago. So, I wanted to take action to oppose this trend.

Writing an article for Jinja Shinpō was the first thing I did. While it does not have a massive readership, it is read by Shinto priests, who are an important part of the conservative side of Japanese society. Japanese conservatism has not been xenophobic in the recent past, as I have mentioned before, and that should mean that there is nothing inevitable about a trend in that direction, at least not yet.

The article starts by regretting the xenophobic rhetoric in the election. This was, as noted, not restricted to Sanseitō, so I avoided naming names. I followed that up by emphasising that this is not consistent with Shinto practice — jinja are open to everyone, and priests pray for harmony. In addition to that, there are jinja enshrining immigrants as kami, and even Yasukuni Jinja enshrines people born in Taiwan or the Korean Peninsula.

I then suggested concrete actions, such as putting up a poster inviting foreigners to enter the jinja and pay their respects to the kami. This would both make it clear to foreigners that they were welcome, and provide an opportunity for Japanese people who were inclining to xenophobia to reconsider. I also suggested proactively inviting local foreigners to attend and participate in matsuri, because that would both support the matsuri, and support the integration of foreign residents into the local community.

I concluded by arguing that this sort of grassroots activity could help stop Japan withdrawing from the world, and lead to the spirit of Shinto blossoming in a multicoloured community.

The writing process was interesting. I ran the draft past my colleagues in Jinja Honchō before sending it to Jinja Shinpō, and they recommended some changes to make it sound less critical of priests. Since I had already been toning down my rhetoric in my revisions, I was happy to do that. The rhetorical point was not to be confrontational, but to encourage priests to feel that they are already on this side of the issue. There was one interesting change they recommended, because I had been debating with myself over where a particular sentence best fitted in the article, and they moved it to the place I hadn’t chosen.

After I sent it to Jinja Shinpō it was, as usual, edited. There was one place where I wanted to use a word, nagoyaka (和やか), that is not normally applied to whole societies, and so the editor had revised it. However, I really did want both the nuances — of feeling personally comfortable and at ease in a situation — and the fact that it uses the character “和”, which also means “Japanese”, so I asked whether we could change it back, and the editor agreed.

I do not know whether it will have any effect — it has only just been published, after all. But I hope it will help encourage positive change. After all, I do not have the option of pretending not to be an immigrant.